Lendle

Spartanville was getting ready for the annual Butter Festival. People arrived by tour bus filling the local motels to capacity. The camp ground outside of town had been full a week ago with RV’s, conversion vans and tents. No one in the tri-county area wanted to miss this annual extravaganza. The main street would be blocked off so the local merchants could display their wares and hung on every street light was the symbol of the festival, a butter cow. Wisconsin was famous for their dairy industry and Spartanville for their Butter Festival. Even the cheese heads changed their hats to sticks of butter. Marla was excited to join in the festivities for the very first time with her Grand Opening of ‘The Chocolate Kiss’. There wasn’t a better time to attract customers than the Butter Festival. They had been making chocolate seven days a week now for the past three weeks. All the ladies were working overtime to get their supply of chocolate ready for the crowds. The shelves in the store front were filled, beautiful plants were set on every table and the ladies were in the back room busy making the next chocolate treat. Marla sat down on the bench outside her shoppe, turning herself into the pretzel that Hillary had shown her. Taking several deep breaths, she tried to quiet her mind and ignore the list of ‘to do’s’ that were swimming around in her head. Most of the time, she was calm but this felt like the calm before the storm, and hopefully it would be a storm of customers who wiped them out of chocolate!!
Hillary joined her on the bench, turning her own body into the pretzel shape she called Cook’s Hook-up. Both of them breathed in rhythm and with the two of them together focusing on relaxing, it seemed to do the trick, Marla felt the wave of calm take over her frazzled brain. “Thanks, I really needed your support. I was hoping that my breathing would relax my mind a bit, but until you arrived my list just kept swirling around in my head and getting bigger and bigger.” Hillary put her finger tips together and exhaled a big breath, with her tongue on the roof of her mouth, she sounded like there was a glob of peanut butter stuck to the roof of her mouth when she spoke, “It’s always better to have two people focusing together. Give me another few deep breaths and we can talk.” With that said, Marla remembered to keep her tongue on the roof of her mouth. She tasted the dark chocolate fudge she’d been sampling before she’d escaped to the bench. Yum! The ladies were definitely making the most Divine chocolate around. Just as good as Grace’s chocolate in Maine. Marla decided that pride was a good thing when it came to chocolate. She was definitely proud of all that they had accomplished in the past month. Bringing everyone together to work as a chocolate team had been actually quite easy and fun. Never in a million years did Marla think starting a chocolate shoppe would be this easy. She knew she had many friends to thank and especially Ben, her guardian angel. He popped into the shoppe on a daily basis, making everyone feel loved and appreciated.
Exhaling in unison, the two of them watched the boy scouts as they finished planting the butterfly garden in the lot beside the mini mall. Marla grinned, “That is exactly what will bring people to this mall. The trees and flowers that they chose are perfect. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the butterflies flocked there in droves. I don’t know what you call a group of butterflies, probably not a herd like cows.” Both of them laughed at the vision of a ‘herd’ of butterflies descending on the garden, seemed like everyone was thinking about cows and the upcoming Butter Festival. Marla looked at her friend Hillary, only a few weeks ago she had arrived in Wisconsin, escaping from her career in Boston. Now she had only one client, Marla and her chocolate shoppe. Marla knew that Ben had directed Hillary to her, another one of the blessings she received.