On Aging

Okay, so here we are at another birthday.

I keep waiting for the year to come where this bothers me - I'm happy to report it isn't here yet.

I am :: drum roll :: 42 years of age today. Old enough to be...the older sister of most of you.

Although, I believe Fab Boy and I are the same age this year, no?

Anyhoodle, I still LOVE my birthday. My own personsonal holiday - what could be better?

I do sound like a youngest child rather than an eldest child, don't I? Don't care. My day! La-la-la-la!!!

Got cupcakes - welcome back to the fourth grade, folks - and cards at work today. Even the Engineers signed on, which absolutely pleased me to no end. They aren't sociable, The Engineers. But I go around their department every Friday forcing them out of their collective comfort zone, forcing them to talk to a Marketing Person and apparently they don't mind as much as they used to. One even called me "Baby" when he signed my card. How's that for progress? Bless them....

Enjoying gifts, Gifts, GIFTS right now (Hub is playing with the new iPod Touch, so I have time to post - had to wish Joshilyn a Happy Birthday to Us) and martinis with bleu-cheese stuffed olives. Go-oood day!

Tomorrow brings the buffet of Indian culiary goodness at my favorite ethnic haunt in Huntsvegas and a viewing of Slumdog Millionaire...before meeting friends at dinner for Sushi. Can you say multi-cultural gluttony? I can!!!

So, the lesson to be learned here, kids (those of you who are not yet 4-2 are still "kids" indeed) is that 40-ish birthdays are still to be enjoyed and even savored - because they beat the HELL out of the alternative.

Happy Birthday to ALL of us!

Friday Funny

If you stay married long enough...

Today is our anniversary and I forgot and he remembered. Hate it when that happens even though IT NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE. So...because we've been married so long...instead of having to get dressed and drive under the influence and spend money...we're having Favorite Dinner Number Five at home with our kids. All of them, and my sister, and my bestest friend who was our wedding witness. And these are the emails long-married people send each other on their anniversary.

(His car has been in the shop getting new brakes, he drove mine to a store parking lot this morning and I have my sister's truck this week.) Go to the bottom and start up.

Your car will be at WD. I have mine. New battery in truck...to start hauling off shit. (Don't piss me off...your body will fit in the truckbed.)


-----Original Message-----
From: The Big Boy
To: Country Girl
Sent: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 2:15 pm
Subject: RE: Supper


Ok. Anything I need to know about cars? Happy Anniversary!



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Country Girl
Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2009 2:06 PM
To: The Big Boy
Subject: Supper


Tacos for supper. Neeley will be here.

Pretzel Quiz Answer!

I didn't expect people to actually guess at the pretzel answer! Good on y'all. :o)

Because I am an entomology nerd, and suspect some of you all are as well, here's the whole story (according to the CERC).

In the early Church, the Lenten abstinence included all forms of meat and animal products. Additionally, the general rule was to eat only one meal a day - so a need arose for a “snack” that wouldn’t violate abstinence and fasting laws.

According to pretzel maker Snyder’s of Hanover, a young Italian monk in the early 600s was preparing a special Lenten bread of water, flour and salt. To remind his brother monks that Lent was a time of prayer, he rolled the bread dough in strips and then shaped each strip in the form of crossed arms, mimicking the then popular prayer position of folding one’s arms over each other on the chest. (Yeay, Melissa!)

Because these breads were shaped into the form of crossed arms, they were called bracellae, the Latin word for "little arms." From this word, the Germans derived the word bretzel which has since mutated to the familiar word pretzel.

Another possibility for the origins of the word pretzel is that the young monk gave these breads to children as a reward when they could recite their prayers. The Latin word pretiola means "little reward," from which pretzel could also be reasonably derived.

Lent: Self-Improvement for the Attention Deficient

Loads of people - like me - avoid making New Years resolutions because we know in our hearts the resolution only lasts, at the outside, until St. Valentine's Day.

Yet every year, at the crack of dawn on New Years Day, millions of otherwise-sane individuals make grand promises to themselves to quitsmokingandloseweightandquitdrinkingsodamnmuchand

spendmoretimewiththekidsanddocharityworkandandand.

Which is utter nonsense. Nobody can wake up one morning and completely overhaul their lives AND, more ridiculously, expect it to stick. Unless, of course, they are all married to life coaches.

In which case there is NO way they can quit drinking.

Enter Lent.

Forty days of self-improvement and character-building sacrifice. Forty days. And at the end you are rewarded with chocolate eggs and a ham dinner. Forty days. You could stand on your head for forty days if you had to.

Last year for Lent I stopped engaging in idle gossip. That was much more difficult than you'd think. I don't initiate talk about other people - unless they've pissed me off and I need to vent - but think about all the time you spend listening to, and unconsciously engaging in, talk about other people.

Now, a year later (give or take a full moon after an equinox, or whatever), I am still very conscious of gossip and do make an effort to avoid it. I am not going to leave the table at a dinner party to get away from it, but I really try to hold my tongue.

So this year I am going a step further in the self-development department: I am not participating in gossip and I am giving up Facebook - in favor of books. How's that for self improvement? My book reading is way, way down and I can directly link the decline to the amount of time I spend online in the evening. But not for the next 40 days.

Additionally :: deep breath :: as a means of sacrifice I am giving up wine.

Did you just say "Big deal." ?? Big deal?! BIG DEAL?!! Yes, as a matter of fact, it is a very big deal. Hub and I enjoy a glass or two every evening with dinner. I love wine and I am fairly certain it loves me. It's complicated....

I am taking the wine money and doing something good with it. Not giving it to Christian charity, they get enough between offerings and Catholic Charities...although Cc would be the obvious choice considering the impetus...but, naaahhh...So, in this case, one case of wine's worth of loot goes to the local no-kill shelter.

So is this unrealistic? Yeah, probably, but I'm going to give it a shot anyway.

It's going to be a long, crabby forty days but hopefully I'll come out on the other side a bit better person than I am now - and full of chocolate eggs.

(Who besides Fab Boy gets the pretzel reference, eh?)

I got a bran' new gurlfrayend........

(Go back and read Saturday's post before you read this. I'm not in jail!)

That's a line from a country song and if you know the tune, it's stuck in your head for the rest of the day.

I really DO have a new best friend. She would be the attendance secretary at the middle school. When the letter came Saturday and I LOST it, everyone kept smiling because by Monday...I would be fine. I would be happy. I would handle this.

Sunday night? I was ready to KILL me some school board members. I was FURIOUS...I made more progress towards a stroke in those two days than I've made in the last 52 years.

ME. Me. Me. The Woman With No Life because...it's Monday at nine o'clock and someone in the school office realizes they need nine cakes at noon Wednesday for a principal's meeting? Two choices...call 27 people and hope you can get nine to agree to bake a cake or make ONE call...that would be to me...and it's done. Handled. Baked. In your hands. Nine cakes and I'll probably stop my DUMB ASS at WalMart and buy paper goods.

And you sent ME a letter?

This brings us to another subject and y'all!!!...Aunt City Girl is working so you need to listen to Aunt Country Girl. Pearls. The answer is pearls. Doesn't matter what the question is? Pearls. Will get you at LEAST a C and depending on the situation? You might make Scholar's Bowl.

I wear my pearls every single day of my life that I leave this house. They're not great pearls...they're just nice, tidy, round pearls. Real, but no one went diving in some tropical country to harvest these pearls...probably an oyster farm in Mexico. Matching earrings. Low key. Polite. Responsible.

Low key, polite and responsible will get you a LONG way. No matter the situation.

So Monday morning I got up and...I was still mad. I sat here all day and weighed my options...I was the high school principal's student aide his first teaching job out of college. I can go to him. The judge I'm supposed to appear before has a long history with The Big Boy and my dad (kindergarten, Little League and Boys State make a LONG history.) His soon-to-be ex-wife was my mom's student aide in another school system. This system's attorney is...first cousin to someone I DIDN'T marry but whose family is still dear to me. Or me to them. I have the potential to plead my case.

Or stop baking those damn cakes.

But in the end, on the way into town I got to thinking about what we all know...AND THIS IS NOT SEXIST...somewhere up there is some person with several letters after his name who is in charge. And then there's the high school diploma'd woman running the show.

So I threw myself on her mercy. Totally. Wearing my jeans and pearls and boring sweater and boring self and...here I am. I don't mess up on purpose. SAVE ME!!!! And since I have on pearls...I have to be harmless! And polite! And responsible! Don't I? Please save me!

She did. We are now email buddies. She is the most beautiful, intelligent, talented, gifted and wonderful person I've ever met and...I don't know her first name. But she took ONE look at the actual situation and clicked a couple of computer keys and...it was fixed. Fixed. I'm okay. I don't have to go to court. I don't have to make a stand and...take my kid out of this school system that I don't even WANT her in but do so because I feel like I'm doing the responsible thing. Public school...get your lessons while you can.

A funny...I really DO wear these pearls every day. And one day last fall I was at my friend's house in Bham for the weekend and when I left, I left my jewelry on the dresser. Got halfway home before I realized it. I called her that Monday and asked her to mail it...one necklace, two earrings and two rings...stick them in a padded envelope and I'm good.

Except that the NEXT Monday, I didn't have my pearls and I was gettin' NERVOUS. So I called her house and left a message, and my point has become legend with her 15-year-old and friends...SEND ME MY PEARLS OR I'M GOING TO HAVE TO BUY SOME MAKEUP. Because y'all...you need to listen...pearls cover up a LOT of sins. A lot. A lot.

Pearls can keep you from going to court. YOU do the math.

Bedwell: The Double Live Album

Okay, I'm still laughing to myself.

:: heh-heh-heh ::

:: giggle ::

So on a friend's friend's Facebook post today he passed along a little game and it goes like this:

Go to Wikipedia, select "Random Entry" from the frame on the left and whatever word, phrase or name comes up first is the name of your band - if you had one... And you know you wish you did.

Who among us middle-aged-but-still-cool-in-our-own-minds overgrown children of the '70s didn't dream of traveling with the Partridge Family?

"We'd spread a little lovin' then and we'd keep movin' on."

Or singing with the Brady Bunch to raise money to pay for another of pitiful middle-child Jan's engraving errors?

"We're gonna keep on, keep on, keep on dancin' all through the night."


So the name of my band?

Bedwell

I kid you not.

Pussycat Dolls eat your hearts out.

There's a trough down the middle of my kitchen

It's from pacing. And trying REALLY hard to keep my mouth shut. I called my mom, my teacher friend's answering system and CG's machine. But God sent this letter to my house on a Saturday to give me time to get my shit together.

It's going to take until Monday morning.

THIS IS A SMALL PLACE TO LIVE. If you are ten years or older? There is a 50% chance one of my parents was your (pick one or more):
English teacher
Coach
History teacher
Science teacher
Librarian
Asst principal
Driver's ed teacher
Superintendent of Education
Scholar Bowl coach
Yearbook advisor
Chairman of the county board of education, or...

FLOOR MOPPER...AMBULANCE RIDER (when I was ten, my sister eight and my little brother two, my dad the coach took us to a football game and a player was injured and my dad got in the ambulance and went to the hospital with the injured boy and.............LEFT HIS KIDS. Us. At the stadium. When all the lights went dark? We started walking down streets and knocked on the first door with a light on and because...THIS IS BUMFUZZLE?...it was one of my dad's best friend's mom's house. And she called my mother.)

The point of all this? Me. The Mom. The woman who gave up her potential university teaching position and body and mind to raise kids? I got a letter today from...the board of education.

I am supposed to appear before a judge Tuesday morning to explain my child's unexplained absences. Because, apparently, in PUBLIC SCHOOL, you can't miss a day without a written excuse. Because the state doesn't get money. And they DON'T CARE how many blood hours you and your family have put into the workings of public school systems and it doesn't MATTER that we are talking about three days for a brown recluse bite and three days for the crud.

THERE HAS TO BE A WRITTEN EXCUSE. From me. The Mom. Who hasn't (severely) screwed up with her kids in almost 30 years. The woman who worries about EVERYTHING and who had a TracFone in her seven-year-old's pocket every time we went to an event with more than 50 people. Because you never know where the psychos and whackos are hanging out.

I know. It's beauracracy. It's the wheels that turn. It's reality. But it's ME. And you didn't call and you didn't send a letter and you want me to be WHERE? Tuesday?

Monday? That judge was in kindergarten and 12 years of school with The Big Boy, and my dad was his principal in jr high and his teacher in high school and served on the tourism board with him and...oh, yeah. Boy Scouts and baseball. And, my mother's student aide married him and my...I quit.

But come Monday? If they ever send me a letter like this again, I will put my kids RIGHT back into private school.

Because THIS is what is wrong with the world today. This and excessive packaging on Kellogg Corn flakes and the TOTAL incongruity that is the wheel and all that shit people throw out on the side of the road.

Me. Me. The Woman With No Life because she spent hers on her kids.

In court.

I don't think so.

I'll finish this when I get...composed. Or out of jail.

I will throw in here that this is the school system that...last week? Used its finances and resources and administrative talent and hardware and software and brain power and time and oh yeah! YOUR tax dollars. To do a skills assessment test on The Nice Kid and sent me a printed report to inform me...I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP...that my child should be a puppeteer. A puppeteer. Number one spot on the form. Top of the list. Puppeteer. WONDER HOW MUCH TIME AND MONEY THAT TOOK?

Apparently, there are benefits here I'm unaware of.

I could have gone a long time with knowing THIS.

Now, I know that I have limited horizons and experiences and that there's a LOT of stuff going on on this planet that...should I be aware of the ways and means?...would make me a more interesting and well-rounded person. I LONG for such knowledge. If I had the financial means, I'd take my kids and live in a different country for a month every summer. Because visiting a place isn't like living in a place and I think I'd start to pick up the subtleties and nuances if I stayed somewhere strange for a month. I think.

(I'll mention here that to this end? The Big Boy better NOT drop dead of a heart attack in THIS lifetime. That double payoff for an accident thing and all...which would fund my excursions nicely.)

Having said all this, there are some things that...should I ever "get" the meantness of something like this? Y'all just shoot me.

This is a cruise. A cruise on a ship, with bands and food and water and such, and the major purpose of the cruise is that at some point in time every person on the cruise gathers aboveboard and they take off their clothes and take a group picture. Of lots of naked people who don't know each other.

I hold my breath when I pass someone in the grocery store because I don't want to breathe the air they leave when they pass. We won't even TALK about the potential in the taking of this picture.

I wish I hadn't already eaten breakfast. I'm glad I don't have a CLUE as to what would possibly make someone want to participate in something like this.

You can't tell which is me, can you? Can you?

---

Need a job? Find an employment agency near you.

Dearly Beloved

Y'all, I'm pretty sure I'm going to expire sometime soon.

I don't mean to scare you or to make light of the end of a person's time on earth, but I am fairly certain that the other shoe is about to drop - big time.

It isn't enough that I'm married to the perfect damn man. (Has Country Girl mentioned that we have very little in common?) :: rim shot ::

And it isn't enough that I've been pretty fortunate in life, even if it did take a long time and lot of hard work. Fortune nonetheless.

And that fortune extended itself - made itself at home and put it's feet up - this week as I've travelled to the San Francisco area for a conference.

So I get to the airport gate at HSV just as the plane is boarding - no wait - and once on the plane am seated next to a very quiet, very thin lady. Score 1.

The plane is grounded for 45 minutes and it looks like I'm going to miss my connection, except that once in the air we get an unexpected tail wind (breath of angels, anyone?) and arrive in Atlanta on time. Not just on time, but they've changed our arrival gate to B31. At Hartsfield, where the approximately 147 mile trek between terminals involves a TRAIN RIDE, I'm sure I'll never make it to the next gate on time. So we get in at B31, we deplane and I discover my connection boards at B32. So I just strolled myself a cross the way and right onto that next plane. Score 2.

On the flight to SFO I am seated (in the middle, but that's okay) beside a boy who - my hand to GOD - was Robert Pattinson's brother. Okay, maybe not his brother but DEFINITELY his first cousin. He was so damn cute - cute, not handsome or sexy or anything, just cute...I am getting old - that I had a difficult time not touching him in his sleep. I mean, like if my nephew was asleep beside me and he lolled forward, I'd pat his back or something motherly. Not this boy. Hands to myself...just enjoy the view. Was that a five hour flight? Really? MY how time flies! Score 3.

My "shuttle" to the hotel turns out to be a chauffeured town car with a LOVELY Persian (Iranian) driver named Ted, who I helped select a cell phone for his son (the wrestler at SF State) while en route. He will pick me up very early Friday morning and return me safely to the airport. No Bone Collector here. Score 4.

Upon check-in my room gets screwed up so I end up...with a FABULOUS room - very large, many windows, great light - with a STUNNING view of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. Just happened to notice that as the sun was coming up the morning. Score 5.

In a break-out session today I avoid like the plague the entitled, self-important bitches from Hewlett Packard and Apple and Microsoft and befriend a PhD candidate from Finland named Anne who turns out to be one of the coolest people I've ever met. And she thinks my friend Liz, who is presenting, is a rock star. Score 6.

Weeks ago I made reservations for myself and Liz at Alice Waters' Chez Panisse, which any American Foodie will tell you is the birthplace of all modern American (eat fresh, eat local, eat in season) cuisine. California Cuisine. The Godmother of it all. So I had reservations. Liz and I invited Anne and the Maitre d' was able to squeeze us all into a lovely little table. And, oh, did I mention that this week is "Celebrating Black Truffle Week" at Chez Panisse? Score 7.

This isn't the cooking blog but I have to tell you that we had Baked Goat Cheese with Braised Belgian Endive and also Cardoons with Potatoes and black truffle and egg appetizers; Black truffle pudding souffle with spinach, celery root and chantrelle mushroom entrees, which may very well have been the most amazing things any of us has ever put in our mouths; and creme fraiche panna cotta with candied kumquats and citrus tuile for dessert - and several glasses of AMAZING wine. We ALL were sure we'd died and gone straight past St. Peter, do not collect $200 to heaven. Anne couldn't believe they have food like this in America. I stole a rock from the garden and a lovely waiter gave me a menu. :o) Score 8, 9 and 10.

So even though I was pulled out of the meeting today to work on a freaking fire drill for a boss's boss's boss who is either bi-polar, manic depressive or just pure evil, it doesn't matter. Jesus could call me home tonight and I'd be ready to go.

Celebrating Black Truffle Week. On someone else's dime. Can you beat that?

Phone call from the past...

...when The Big Boy and I got married, I had a five year old, we were young and talented and making money. Life was good. We bought a house at the golf course and met some really fun people and had some really fun times. In retrospect, I should have been more grateful. At the time, I just thought I was fat. I wasn't.

Phone rang yesterday and it was a friend from then. Checking up on mutual acquaintances. And this story came up and...I hadn't forgotten it but I hadn't thought about it in a long time. Which is sad because THIS story? Is hilarious and when you get older? Stuff like this just makes you roll your eyes.

After we'd been married a couple of years and decided that yes, we wanted to have a baby because...he wanted to have a baby, I started the tickfuck that is infertility treatment. I got up every morning, drove 110 miles to Bham and had a sonar and bloodwork, drove 160 miles to school where I was working on my graduate degree and put in a day, called the clinic and found out if I needed a shot that night and if I did? Drove 90 miles to the only pharmacy in this end of the state (at the time) that sold the $120-a-pop shots, then drove 30 miles back home. And got up the next morning and did it again.

It wasn't pretty. We did this for most of four years. It takes its toil (This was a typo but I'm leaving it)...we spent more on The Nice Kid than we spent on that house on the golf course. Looking back, she was the better deal. That house had a narrow hall.

One New Year's our best couple friends had a great party...I still think this is the best idea I never had. New Year's Eve. Nine o'clock. Champagne and dessert. People eat dinner somewhere else, have a nice romantic time, get in the mood and then show up for...the party. It was a hit and I still think it was the best party ever.

The Big Boy, his friend and his friend's friend, got into the tequila. This is NOT good at any time but on this night? It was REALLY not good. We had picked up The Big Kid and her best friend from the ice rink and had them with us, and when we got ready to leave...it got ugly.

We're backing out of the party driveway, ME driving of course, from the party house and TBB starts yelling at me to close the garage doors. You know...THE GARAGE DOORS AT SOMEONE ELSE'S HOUSE. Sorry, bud, MY REMOTE DOESN'T DO THAT. He didn't get any nicer and the situation didn't get any better and we start home. And he is muttering. Over in the passenger seat, muttering to himself. And we get home, raise OUR garage door, start up the steps and he says, and I quote:

"Yeah. Been trying to trap ME with this baby shit. I'm not trapped yet."

YOU'RE not trapped? YOU'RE not trapped? You STUPID SON OF A BITCH...YOU'RE not trapped? I've been driving my ass off and shooting hormones into my butt and serving as a guinea pig at UAB and...WHO'S trapped?

I saw red. Not light pink but "I will kill you" red. The color of murder. And we got to the top of the steps in the den and I turned around and swung with every needle-injected/driven out/too tired to see bone in my body. I fully intended to kill that dumbass.

Problem. We had white marble tile. Shiny white marble tile. And I had taken off my heels and was wearing cream stockings. To go with my cream cashmere. I looked really good but...slick hose? and slick floors?

When I swung he ducked and I spun around and when I did the floors and my feet did things and...I fell over backwards. (Which was his fault because if he'd kept his STUPID FACE in front of my fist? My momentum would have been halted.) When I fell over backwards? I fell into the Christmas tree.

Which fell over backwards. With me on top of it, thrashing around in the pine-scented chaos.

There was water and paper and gifts everywhere. Everywhere. And when I got up, for the sole purpose of KILLING that asshole, my cream cashmere sweater dress had Christmas ornaments hanging all down the back. Just like...hooked in. Dangling. All down the back.

TBB is no dummy and he immediately took off out the front door. I went after him only so far as the gravel driveway and...OH YEAH! I had no shoes. So I went back in and locked the doors and went to bed.

No one can remember if he got back in the house or prevailed on a neighbor to take him in. I sort of think he got into the garage and slept in the car because I ALSO sort of think that I had hidden the car keys in the deep freeze and it took me two days to remember it.

I wish I'd been born with more of the knowledge it's taken me so long to acquire. I sure did go through some STUPID stuff to get to here.

To this day, TBB swears he didn't say that but...there were witnesses. He did. Say that. The picture really is us, back in the day. I've found an on-line site that will print it into an Andy Warhol-type five-foot tall canvas. Christmas present, I be thinking.

---

Need a job? Find an employment agency near you.

There's a miscommunication here somewhere...

In my mind, I am an open book. My kids say that a lot...they know what pisses off The Mama, before they do it. Mess up? You have it coming because you KNEW she was gonna pitch a fit. That's what Mama's do.

The Big Boy and I have been married/cohabitating for...I have to think...I met him when I was 29. (Math is not my strong point.) He spent my 30th birthday with the girl he had been engaged to for four years while she waited on him to get out of grad school. I...spent it with someone younger because it was HIS choice. And this kid was really cool. Times were different back then.

Anyway...we've been riding this train for 24 years. In one form or another. And it would SEEM TO ME that...if I were married to me? I'd quit pushing those buttons. They're very well labeled. In red. Every time.

Posted on the wall in our den is a hand-written sign...when the phone beside my bed is missing, The Nice Kid loses her cell phone for a week. One. Week. This would be because our parents are approaching elderly and I have a 28-year-old daughter out galivanting in the world and should someone call me in the middle of the night? I need to be able to HEAR the phone ring and PICK UP the phone. I'm just sayin'. And since The Nice Kid has never hung up a phone or put a lid on a container in her LIFE...we know it's her (the correct usage is "she" but how dumb does THAT sound?) who is responsible when the phones are missing. That's the way this stuff works in this Institution...there are mornings I get up and not ONE of the four phones in this house is sitting on its base. Not one. That be pissing OFF a mobile phone battery.

So...today is Monday. Friday night I...ended up on the couch at my brother's house after an elementary school birthday party (gotta love those Catholics!) and a dance and Science Olympiad and...something else I can't remember. And one glass of wine and two beers and cold medicine. It was late, I was tired and sick and we spent the night. It happens. And when I called home to tell The Big Boy where we were, he didn't answer. So I left a message. This is how this works.

Except he didn't get the message because he doesn't do answering machines so at four o'clock when he woke up and realized, and I quote, "I didn't have a wife! I didn't have any kids!", he called my cell phone and WOKE ME UP. One of us was pissed. It would be hard to decide which one it was because we both thought this was easy. He didn't know where I was (it took you until FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE FUCKING MORNING to decide this was an issue?) and I had LEFT HIM A MESSAGE.

How simple is this?

Anyway...last night when I took The Nice Kid's cell phone away from her for not hanging up the phone by my bed...because The Big Boy TOLD me she lost it...it turned out that, oh. Ooops. HE had knocked it off the nightstand and it was behind the bed. And when this shit hit the fan it flew all OVER me.

How simple is this?

So I went to the home store and spent $160 and then I went to the other home store and spent $260 and then I went to our Mexican place and had a margarita and a lovely grilled chicken combo and then I went to Dollar General and bought a sudoku book and then....

...I warn't mad no more. So I came home.

I'm just saying.

There goes the neighborhood.

Keeping in mind that City Girl is the highbrow segment of this equation and...I'm not...we're going to reconsider. She and I haven't discussed it yet but, given time, we're going to reconsider. Because she's the Brains and...I'm not. I'm the Loud One.

When you look at the two of us the sum is...ludicrous. She was raised up North. I was raised in Center Star Alabama where "up North" is considered anywhere on the other side of Collinwood Tennnessee. She is of Polish extraction with the accompanying diverse experiences. I am seriously rural ScotsIrish Tennessee hillfolk REDNECK. (There is, for comic relief, a couple of Germans and an Indian in there somewhere but the History Channel? Does programs on my relatives and their murderous tendencies.)

City Girl has no kids. I have three...aged 28, 13 and eight. Had you taken a vote in high school? I would have been elected Most Unlikely To Have Multiple Children. I continue to wake up to a new world every day. I have no plan and lots of dust bunnies. She has an outline and clean baseboards.

She has a Real Job. She works really hard at her Real Job. I went to school for a really long time but then...I had kids for a really long time and the older you get? The harder it is to raise kids. And the less apt you are to step outside the house and let other people demand stuff of you because...you're used up. There's only so much of one person to go around.

So? Having said this? We're in. She's justifiably tired. I'm lazy. That's okay. We will prevail. I might even get on a roll this afternoon about the BUTT UGLY woman in the Mustang riding my ass through Killen this morning. I'm not making this up. I'm cruising along, speed limit is 55, I'm doing 59. In the right lane. Listening to The Boss. Minding my own business. And then out of the blue there is this red Mustang about TWO inches off my ass.

Two inches. I can't figure out WHY, because I AM IN THE RIGHT LANE. Honey, I'm going as fast as I'm gonna go in an incorporated vicinity. YOU. NEED. TO. STOP.

She didn't. The car in the left lane, who was holding everything up, wasn't too concerned about the situation and I wasn't ABOUT to speed up and get a ticket so that Red Car could pass me. Do it on your own dime.

And finally, when my speed gave Red Car the inches she needed, she whipped over and passed me. And when I turned around to GLARE at the bitch because...(to paraphrase Richard Pryor) "I AIN'T DONE NUTHIN'!!"

SHE turned around and looked at ME!!

And it was like Medusa on a roll. That was the ugliest damn woman I have seen in at least six months. Bad bleached hair all straw-like to her...well, to where her chin was SUPPOSED to be because...That woman? was all nose. She had this HUGE ugly-ass nose and then it sloped straight down to her neck because of the absence of chin and THIS CHICK? is driving a Red Mustang?

Honey. Oh, honey. It's gonna take a LOT more than a Red Mustang for you to be lookin' good and in the meantime? You really need to get off my ass.

I'm just sayin'.

The Fat Lady Considers a Tune

I'm really sucking at this blogging thing.

Every few days I think, "I'm going to retire."

But then I don't. Instead I throw up - both literally and figuratively - a political cartoon to buy myself a few more days. It's now been a week, and I've still nothing interesting to say.

Fortunately for us all, Fab Boy is coming through - with flying colours - his dry spell. He seems to be getting back to something of his old self, and for that we are extremely thankful to whatever Power that be.

Erin occasionally...like now, for example...goes silent for weeks on end only to come back with a massively humorous series of posts that keep everyone coming back for more.

If Alejna gets stuck in the... stucks... it seems that she instinctively turns to PANTS for a few Diet-Coke-out-the-nose-inducing posts, we all roll around laughing, and then she gets her groove back.

Me? Not so much. No pants. As a matter of fact, today I am wearing culottes, which are decidedly unfunny. Unless you are as short as one of the women in my office (who is 60 years old, mean as a damn snake and we call her The Troll) and you wear culottes with boots, trying to look cute, but instead look like you're wearing tea-length, bell-bottom trousers. Those are some funny culottes.

I think I've lost my mojo, kids. I'm not posting, I'm not emailing and I'm barely Facebook-ing.

Tired of the computer I am. Tired in general I am.

So I think I'm going to go on sabbatical. I didn't know that's where I was headed when I started this post, but that's where I've wound up.

Of course, next week I am headed to Berkeley, California - the most liberal burg in the most liberal state in the Union.

Betcha new material walks up to me on the street, takes my hand, buys me a drink and gives itself to me.

Betcha.

I invited HOW many people?

Several years ago, I can't remember why, my family started having a spaghetti dinner at my house for Valentine's Day. It's actually a lot of fun if you don't sweat the small stuff...we have Flarp competitions, two of The Little Kids who eat an entire block of Romano, another one who eats an entire pan of rolls, 18-inch spaghetti from Central Grocery in New Orleans (which has to be cooked outside in the fish cooker because even I don't have a pot to do that stovetop) and an EXCESSIVE amount of noise. And laughter. Some really good wine that everyone shares. Then some really cheap wine that everyone shares.

The problem is this house. This house is a mess, perpetually, and I started considering that "small stuff" a long time ago. There does, however, come a time (and it usually involves other people) when we have to have a cleaning. So this morning, I started cleaning. It is nearly 11 o'clock in the morning and to date...I've cleaned an eight-foot square of concrete. That's it. Now, this IS a corner of the big den floor from which I pulled up all the carpet because I AM going to acid etch it. Some day. Down the line. But I haven't done so yet so...we be livin' on a slab. Which means rugs and stuff and I pulled them out into the driveway one day last week and I probably ought to go tell the UPS man to move his ass OFF of them so I can vacuum them and bring them in. And if you don't think standing out in your driveway running the vacuum cleaner doesn't absolutely freak OUT some Center Star Church of Christ? Just check here this afternoon.

I also learned, a few minutes ago, that if you mix Clorox Clean-up, Kids 'n Pets cleaner and Bug-Be-Gone in a pump sprayer and spray down the slab and then walk off...the top will blow off the pump sprayer. I'm not making this up.

The little dogs started whining and their eyes watering so badly that they've moved outside. For the day. The big old dog went upstairs and shut the bedroom door himself. The Brown Recluse are all in the corner, wearing gas masks and plotting with the crickets who wear combat boots. I finally opened a window and turned on the unit fan after I got tired of listening to Elvis explaining the Ten Commandments to me.

And now I'm sitting here, drinking a beer because I've worked so hard, and talking to y'all. Damn good thing Valentine's Day is still six months off.

Or I might need to hurry things up.

---

Who's never won? Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music.

Keeping in mind...

...that while I AM NOT condoning any sort of illegal activity (remember, I have one grown kid but TWO TO GO)............

I honestly believe Michael Phelps needs to get himself some better friends. Or at least cull the asshole with the camera.

Friday Funny

Lopsided Cakes Need Not Apply

Oh, y'all...Get ready for Epicurious-meets-Disney-meets-Timothy Leary.

You know I hate to be a hater, and I especially hate hating on fellow bloggers, since I am only a part-time temp in the steno pool of the blogosphere.

But in this case I will make an exception. Check this out: The cute food blog.

God love 'em. You know their mommas do...and repressed, suburban Martha Stewart wannabes...and Japanese teenagers who wear shaggy pink legwarmers and carry $2,000 Hello Kitty backpacks. But that's surely the outermost limits of their appeal.

I fully understand and appreciate the concept of Food As Art, but Canadian bacon geese? Really? Pork as a modeling medium? I think even Emeril might draw the line there.

Don't get me entirely wrong, Americans of the Southern persuasion can get pretty extravagant with food. I submit as "Exhibit A" Hummingbird Cake. Eight layers of banana and cream cheese insanity. But there is a distinct difference between extravagant and...stupid.

But then again...I am -very seriously-considering constructing a Marcel Duchamp urinal entirely of miniature marshmallows and submitting a photo to the site.

heh-heh-heh.....

Double Indignity

Frequently I look around and wonder...what train is this? How did I get here? WHERE THE HELL IS THIS GOING?

Such ruminations are pointless because...I'm in a wind tunnel. Circumstances put me in a really weird place at this time in life and...all you can do is buckle up and hang on. (I'm 52 years old. My oldest child is 28, my youngest child is eight and there's one in the middle. No, I didn't do it on purpose. Yes, I know what causes it but IT NEVER CAUSED IT BEFORE.)

The Not Nice Kid, the youngest one, is a spectacular athlete. She is...awesome. And a pleasure to watch if you are her mother and...you can't run and spit at the same time. True story. Back when I....wasn't just someone's mother...I was a fitness nut. And I ran 10K's with my buddy, Tim. (Another true story...Tim called one night to pick a time to meet me the next day and The Big Boy answered the phone, handed it to me and said, "Here. It's your side dick." IT WASN'T, but that was really funny.) And Tim and I would run in the winter and, if you've ever done this you know about the mucus thing, I'd have to stop and spit. And Tim would say, "Why did you stop?" and I'd say, "I had to spit," and he'd say, "But why did you stop?" and I'd repeat, "I had to spit," and then...that guy would round first. Base. HOWEVER, we took a spring and Tim taught me how to run and spit at the same time, without stopping.

As I said, true story. And the reason I am so amazed at TNNK's abilities.

Point: Basketball season ended a couple of weeks ago and at the end of the game this man comes up and sits down on the bleachers next to my mom and me. He was there to recruit TNNK to play AAU basketball out of Tennessee. She's that good. But he climbs the bleachers, sits down and asks, "Is number 11 your granddaughter?"

Well. Hellfire.

Actually...be honest. This is rural northern Alabama and...she very well could be. She very well SHOULD be but...no. She's not my granddaughter. She's mine. And that would be the GRANDMOTHER sitting next to you.

But we laughed (as we've done before) because be honest...the guy wasn't out of line. It's the AGE thing. And we talked and compared relatives (that rural Alabama thing) and swapped numbers and laughed some more.

And then I will be damned if I didn't walk into WalMart this morning (sick kid...no one else sells cold medicine at 7:30 in the morning) and THE BITCH CARDED ME. For a case of beer. And no, I didn't have my driver's license...I DON'T CARRY A PURSE. I have an Amex in my pocket and I have my driver's license number and social security number and phone number and house number and ALL THE IMPORTANT NUMBERS memorized but...no. I don't have a photo ID. And no, there is no question in YOUR mind that I have not yet reached the age of 21.

No. Question. At. All.

Just ask that guy in the bleachers. He'll go get me a wheelchair and some Geritol if I ask.

Words to Live By

Thought of the Day:

In wine there is wisdom

In beer there is freedom

In water there is bacteria.

- Benjamin Franklin