Country Girl / City Girl

This is a disclaimer...

2012-01-22T18:15:00.000-06:00

I was going to post the Webster definition of "disclaimer," but truth be told I don't give a shit what Webster says it means. I'm going to tell you what I think it means, and in the context of this blog that's all that matters.

From here on out, I am writing under the assumption there's no one here but City Girl, me and some ~~weirdos~~ well-trained cohorts. If you're not one of those? Proceed at your own risk.

And that's all I have to say about that.

I folded...

2012-01-10T19:10:00.001-06:00

...deliberately and with (almost no) remorse. Now to Plan B.

Day Four...

2012-01-10T14:12:00.000-06:00

...of this cleanse I'm not doing. And I'm not feeling the love.

The alarm goes off at 6:30; we get up about ten minutes later. I make coffee for The Big Boy, yell about teeth and hair and lunches and backpacks and tennis bags and the time. I take the paper, the Notebook and my phone and come sit in the bed and read and do the Sudoku and check Facebook and Pinterest and emails and then...I've been sleeping 'til 11:30 or 12 every day.

My skin does look better and I lost five pounds in two days which I know can't be good. I feel like shit. I'm not sleeping too well, although last night was better. I just don't see the POINT...school meeting at five this afternoon and no, we can't go eat afterwards. Not quite sick of this drink yet, but I can see that coming.

Part of me says, WTH? The other part says, go to bed tonight on track and then you only have six days. One-and-a-half times what you've already done. All the articles SAY it's supposed to be like this...that there will be an awesome awakening here in a few days. It would probably be best if tomorrow, I went for a walk when The Inmates leave, as opposed to piling up with the print and electronics.

Now I know why they do this in groups. My self-motivation has never been my strong point.

We'll see.

I'll tell you right now...

2012-01-09T19:31:00.000-06:00

...this bites the big one. Bigtime.

I did it today. So far. Tonight is The Game of all time if you live in this vicinity. The Rematch of the Century. The Grudge Match of the Decade.

I cooked. Every standard football snack of ever. Cocktail wienies. Wings. Meatballs. Chips and salsa. Olives and pickles and more olives. Dip and more dip. I made all this and I haven't lapsed YET but I'm telling you...this sucks.

So, where are the DT's?

2012-01-08T20:05:00.000-06:00

A while back City Girl and I did that thing we do...she called one day and said, "Hey, you ever think about doing a cleanse?" two days after I had ordered Clean, by Alejandro Junger. We're good that way.

But talk about it was all we really did...unless her traveling ass has kicked into gear and she's all clean and healthy and she just forgot to tell me. We talked about different types and times and reasons and so on. I originally thought I could pull off the 10-day Master Cleanse, right before Christmas. I even bought the stuff. I was wrong. Too many obligations involving too much food and too few chances to bow out should the need arise. I just kept eating.

CG thought she would try a weekend. Just a weekend, to sort of purge during the holiday festivities. Then we talked about doing an extended cleanse at the new year.

We didn't.

The simplest cleanse I read about, and also one of the oldest, was the Master Cleanse. I had the stuff. I did NOT have the motivation or the will...my intentions are always better than my accomplishments. So yesterday, Saturday, when I was sitting here with the paper, Sudoku and the computer, and I realized it was Saturday which around here means all-day party...I realized it was time for a cold beer. And for some reason known ONLY to the Lord because I am CLUELESS...I thought, "Well, why not just mix up a cup of that stuff and sip on it. In and among the various alcoholic beverages that Saturday calls for."

And I did. And because it was a rare Saturday, with nothing to do and no where to go, I did it all day. All. Frigging. Day. Just the mix...nothing else. Made soup for the rest of the inmates and...sipped. ALL DAY!!!!

Number one best trick...I LIKE the stuff! That's always been my problem with drinking...it's a habit. I walk around all day with a glass/bottle/can/whatever in my hand. I don't like sweet. Water gets old.

Beer is good.

So the only thing I LIKE to drink...beer, wine or bourbon...isn't that good for me and has a lot of calories when consumed in quantities and I do EVERYTHING in quantities so...wasn't working out too well. This stuff is lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne. Pepper. I KNOW!!!! Three of Gourmet magazine's top ten favorite ingredients in one place! (Not really...I made that up. Editorial license.)

Anyway. I bought the syrup and cayenne at the health food store and I don't know what maple syrup is supposed to taste like so I don't know about it, but the cayenne is AWESOME. The recipe calls for "1/10 teaspoon, or as much as you can stand," and I've been using 1/4 teaspoon and it's this lovely tart-sweet-smoky beverage and...I did it another day. Today. If I go to bed without thumbing through a couple of cookbooks or perusing food ideas on Pinterest and losing my motivation, I will have done it for two days. WITHOUT EVEN MEANING TO!!

I still don't mean to. Part of me keeps thinking, no way. But then the other part, the part that's watching the years slide away and realizing, well, that the years are sliding away, checked the datebook. And not only do I not have to be ANYWHERE this week, I don't have to be anywhere next weekend. Two weekends in a row, at home...hasn't happened in forever. I COULD, if I wanted to, do the entire ten days.

Of course, I don't. But I could.

My tongue is white, which is supposed to mean your body is shedding toxins. I feel okay, even though today and tomorrow are supposed to be the worst days. (If I were doing it. Which, of course, I'm not.) Weight loss on this is negligible (even though it runs about 10 pounds) because it's water weight, which comes back. And I'm not a low-calorie or low-fat person, my body likes low carbs with protein, so this doesn't sound like something I should be doing. But then again, it's only ten days. What if it really DOES flush out all the things that have been causing all my auto-immune disorders? What if I don't walk around with a red burning peeling face, or what if my joints don't ache all the time?

It's only ten days.

AHHHHHH!!! Maybe instead of one day at a time, I'll do sections of the day. Just til noon. Just til school's out. Just til dark.

Man, this grown-up shit sucks.

NYE Attire Advice

2011-12-29T16:40:00.000-06:00

I love this advice from Southeast Edition No. 25

Chinese Turkey

2011-12-23T15:42:00.002-06:00

Bad Lip Reading - Rick Perry

2011-12-13T08:54:00.000-06:00

Bad Lip Reading: Rick Perry's "Strong" ad - watch more funny videos

I hope Dory is laughing!

Kid humor ;-)

2011-12-10T19:22:00.001-06:00

More things I'll go to hell for...

2011-12-08T16:55:00.001-06:00

Did you know that if you pour some spaghetti/pasta/marinara sauce, from a jar, into a dish and put a log of goat cheese on it, and heat it up...

...and then open a can of crescent rolls and cut them into strips and bake them...

...your children will love you? For real.

Don't be hatin' on my swag

2011-12-07T09:06:00.001-06:00

Saturday night, I'm headed to a gathering. I'm pissed off already. What to do, what to do?

We all know, I'm all about the kids. Had you asked in high school? My best friend, she who is childless, would have been the parent of at least six kids, with a couple more foster/neighbor kids thrown in for good measure? Me? Maybe one kid. Lots of schooling. Teaching and traveling.

What's that old saying? Life is God laughing when you make plans? Or something. Not only did I have three kid, I had them 20 years apart which means every time I got ready to do something...I had another kid. The last time, at 44, pretty much convinced me this is full-time. Last night was the elementary school Christmas program, the last one we'll ever participate in, and WE DIDN'T GO. The Not Nice Kid didn't try out for a part because she didn't want to learn the lines or be there at 7 am for a month, and I've been tired of these things for...about the last 10 years. So we didn't go. Didn't bother us, either. First thing this morning I have a text..."Where the hell WERE you? We stood in the back and bitched about being there and sure did miss you."

I told them...you're the next generation. I'm done! But then, because I have trained them well, we made a date for margaritas after the final basketball game of the season Saturday ;-) Women with kids are special like that ;-)

But I digress.

My point...I spent my life raising my kids, and I happen to think that, accident or no, it has been an awesome ride. They are three totally different, totally cool in each way, people. Some good some bad in each...lots of wonderfulness in all three. Do I think my way is the only way? HELL NO...it's not the way I CHOSE! And it never has seemed an issue...City Girl has no kids. She laughs at mine when they're there, and then sends them on their way. It never occurred to me...that she cares if I have kids. Never occurred to me to care she doesn't have kids. Just the way things are.

I grew up with a group of five boys, born the year before I was. Parents grew up together. We have a history. I spend five important holidays a year with them and their wives...about the only place left in my life I can let my hair down. Last gathering? Sitting outside, late at night, and I told something about someone and her job and her kid and Childless Wife A said, "I get so tired of women using their kids as excuses to get out of work."

Did you get that? CHILDLESS Wife A?

Should have kept my mouth shut. Didn't.

Brought up my college roommate, who has a degree in engineering and literally...took it to the house. By choice. Conversation deteriorated and Childless Wife B said, "You can always hire someone to look after your kids."

Repeat there...CHILDLESS Wife B.

There was a change of subject.

A week or so later, because it was bothering me so much, I asked City Girl...am I being unreasonable? I am seriously OFFENDED...I consider them IDIOTS, and selfish idiots at that. But I was willing to discuss the fact that maybe, just maybe, my outlook was scewed. (Spell check says that's not a word. It is around here, a version of "askew," so I'm wondering if I spelled it wrong. Damn.)

City Girl, God love her, immediately backed me up..."I get so tired of women who DON'T think that women with kids have it harder." (I would like to point out here that City Girl does more work in half a day than the two of them do together in a week. So there.)

So here I sit...it's Wednesday. I can either get over it, which isn't likely, or get madder and madder and end up causing an uproar at the last place on the planet I want to cause an uproar.

Or...I could bake the cake I said I'd bake, send it with The Big Boy along with my regrets and explain: I have something to do WITH MY CHILDREN. Which comes before time unwillingly spent with selfish hypochondriac bitchy witches.

Or witchy bitches.

Ho's can't cook, anyway.

FOUND!!!!

2011-12-05T12:57:00.001-06:00

Lord I love Facebook ;-) Back in the uproar that is The Institution...none the worse for wear!

If you have four legs, fins or feathers...

2011-12-04T06:16:00.001-06:00

...you should probably leave. I have apparently invoked some severely pissed off spirit...possibly Bambi's mother vying for screen credits. Or something. And that bitch be PISSED!

I have, tattooed across my forehead in letters that humans can't see, "S.U.C.K.E.R." If you are an animal, it is neon and flashing. This has had The Institution at four dogs and six cats for the past year.

Picked up a small stray this summer, temps over 100 and no water within a quarter-mile...neighbors promptly named him Spike. Cute little mutt, but he quickly picked up a bad car-chasing habit and we came home one afternoon to a sobbing neighbor and a grease spot in the road. Damn.

Oreo, my oldest cat, finally reached the point about three weeks ago where he couldn't fight the infections the feline leukemia kept setting him up for. Trip to the vet, in and out. Oreo currently resides in the deep freeze, waiting on me to get down to the farm and bury him.

Thanksgiving night my sister drove home in the rain to find Not My Cat, the stray she has refused to claim (but feeds and tends to) for the past four years, flattened in the road. We commiserated over our bad luck.

We had NO idea.

My parents elderly German Shepherd, Sackett, died last year. They finally found an awesome puppy, and two months ago Tell joined The Institution. Beautiful chunk of a Shepherd; smart, funny and more personality than should be legal.

Tuesday morning my mother ran over his head. I wrapped him in my jacket and sat at the vet's while they evaluated the situation. I probably should have explained the track record right then... We'll have to put him down Monday morning...we've put it off "one more day" for a week now. He may be blind. He may be brain damaged. He IS pitiful. I'll go hold him while he falls asleep.

I hate this.

Yesterday The Nice Kid, who is currently under review for a name reevaluation, decided she would take Red Dog with her into town for a picnic at the park and to pick up The Not Nice Kid. And then come home. Short simple day.

Red Dog is the luckiest I've ever gotten in a bar. Three years ago...maybe four?...I pulled into the parking lot of the liquor store (liquor store...bar...same difference) and there was a beautiful Golden Retriever, wandering in and out of the speeding cars on a Friday afternoon. Beside a six-lane highway. When I asked, turned out he had been there almost two weeks. Left the store, walked out to my car and...there sat the dog. In my car. Drove through the two adjoining neighborhoods until it got dark, stopping every block or so and opening the car door, expecting him to jump out and go home. Didn't happen. Ads in the papers. Nothing. Signs on the front door of every business within reason. Nada. He is the ultimate gentleman, well-trained, while still being the only dog on the street who has taken down the pit bull next door. Once. Didn't need twice. Red Dog must have belonged to an older person...he loves the kids but he favors older people. He lived with someone who drove a small truck, and he sat in the passenger seat. He and I have an understanding and we function well.

For some reason, known only to the brain of a 16-year-old, She-Who-Needs-A-New-Name decided to go visit her friend. They put Red Dog...WHO LIVES IN THE HOUSE...in the fenced-in back yard and promptly proceeded to forget about him. Some time later, apparently several hours later...it couldn't have been a matter of minutes because it takes a 100-pound dog a bit of time to dig out from under a fence...they realized Red Dog was gone. Lost in a neighborhood adjacent to the local university and downtown. My country dog was...lost. In town. Had been for several hours.

He still is.

The story I have is that a university cop saw a woman in a burgundy Pilot pick him up. I have already placed ads everywhere feasible...the paper, Craigslist, websites. Called the police, the pound, the university.

My dog is missing.

I have sat in the vet's office every day for five days and held a severely injured dog, dreading the day we have to admit he's not getting better. That was bad.

This sucks.

She Who Needs A New Classification texted me when it got dark last night and said, "I'm sort of afraid to come home."

I texted her back, "If you're only SORT OF afraid to come home? You're in for a big surprise."

Lord, please protect my dog.

SIMAAM Friday Funny

2011-12-02T07:15:00.001-06:00

Last So I Married an Axe Murderer reference. I promise.

Fini!

2011-11-30T22:27:00.001-06:00

I'm here!

:: panting hard, grasping at chest, doubled over and making inhuman wheezing noises ::

It's 11:27 - still 33 minutes from December and the end of NaBloPoMo.

I see where CG1 - ever on the ball - already posted today but, Dude, I want in on the action!

Fittingly, I have a story about a happy ending: Tonight, after a long, lo-ng day of meetings; after I (only half-knowingly) kicked up a shit storm of epic proportion, the full fallout from which will not be known until late tomorrow; after a day of having every question met with two more questions, which frustratingly led to ten additional questions - and no answers - I ended the evening laughing my ass off with three coworkers whom I hardly knew.

The company I work for has something like 45,000 employees globally, not counting tens of thousands of contractors in China, India and the Philippines. It's impossible to consider all the people I'll never meet, who are actually colleagues.

This week I'm offsite, in marathon planning sessions with a group of 20 people whom I don't know, have never even heard of, have virtually nothing in common with, and may never see again.

So we met. We went to dinner, and then some of us followed up the meal with a nightcap...at which point we all wound up quoting from the exact same random 1993 "B" movie.

A few people were talking about the technology industry and...well, technological things I didn't understand. Which led to stories about customers, which led to stories of travels to India and the Middle East, which led to people questioning the lack of Coca Cola products in Muslim countries and the abundance of Pepsi, which owns KFC, which lead to Colonel Sanders, which led to someone mumbling, "Before he went teats up" which led to me snorting - SNORTING - mouth agape, "You did not just quote from So I Married an Axe Murderer."

And so began a 20 minute snort fest; four people from wildly different backgrounds quoting Mike Myers as Stuart Mackenzie. Catch up here.

Religion will not unify the world, neither will Wikipedia or the UN - leave the heavy lifting to stupid movies.

Sometimes, life is really, really good.

i have a post...

2011-11-30T20:33:00.002-06:00

...that requires opinionsc but i cant get to the notebook and this new phone is...new. hopefully i ll get my hands on it before midnight...

We said we'd post...

2011-11-29T20:52:00.003-06:00

We didn't say we'd be good.

I spent three hours this morning in the vet's office with my parents dog. The one my mom ran over. When I left the doctor's office, I came home and showered off the blood and...my sims card had died.

Two hours at Verizon. The boy there was wonderful...for real.

The sims card didn't make it and I have a new phone. Two to three days to know how the dog fares.

Loooong day.

About "normal..."

2011-11-28T10:02:00.005-06:00

It always just tickles the hell out of me to look around and realize...honey, I'm the most normal person you know. I mean...come on, y'all. This says a LOT more about you than it does me...

Skipping over Thanksgiving (which was very boring because my dad had the heat set on, like...FRY...so most of us stood out in the yard for the short time we were there) we had a family birthday last night. We have these family uproars at a Mexican restaurant, owned by a Catholic school parent friend of ours with a heavy hand on the tequila bottle. Sometimes this helps, sometime it hinders...sometimes we live up to the sign on the door. We take lots of pictures, which is sometimes the only way we know just exactly HOW much fun we had. We're normal that way.

Throw into the mix...one cranky old grandfather. He was a cranky young father, and he isn't improving with age. Some days are better than others. Some days...he shouldn't have been invited. The problem is, you never know if it's a do-invite or a don't-invite until he's rude to the waiter and then it's too late.

Let me throw in here, in case the Lord is checking my messages today, that he is 81 years old and has had a series of strokes. While he is mildly physically challenged, with a weakness on his right side, who's to say if he's mentally challenged? He's always been an ass.

The Big Kid and her cousin, The Big Niece, have been food service workers. We are a food service worker's best friends...we tidy and tip and don't do complicated orders and...

...oh, wait. There WAS that time...the grandfather announced that he wanted "that thing we always order," which would be a chimichanga, except that he wanted it made with "three eggs, scrambled. NOT two eggs, three eggs. Scrambled and then put in that thing."

This is where we became best friends for life with all our friends at the Mexican place. God? Thank you for Reigo.

Reigo was taking care of us that night, and when The Cranky Grandfather started in on his creative ordering, Reigo rolled with the punches. It was...there should be a word for funny and embarrassing at the same time...because Reigo was ON. TCG was adament, and not having a good night. Twice, he held up his empty beer bottle and announced loudly, "BEER!" No "please" or "when you get a chance." The third time, The Big Kid literally slapped the bottle out of his hand...while the rest of us slunk under the table.

Slink. Slank. Slunk. Are those really words?

But Reigo never flinched. He questioned TCG, "Not two? What about four?" but TCG held out and eventually dinner was served. I have no idea if what came was what TCG ordered, but I don't remember another uproar so maybe it was okay.

Last night? Not a good night. At one point, TCG jumped up and headed out the door. Of the RESTAURANT. The Enabling Grandmother asked, a few minutes later, "Where's your daddy?" Well, um, not sure. The bathroom? Pulling the wings off small insects? Just as TEG got up from the table, here comes TCG. Turns out...he had seen the nice girl at the cash register dash out the door and had decided that someone had left without paying and she was going after them and...

...HE WAS GOING TO HELP HER.

Did I mention the 81 years? The strokes?

Reigo rolled...have I said we love him? TCG wears hearing aids. I guess he had them in last night, but since he is not particularly interested in anyone else's opinion, it's hard to tell. So everytime he barked, "Bring me a beer." Reigo said, "No." Very politely and calmly. And TCG didn't hear him and the rest of us FELL OVER. I mean, snorted. Reigo kept bringing the beers. The rest of us kept laughing...even the serving kids laughed, instead of getting all bent out of shape and...oh, but then TCG started in on the flash on the camera.

None of the little kids could take pictures, because he said not to.

Once upon a time, when my grandmother was dying and was mean and cranky and sneaky and difficult, TCG said, "I'm going to be the nicest old person."

I wish...I pray...I'd pay COLD HARD CASH to have that in writing. And when the time comes? Will one of you please print this out and make me read it?

Sunday Punny Sunday

2011-11-27T16:23:00.001-06:00

Hubster and I are the custodians of, and personal servants to, an enormously fat, grey tabby cat. A cat who has developed an obsession with scrambled eggs.

Understand, we do not feed table food to the animals. At all. Ever. We spend a great deal of money on special-needs dog and cat food and I'm not about to upset the balance of nutrition provided by those freaking expensive pellets by sneaking scraps of pork fat to the little carnivores among us.

But the tabby... a few months ago he snuck a bit of egg from my breakfast plate when I got up to answer the phone - and has been a cat possessed ever since.

Every morning he follows me around, giving me the eye, assuming - knowing - I have eggs.

Oh, if only I would share! The torture he is subjected to at my hands...er, fork... is unbearable! Somebody, call the ASPCA.

Probably the only reason he hasn't extracted his revenge by killing me in my sleep is that he knows as The Woman goes, so go his chances of ever again sinking his tiny teeth into buttery, tarragon-infused, yolky yumminess.

This morning Hub and I eschewed the Waffle House (possibly the first time in the history of the English language the words "Waffle House" and "eschewed" have been used together) in favor of breakfast at home.

I made French toast. Tabby thought I'd made eggs...because he ALWAYS thinks I've made eggs.

Down we sat to enjoy The Most Important Meal of the Day when Hub asked: "Why is Tabby giving me the stink eye?"

I explained the egg situation and said....

Are you ready for this?

I said: Maybe we should send him to Oeuf-er Eaters Anonymous.

Hahahahaha-haaaaaaaaaaaaa-hahahahah.

Then I snorted and nearly choked to death on orange juice.

I'm not completely convinced Tabby didn't have something to do with that.

I wrote an explanation...UPDATE!

2011-11-26T11:22:00.002-06:00

CG1
I wrote an explanation of how I screwed up America's ultimate middle-class casserole last night. French's Green Bean Casserole. Never had it. Inedible.

When I hit "publish," I got "url not found," and the post is gone.

Not gonna happen.

***Time Lapse ***

CG2 Note: This was a comment, but I figured I'd use it to beef up CG1's post. We've got each other's backs like that.

My SIL and I were talking on Thanksgiving about how much we hate, despise and loathe green bean casserole. I'd never tried it before moving south...and this is my first public admission that I've never successfully consumed a full portion.

Every year I serve myself a polite little scoop, but end up pushing it around my plate and hiding it under the extra Parker House roll everyone knew I couldn't eat, but put on my plate anyway. Little do they know, the reason I TAKE the second roll is because I need it to cammoflage little scoops of inedible casseroles.

I'm not judging GB casserole connoisseurs. At all. Clearly the problem is with me, not with the millions of normal Americans who can't get enough of its crispy-onion goodness.

Although, it could be the way it looks up at me from the plate. French's would have you believe that everyone's GBC looks like the image above, when really, it looks like this:

At my house we call that "The Dog's Dinner." Not because we would feed it to the dog, but because it looks absolutely repellent.

The good news is that even if we are at odds with the mean and norm, we are not - by a long shot - alone in our hatred of GBC.

Exhibit A: The "I HATE Green Bean Casserole..." fan page (anti-fan page?) on Facebook.
Exhibit B: The "I hate *fill in the blank* more than green bean casserole" CBS Sports fan page.
Exhibit C: The Cooking Light message board - admittedly not the best place to find supporters of cream of mushroom soup and fried onions, but still....

Green Bean Casserole! More fattening and less enjoyable than a stomach virus!

It's So Tasty Too!

2011-11-25T17:45:00.001-06:00

On this, the day after Thanksgiving, are you tired of turkey? Sick of stuffing? Unable to glimpse a green bean without gagging? You're not alone.

It is a little known fact that the term, "Black Friday" originally referred to the zombified dilation of people's pupils when faced with Thanksgiving leftovers.

And now a word from our sponsor -
Are you tired, run down, listless? Do you pop out at parties? Are you unpoopular?

Well, are you? The answer to all your problems is in this little ol’ bottle, Vitameatavegamin...It’s so tasty too. It’s just like candy!

Anyway, around Chez City the day after Thanksgiving means pork. Pork chops, pork tenderloin, pork and kraut - anything but poultry.

I've been making pork chops with apples and fennel for several years, but never bothered to commit a recipe to paper. Luckily, the Food and Wine website offers such a darn close version of my non-recipe that I'll never have to bother measuring and documenting and all that left brain stuff.

Pork. It's what's for dinner tonight, along with twice-baked potatoes, roast acorn squash and leftover cranberry relish - because I never, never, never, never ever get tired of the 'cran. Smacznego!

Pork Chops with Apple, Fennel and Sage

8 boneless, thin-cut pork chops (1 1/2 pounds)
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 leek, white and light green parts only, thinly sliced
1 fennel bulb—halved lengthwise, cored and thinly sliced crosswise
1 Fuji apple—halved lengthwise, cored and thinly sliced
8 small sage leaves, coarsely chopped
1 cup hard cider

Season the pork chops with salt and pepper. In a very large skillet, heat the olive oil until almost smoking. Cook the pork chops over high heat, turning once, until browned around the edges and just cooked through, about 3 minutes total. Transfer the pork chops to a plate and keep warm.
In the same skillet, melt the butter. Add the leek and cook over moderate heat until tender, about 3 minutes. Add the fennel and apple and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 4 minutes. Add the sage and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Season with salt and pepper, transfer to a platter and keep warm.
Pour the hard cider and any accumulated pork juices into the skillet and boil over high heat until thickened, about 4 minutes. Set the pork on top of the fennel and apples, pour the sauce over the pork and serve at once.

Y'all do WHAT????

2011-11-24T13:10:00.002-06:00

This family eats at my parent's house at six o'clock. P.M. Forget that noon shit.

Gives us plenty of time to start drinking early in order to better appreciate all this familial luuuuv.

Happy Thanksgiving to the planet...it's a good place to be.

Not a Real Post

2011-11-23T11:14:00.001-06:00

I know it's not Friday, so I have no excuse for bailing out of a "real" post.

But, let's face it, we're three weeks into NaBloPoMo and this shit is getting difficult.

Gobble Squared, Kids.

It is genetic...

2011-11-22T17:10:00.003-06:00

...the thing that makes guys different from girls. We, obviously, are not talking physical attributes here; although I have a HELL of a lot to say about that, too!

My dad is an only child. This is not a good thing. My husband has a sister, but he is the oldest and the one who shone while growing up. (That's not necessarily a bad thing, unless you're the sister.)

We live in a small town. My friend's grandparents are buried in the same cemetery with my grandparents. I'm related to half of everyone I know, and related to someone who is married to the other half of everyone I know. You grow up this way and you...belong. It's that simple.

A couple of months ago my dad went to an old friend's house, after a funeral, where all the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, etc, were gathered. My dad doesn't get out much anymore, hasn't done anything for anyone lately, and isn't overly concerned with the well-being of the planet.

His comment, afterwards? "None of those kids know who I am."

Now, I'll give you he has been a part of that family for most of the last century, but time...she be a' passin'. And considering he hasn't made any gestures to be a part of these latter generation's lives? My first thought was...his comment should have been, "I don't know who any of those kids are."

But I thought I was just being pissy.

The Not Nice Kid has been in a boot and on crutches for a month, and although she has been officially "released," we still have exercises and ice and ibuprofen. So this weekend, she played basketball with her school team. (She really was hoping she'd get to sub with the boys, but we have to be careful about that now. Political correctness and all that. The girl kicking the boys asses doesn't go over too well anymore.)

I know I'm the mom, but I'm not prejudiced. She really IS that good. So midway through the game one of the refs comes up to me, (when he realizes the woman in the stands making fun of the basketball kid ("Girl shots!!" That's my line...) was probably the mom) and says, "My son saw a game y'all played last week and came home and told me about her. Says SJ has a girl who can play with ANYBODY!" I laughed, because I hear this all the time and I can't run and spit at the same time because it takes too much coordination, and agreed. Then someone did something and the ref went off to ref. 'Cause, you know, that's what refs do...

He came back a little bit later and asked, "Where did she come from?"

Then someone did something and he went off to ref some more.

Finally, after figuring out how old he was and where he went to high school, I explained to him that The Big Boy played on the local high school team that won a state championship in the 70's, with a star player who is a local legend. (His name is Otis Boddie and he was AWESOME. Daughter at Auburn and she got the genes ;-)

The ref knew immediately.

When I came home and repeated the story, TBB wasn't paying a lot of attention because he's cool that way. But when I said, "That ref said he'd been looking for her....", TBB raised up and said, "Looking for me?"

No. Not looking for you. ASS.

But that's IT!!!...what makes men step out in front, so much more easily than women do. They always assume someone is looking for them. AND THAT'S NOT A BAD THING...I'm trying to teach these girls this. Step out!! You're the one!! But the point is...I'm having to teach them! They weren't born with this automatic assumption...the one that says, "The world revolves around you!" "You are the one!" "You light up my world!"

Sorry. Debbie Boone regression there.

"The things that make me different are the things that make me." Winnie the Pooh. Who would have been a better parent than I am ;-)

I did that thing...

2011-11-21T14:38:00.003-06:00

...that thing you always assume YOU'll never be stupid enough to do.

I sent a text to the person I was texting about.

The text read something like, "I wish I could just block NegativeRant's posts. AND ISN'T THAT FUCKING TREE POISONER GUY FROM TEXAS?"

There is, of course, history here. I had been running interference for NR for some time. The team no longer ate or partied together, because of the parents who prefered not to associate. Me? I don't pick sides, and then THAT became an issue with NR, as one disagreement turned into another disagreement and it sort of ended up...with me or against me.

Not gonna happen. I am the ultimate fence-straddler, unless I am married to you in which case...bring it on ;-)

And then we get up one morning and there is this totally irrational rant on Facebook and instead of just keeping my mouth shut, LIKE I HAD DONE FOR THE PAST YEAR, I sounded off to The Nice Kid. She had gone through my FB a couple of days before, deleting negative people. We didn't delete NR, my choice, but I knew TNK would get a kick out of the post.

So I grabbed my phone and sent the text and...I sent it to NegativeRant. You know, the text wishing I had blocked her negative rants.

Y'all, I apologized. Out the ASS, I apologized. Don't know what the response was, except that it was negative and TNK told me to forget about it. She deleted the entire thread.

Since then I've seriously considered...is there a way to ask for confirmation before you hit "send?" I'll bet out of the million texts I've sent in my life, there aren't ten I'd mind anyone seeing...and it was one of those I mis-sent. On the other hand, things are a lot more peaceful and the kids say it's nice not having to always be on guard. I miss a friend. I don't miss the drama.

THIS is why I'm happy in my hole. Nope, I do not willingly leave the house more than a few time a month. Happy in my hole.

Think I'll add that to my list of awesome life theories: #1...You can't save every chicken. #2...Do 55 and fuck it. And now? #3...Happy in my hole.

Inventing Insults

2011-11-20T21:26:00.001-06:00

Our old friend Hunky, husband of Dory, posted this story about the bastards in Congress on FaceBook.

Debt Supercommittee Members Brace for Failure

The assholes are giving up before they've even tried.

Tom, being the lovely good guy he is, called them "Jackwagons."

In a fit of pissed-off-ness, I asked if "Jackwagon" is the polite term for a useless, leaky douchebag.

Which struck me...did I just make that up? I wonder if anyone has ever compared a useless apparatus - like a governing body - to a dysfunctional gynecological gadget.

My rage at Congress temporarily forgotten, I Googled my brand-new favorite term...and found it has been applied to lawyers and politicians for years, and most recently to Mark Zuckerberg.

So now I'm on to the next new insult:
Stone Cold Speculum?

OK - Stop the presses.

Now, I just Googled "gynecological tools...." and it auto completed, "gynecological tools for mutant women."

I....I'm speechless. I have no words.

WTF?

Saturday Slap in the Face

2011-11-19T15:00:00.001-06:00

Hang onto your banana clips and leg warmers, girls of a certain age.

I was minding my own business, studying the latest issue of People Magazine, the annual Sexiest Man Live edition, doing research, when I flipped to the article, "Sexy at Every Age."

I looked at the guys in their 20s...meh. With the exception of Robert Pattinson they all looked like they had 11:00 curfews.

30? Jake Gyllenhall, Leonardo DiCaprio - Okay, now we're getting somewhere.

The guys in the 40s category looked even more familiar: Jason "Handsome Rob" Stratham, Clive Owen, John Stamos, Jon Bon Jovi - be still my Tiger Beat-ing heart.

Then I got to the 50s category where, back in the day, I rarely recognized actors...and there he was: Ralph Macchio.

The Karate Kid, Johnny from The Outsiders, Jeremy from Eight is Enough - is 50 years old.

That can't be right...... Ah, but it is.

So, if you'll all excuse me, I'm going out back to dig a big hole. I need to bury the last illusion...delusion...I had that I'm still reasonably young.

Friday Funny (from the fields)...

2011-11-18T15:44:00.000-06:00

In the world of hi-tech gadgetry, I've noticed that more and more
people who send text messages and emails have long forgotten the art of
capitalization.

For those of you who fall into this category, please take note of the
following statement...

"Capitalization is the difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a
horse and helping your uncle jack off a horse."

Is everybody clear on that?

Sitting in the parking lot...

2011-11-17T16:14:00.001-06:00

There really was a post attached to this...concerning corn nuts and white wine in a school parking lot. Damned if I remember the point.

Reboot

2011-11-16T07:55:00.001-06:00

I am seriously considering undertaking the following steps this weekend:
1. Mix up a big nasty batch of Master Cleanse
2. Buy, cook and consume vegetables in large quantities
3. Refrain from alcohol and caffeine for the weekend
4. Get a massage, a steam and drink many liters of water
5. Sit down and read both newspapers
6. Take vitamins
7. Take naps
8. Seriously attempt to meditate
9. Moisturize
10. Not leave the house (except for the massage)

Normally my weekend routine goes something like this:
1. Eat a lot of bad stuff
2. Eat a lot of good stuff
3. Drink a lot of wine
4. Drink a lot of Diet Coke and coffee
5. Run around like a maniac trying to accomplish way too many things
6. Start worrying on Sunday afternoon, what madness the week ahead will bring
7. Beat myself up on Sunday night for all the things I *didn't* accomplish

I hate to admit this, but the older I get the harder it is to bounce back from a week on the road. Especially when I travel with people...I tend to pick up their bad habits and add them to my already impressively long list of Things I Really Shouldn't Do.

Like eat sausage for breakfast, an Italian sub for lunch and then top it off with ribs and wings for dinner.

Can you say bloated? I knew that you could.

You're gonna have to trust me here....

2011-11-15T07:45:00.002-06:00

Due to popular request (hahahaha! That would be from elementary school moms) I posted a recipe on Facebook yesterday. Keeping in mind, City Girl and I are all ABOUT some recipes...in fact, we'd probably be better at running a restaurant than we are at blogging, just because we'd get to EAT! And play with food! And go on Pinterest and find awesome tablescapes! None of which, I'm guessing, has anything to do with running a restaurant but until we ran out of funding we would be SO happy....

Right there's the problem...I couldn't run a restaurant if you bought me new Nikes. I'd be bankrupt two days before I opened. But COOK? I might not could do it, but I'd go down eating ;-)

The thing about this recipe is that it has two things I normally would never consider using...a crockpot and cream-of soup. Why? I have NO idea. It's just that...crockpot. It seems so...so...cream-of soup. I don't know where I got these notions, but I've carried them around for a long time. Then, about five years ago, I got to noticing that there were a LOT of recipes for crockpot things that sounded...good. And THEN....I got to noticing that I wasn't home very much. Two kids playing sports, going to school 20 miles from home and playing entirely different things, didn't leave a lot of down time.

The Big Boy used to joke, when I had one kid and spent HOURS on supper every night, that I'd go into the kitchen, open a bottle of wine for dinner, make the bread for its first rising, put something on to simmer, have a glass of wine, set the table and have a glass of wine, do something with some meat and start another vegetable, have a glass of wine, get everything ready to sit down and then...open a bottle of wine for dinner. He's such a card.

So I bought a crockpot and it sat in the garage, unopened in its box, for two years. But I kept seeing the recipes, so finally one day I took it out and...voila!!! I'm hooked. Dumbass Award of the Year to the dumbass who left her crockpot in the box for two years. That would be me.

Cream-of soup? No idea where that prejudice came from, either. It just always seemed so...common. HAVE I MENTIONED THE DUMBASS AWARD? Common isn't bad! Common may be common because it WORKS!

So here, courtesy of a friend who kept insisting this was good is...TA-DAH!!! Your grandmother's chicken and dressing and I'm not kidding you...this is as light and moist and savory and rich and perfect as everytime your grandmother made it. And if you come from my family, that's the ONLY time it tasted like that because my mother? Cuts her chicken and dressing in squares. Like...dry squares. I cannot explain the cream-of-chicken soup. Can't do it. You'll just have to trust my friend Lisa.

Crockpot Chicken and Dressing

2-4 chicken breasts
8-inch pan cornbread
8 slices day-old bread or four fat biscuits or four fat rolls
1 medium onion,chopped
1/4 cup to 1 cup chopped celery
4 eggs, beaten
24 oz chicken broth
2 cans cream of chicken soup
1 t salt
Pepper to taste
2 T sage/poultery seasoning
3 T butter

Crumble breads. Mix in all other ingredients, excepting butter. Spray crockpot with cooking spray, pour chicken and dressing into pot and dot with butter. Cook two hours on high or four hours on low.

Now. I cook the chicken, then use the cooking broth for the recipe. I cut the chicken into chunks and mix it in with the dressing. If you're using pre-cooked chicken, you need two 14-oz cans of broth. Lisa's recipe called for less seasoning but...Lord I love me some sage in some dressing, so trust me. Two tablespoons sage.

Please don't do what I did and not try this. This is so good that now I keep a ziplock bag in the freezer and save leftover cornbread and biscuits, for when the notion strikes. If you buy frozen chicken breasts in the bag? You can pull out a couple of breasts, make a pan of cornbread if you don't have enough saved and...two hours later. The Supper of Champions.

I promise.

Tune In, Drop Out, Get on a Plane

2011-11-14T13:29:00.001-06:00

Well, kids, I'm off again - about to board a plane to the bustling metropolis of Cleveland.

Actually, I like Cleveland. There's really nothing not to like about Cleveland - I think the place gets a bum rap.

Unlike Detroilet, which was as depressing as I expected when I visited a few weeks ago.

On Thursday I'll be in Silicon Valley. I *would* tell you that I'll be in San Jose, except that certain elements out there insist on singing a certain old song whenever I mention San Jose, so I TOTALLY am not mentioning San Jose.

So let's review where I've recently traveled for work: Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City and, soon, San...Silicon Valley.

Wow. That's really not a sexy lineup, is it?

These cities are where the customers in my program are based, and I'm thinking that if I'd been devious instead of loyal, forthright and true (like a St. Bernard..or are those the Mounties?) I'd have recruited customers in Miami, Manhattan, Seattle and San Diego.

Next time. The next round of customers will be in Vancouver, Chicago, Tampa and Toronto - places I've either called home and want to return to, or cities I've long wanted to visit...and possibly move to. (Hub and I seriously discussed making a run for the border when George W was reelected).

More from the road later this week. :o)

Amen, Sister

2011-11-13T17:44:00.001-06:00

Things that make you go "Whut?"

2011-11-12T14:02:00.002-06:00

Flipping through the channels and the Travel Channel has a program, Extreme Barhopping, listed. Caught my eye (you think?)...but when I clicked on the info, it reads ".....$10,000 drink that comes with handcuffs."

I'm pretty sure I've had this? I just don't think it was marketed quite this way. In fact, I know I got married at least once with said logic ;-)

Maximum Elevenness

2011-11-11T08:48:00.001-06:00

In celebration of Nigel Tufnel Day, we're turning it up to Eleven, Baby!

Here at the world headquarters of CGCG we have 11 pipers piping.

We're reading David Llewellyn.

We're sucking down Slurpees - from the 7-11, natch.

Because we're in Rocket City, we're remembering the Apollo 11 mission.
(Is it a coincidence there was a full moon last night?.... Well, probably.)

And because no Eleven is as big, bad, loud or Spandex-wrapped as Nigel's, we are watching this Spinal Tap clip on continuous loop.

For those about to rock, we salute you.

Rocket City

2011-11-10T15:31:00.001-06:00

Today's post highlights the town in which I work: Huntsville, Alabama.

For those of you who listen to Morning Edition on NPR, you probably heard this story earlier today. For those of you who don't - and I know we only have six readers - here you go:

"Driving into Huntsville, Ala., it's clear what this city is all about: A giant Saturn V rocket looms ahead in the skyline. This is the city that made the Saturn rockets that took the Apollo astronauts to the moon.

"We're the only place in the world that still has expertise about going into deep space," says Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle. He says the moment the Saturn V took off and put man into space, it turned what was then a rural farming community on its ear.

And the city has been on a high-tech growth spurt ever since. The place dubbed "Rocket City" is now a metropolitan area with 400,000 people, a high-tech enclave in a poor state.

But with NASA downsizing and the specter of automatic defense cuts looming, Huntsville finds itself in limbo...."

Read the rest of the story here.

At one point Huntsville was home to the highest per-capita concentration of PhDs in the country. It may still hold that designation. God knows you can't go to lunch without overhearing a conversation about...hell, I don't know what they're talking about. That's how I know they're crazy smart. (How's that for logic, huh? They don't teach that at MIT. Them's street smarts, right there).

More Hunts-vegas

Just in case Debbie Elliott and NPR are a little too erudite for your taste, I give you Rocket City Rednecks.
Have you seen this show on the National Geographic channel?

Three physicists and a retired NASA machinist building...stuff. Bomb-proofing pick 'em up trucks with beer cans and foam core to prove an armored Humvee doesn't have to be so slow and heavy...fueling a rocket with moonshine...you get the picture.

I have to admit the program does not portray Huntsvillians in the best light - they lay on the redneck routine pretty thickly. But, truth be told, the lead Redneck isn't from Huntsville, he's from "out in the county."

You know, kinda like CG1. :o)

(And that's what you get for making fun of people who eat messy sandwiches with a fork and knife).

Be afraid....

2011-11-09T12:35:00.002-06:00

....be very, very afraid before you become our friend.

This will be a short and to-the-point post because in a minute I'm going to lose perspective and sit here and cry over a mongrel cat for the rest of the day. Don't be bothering me.

We used to have Pumpkin Parties for the kids. Started with five kids in my parents front yard. Last one was...three? four? FIVE??? years ago, with 150 people. Haven't gotten around to it since then.

The first party, we accidentally had a litter of kittens. Got rid of them all. Second party, a friend BROUGHT kittens. Got rid of them all. Third time? No charms awarded; I had to post on the invitations..."NO KITTENS. I promise ;-)"

Today I had one of those kittens put to sleep. Old. Frail. Cranky. Sick. Sicker. The Nice Kid came home from school, coughing and spewing. She took him to the vet for me...said vet is two miles from the house...I couldn't do it. I was still sitting here thinking I could change my mind when she walked back in the door, box in hand.

Dead cat in the box.

I had her put him in the deep freeze. I'll bury him tonight.

A little later we were in the kitchen swatting flies, which are EPIDEMIC here. Having said that? If I were a fly, I'd live here. Non-stop buffet. Just about any room you choose. And one of the kittens kept jumping at the fly swatter.

TNK kept swatting at the flies and yelling at the cat. And I told the cat..."Keep it up!!! We'll put you in the deep freeze!!! WITHOUT taking you to the vet first!!!!"

We fell over laughing. And now we're crying some more.

Ouch.

2011-11-08T09:42:00.001-06:00

It started out as a very short list...

2011-11-07T09:53:00.002-06:00

This would be, the list of things I didn't sign up for. Three kids, 20 years apart, pretty much guarantees I would be responsible for just about anything at some time or another...intentionally or not. I'm good with that...some of those things have actually turned out to be pretty cool. (This does NOT include the time I found out that if you put a dead snake on a grill and then go back 15 minutes later and raise the lid THAT FUCKER IS JUMPING AROUND. Not one of my better moments.)

But I did NOT, anytime, anywhere, anyhow, sign up for something dead under the sink. It COULD be dead under the board that is the flooring for under-the-sink but I have NO INTENTIONS of finding out.

There are flies. They are small and dumb, which is good, except that by sheer number they are winning this fight. I cannot find where they're coming in, although I've sprayed around all the doors and windows and UNDER THE SINK and...they keep coming.

So between the smell and the flies, I've used about $6 of cider, mixed with another small investment in cinnamon sticks and whole allspice, simmering on the stove. Great...now The Institution smells like DEAD APPLES. And it BUZZES.

So I'm out of here. There is a lovely Mennonite trading post about 30 miles north of here, and last year they had awesome mums and fall offerings and they always have cheese...lots of cheese. Cheeses to make your heart sing. So J Friend and I are off to check out the foliage and the trading post, and then find a floor cleaner at a retail institution somewhere. About 3:30, I will text The Nice Kid and tell her, "When you get home? Pull out all that stuff under the kitchen sink and see if we need to do something about that rotted floor."

Moms are sneaky like that.

Pantone Pansies

2011-11-06T10:43:00.003-06:00

This admittedly isn't a *great* story, but it does begin with "So there is this stalker...."

For 44 years, and through two practice husbands, my name has been City Jones. My father was Big City Jones, his father was Grandpa Jones. My people are Joneses. I am a Jones.

Believe it or not, Jones is an uncommon name in this part of the country. What can I say? It's Welsh.

Hubster's last name is Johnson. There are at least one hundred Johnsons in this ZIP code, including two with the first name "City."

When Hubster and I married I did plan to hyphenate my name. But after a few years of procrastinating, we decided that I should just stick with Jones. I'm a modern woman with a unique name, in a town with little surname variety. I like my name, and becoming The Latest City Johnson held zero appeal. Most importantly, Hubster was, and continues to be, FINE with it.

Apparently, not everyone in town is fine with it, not that it's anyone's goddamnedbusiness.

A few weeks ago we were at a charity thing. We don't usually go to Things. Normally, we get an invitation, we send a check, and we don't attend The Thing. But this was a Good Thing, a seemingly enjoyable Thing for a good cause.

And it seems that I've been hit in the head with an anvil since the last Thing, erasing the bad memories of Things Past and clouding my judgement. So off we went to the Thing.

Once there we ran into a lot of people we like very much but rarely see, which was lovely, and we fell in love a small, beautiful object being sold as part of the fundraising effort.

Hub ran into a friend so I excused myself to execute the purchase. As I was...transacting... with the very nice Volunteer Lady, Small Town Debutante (cue the fugue) whom I do not know well, and who I didn't even recognize the last time we ran into each other - took over the conversation.

STD: "Here, let *me* give you the information, Volunteer Lady. This (points at me) is City Johnson, although she says her name is City Jones."

"That's because my name IS City Jones." I told Volunteer Lady, trying to ignore STD.

"Oh, that's right," she touched me and continued directing Volunteer Lady, "She HY-phenates it. But, as you can see, there's not enough room on that little ticket for the whole, unusual name, so just write Johnson."

I turned my attention to STD, "My name *is* Jones, not Johnson or Jones-Johnson."

"Oh, honey, don't be offended, it's just such a funny name." Stop. Touching. Me.

Volunteer Lady whispered, "I think it's a pretty name."

Aaaand the spell was broken. I thanked Volunteer Lady and walked off to fish Hub out of the crowd.

"We need to go before I punch STD in the face. Why did we come to this Thing?"

"STD? Really? Well, she does owe you. Remember you ripped off her head and shit down her neck 11 years ago when she wanted you to sign her petition to color-coordinate all the landscaping in the neighborhood."

And there it was. I had to own it. I did, indeed, overreact to the petition that would have allowed her and a select group of Taste Mavens to tell me what color flowers I could plant. And as Karma dictates, I had it coming. Fair enough.

It took her a long-ass time to get around to it, but she got back at me. Damn, I wish I had that kind of patience and memory and time....

Wait a minute. How did she even recognize me when, just a month ago, I had no idea who she was? This, truth be told, probably offended her more than the Pantone Pansies incident.

And not only does she knows who I am, but she knows the entire story of my name (to hyphenate, not to hyphenate) AND she pronounced it correctly, which is no small feat.

How much time and energy has this woman put into thinking about me?

So now, instead of being offended by her drunken attempt at putting me in my place, I'm a little creeped out.

Is this her hobby? Does she keep dossiers on the women in town who don't go along with her program?

Maybe she has voodoo dolls of us Pansy Mavericks...That certainly would explain this pain in my ass.

It's A Wonderful Life!!

2011-11-05T17:13:00.003-05:00

Ignoring the useless dish and the telephone pole and lines...this is the view out my back door. Those black dots are cows. The crop in front of them is...well, hell. Short grain. I'll remember later.

City Girl and I had lunch today. The food was good and I have mussels to cook for supper. The Nice Kid joined us and it was such a nice day her constant interrupting and laughing and telling stories that had nothing to do with what we were talking about was nice. And for the record? Yes. City Girl cuts up her sandwiches and eats them with knife and fork. Never having been to McDonalds with her? I cannot verify the frequency....

But somedays everything is just...right. And today was one.

I love this life ;-)

Friday Funny

2011-11-04T10:08:00.001-05:00

"Friday Giant Happy Smile" is more accurate.

Even if you aren't a Doctor Who fan, this will make you grin. I promise.

(Have I ever led you astray?)

How I miss David Tennant....

A couple of years ago...

2011-11-03T10:57:00.003-05:00

...I bought a Nikon SLR. I love this camera. I've loved cameras for a long time...if you know what a Canon AE Program is, you get to move to the front of the line.

When it became apparent that I wasn't raising rocket scientists, but I have a child who may potentially make it to the cover of Sports Illustrated in one of two ways, I started lusting over an SLR. A tennis parent had an awesome Nikon, but she also has family $$'s so while I wasn't lusting to QUITE those heights, I was lusting.

Two margarita lunch did it one day.

LOVED that camera. Til the day it stopped working, and I sent it back to Nikon. They returned it, marked "repaired." It wasn't. At all. I sent it back AGAIN, Nikon kept it for a while and then sent me another camera. A newer version of mine, refurbished. That was okay.

Until it stopped working. Sent it back a couple of weeks ago. It was returned. Marked "repaired." It isn't.

Not ONLY does it not work AT ALL, as opposed to working hesitantly when I sent it in, it was returned with a snarky photocopied sheet which is probably titled "Flash for Dummies." With highlighted paragraphs.

Oh, don't you EVEN.

I paid Nikon $159.22. I paid The Mailing Room $18.78 to ship it. October 6, originally, which means I haven't had a camera for over a month. Yesterday? I got an email from Nikon Service, informing me that they could not procede with emailing me a paid shipping label until I provided them with the invoice repair number and the service order number.

I went into my account on THE NIKON SITE and retrieved said numbers.

Got another email this morning. They need the serial number on the camera.

I just sent it. With the comment that "...it appears to be the same as last week."

I don't fight, people. I'll just buy another brand. And, like with poor service in a restaurant, I won't ever come back. You can make book on it.

This HAS taught me, however, that my 4G Droid? Takes AWESOME pictures.

*smile*

I'm coming! I'm coming!

2011-11-02T20:06:00.003-05:00

...actually, I'm just breathing hard.

AHHH hahahahaha. That would be me, cracking myself up.

Actually, I'm coming down from one of those days where I'm looking around wondering...what the HELL is wrong with everyone???? Where did all these mean people come from? And why? Why be mean when you can be artificially nice with less effort?

I smile at everyone. I don't mean "sort of." I smile. WalMart. Foodland. Hobby Lobby. The co-op. Today? RiteAid. If my ordinary, mother-of-the-year look doesn't get you, then surely some crazy 50-something bitch wandering around retail land grinning like the Cheshire car should. If you don't want to be my friend, get out of the way.

And you would think that smiling at someone, as you pass them, headed to the booze, would make the world a better place. Second time in life this has happened to me...a well-groomed middle-age white female. Headed UP the aisle, on the left side. Only today, I was looking for something and she wasn't. And she was headed toward me, on the wrong side of the aisle. I KNOW she saw me. No one else on the aisle. She wasn't budging. Today? Neither was I.

We met. Nose to nose carts. I was looking at her, and I wasn't smiling. Me, who ALWAYS backs down from a fight unless I'm married to you. (Okay, maybe not ALWAYs, but most of the time.) And I swear, she looked me straight in the eye and said, "Am I in your way?"

Last time this happened, I muttered something and left. Today? I AM SICK AND TIRED OF SMILING AT SHITTY PEOPLE. I'm tired of it!!! There is NO reason not to be nice to mean people; it takes no effort. But today?

I smiled. I smiled real big. And then I said, in a very polite voice as I pulled my cart over and, wearing my pearls and my cowboy boots, "Traffic to the right, bitch. Traffic to the right."

It is highly possible this woman is head of the local Red Cross. Or chairman of the women's auxiliary somewhere. Or like, an anonymous benefactor. But today? SHE WAS ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE AISLE.

And I'm tired of smiling at mean people.

;-)

NaBloPoMo 2011 - Let the Games Begin!

2011-11-01T13:27:00.001-05:00

Last November, CG1 and I got off to what she called "an inauspicious beginning" when we failed to post on the VERY FIRST DAY of NaBloPoMo.

But not this year! You wanna know why we're here in our place with bright shiny faces long before midnight on the first of November?

Because we're celebrating five years of friendship with the bloggers we met during our first NaBloPoMo misadventure.

Five years with Fabs, Dory, Hunky, Mel, and Alejna.

Our relationship with you all has endured longer than Elizabeth Taylor's first three marriages...longer than the Sex Pistols...and certainly longer than Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries.

This NaBloPoMo is for you - We love you guys!

Time Warp

2011-10-31T15:25:00.000-05:00

Return of the road warrior! This week I travel to Kansas City, last week I was in Detroit.

Or, as my colleagues call it, "Detroilet."

On the flight up I convinced myself that I'd be struck by lightning when we landed. You know...a lifelong Chicago Blackhawks fan in Red Wings territory.

You think I exaggerate, but this was a perfectly valid concern considering that when I crossed the threshold of Busch stadium earlier this year, the damn place was assaulted by a massive hail storm and just missed being hit by a tornado. (I was standing beside the guy who took this video, shaking in my shoes and promising the baseball gods I'd never again cheat on the Cubs).

Luckily, no sports-related injuries were incurred in 'The City of Tomorrow.'
How-evah, I did trip and fall into a time warp....

Back story: In the 8th grade I had a devastating crush on a boy named Ray Wasik. Over the years I've thought about Raywasik (you have to read his name all running together because that's how I've said it in my head since the day I met his blonde, Polish loveliness in Political Science class). This is because I experienced my first near- mental breakdown working up the courage to ask him to sign my yearbook on the last day of school. Ever since then, when I've been Chihuahua-in-a-thunderstorm nervous about something I've thought, "This isn't Raywasik Yearbook bad. I can do this."

Present day: The morning of my meeting last week, I pulled on my power panties and headed out to the site of a pretty important customer. I was feeling good. I was cool. I was going to run the smoothest, bestest, most productive-but-fun meeting ever held in Novi, Michigan, goshdarnit. (Hey, it ain't saving puppies, but it's what I do).

Everything was going fanfuckingtastically - for ONCE the rental GPS worked so I didn't end up hopelessly lost in a strange city. Therefore I arrived early and found a Mary Catherine Gallagheresque Superstar parking spot. All good signs, right?

Right. Until I walked in aaaand.....

There sat Raywasik. Not the real Raywasik. Not even someone related to him...you know I had to ask ...but he was close enough.

And I was sooooo fucked.

There was no way in hell I was going to be able to sit in that room, all day, and cooly interact with the doppelganger of the person who comes to mind whenever I'm losing my shit.

Aaaaaand I didn't.

I wasn't cool. I was 14 years old and awkward, and I'm pretty sure I left everyone there - including people who have known me for years - believing I'm a resident of the spectrum.

So, as long as I had reverted back to my 14 year-old self, what do you think I did this weekend?
1. Looked up Raywasik in old yearbooks, to verify that this guy does, indeed, look exactly like him
2. Google-stalked Raywasik

The worst part of this dysfuncational tale is that he has no online presence. None. On the Internet, where nobody knows your a dog, he doesn't exist.

There is an actor out there, named Ray Wasik, but he isn't THE Raywasik.

Raywasik isn't on Facebook, Google +, Twitter, LinkedIn or Tumblr.

So he must be dead, right?

Poor Raywasik.

Friday Profound Yet Offensive

2011-10-28T08:48:00.000-05:00

I can't post this on FaceBook...the villagers would take it out on Hubster. :o/

Look what I did! beam.beam

2011-10-25T09:29:00.003-05:00

I don't have anything to say about it because my arms, my hands, my shoulders, my chest, my back, my hips, my legs and my feet hurt too bad to type. But in the near future it will be a fire pit!

Being married on a Friday night...

2011-10-22T10:07:00.003-05:00

There are two versions of marriage.

One is the delusional version, the version teenage girls have. You meet a good looking guy who dresses well. He likes you. He’s funny. He has a cool car. He has money to take you to dinner and a movie and then to the coffee shop. He jokes with your mom and is respectful to your dad. He knows the difference between a Phillips and a flathead. He eats mushrooms and blue cheese, and when your family cooks out at the farm he knows how to build the fire.

Then, there’s reality. Your good-looking guy weighs 100 pounds more than when you married him. He doesn’t tan anymore because of the skin cancers and when he comes downstairs on Sunday mornings while the kids are at church and cooks his breakfast naked, wearing a pair of sandals, you go get a root canal.

You plan…A Night.

The Plan…The Not Nice Kid is spending the night at a party. The Nice Kid is going to a football game. You will buy wine, and steaks. There will be real fettucine and sour dough bread. You will make the night worth his while, and the next day he will help you clean up the kids’ rooms, and paint their furniture.

The Reality:…The Nice Kid stays home. The Big Boy calls and says he’s going to the football game with his buddy. The steaks are $14.99 a pound and all fat. You have to take your dad to pick up his car at the dealership.

Nine o’clock?

You’re home by yourself. The Nice Kid got hungry and went to eat. The game is still going on and TBB is two hours out.

You and the cat go to bed.

Slam ass tickled to death ;-)

Day Two: I was trying to be nice so I scheduled TBB a massage for three o'clock today. Turns out, the second most important football game of his life comes on at 2:30, and of course I did this on purpose. Then TNK had a flat tire on her way to take her ACT.

Bourbon for breakfast is a good thing....

Friday Funny

2011-10-21T16:42:00.002-05:00

If you like the Venn diagram....

You'll LOVE the Venn Pie-a-gram!

Image Credit: Tastefullyoffensive

Sometimes things just work out...

2011-10-19T21:41:00.002-05:00

...and sometimes you should have stayed in bed.

I am...not sure what the word is. Not minimalist, but that's close. Not purist, by any stretch of the imagination but...when it comes to cooking, I tend to stay with basic ingredients and do the mixing and blending myself...there's a word. Somewhere. (Different post in here. City Girl and I were just talking about...where the words went.)

Not to say I'm averse to short cuts...my most famous and requested recipe has a cake mix and a box of jello in it. And I've already carried on about the frozen biscuits in a bag....they are some good eatin'.

But what in the world possessed me...I am clueless. Totally lost my mind tonight. Have you found Pinterest? If you haven't, well...to paraphrase City Girl...it's "cybercrack." At first I couldn't figure out the draw but once I realized it doesn't jive with AOL (I know! I know!) and started exploring in Gmail, I was hooked. ALL the best ideas I'll never do but still...just looking and dreaming makes for points. Right? Jewels in my crown?

And right there, posted by otherwise sane, talented and knowledgeable people, was a recipe I've been seeing for years. Apple Dumplings. Apple slices, rolled in pastry and baked. Old favorite, I'm sure. EXCEPT...this recipe...and as I said, I've been seeing it for years, called for crescent roll dough and...

...brace yourself...

Mountain Dew. Mtn Dew. The yellow stuff in a bottle. Mountain Dew.

I have no idea what the hell I was thinking. I don't eat sweets. I seldom cook them. There was a great pot of chili on the stove, I had all the extras. Good crackers. APPLES IN MOUNTAIN DEW??? That doesn't even sound like me. But I tried it anyway.

Y'all...this may be the nastiest stuff I have ever seen in my life. You cut the apple into eighths, wrap each slice in crescent roll dough and line them up in a baking dish. Pour TWO STICKS of melted butter with 1-1/2 CUPS sugar over the little packages and then...as if there wasn't enough sin in that pan already, you pour 12 ounces of Mountain Dew over it. And bake it.

AND THEN, you're supposed to serve it with a scoop of ice cream!!

I fixed a dish for The Not Nice Kid. She said it was nasty, but she ate the entire dish. If The Nice Kid has tasted it, I didn't hear. I finally took a fork and picked off a piece of the pastry.

Never in my life have I tasted so much vile sweetness in one place. It might not actually be that bad, underneath the sweet, but I have no idea how you're supposed to get past the sugar. Y'all? I cannot understand normal people deliberately sitting down and eating such...

Usually I'd send the leftovers to someone...the neighbors, my sister, the teachers. This stuff? I'm kind of thinking there might be divine retribution for...well, I'm still sort of worried about having to answer to the Cooking Gods about the Mountain Dew. I know the dogs don't need it, and the hummingbirds have already headed south. This may actually make it to the garbage disposal.

If blogs had color, this one would be red. I am THAT embarrassed. Justifiably so...MOUNTAIN DEW.

I think I'll skulk away now....

Out with the Old

2011-10-19T14:09:00.000-05:00

I just dropped by to change the template.

"Hi!" by the way. :o)

I do have stories to share with you.

One involves myself and a transvestite in a ladies room.

Another concerns a local Big Fish who apparently is stalking me. Which isn't nearly as sexy as it sounds considering the stalker in question is a woman. And she's a skinny blonde - which does nothing for me, regardless of gender.

BUT, I think I'll save those stories for NaBloPoMo.

Na...Wait, what????

Are you game, Country Girl?

Also, the image? Apropos of nothing. Except that this (jerk thumb north), this is my happy place.

Oohhhmmmmm.

For our friends in the UK: The king is dead. Long live the king!

A rant against Facebook haters...;-(

2011-10-15T21:24:00.000-05:00

A while back someone wrote something in the local paper, criticizing Facebook. I sounded off, pointing out that...wait. Let me see if I can find it.

You know what I'm tired off? People bitching about Facebook. You don't like it? GO AWAY! We didn't invite you to our party anyway ;-( If my friend posts she's at Restaurant Du Jour? She's either telling it because we were there yesterday and we're still laughing, or she's giving good press to a worthy establishment. Or someone tells what's for dinner? It involves personal favorites or local produce or something special from the area. EVERY POST ISN'T DIRECTED TO YOU! Ass.

So today, I was doing something and I thought...wonder what my day looked like? (Because, see, I was SUPPOSED to spend the day watching tennis and playing with my friends. But SOME thoughtless spouse neglected to mention until HE WAS WALKING OUT THE DOOR that he was going to Nashville tomorrow to pick up his car. Which totally threw a monkey wrench into the entire workings so I SAT here BY MYSELF all day. Different post.)

ANYWAY. Went back and checked and sure enough...posts for the planet. Yes, I posted a picture of an awesome little girls coat and hat ensemble, with the comment that it looked JUST like something The Nice Kid would have worn. (She of the matching hat/socks/shoes/hairbow outfits.) You know why? Local, home-owned shop. Lovely stuff. Owned by the relative of a friend of mine and YES...you should buy your cute kid cute stuff from the cute shop owned by the cute niece of my friend.

Another post was a link to Tabasco's recipe site, because Tabasco is a very old, very revered, VERY important-in-this-house, business. And you should be clicking on their links so that they stay happy and keep bottling peppers. (For The Big Boy and my SIL's birthdays, I paid $25 for five ounces of Tabasco Family Reserve. TBB is an ass and rolled his eyes, but there's a really nice medallion on the bottle. So there.)

Another link was to a food blog and if you know ANYTHING about us, City Girl and I would be all ABOUT some food.

Fourth post was a picture of The Not Nice Kid, with her boot and crutches, sitting in a chair watching the high school homecoming parade with two friends. Said friends being the most well-mannered, erudite, functional kids ever. Anywhere. They're pretty, too. Kudos to the parents.

Okay...fifth post was a picture of my parents dog. Eight-week-old German Shepherd puppy the size of a large laundry basket. All feet and crooked ears. I'm babysitting him while they are in the mountains. He is TOO cute...I figure if you un-friend me because of a post of a super-cute puppy, you didn't need to be here anyway. (This is particularly apt because I currently own/feed four dogs no one else wanted, and a running count of cats. Supposed to be six, but Groucho hasn't been around so I'm not sure.)

All of which brings me back to my point...it's a social site, meant to please a myriad of people. Roughly 100 of my friends know those well-mannered children, and smiled when they saw the picture. Roughly 100 PERCENT of my friends went immediately to the food blog...then to the Tabasco site. The children's shop site? If just two people with young children walk through that door, I've done my deed for the day.

So. Dear Ass: None of it was directed at you. Wasn't MEANT to be, and I'm guessing if you had seen any of it, the picture of the puppy would have given you fodder for foolishness. Because that's what you're spouting and NOW I remember why no one I know reads you.

So there.

She sez, as she tries to pick a cat hair out from under the the Caps Lock key, so it will work again ;-)

The Lord works in mysterious ways...

2011-10-07T06:14:00.001-05:00

...unfortunately, I think he's talking to me in cat poop.

There's a radar animals have...it hones in on "suckers." I have this on my forehead: S.U.C.K.E.R. Humans can't see it, but animals are right on the signal. Apparently, I have it on my car, too, because that's how Red Dog (so named because he is such a purebred that it never crossed my mind I wouldn't find his owner) picked me up in the parking lot at the liquor store. Luckiest I ever got in an establishment selling booze ;-) And there wasn't even a band....

There are four dogs here. Two I unwittingly took in, two had no where else to go. There are...six cats. I think. Two I brought home over a ten year period. Four were...born here to a stray mama cat and I got rid of what I could and...kept the others. I KNOW.

Red Dog is a full-blooded Golden Retriever, the ultimate Southern gentleman, and has allergies. I've tried everything but the best I can do is...he scratches at night. He doesn't hurt his skin and he isn't in pain so...scratch. It works.

Tupelo (so-named because he's a Hound Dog and if you don't get that, go away) chases cars. I've hit him twice...the first time he peed blood for a week and couldn't walk for three days without crying but...he chases cars. He is a savant...believe it or not, this is a really smart dog.

Copper had a full-blooded basset hound mother and an unknown scoundrel for a father. He is ALL attitude...does not move, blink or acknowledge. He's mean, if need be.

And then there's Spike. I found him by my parent's farm, in 100+ heat with no water within a quarter mile. Brought him home SURE he had an owner. The kids named him Buddy, the neighbors took one look at him and pronounced him Spike. All short spiky feisty black&white movie dog.

And the cats.

The Big Boy doesn't do animals. I don't know why; haven't asked. Doesn't really matter...the way this works we don't adopt animals, they adopt us. But even I will admit...four dogs, six cats.

That's a lot.

Apparently somewhere in the vicinity is some more slut dog. After three years of well-mannered habitating, Red Dog has decided to get up at 2 a.m. every morning and...leave. He doesn't get pushy, he just stands on my side of the bed and....looks at me. Until I wake up and let him out. No problem...I'll use it for a bathroom break. Except the other night he didn't come home until seven in the morning.

Did I mention the allergies? At first, listening to a dog scratch at night was annoying. Now, it's what's there. So when it WASN'T there? I laid there all damn night waiting on that dog to come home. 7:30? He showed up. He was happy; me, not so much. This sort of tried to turn into a trend....depends on whether or not I can ignore him before he gives up and goes back to sleep. But it's still been at the expense of several nights sleep.

The car chasing? When Spike joined the menagerie, he met Tupelo. Who chases cars. After being hit twice, he still chases them but he knows how to dodge the tires. Spike? Not so much. So when I heard the screaming and yelping from the road, I knew what had happened. Result: one puppy with a broken leg. One absolutely hysterical driver. The dog? I took to the vet and got the okay. The driver? Is still crying. TOTALLY ruined my morning since I had to hit the ground running to wash off the vet/dog smell, get a haircut and meet my best bud for lunch. Luckily, she took a table outside so maybe the smell of old dog urine didn't permeate lunch.

Today? The housekeeper came. She didn't feel well, and as we're working on the...piles...I hit "touch up" on the dryer. Turns out? One of the younger cats, litter box trained, had been in the house and since there's no litter box? Because you don't live in here anymore? He. Pooped. IN THE DRYER. On the clean clothes.

Know what happens when you turn on the dryer, heat up some cat shit and then let it harden? The solution involves disposable gloves, most of a bottle of Clorox, a fan and a LOT of profanity. More profanity than Clorox.

All of which MIGHT say...over the top. No one needs four dogs and a running count of cats. (Don't you love that? "Running count of cats." It's what it is.) But...except for Red Dog, and maybe Spike (who needs a boy), no one wants these dogs. More personality than appearance. LOTS of personality...the lady across the street even wrote a story about them...unfortunately, she's not feeding them.

Cat poop in the dryer. Y'all, this ain't lookin' good ;-(

I finally succumbed...

2011-10-02T23:41:00.001-05:00

...wait. I did not succumb (although what a perfectly nasty word to fit the situation,) I fell. I toppled. I lapsed. I busted my ass in the mud.

After 25 years of driving what amounted to essentially the same Volvo, same make different year, I bought an SUV. I SWORE I would never drive such. I ridiculed women who plodded around in my mother's station wagon reinvented. I zipped around in my super-safe lightweight foreign car, secure in my superiority.

And then I fell off the wagon.

Bought a Honda Pilot. LOVE this car, like...LOVELOVELLOVE this car. Extra L in there for emphasis. I love this car.

Which is all fine and dandy. I've gone from me and one kid to...two large kids, a large me and a large Big Boy. We are officially The Large Family. This car is much better for Large Soccer Trips and Large Tennis Trips. I can live with this.

Except, y'all. Oh, y'all. Yesterday? I'm riding down the road, all Large and everything and pull up to a red light next to another mid-size SUV and I glance out the window and without missing a BEAT, thought to myself, "Mine's bigger than your's." Thought it rather smugly, too, I might add.

I am ashamed. So ashamed. It took me less than a week to fall and people...I'm still scrabbling down the hillside. Just make sure? I ever mention getting a C...what is that license? CLV or something like that? For driving big trucks? Someone just slap me. I KNOW my limitations ;-)

Things Your Momma Didn't Teach You

2011-09-27T20:37:00.003-05:00

Thing Your Momma Didn't Teach You #3,839

Fresh baked goods, like blow jobs, should never become so commonplace in your home that the man of the family fails to react with appropriate enthusiasm.

"Oh! You baked today!!"

I'm just sayin'.

I hate this...

2011-09-16T15:17:00.001-05:00

There are four dogs living at The Institution. Maybe next week I'll get it together and post pictures. Each one is, in his own way, awesome.

No one else would want them.

There are...five cats. I think. Oreo is ours. He's old and blind in one eye and he gets to come in by himself and eat every day because the other cats are mean to him. HA! I show them.

Casper was white when he was born, he is Siamese-colored. Sparky is black & white and Casper's brother. Casper is aloof and a roamer. Sparky is...sparky. Mean to the other cats, and cuddly as all get-out if you sit down with him. He reminds me of The Not Nice Kid.

Ben is ours. He's an orange cat and AWFUL. Passive. Needy. When he sits down with you? It's not NEXT to you or BESIDE you...he lays his head up by your neck and curls into your body. Super smart and not too worried about anything...he's The Nice Kid.

Last two are...wait. That's six, isn't it?

Damn.

Spitz was the runt when he came out...that didn't last long. Feisty and funny and take you OUT...no fear. Groucho has a black mustache...get it? Very polite...he probably wore a tux in a past life. And wore it well...

So there is this cat in our outside garage...she is actually Spitz and Groucho's mother. Homeless. Shows up, eats my food, breeds, reproduces and leaves. Only this time? She left too soon and even though she was no Mother Teresa, I'm pretty sure something happened to her. There are five two-week-old kittens in my garage. There were. We haven't seen Mama Cat in four days. The kittens never stop screaming.

We tried feeding them but...five kittens? They weren't interested and if it was one? You might could coax it but...five? And then we're sitting here looking at everyone being gone all weekend and...

I hate this. I really really really hate this and I will cry all weekend in public places but...

...we took them to the pound to be put to sleep.

It's better than starving to death or dying of thirst or freezing to death.

That's what I keep telling myself. I hate this.

I really really hate this.

There's this friend of mine...

2011-09-12T11:20:00.001-05:00

...who is awesome. He grew up in a small town in Tennessee and while his roots are still in the small town, his heart travels the world. Specifically, Nashville and Savannah. In between Boston or New York or a lovely excursion to England....

So we're talking this morning. The Inmates just spent the weekend on the road...two hours to a morning soccer game in Bham. An afternoon soccer game in Bham. Another two hours on the road to a hotel in Montgomery and then four hours of soccer Sunday afternoon. Home at nine o'clock on a school night.

Lesson learned? We forgot a pillow and blanket this trip. Makes it hard to sleep when The Mama insists on keeping the air blowing full force on Max AC. We took two small coolers, instead of one small and one larger which makes it really hard to explain why the kid playing soccer in 100 degree heat doesn't have a cooler. MY BEER!!!!! What am I supposed to do with the beer? (Not really, that's a JOKE! before someone calls DHR.)

(It was only 98 ;-)

So ANYWAY. When we got home at nine o'clock last night, I started lists. Car lists. Food/hydration lists. Clothing lists. Lists that the people who are participating in these events can check off and handle themselves. I'm tired of refereeing over who-forgot-what. Just check and go. It's a list.

And then this morning? Talking to my bad ass friend?

He has lists. He even offered to send me one of his lists. You know what for? Was he sharing car-packing tips? Was BadAss sending me USTA accredited food lists? Did he have a list of how many sets of soccer socks you need over a four-game/two day weekend?

No. He's sending me a list for a long weekend in Savannah. It has restaurants, bakeries and cafes. It has galleries and shops and favorite artists at said-galleries and shops. It has best tours and best walks and best historical houses and events. It has pictures of the warehouse he converted into a loft.

Nowhere in his lists are drugstores that carry Imodium for kids with stomach viruses. There's no mention of emergency clinics for pulled hamstrings or broken wrists and for SURE no shops that carry shin guards and the cleats we forgot.

I'm thinking? We're gonna swap spots for a while. I'm going to hand him the keys to a vehicle filled with an assortment of kids...some mine, some not, all laughing and spilling stuff. Half of them missing necessary sports equipment, none of them with homework done and ALL of them hungry.

In return, I'm going to take his neat, luxurious SUV and head to Savannah. I'll have breakfast curbside, sitting at a bistro in a little round-back metal chair at a tiny table. I'll stroll around, with his credit cards, and shop brightly colored art. I'll laugh at witty, funny people who can create things out of their minds. For lunch, I'll drink an entire bottle of wine, with meat and cheese and good bread and then I'll go take a nap. On clean sheets with no cookie crumbs or cat hair. When I wake up, I'll shower and walk the streets under the trees with the breeze blowing. No snot or peanut butter on the shoulder of my shirt. I'll stop somewhere...ANYWHERE...and order interesting things off the menu and not have to referee a fight over who gets which color. I'll drink another bottle of wine and taste complicated things someone else cooked...and that someone else is going to clean up. I'll keep strolling and find a cool bar and drink good bourbon and, if I'm lucky like happened once in Atlanta, Mitch Wood and His Rocket 88's will be playing and the saxophone guy will dance down the bar while blowing his horn.

I'll stumble back to the loft and take two ibuprofen and wonder where the needy kid and the needy cat are, every time I roll over. I'll get up in the morning and go buy that picture of those people at the market and then....I'll take that clean SUV back before I spill something and I'll come home and wonder why the HELL I haven't put up the new garage door and I'll open the front door to be greeted by the smell of sweaty tennis clothes and stinky soccer shoes and wet dog and mildewing towels.

And then I'll go sit in my side yard, look at the weedy flower beds and the rusty grill and the lopsided chicken coop, and yell at the NEXT DAMN KID who kicks a ball in my direction.

The next morning, I'll go check BadAss out of the facility he ended up in.

I'm nice that way ;-)

(no subject)

2011-09-09T12:59:00.001-05:00

Every time I sit down on the couch in the big den, I feel like something is crawling all over me. Upon reflection, I've decided it could be one of three things.

Something COULD be crawling all over me. With one Golden Retriever and one feline Golden-Retriever-Wannabee in-house, and three mutts and five cats in-and-out-of-house, we could have fleas. I don't have any bites, but....there could be fleas. In which case, I need a beer. Maybe if I put a spoonful of beer in a saucer by the couch, the fleas will jump in and then we'll ALL be happy!

I could be having DT's. In which case, I need two beers. Fuck the fleas.

I could have a serious muscular disorder and I'm going to be wheelchair-bound in two weeks and my children will be poor motherless waifs. So I might as well finish the entire 30-pack so it doesn't go to waste after I'm too frail to lift the can to my trembling mouth. (This one only occurred to me because of City Girl's revelation about cross-country flying and blood clots.)

Luckily, it's Friday. I can do whatever I want to, including going into the LITTLE den and sitting there ;-)

Train Wreck Waiting to Happen

2011-09-06T19:39:00.000-05:00

This is too long to text to CG1 and too random not to share.

So, big news, two weeks ago I had the last remnants of my nonfunctional girl plumbing removed. By force. I hung on to those parts for as long as possible, but in the end, we had to call in very expensive plumbers to rip out the pipes.

Such a removal results in one of two scenarios: You grow a mustache and stop sleeping or you get whore-moan replacement. Guess which one I picked. (Hint: facial hair makes me squeamish. Even on him.)

Today I went to - I shit you not - The Pellet Center. I felt like a Grizzly volunteering to be tagged. (CG1 has been threatening to have me pelletized for years. Well, sister, Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday - it finally happened).

They take me into the little room, I joke with the nurse about growing a mustache, she weighs me, I do a dance because I've lost five pounds, and then the (female) doctor walks in and it's all business. Until....

Doc: (blood work results in hand) Wow! It's a good thing you got in here today because you are a trainwreck waiting to happen.
Me: I beg your pardon?
Doc: Your readings are (direct quote) a crazy mess. How are you dealing with your symptoms? Are you sleeping? Are you depressed, anxious, irritable, flushed?
Me: Nope. I was just telling your nurse that I'm amazed I don't feel any different than I did before the surgery.
Doc: (nodding, knowingly) Because you felt so bad before the surgery.
Me: No, except for the pain, I would never have known anything was wrong.
Doc: (confused) You feel no different than you did two weeks ago?
Me: I don't feel any different than I did 10 years ago.
Doc: (blatantly skeptical, not even trying to hide it) It is not possible that you feel no different than you did before. Your levels...are a mess. You need help.
Me: So maybe that's why I'm such a bitch?
Doctor has nothing to say to that.

Memo from the Greek chorus: It is never wise to use an expletive in front of people you don't know when in a very conservative, small, conservative, close-knit, conservative community. People might get the wrong impression about you. Fuck people.

Me: So what you're telling me is that what is 'normal' to me, is actually completely screwed up.
Doc: That seems to be the case, but don't you worry. We're going to get you fixed up.
Me: Not to be disrespectful or...weird...but you aren't going to make me....nice...are you?
Doctor looks at me.
Me: I don't really trust nice people. I wouldn't know what to do if I was nice.
Doctor looks at me, nurse is about to tinkle herself laughing.
Me: I'd rather have the mustache.
Doc: Pull down your pants.

Good thing I'm suffering from total inertia...

2011-08-29T15:19:00.002-05:00

...or I'd be bothered about some things.

This is the South. There are some things that are sacred. Two, real near the top of the list, are biscuits and chicken & dressing. I make awesome biscuits. Took me years to figure it out since my grandmother's instructions don't usually include specific amounts. Chicken and dressing? I'm still practicing. Sometimes good, sometimes not so. It happens.

You can now get frozen biscuits, in a bag, that are just as good as mine. Or my friend, Tony's, for that matter, and his are always awesome, too. But now? You can make chicken and dressing in a crockpot using...forgive me, Lord...cream of chicken soup. Out of a can. And this chicken and dressing is AMAZING. I mean, I put two tablespoons of sage in there, some cornbread, onion, celery and eggs and y'all...my grandmother would not know it wasn't her's. It is SO good that my 81-year-old cranky-ass father, who criticizes EVERYTHING I make as "not like Virgie's," literally scraped the pan last week.

It's that good ;)

The biscuits are, too. So what's the problem?

Technically, I'm not sure there is one. But something in the back of my mind is nagging at me that...we're losing something here. We're losing the hands-on artisanal aspect. We're losing the history. We're losing standing next to your grandmother in the kitchen, eating raw biscuit dough and getting to cut out the circles while she shows you how to "not twist" the cutter. It's having a biscuit cutter that is a metal Gerber orange juice can your mom started using when your little brother was born. (He'll be 48 in September ;) It's listening to your grandmother criticize your mother's dressing every Christmas. No matter what.

I think I feel this way about Kindles. I don't have one, so I have no business saying anything but there's something about carrying a book in your satchel, about turning down the corner of the page and feeling guilty, about smelling the pages of an old book and finding the occasional illicit notation or the scrap of paper stuck in for a bookmark. I have my great-grandmother's original red-and-white-checked Better Homes & Gardens cookbook...how do you hand down a cherished bit of .jpeg to a grandchild?

You don't, but at the same time I haven't read The Help. I KNOW!!! How pitiful is that? But...I either have to go buy it or go get on the list at the library and then...well, I have to go get it. And for someone fast approaching hermit-status, that's a big go-do. If I had a Kindle, I'd have read it several times by now. But...

If I'm going to be a hermit, I have to stop thinking so much. I could get busy and clean up this house. And yard. And power-wash the siding and mulch the beds.

I could ;)

Take it where you can get it... ;)

2011-08-08T20:01:00.002-05:00

That would be...humor from wherever.

I don't have a car. Originally The Nice Kid was going to get a car for her 16th birthday. Not a NEW new car, but a new car to us. Then, she had an interesting year...$500 for a new radiator after she drove up from the farm doing about 50 mph. $1000 in new brakes when EVERY part of them had to be replaced. Apparently now, there's an armadillo waddling around Alabama with an oil pan on his head...don't have the bill for that one, yet. If you see him? Send him this way.

So she got my car. A used and abused Mama-Volvo, with a Catholic school tag on the front, a soccer magnet on one side and said Catholic school magnet on the other. No car seats any more, but dents, scrapes, old gum and fingerprints. Everywhere. She ain't cool, but she's safe ;) She could be brewing meth in the trunk and no one would look twice...boooorrriiinnng.

I haven't bought a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk in six weeks. Call and ask me to do something...come on. I DON'T HAVE A CAR!!!! I would LOVE to clean out the uniform room at school!! I was DYING to solicit funds for the upcoming fundraiser! I so WANTED to work the MG hotline!

Ooops. Can't do it. Don't have a car.

Obviously, I can only milk this for another couple of days. School starts shortly. But today???

Satisfaction is so sweet.

Since I haven't been doing the shopping, I've been sending for bare essentials. Milk. Bread. TP. Garbage bags...and they didn't get those right. So tonight, I finally had to look at the list and send for some serious shopping.

Four stores, people....FOUR stores. Aldi has cheap bread (100% whole wheat, not "Made With Whole Wheat".) Eggs. Milk. Kettle chips. Sandwich cheeses...not processed. Sandwich meats. Cleaners. Foodland is the only store that still carries whole fat buttermilk. WalMart has a quart of cream for $3. Dollar General has Yardley soap.

They thought I was being mean, for real. I've been doing this for them for YEARS, and no one had a clue. "What do you DO all day?" is taking on new meaning. FOUR STORES!!

Y'all...I'm sittin' here. Haven't moved. Four stores.

Odds are, I'll get less than half of what I requested but that's not the point.

Four stores. Four. Stores.

Four.

;)

Someone is making $$$ off this!!!

2011-07-21T15:43:00.002-05:00

There's this app the kids put on my phone. It's free (I hope!) but it has ads that, I'm pretty sure, pay the app writer/inventor/whatever.

So The Not Nice Kid tries it and gets, "Soothing." HAHAHAHAHAHA!! The kid came OUT pissed off and has been on a roll ever since. Wrong!

The Nice Kid tries it. This child is 170 pounds of solid muscle, can work like a man in Phil Campbell (tornado relief) and is the backbone of this family. Her reading said, "Delicate." Beginning to have doubts.

They put MY thumb on there? "Somber, dull and not affected by alcohol."

I couldn't make this up ;)

Grand Theft Tomato....

2011-07-20T21:44:00.004-05:00

Y'all, I really did this. And as soon as I get it all told to all involved???? I'm gonna fall OFF the planet laughing and just bust a GUT ;)

Normally, this corner of the universe is awash in fresh tomatoes long about now. Given the rising temperatures of the last decade? The people who normally plant tomatoes...didn't, this year. I'm one of them and...I am in WITHDRAWAL. It is TIME for some 'maters and someone/somewhere needs to be supplying The Institution. No one seems too worried about it!

I was in fresh-tomato-withdrawal vocally on Facebook, and Friend RH volunteered her dad's bounty. God bless. She called and we arranged for The Nice Kid to pick up the tomatoes at FRH's house, on her front porch, early in the morning.

TNK called me, on her way into town, asking where she was going. I knew, but how do you tell someone how to get to a place you just...know where it is? So I said, being all know-it-all, "It's up past the tennis courts. Just GPS it...HusbandFriend RH. No biggie."

She did. Got the address. Found the house. Turns out? "Up past the tennis courts" can mean the road that runs RIGHT past the tennis courts, or it can be the road that runs past the tennis courts and north. TNK's interpretation and my interpretation...weren't the same ;(

When she got there, she couldn't figure out where she was supposed to go and there were no tomatoes in a bag on the porch so...she started trying doors. None of them were open and no one came when she rang. She finally found a side door, unlocked, stuck her head in and called "HusbandFriend?" When no one answered, she stepped inside.

Just then? A strange man busts into the room shouting, "What are you doing????" and TNK started stammering. "FriendHusband?" and he nodded so she goes on: "I'm Country Girl's daughter?" Blank stare. "I'm here for the tomatoes?" Confused look as SM looks around and spies tomatoes on the counter. Neither one of them have a CLUE what they're supposed to be doing, so SM hands her the tomatoes. She leaves.

Y'all!!!!!!!!! WRONG HOUSE!!!!! For real...my child walked into a strange house and took the man's tomatoes.

Grand Theft Tomato. Oh Lord...what kind of time does THAT particular crime carry?????

Turns out, God looks out for fools and them too damn dumb to look out for themselves and...this is FriendHusband's DAD's house. So when TNK mentioned FH, there was a suggestion that this wasn't a random break-in and since TNK doesn't LOOK like she has criminal tendencies, FH's Dad didn't shoot her.

Y'all.

We stole the man's tomatoes.

Unintentionally but....entering without breaking. Taking items under false pretenses but...it was FH's DAD'S false prentense.

TNK wants to bake a cake and go back and apologize. Far as I'm concerned, just fry the bacon and get out the lettuce. Hope he never sees you in public.

Plant your own damn garden next year ;(

It did WHAT???

2011-07-18T23:16:00.004-05:00

If you store your cast iron in the oven? Because you live in the South and uae a convection toaster oven because IT'S HOT and you don't want to heat up the house?

Then, if you put a cantaloupe in the big oven so that the fruit flies don't find it, and then you forget about said cantaloupe, your cast iron will RUST. Rust. All of it ;( This part I didn't get; I mean, there's the moisture thing and all that but I'm a little offended that the cast iron got all pissy in...what? A week? Ten days? CHILL, boys, just chill a little. IT"S HOT.

And the cantaloupe will get all Stephen King on you.

Eating crow again...

2011-07-11T12:08:00.004-05:00

Seems like someone could do something about that "youth wasted on the young..." thing. There are a bunch of things I sincerely regret, but one of them is something I swore would never matter. History. Who the hell needs to know about a bunch of musty old things and people that are gone?

I was wrong.

My high school history teacher was a gift from above, and I didn't have sense enough to know it. At the time, I was sure that there was no point in my life I would ever need to know any of the things he so avidly shared with us. Then later on, that "doomed to repeat itself," thing kicked in and y'all....will someone talk some sense into THESE kids?

The midi-dresses may just be an opinion, but I don't think so. Those things are just UGLY...they were ugly in the 60's when they first showed up, and they're ugly now. At least then, they were coupled with a LOT of ugly...everyone, male and female alike, had long stringy hair parted in the middle. Shoes were ugly...clogs. Mocassins. Platform things that made you look like you were walking around with bricks tied to your feet. I saw a woman in public somewhere last week, wearing a midi-dress...and had to ask The Nice Kid if that's what it was. I couldn't tell if the woman was in her nightgown or not. Walking around in 2011, with well-coifed hair and nicely maniciured nails and...wearing a shower curtain? Jars the senses.

(It probably also helped that in the 60's? Everyone was stoned. Lots of things that later turned out not to be such a good idea looked good through a haze of smoke...Corvairs and DDT immediately come to mind ;)

The black socks on athletes? Not an opinion...that shit is U-G-L-Y-ugly, too. First time I saw a kid on the tennis courts wearing black socks, I burst out laughing because OBVIOUSLY, he had forgotten his bag and had had to borrow a pair from someone.

Wrong. He was making a fashion statement and apparently, I'm the only one who thinks that if he's going to wear those socks, he needs a pair of Bermuda shorts, sandals and a camera hanging around his neck. Black socks+shorts=old men from up North. Can't fix it.

But THIS one??? I put my foot down on this one...no way, no how and I don't care WHO does it? I will ground your ass for eternity. I promise.

Bobby pins. Bobby pins, in your hair, deliberately used to be seen.

NOT fancy bobby pins. Not colored bobby pins, or jewelled bobby pins, or feathered or beribboned bobby pins. Brown metal bobby pins with plastic ends. Y'all, that's just WRONG. Tacky, cheap, ugly WRONG. And not just wrong but...why???? Why in the world, with all the cool things just BUSTING out all over at The Tar-Jhey, would anyone ever think that bobby pins were a good idea? They go in BUNS, for pete's sake, buried down in your hair so they can't be seen. THAT'S WHY THEY'RE BROWN. Common, uneventful, nondescript brown.

Ugly brown.

Then again, I'm the one who loves my baggy shorts with elastic across the back waist. Which is, as either City- or Comet-Girl pointed out...sort of like half a mullet.

Can't fix ugly ;)

I need a routine....

2011-07-07T09:25:00.004-05:00

It's sort of feast or famine around here, isn't it?

There are Things Going On. If I knew about bullets, I'd do something cute with bullets. (See, I just said that and...there are bullets up there. Let's see...)

HA!! Bullets.

City Girl works. All the time. While it bodes well for her retirement, investments and budget and such, it sucks for lunch-with-friends and being-spontaneously-funny-on-your-blog.

It took me a long time to warm up to texting, but now it is my primary form of not-face-to-face communication. Which means that The Big Boy, (who has refused to voluntarily learn anything new in 40 years and therefore has a $15 phone from Dollar General, with which he conducts a million dollars+ worth of sales a month) and I speak even less than usual. No, I'm not answering my phone in a public place. No, he's not getting a keyboard. Hate it. Which leads us to...

I think I'm going to join the Book of the Month Club. I belonged a long time ago and just took the monthly selection, on the premise that reading stuff I wouldn't normally read was in my best interests. It worked; I could cull the trashy romance stuff and I read some good things...The Greatest Generation immediately comes to mind. But the real reason is that I'm resisting...

Non-book books. Y'all, I don't think we need to lose leather-bound and paper. I don't want to lose...ink. Illicitly turned-down page corners. Hell, turning the page! I may come around, like with the texting. I hope not.

The Nice Kid turned 16 July 5. Originally, she was going to get her own car but a few choice incidences of poor judgement (driving too fast on an ungraded gravel road and knocking a $500 hole in the radiator? $1000 brake job because I SAID...SLOW DOWN???? Backing into the housekeeper's parked truck?) sort of changed things. So she got my trusty, well-abused Volvo, a steel cage on wheels and I? Am carless. Because...

I started sending emails to TBB three months ago, reminding him we had to have another car the first week in July. He has never, in 50+ years, bought a car when we needed it. I have decided, however, that after four Volvos in 20 years, I'm changing vehicles. Partially for convenience, but partially because....

My sister-in-law was at Book Club last week and one of the girls pulled her aside. Turns out, the girl had offended me in traffic (I'm pretty sure I remember this...large white/ivory SUV. Tried to kill me ;) and I had snatched up my phone and made a point of letting her see me take a picture of her tag. She explained to SIL that she didn't see me/mean to/go around killing people, and she was mortified that her name/picture/crime was going to show up in print somewhere. Ooops. Sorry. Y'all...I'm just loud. To begin with, I couldn't take a picture driving down the road if I had to (next bullet.) Also, if you knew you messed up? It's okay...it's the people who do it on purpose/without remorse I'm stalking ;) I didn't mean to be mean...

Next bullet? TNK, The Not Nice Kid and I have shared 700 phone minutes for years. We have never hit 400 minutes...they text, 99% of our peoples are Verizon, too; and we just don't talk on the phone that much. Last phone demise, TNK got a Droid Thunderbolt, which is 4G. NO ONE TOLD ME that you can't have parental controls on 4G. Get an alarmist text from Verizon one day warning me something is going on, log in and check and...son of a bitch. On her own, single-handedly, without assistance, TNK had used 1100 minutes in 21 days. Called, fixed it, and handed her my old 3G. Me and 4G? Pearls before swine. This phone is a bitch ;(

Trying to lose the bullets...looks good from here. Sitting here with TNNK and a friend and considering just...calling and buying a car. TBB has been on the computer for a week. Comparing things and looking up things and checking things. When it comes down to it? I'll probably just buy the red one ;)

Time marches on...

2011-06-22T11:08:00.000-05:00

...and it seems there's a lot to learn ;)

Used to, when I was hanging with the parents of The Nice Kid's peers, every now and then I would roll my eyes and laugh, "Oh, my Lord...I bet you weren't even born when Kennedy was shot." (TNK is the miracle kid I had in my old age at 40.)

The last time I made that crack, in a group of The Not Nice Kid's peer's parents, I was the only one THERE who was born when Kennedy was shot. I shut up after that. (TNNK is the kid God sent when I was 44, to explain to me that I had NO idea what a miracle should be ;)

Yesterday a group of parents were chatting and someone made a crack about selling plasma and then someone else made a crack about selling eggs, and I made a crack about everyone hushing before we got into TMI and Hal opening the pod doors.

No one knew what I was talking about.

WHO'S HAL????? For real??? They didn't have a clue and when I got to thinking about it I'm guessing mid-70's and no...they probably weren't born.

You know, in 1974. The year I graduated from high school.

Okay, the problem is...

2011-06-20T18:11:00.003-05:00

...in the midst of the stuff to make fun of???? Which is what we do most of the time on here?

There's a whole lot of mean shit. And I am SIMMERING today, over the mean shit.

How can you have mean shit with fifth grade girls??? Ten-year-olds. Still laughing and growing and moving.

Well, just let me tell you. One of the advantages of being me? FIFTY-FIVE years old? Is that I've been there and done that. The charity ball? The service league? The PTO? I did it. I don't have to do it again and I am REALLY sorry that you still think it is important. Check back when you're my age....there are a lot of people and causes and organizations that need your help, and they don't care if you dress up or not. The lady across the street? Doesn't care if I throw a party to bring her hot supper when the power is out or not. Good deeds are good deeds.

So I'm going to say now that...I have no delusions about my kids. I DO, however, know what they've been taught and so I'll say now....

...if my child ever goes to an eleven-year-old's birthday party? A party hosting all ten of the little girls at her private school? And draws a picture of everyone there EXCEPT the small, quiet, Vietnamese girl? And if the SQVG asks why she isn't in the picture and my child says, "Well, NEVER MIND," and scribbles out the entire picture and throws it in the trash???? You need to tell me.

If my child ever goes on a group trip, ESPECIALLY if it's a church trip??? And announces to a GROUP of people? NOT one person, but a GROUP of people? That the diabetic child in the community is not a "real" diabetic, but diabetic because she's "fat?" The diabetic child with a bodyfat percentage of AT MOST 18%??? You need to tell me.

I have no delusions...if it weren't for the joint issues in my hands I'd beat a kid once a day just on principle. But at the same time????

People...this isn't okay. It's REALLY not okay.

My kid tears into a dominant/bully/mean kid? You're on your own. But leave the nice people alone ;(

Friday Funny

2011-05-27T13:29:00.004-05:00

The Queen has been in the American news constantly during the last few weeks, what with The Wedding, Liz's apparently mind-bending trip to Ireland and Obama's stay in Buckingham Palace.

Maybe that's why this image caught my attention.

Wouldn't this be an amazing Halloween costume?

First, the Queen (observe a moment of silence for Mr. Mercury here):
Sterilizingly tight leather pants, shag chest toupee, a crosswalk-thick layer of guyliner and a muskrat pet for a mustache.

Then The Queen:
Over this fabulous assemblage of man parts you don a perfectly square, Crayola-colored gown and $100M worth of jew-ells plundered from former members of The Realm.

Et viola! I can't wait until October...."Oh, Huu-uubby! Do I have a costume for you!"

Oh, shit, here we go

2011-05-24T10:52:00.004-05:00

Last week I woke up, in the middle of the night, in a hideous sweat. I blamed it on the steak and red wine I'd had for dinner.

Sometimes, when I eat heavily late in the evening, it effects my sleep. That happens to loads of people -young people, even. Right?

The next night I had pasta and red wine.

More sweat.

I blamed the wine.

The following night, no wine, no sweat.

Eureka! It isn't hormones! It couldn't POSSIBLY be hormones. It's the wine.

Last night: no wine, buckets of sweat.

Well, fuck a duck.

This morning? I spent 10 minutes searching my office for my computer glasses.
As I was walking out the door to retrace my steps, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror - and found my glasses.

Of COURSE they were on top of my head. That's the oldest menopausal/middle-aged cliche in the book. Sweet Jeezus - if this is going to happen to me, can I get some original symptoms, please? Something with a little color? Something a little less...textbook-y?

So, here we go, kids. It looks like I'm crossing the threshold into Those Years.

I hope The Hubster survives.

Image attribution: Middle Age Barbie is all over The Interwebz...I have no idea who originally Photoshopped her. Sorry.

Bless It

2011-05-19T16:46:00.004-05:00

No, I haven't died, and if you read CG1's last two posts, you aren't surprised to learn I'm still breathing. Okay, it's more like an exhausted wheeze, but still....

So, you might remember that The Hubster owns an event management company (rents giant tents, builds stage props, throws casino parties - dealers and pit boss included).

Last weekend he had a prom...out in the country. I don't want to identify the county in which this patch of "country" is located lest I offend someone's kinfolk, but suffice to say, an F4 tornado ripped through the middle of it and no structures were damaged. The Country.

Anyhoodle, a few hours after the onset of The Prom, the prom sponsor texts Hub with the image above. The girl in the picture is wearing a cammo dress (that would be a dress made out of camouflage material, for all you other City Girls) and her bouquet is made up of:

Calla lilies
Mums
Wheat
Fishing Lures
and Shotgun Shells

She is going to make some man (or woman) a damn good wife someday.

It's back to the dots in the Celotex...

2011-05-16T10:43:00.004-05:00

There's this speech I make. It's a post on here somewhere, I'm pretty sure. Involves the day you're laying in the nursing home, drooling all over yourself and staring at the ceiling. Counting the dots in the Celotex.

If that day ever comes? I don't want to be laying there regretting things. I don't want to be thinking, "Damn. I never bought a red car." (I haven't but...I don't want one. That's not the point ;) "Damn...I never made it to Ireland." (I will.) "Damn. I wish I'd spent more time with my kids." (I do.)

The arts festival City Girl and I have helped at was this weekend, and after a couple years lay-off, I was there. Late Saturday afternoon, after the manual labor for the Saturday night party was done, I took a quick turn through the park. All SORTS of amazing stuff...everything from pastels, acrylics, folk work, metalwork, jewelry to woodwork to pottery to...you get the picture. There's a piece of pottery in the gallery I'm going to buy this afternoon if it's still there ;)

There was also...yard art. Now, I know this is a touchy subject for some, and I've never really HAD any yard art but...sometimes, things change. A couple of years ago I gave up on tilling up a patch in the back yard and planting a garden. The back yard is the side of a hill...it slopes. And unless you've ever man-handled a tiller across a slope? You have NO idea.

So I embraced something a friend calls "guerilla gardening." Planting herbs, vegetables and edibles in and amongst your landscaping. From there, I fell in love with the metal obelisk things...the pyramids made from rebar with old finials on top. Tomato cages ;)

And Saturday, on my quick stroll, I literally laughed out loud. (Problem with having kids at 44 is that not ONLY did I spend Sunday explaining Purple Rain, but they didn't even know who Prince IS.) There, on a five foot piece of rebar, a pig was flying.

I hooted.

Came home, nursed my aching muscles with ibuprofen washed down with bourbon, and laughed about the pig. Flying. It apparently, is time. For pigs to fly. Ed McMahan hasn't shown up yet.

From there? Oh. My.

Sunday I took some and all of the kids and their friends to the festival. We wandered around. Ate lunch. Wandered around some more. I kept laughing about the pig. (An aside here...it's a small propane tank, I think. With metal wings, nuts for eyes and rebar legs. EIGHTY DOLLARS.) I laughed every time we passed. Sent some people to see it. Explained to the kids..."when pigs fly..." Don't know if they got it or not.

And then, toward the end of the afternoon, I thought, "You know? I could get hit by a truck crossing Seminary Street this afternoon and there I'd be. Bleeding out in the middle of the street. Staring at the sky thinking, 'Damn. I never bought a flying pig'."

So I did.

And they do ;)

My, how time flies....

2011-05-12T16:33:00.000-05:00

City Girl and I met when we were both working on a local arts festival in our burb. I've been sitting here trying to figure out many years it's been...

The six degrees of separation thing doesn't apply around here...two degrees max and fifty percent of the time we're related. I enrolled in the Master Gardener program when I was six months pregnant with The Not Nice Kid. Met a lovely Scottish lady there, who turned out to be the Matriarch of the Arts Festival...which is how I was recruited. So that would be ten years. I think.

You know how you have definitive moments in life...funny little scraps of time that you can recall in complete detail? I don't remember the first time I met CG but I can tell you the moment I realized she was a keeper.

Another volunteer was driving her van down a sidewalk in the city park...I think we were hauling children's art. I was in the passenger seat and City Girl was in the middle of the back.

(An aside here. City Girl has flawless skin...as in...no imperfections and the bitch ain't got a wrinkle in sight. Whatever history she has is not reflected in her face.)

Driver Friend said something about something about being married, I said something about something and City Girl says, from the back seat, "Well, I something-about-something, and that's why I've been married three times."

DF and I, simultaneously, turned and looked at each other. There was an...extended...silence, and then together we blurted out, "HOW OLD ARE YOU????"

I was giving her 23, tops. TOPS. I mean, for real...early 20's. DF agreed with me. Turns out, we were more than a decade off and to this day...I'd show up at her 30th birthday party tomorrow with no questions.

This weekend is the arts festival. CG is no longer a college student; she has a big-girl job, no time and flits all over the planet. I have one kid with a big-girl job, a teenager and an elementary schooler. Driver Friend is 800 miles away.

That van was maroon. DF had on a denim shirt. Life moves on ;)

Dear Tacky Police:

2011-04-26T21:40:00.002-05:00

I have a confession to make. Not an apologetic confession, but a "feel obligated" confession. I'm only doing this because I'm thinking that if you're watching me? And I DON'T confess? You'll think I didn't know that what I'm doing is...tacky.

(You're not paranoid if they're really watching you ;)

Those fake Christmas candles that go in the front windows of the house at Christmas? The ones on like...solar timers? Or something?

Mine are still up. On the window sills. On purpose. Because I want them there.

Now, I have solar lights at the base of the outside windows. But THESE lights, the Christmas candles, are amazing. They're like...night lights with balls. Night lights for big boys, as opposed to little girls with princess-shit by the bed.

These lights are soft yet bright, competent without being pushy, there when needed as opposed to in my FACE.

I might marry these lights. So. Apology rescinded.

My bad ;(

May I vent for a moment?

2011-04-21T09:45:00.002-05:00

We're sitting here in The Institution the other day, doing whatever, when The Not Nice Kid pipes up and asks, "What's 'nigger'?"

The air sucked out of the room. The Nice Kid and I stared at each other, horrified. Simultaneously, we asked, "WHERE DID YOU HEAR THAT?"

Now, this is Alabama. And I realized a long time ago, I have to be more cautious than people from other places, because I get labeled a racist more readily than they do. I know that I went to school when schools were segregated, but I don't remember it. I don't think I've ever seen separate water fountains or bathroom facilities and if I have, I was too young to remember that, too. But still...this is Alabama. So I'm very careful. And "nigger" is one word that doesn't get used around here. (If you know me? You're pretty sure that's the ONLY word that I don't use. My decibel and profanity levels are in direct proportion to my alcohol consumption. Bad mom.)

And do you know what she said?

"It's in this song."

It's a word in a song sung by a BLACK guy.

I raised a child for 11 years, who had never heard the term, and all of a sudden...here it is. As presented by a black guy.

I CAN'T MAKE IT GO AWAY IF YOU WON'T SHUT THE HELL UP.

The Nice Kid explained, "It's okay for them to say it. It's racist if we do."

In a perfect world, honey, in a perfect world.

(no subject)

2011-04-06T09:53:00.001-05:00

Rites of Passage...

The sex video is today or tomorrow, I think. The Not Nice Kid is alternately amused and grossed out. The rest of us are just amused...she just turned 11...give it a couple of years ;)

The Nice Kid texted me from school the other day. (No, she doesn't have her phone at school. I mean, it's not like I don't trust the public school system to LOOK OUR FOR MY KID or anything. ) "Mom, I got in trouble."

Damn. I assumed it concerned attire...there IS a dress code but it's sort of ambiguous and inconsistent. She doesn't drink or cuss or fight, so...whut?

She has a friend, a young man, who recently announced he is gay. It's one of those...well, duh! moments. WE all knew, glad you joined the party. (Crackin' myself UP!) There was, predictably, backlash. They're teenagers...lots of drama. For a minute or so and then everyone gets all torn up over...a new car or a bad haircut or all the other equally important events in teen angst.

TNK is sitting in class, and there is a kid behind her who is ordained in a church. A rolling around, chanting in the aisles, creatively interpreting the bible, church. (Now SEE...to ME? THAT'S a problem. Tops? He's 16.) And this kid is badmouthing the recently-announced gay child. He says to TNK, "You're a faggot lover." To which she replies, "You're an ignorant ass."

As I explained to her, the problem was NOT in her reaction...she was right to stand up for her friend. The PROBLEM, and I hope she remembers this, was in her choice of descriptive nouns. "Ass" may not have been the best choice of terms. We'll work on this.

So here we are, driving down the road and discussing the proper terminology for telling someone to mind his own business...AND THAT'S WHAT THIS IS ABOUT.

I. Don't. Care. What. You. Believe. Mind your own business.

And I would appreciate the same consideration. I have a friend who grew up Pentecostal, the showpiece in a family gospel band. In one of our discussions about sexuality and gays and God and choices, he pointed out: "God made me this way. It's NOT a choice...no one would choose to be ostracized and beaten up and 'different' and sissy. There's a reason; and someday I'll know what it is."

So TNK and I are working out how this should be handled. First off I explained to her...it's not Faggot Lover, it's Fag Hag. She fell OVER laughing..."Mom! Where did you get that?" THEN, I explained that at ANY time, in ANY situation, that someone starts explaining theology and God and righteousness and...OH YEAH.....JUDGEMENT????? The correct response, right in the middle of the discussion is, "Oh my gosh!!! I have to check my email!!" And in response to the puzzled looks and questions? You explain..."Well! OBVIOUSLY I missed the email from God, giving YOU the right to judge!"

My kitchen is a recently-remodeled disaster, I haven't seen the floorboards in my car in almost a month, I HAVE to either start exercising or picking out tombstones, these kids need to start taking their grades more seriously and........YOU HAVE TIME TO WORRY ABOUT SOMEONE ELSE'S SEXUALITY??? You have time to worry about someone else's drinking habits? You have time to worry about someone else's clothing choices or yard decorations or marital status?

I figure...if I can get myself even CLOSE to right? I've done what I was supposed to do. I can't save mankind or fix the economy or reverse global warming. I CAN? See to it that the elderly couple across the street have a warm supper when the power goes out. See to it that the menagerie of animals living at The Institution, because they're too ugly and un-cute for anyone else to want them, are adequately fed and pampered. See to it that my kids know someone loves them and that my childhood friends know I'm glad they're there.

What I don't get? Is wasting my heart condemning someone else for something I don't understand. The way I learned it? God understands. That's His job.

End of sermon.

Now, if you'll just GET THE HELL OUT OF THE LEFT LANE? Before you go to hell for being an IDIOT? I'll be fine ;)

It may not even be in color ;(

2011-04-05T09:12:00.001-05:00

Oh, Lord, y'all...it is time. Luckily, last time. But it is time for...The Sex Video. The one they show in school. The Not Nice Kid is in...fifth grade? I'm pretty sure ;) and Friday I got a permission slip...no wait. That's not what it was.

It was an invitation.

APPARENTLY, there are parents who screen this sort of thing. Now, this is a nice little private Catholic school and I'm pretty sure there aren't any chains, creams or alternative sexual practices in this film, but then again...I'm on the third kid. The one who's lucky to get fed or picked up from school...which is really funny because I forgot her at soccer practice last week. In my defense, I was at The Nice Kid's tennis match but...yep. Slam ass forgot TNNK. Luckily, I have backup parents who look around the empty parking lot and say, "Ooops, CG forgot her kid again." They deliver ;)

But the paper had a place for me to check whether or not I would attend tonight's screening of the film. I checked "will not attend." Returned it. And then emailed the teacher because, just in case? Told her: I'm pretty sure I've got this down, but let me know if y'all have come up with anything I've never heard of or tried.

Professional student. English, History, Education, Nutrition...creative sexual practices as taught by the Catholic Church? Probably not ;)

Do keep in mind that I lovelovelove me some Catholics. Given the school choices around here I, as a faithful lapsed Methodist, chose the Catholics because I want my children taught tolerance. And if you're from this corner of the universe? There are some really mean judgemental people attending church four days a week around here ;( I am, unfortunately, related to most of them.

The Pictorial Definition of Too Much Information

2011-04-04T16:47:00.004-05:00

I snapped this photo while sitting in traffic the other morning.

So there I am...la-la-la...minding my own business, enjoying the weather, tickled pink that it was Friday...la-la-la...when I notice something odd about the "I feel compelled to tell you how many children and dogs I have" sticker on the vehicle ahead of me.

So I crept closer.

"Oh, Lord, not only are the cats and dogs represented on the backglass, but the dang bird is there, too."

Closer....

"Oh, shit. Is that a dead grandparent? Like, In Loving Memory of Papaw?"

Closer....

"Oh, sweet dead angel baby."

Yup. Angel baby. Dead baby. Stuck. On the window of the car. Along with the five children still of this world.

I would ask you all to explain this to me, but I really don't want to know.

Dear Blogspot....

2011-04-01T22:32:00.002-05:00

This is the third time this week I have tried to post something, and you have completely ignored my composition. The composition I compiled under the tab "Compose." So please, in the spirit of comradery and cooperation? Kiss my ass ;(

Spring Fashion Tip

2011-03-27T13:34:00.000-05:00

On the horns of a dilemma....

2011-03-21T18:05:00.002-05:00

The title doesn't have anything to do with anything, I've just always loved the way it sounds. Same with "wax eloquent," which was the subject of a Charlie Brown comic strip 40 years ago. I took the comic strip to my English teacher because...it was so WITTY! And just...made me want to do things with a pen. Witty things. It's coming ;)

Having one of those weeks...which will be really funny NEXT week. The weather is amazing here, and we had a riverside picnic Saturday. Followed by some basketball, some more basketball, a nap and then...all hell broke loose. I fell over a rake. Not the way cartoon characters fall over rakes...you know, where they step on it and it pops up and smacks them in the face? THIS rake had its tines firmly planted in the ground and when I stepped on it? I went down. With a chair. My foot and my elbow went first. That's the second time this week, which suggests I wear that ankle brace fulltime.

I've realized something...the second best thing about having kids? As well as the second worst thing about having kids? Parents of kids. Most fun and most trouble...other kids parents. Having said that? I'd like to throw my name in the hat for luckiest parent ever. Life is fun.

The Not Nice Kid has a stomach virus, the onset of which was announced at SOMEONE ELSE'S HOUSE. I finally put her in the car at 2:30 in the morning and came home...I know how to run the washer and dryer here. Which brings us to...

After two full days of nonstop activity, my super-dee-dooper dryer, which talks to you and dries stuff and is amazing...decided not to heat. I've pulled it out and unplugged it, so the little computer guy can reset, but there's a good chance something needs to be replaced. I hope I can do the replacing as opposed to having to pay someone from Sears to replace it because they seem to consider a service visit equivalent to a semester's tuition, and I'm more in need of a semester's tuition. ALTHOUGH...last fall I paid the trade school to make me clothesline poles. They're still in a prone position in the back yard but...I can dig holes. I usually do it with The Nice Kid, who has tennis elbow, but I can dig holes.

Spring. I wish the seasons would stop here, until fall. I hate summer.

If I don't get some sleep tonight? I'm going to check into a hotel and collapse ;) With clean sheets ;)

My version rocked...

2011-03-15T09:30:00.002-05:00

This weekend we started cleaning up the debris from a winter of snow, ice and sloth. (When I announced this, The Big Boy informed me he had to spend a couple of hours "working on our finances." I told the kids...I give him 30 minutes before he comes and asks where we bank.)

We picked up trash and rearranged piles and hauled stuff around. And in the midst of the afternoon, I cut back some shrubs and found these pipes sticking out of the ground at the northeast corner of the house. About a foot from the foundation. They are embedded in concrete. No caps.

I asked. No one knew. I peered down into the depths and there wasn't anything but water. We theorized. You pour bug killer down them and it seeps into the foundation? You tie a rope to them and repel down the backyard? They hold torches?

MY theory, and it's still the best one, is that they vent radon. We've never checked for radon around The Institution; I'm pretty sure there's no such thing and it's just a way for Lowe's to get you to come into the store so that you have to walk through the garden center and all that stuff can jump into your cart. But since I have a project in mind for this portion of the yard, I really needed to know what the pipes are for. I took the picture, being careful not to breathe when I got close, to send to knowledgeable friends.

Television antenna tower.

Back in the day? Before DirecTV and such? Television antennas mounted as high as was feasible were the norm. (If you are of a certain age, you remember one kid going outside and turning the antenna, while the other stood inside and yelled, "A little more, a little more...no back! Back!" Until the signal was just right. You also remember when the remote? Was you. Nothing for a napping parent to yell for a kid in another part of the house to "Come here." And when you got there? "Put that on Channel 19." Child abuse.)

But the three pipes are what's left of a really high television antenna, mounted at the back of the house halfway up the hillside. To think...I was working on evacuation plans and all along...it was bad memory.

I'm so proud ;)

Checking something out...

2011-03-10T12:52:00.000-06:00

Have I played the age card lately?

2011-03-07T11:38:00.002-06:00

Yesterday The Not Nice Kid played soccer in arctic conditions. This is The South. It was cold.

After the game, we went to eat with our Besties...the parents who go with the flow and laugh a lot. We laughed a LOT. (That would be because we're funny ;)

Afterwards, we got ready to leave and because of the three beers I had with my dinner...The Nice Kid (who is 15 and has her learner's permit) was driving. We got in the car. She proceeded to back up and I pointed out, "Back up enough to get in the other lane, because you have to turn left."

She backed up. She got in the "other" lane.

THE ONE THAT INVOLVED ONCOMING TRAFFIC.

Oh, y'all. I lost it. I'm screaming bloody murder for her to GET OUT OF ONCOMING TRAFFIC and the light changes and the ONCOMING TRAFFIC is bearing down on us and...did I mention the screaming-bloody-murder part?

She freaks and...stops. Just stops. Right there in the middle of ONCOMING TRAFFIC. Oncoming Traffic was not amused. Oncoming Traffic put on her Not-Amused Face and glared at us.

I made TNK get out of the car and let me drive. Hell...three beers down and I'm STILL not confused. YOU, on the other hand, are CLUELESS.

A friend and I talked about this this morning...about how this generation's decision-making skills are lacking because we never let them make decisions. I've decided to work on this except...NOT IN THE ONCOMING LANE.

We'll talk about it later ;(

A WHAT problem?

2011-03-02T15:34:00.002-06:00

I have two prescriptions. One is for blood pressure and one is for life. Sent in my online refill request Monday and got this message back saying they were temporarily out of stock of the blood pressure meds. Okay, fine. You'll have it tomorrow.

Didn't go yesterday, so whipped into the drivethru today and...no blood pressure meds. The clerk said, "Sorry, but we can't get that now. Something about 'manufacturing problems.' " MANUFACTURING PROBLEMS? It's Adelide. It's been around awhile. Why would there all of a sudden be manufacturing problems? She told me they would call my doctor and try to get the basics of the medication through another brand and they'd let me know.

I took my Cymbalta and left. I figure if I have a stroke? I won't care ;)

If you're not a fan of Fred's?

2011-03-01T11:40:00.000-06:00

You should be. I wish I was this gracefully articulate.

http://http://www.fredoneverything.net/FredAdmin.shtml

It. Is. Not. Me.

2011-02-27T18:28:00.003-06:00

Everyone thinks I'm such a grouch because I'm so hard on The Big Boy.

Y'all have NO IDEA.

A couple of days ago a friend wrote about the South and "false modesty," and that's when I realized...I married the family that formalized the term. The "Protestant work ethic" mutated.

Last week, I took down the bedroom drapes to wash them. This is a north-facing window, so the drapes are primarily for insulation from the wind. No sun. Drapes are still in the upstairs foyer floor. I WILL wash them, I just haven't done it yet. You're bothered? DO IT YOURSELF. Dumbass.

Came home tonight from an out-of-town weekend and NO LIE...he put aluminum foil over the bedroom windows. YOU DID WHAT????? I realized, he thinks he's making a statement but I have news for you...you just said the wrong thing ;(

Last week, I sent him an email requesting a handyman from the plant to install a new stove and over-the-stove microwave I was buying. No biggie.

He told me to wait on the purchase. He puts dozens of these in houses every week, and he was going to check on prices and sizes and what he could get and when he could get it and what we needed and what was...ad nauseum. I've heard this song. I once went two weeks without a refrigerator because he was "going to handle it."

He didn't.

So I bought the stove and microwave and gave it to him for our anniversary yesterday.

He is SO touchy ';)

It. Is. Not. Me.

2011-02-27T18:28:00.000-06:00

You want WHAT?

2011-02-25T17:30:00.001-06:00

A couple of weeks ago I needed a picture. A head shot of myself, to be specific. No problem...I am the camera queen. Last fall when I took my computer in to have it cleaned up? 165,000 PLUS pictures on it. Pictures are my thang ;) The computer guy told The Big Boy I needed to cull "my thang." Been meaning to do that.

Go to find my picture and...there isn't one. At the time there were 1400 PLUS pictures on my camera but....I wasn't in any of them. Well, DUH. I'm the one TAKING them. The pictures that DID include me were taken by ten-year-olds and not a single one included a complete body part, and while sometimes that can be a GOOD thing (thinking saggy chin and ample midsection here) in this case, it didn't work. No picture.

I was sick. As, I explained to the person needing the picture, as a dog. But I got up, put on some makeup, my pearls and a black shirt and went out to take some pictures. End result? Looked like a sick dog with makeup on. I came back in, took off the makeup and went back and tried again. Sent the results with an apology...best I can do. Photoshop me or something. I'm going back to bed.

Luckily, I have really talented friends and he dug through the history and found a very appropriate photo. Not necessarily flattering, but the picture my friends and family love. I'm enjoying the fact that the good people in my life don't CARE that I don't patronize Merle Norman, and forgive me my red face days...which far outnumber my "porcelain skin" days at this point in life. Once upon a time, a very large department store paid me for close-ups of my skin...nowadays? The flaws all have a story. The laugh lines are deeper than the frown lines and bottom line...that'll work.

The up side? When your butt slides down, you don't have a line under your butt cheeks. Straight stretch of flesh. Take it where you can get it ;)

Topics we're avoiding today...

2011-02-21T19:49:00.003-06:00

...begin with how long I sat at the drive thru at the bank this morning, waiting on it to open.

Continues into me finally tearing around to the front of the building, breathing steam and ready to KILL some dumbass who didn't have sense enough to open a business on time and turns out? The dumbass? That would be me.

I hate it when that happens ;(

Watching...

2011-02-20T11:36:00.002-06:00

...a Truman Capote biography on Ovation. Wishing I had busted out, some time...some where.

We had dinner with adult friends Friday night...probably the first time in...two years? At least. Things that came out of that dinner?

I have to clean up my mouth. For real ;) My volume level and my potty mouth level are in direct proportion to my alcohol intake...I know this. But while WE were laughing and having a good time and talking about how pretty the waitress was because...that's what middle-aged people DO...I offended an elderly woman at the table next to us. I have decided I'm mortified...bless her heart...she thought she was coming out to have a nice dinner and she ended up next to a table full of old high school buddies laughing over dumb things. I apologize. Originally, I intended for Saturday to be the day I stopped using dirty words. Turns out, this is like withdrawing from cocaine or alcohol or Seinfeld...can't do it cold turkey. So I'm admitting each time I do it...ooops, shouldn't have said that!! We'll see.

The other thing that came out of that dinner is how far out in left field my life is. Fifty-four years old...children are 30, 15 and ten. Wrooooong. Our friends kept coming up with "things" we should do and we kept...pointing out...can't be there. Gym. Tennis court. Soccer field. Church. Bieber movie. NO! We can't go to Nashville for the weekend. Can't go...well, do anything.

Also realized, wouldn't trade it for anything and I have NO idea what will happen when these kids are out of here. We don't even like each other ;)

Ain't life grand? No matter how things work out...not a dress rehearsal!! And in case you're having problems with life or your internet? Go read this...http://http://makelardhistory.blogspot.com/ Easy fix for what ails you....or pleasant ending to a bad story ;)

Why it's okay that I'm disconnected...

2011-02-17T10:41:00.002-06:00

Standing in the checkout line this morning. Cover of People magazine...

"Jen's Most Revealing Interview Ever!!!!" "She talks about Dating! Babies! Exes!"

WTH? I care about this BECAUSE........?

Then:

"Liam's Life Now...."

Liam Who?

(Okay, I love Liam Neeson. But he very wisely gathered up his money and took it to the house several years ago so this is...a comeback?)

THEN:

"Why Mom Shot Teens..."

Well, duh.

Today...

2011-02-16T10:49:00.002-06:00

...would be an excellent day to go cut back all the roses and shrubs and things that are about to come bustin' ALL out. It's 61 degrees and there's a lovely breeze and...here I sit ;)

It would be an excellent day to finish converting these white side lights into black side lights and get them mounted. Thinking about it.

I piled ALL the dirty clothes from ALL over the house in the big den yesterday and sorted them. Down to three piles ;) That I AM working on.

Obviously, a change of scenery is called for. I'm thinking somewhere close, with a lake view, a fireplace and a cooler of cold beer. The potential for activity is amazing and...here I sit. Motivation, I need some motivation ;)

The hell with some motivation, I need to win the lottery. SO much better than a swift kick in the ass....

Happy Commercial Ripoff of a Saint Day!

2011-02-14T09:56:00.003-06:00

Paging Dr. Freud

2011-02-12T07:50:00.006-06:00

According to the Tumblr post from which this was appropriated, the last two people who viewed the above jumble of letters found these words first: kiss, naked and peep / lust, secrets, crush.

I found suicide-scum, malice-kick and fury.....

I'd say that's about right.

I'm considering printing this, having it laminated and sending it on dates with my 21-year-old niece.

There's no reason to spend time Google-stalking a guy before you go out with him!
Using this handy-dandy, low-tech tool she can figure out within a matter of second whether she should feign a migraine 30-minutes in, or skip dinner altogether and go home with him.

I wonder how accurate the results would be if she tried it on a physiology major?

Oooohhh...a "Happy" for you...

2011-02-10T20:55:00.001-06:00

Old friends move on and morph into new friends and life is good. Don't miss this, http://http://saltycrunchybitterfresh.blogspot.com/ , a lovely compilation of life, recipes, weather and food.

I bet we ate ours...

2011-02-10T20:17:00.003-06:00

Watching something the other day where this kid found, in his bag of candy hearts, a heart that read, "Nice tits." In amidst the Be Mine's, the Sweetheart's, and the True Love's.

I saw this on national television. It appears that when the kid found the candy? He showed it to his parents. Who CALLED THE COMPANY. Called the company. And the company apologized and there was all this hoopla and...called the company.

You know what would happen if we found that at The Institution?

Nothing. IF the child even thought anything about it, she'd have shown it to us and I'd have laughed out loud and taken a picture. The Big Boy would have eaten it, as he considers his right ;) We'd have gone through the bag, hoping for a Fat Ass, Wet Kiss, Quickie, or....okay, wittiest people on the planet. What's the BEST, most obtuse, funniest thing you could put on a candy heart at Valentine's Day?

I'll go ask Don. Y'all tell me....

Electronic Miscellany

2011-02-08T17:22:00.005-06:00

I just downloaded a Confession app.

I would not joke about such a thing. It's called "Confession: A Roman Catholic App."

The app, dubbed "Digital Help for Confessing Catholics" isn't *supposed* to take the place of live-and-in-person Confession, but....we'll see.

I can't wait to learn what sort of ~~punishment~~ forgiveness it doles out.

Along those same lines...I've unFriended a dead person.

She died months ago and it just creeped me out when her business venture sent out sales promotions using her old account...and her lovely face popped up telling me that I had a message from her.

Really? "Jane" sent a message to me? From the great beyond? About a half-off sale?
:: shudder ::

I struggled for a long time...just how awful is it to unFriend the departed if they - or someone - continue to communicate with you?

At least now I have material for my first eConfession...maybe my penance will be to type out five Decades in binary code?

The Cure for Homesickness

2011-02-02T10:56:00.005-06:00

Remember a few weeks ago when CG1 and I went on and on about getting 9.5 inches of snow here in Alabama? The snow that melted a few days later?

My sister just sent me this pic of her back yard in Chicago.

That bump? It's a 5' deep snowdrift. They're stuck with that shit until April.

Who's homesick? Not me!!

My mother is only 4'11"...she may be buried under there somewhere....

Country Girl / City Girl

This is a disclaimer...

I folded...

Day Four...

I'll tell you right now...

So, where are the DT's?

NYE Attire Advice

Chinese Turkey

Bad Lip Reading - Rick Perry

Kid humor ;-)

More things I'll go to hell for...

Don't be hatin' on my swag

FOUND!!!!

If you have four legs, fins or feathers...

SIMAAM Friday Funny

Fini!

i have a post...

We said we'd post...

About "normal..."

Sunday Punny Sunday

I wrote an explanation...UPDATE!

It's So Tasty Too!

Pork Chops with Apple, Fennel and Sage

Y'all do WHAT????

Not a Real Post

It is genetic...

I did that thing...

Inventing Insults

Saturday Slap in the Face

Friday Funny (from the fields)...

Sitting in the parking lot...

Reboot

You're gonna have to trust me here....

Tune In, Drop Out, Get on a Plane

Amen, Sister

Things that make you go "Whut?"

Maximum Elevenness

Rocket City

Be afraid....

Ouch.

It started out as a very short list...

Pantone Pansies

It's A Wonderful Life!!

Friday Funny

A couple of years ago...

I'm coming! I'm coming!

NaBloPoMo 2011 - Let the Games Begin!

Time Warp

Friday Profound Yet Offensive

Look what I did! *beam.beam*

Being married on a Friday night...

Friday Funny

Sometimes things just work out...

Out with the Old

A rant against Facebook haters...;-(

The Lord works in mysterious ways...

I finally succumbed...

Things Your Momma Didn't Teach You

I hate this...

There's this friend of mine...

(no subject)

Train Wreck Waiting to Happen

Good thing I'm suffering from total inertia...

Take it where you can get it... ;)

Someone is making $$$ off this!!!

Grand Theft Tomato....

It did WHAT???

Eating crow again...

I need a routine....

Time marches on...

Okay, the problem is...

Friday Funny

Oh, shit, here we go

Bless It

It's back to the dots in the Celotex...

My, how time flies....

Dear Tacky Police:

May I vent for a moment?

(no subject)

Rites of Passage...

Look what I did! beam.beam