As I sit here on my couch on a rainy 60 degree Sunday, some of my friends are celebrating their fourth and fifth family holiday today. Heck, some of them have had more than eight holiday celebrations in the course of the last month.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas as much as the next person… probably more than some in fact. I love the secrets, the smells, the sights… even the sappy Christmas specials where the evil shopkeeper realizes there is more to the season than commercialism and peace returns to Happyville and little Timmy gets his dog back.
Yeah, I know, I’m a bit sentimental, but life can’t be all sarcasm, moonshine and zombies now, can it?
So, after countless batches of Christmas candy, a seemingly endless stream of holiday engagements and a month-long marathon of shopping or making gifts, I think I’m done for a while.
How can I tell? The signs are all around us… Here’s the top 8 ways to tell you’re done with Christmas.
Your credit card is no longer smoldering and your mailbox is busting at the seams with with bills.
The desire for rich foods like turkey with all the fixings, crown roast of pork and prime rib has been replaced by an urgent need for salad, soup and sandwiches or a plain baked potato.
No one in the house wants to eat any of the goodies you’ve painstakingly made over the past month. Christmas cookies and peanut butter fudge go uneaten, while jelly beans and Doritos disappear by the handful.
The sight of Christmas trees and the not-so-green-anymore greenery around the house brings less feelings of nostalgia and holiday spirit and more thoughts of kindling and the growing concern over how long into Spring you’ll still be sweeping up pine needles.
The pangs of guilt over things you didn’t get accomplished – including not knitting your grand niece and nephew matching glove and hat sets because you ran out of time and not mailing out handmade Christmas cards because you forgot they were in your glove compartment – have dissipated and been replaced by nagging thoughts of “I should probably still try to do that sometime before Valentine’s Day.”
You’d rather watch “Ragin’ Cajun Redneck Gators” on Syfy than suffer through yet another showing of “Elf,” “Shrek the Halls,” “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” or “A Christmas Story.”
The long list of holiday engagements has been replaced by long afternoon naps and curling up with a good book for hours on end.
As temperatures here in South Carolina reach up into the 50s, planning holiday travel schedules is replaced with an urgent desire to plant a garden.
So, let’s take a few minutes and say goodbye to 2014’s holiday season. It’s been one to put in the record books… well, the keepsake books anyway, if indeed we keep any of those. And remember, there’s just 363 shopping days left to find the perfect gifts for Christmas 2015.
No, no, no, no, no. It was bad when you did it in 1984, it remains bad, bad, bad, bad, bad when you do it now.
The original crew singing 1984’s smash hit “Do They Know it’s Christmas” the precursor to “Feed the World”
Look, it’s not like we’re not all KEENLY aware of the fact that “Do they know it’s Christmas” is the most annoying and condescending song we hear every hour from Black Friday through Christmas Eve. Even “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” and “The Christmas Shoes” pale in comparison to the 1984 version of “prove your love and compassion via donations.”
But now, you’ve gone and made ANOTHER one, equally as condescending, sappily sweet and just smacking of that “white messiah complex” stuff you Brits seem to have perfected.
Released November 17, 2014, the NEW and IMPROVED version of “Do they know it’s Christmas” features One Direction, instead of Boy George, and Sam Smith, instead of George Michael, and lots of other British musicians I don’t recognize. Which is kind of like the first one, except that I recognized a lot more of them back then cause back then it was a new concept and I, like it, was cool.
Oh! And Chris Martin is in it – which of course makes everything cooler, and Bono is in it – which used to make everything very cool, but now makes whatever he’s in very serious and political. And Sinead O’Connor is in it, which makes it weird cause she’s the only person there that is my age and still doing the same thing she was then, only with MORE hair.
But, essentially, it’s the same song… trying to raise money for the same cause – Africa.
This time, however, it’s about West Africa and Ebola. I guess Band Aid spent the last 30 years curing famine and drought in Africa and decided it was time to focus on ebola.
Bob Geldhof being activisty
According to Bob Geldof, he was asked to help out. And he has, sort of… in the first 24 hours, industry reports say sales of the single raised more than $1.7 million – but… let’s just say, it’s really unclear at this point where all that money is going to…
But none of that is reason enough to hate the song. All you have to do is watch the video.
Sure, some of the lyrics have been changed; sure, the players are all new and hipper and grungier… but it’s the actual message of the song that just bites me in the wrong places.
So, here goes the first part of the song from 1984…
George Michael “But say a prayer, pray for the other ones, at Christmas-time”
Simon le Bon “It’s hard, but when you’re having fun, there’s a world outside your window and it’s a world of dread and fear”
Sting “Where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears”
Sting, Bono and Simon sing of Christmas… moments later the world groans.
Sting, Bono, Simon “And the Christmas bells that ring, there are the clanging chimes of doom”
Bono (and this is the line that gets me) “Tonight, thank God it’s them instead of you.”
After a Phil Collins drum spot, we get “And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmastime, The greatest gift they’ll get this year is life. Where nothing ever grows, no rain or rivers flow. Do they know it’s Christmas-time at all?”
See? I just want to smack people when I hear that.
First, uhm, yeah… THERE IS SNOW IN AFRICA! Ever heard of Mt. Kilimanjaro – or the ski slope open in winter in Morocco? And by the way, many of the countries located in Africa – especially the ones hit by Ebola – are predominantly CHRISTIAN. And more than that, characterizing the ENTIRE CONTINENT by the famine in ONE COUNTRY is a pretty demeaning generalization of a continent that has rich and culturally diverse climates, cultures and citizens. Ditto for a killer disease.
Even Geldof admits it’s one of the two worst songs of all-time – both of which were written by him. The other one is “We are the World.”
And despite the fact that many in Africa don’t want his help because of its demeaning nature and the stigma the song has given the entire continent as being full of people who are more looking for a hand-out from foreign countries than help to achieve more in their live, Bob Geldof went ahead and re-released it anyway.
People I don’t know, and Bono, heading to the recording studio to donate their “time” to finding a cure for ebola.
And the demeaning images in the video are enough to prove Africa’s point. It’s a little startling to see people in hazmat suits tending to impoverished patients clinging to survival, then be swept away to images of rock stars exiting their limos in designer suits and jewels? There’s just an overwhelming picture painted of men in white coming to save the day for the poor dying African man.
And even more than that – of the rock stars lined up in the new video, only 4 of them are black, as opposed to the original’s ONE. Not that I’m saying there’s not some good in making a few progressive changes, but seriously?
I guess he was doing enough of a good thing by changing the lyrics up a bit.
Now instead of “Tonight thank God it’s them instead of you” Bono sings “Tonight, we’re reaching out and touching you?”
Did Bob NOT know when he wrote that, that that is the number one fear of white people EVERYWHERE (thanks to Fox News and CNN) that they will actually be TOUCHED by one of those ebola patients and then it’s only a hop, skip and shamble to the full-on zombie apocalypse?
I mean, COME ON! As if guilting us into handing over cash wasn’t bad enough, now you’re trying to scare the bejesus out of us into giving you money?
And why, again, does it have to be OUR money? Why can’t it be his? or theirs, even?
After all, Bob is worth more than $150 million. Would it really be too much skin off of his nose to fork over a paltry $1 million to help out?
If Bob really wanted to help, why didn’t he ask his friends, the millionaires who are singing, to donate a little cashola to be a part of the song, instead of letting them donate their “time.”
I mean, seriously, what else have these people got to do? Go around “consciously
Chris Martin getting ready to sing about a different set of bells…
coupling” with models, starlets and celebutantes?
If you look at it from an analytical position, it makes more sense for them to contribute a few buckaroonies, than for us to.
Let’s face it, if Bono, who is estimated to be worth $600 million, and the rest of U2 can move to the Netherlands to avoid paying Irish taxes, surely they can toss a few million to ebola to avoid paying taxes by making a charitable donation, right? Surely, they could have hired Two Guys and a Truck instead of paying Atlas Moving Company thousands and saved enough money to throw at a worthy cause.
Chris Martin is the frontman of Coldplay, which is estimated to be worth $64 million… One Direction? worth an estimated $42 million. If JUST those two groups donated a measly 3% of their combine net worth, it would double the single’s first day sales and still leave them with …$62 and $40.7 million and change, respectively. Really? Is Coldplay really so bad off they can’t survive on ONLY $62 million? Maybe One Direction’s hair products for men cost a bit more than they did when I was a kid and into that whole pop boy band thingy…
Maybe the members of Cold Play and One Direction should talk about their woes to their fans and tell them why they can’t afford to give up $3 million of the combined $106 MILLION they are worth, because they won’t be able to shop on GOOP anymore or buy goop for their hair.
Go on, Bob and Bono…. tell her how the best way you can help is getting together with your friends and making a record.
Maybe, just maybe, they should tell that to the people in Sierra Leone, Guinea, Nigeria and Liberia waiting for treatment for Ebola and watching their family members die for want of hydration and sanitation… Maybe, I think just maybe, they should do that in person… maybe it’s time for them to reach out and touch someone else tonight…
My hip hurts. And even though the doctors say it’s arthritis, I’m way too young to hear that come out of any professional’s mouth.
One of my cats died Sunday morning. But he was 417 years old, so it was time.
My house is not the kind of clean I would like it to be, but we’ll blame that on the aforementioned hip, and ignore the fact that I tend to have piles of clean laundry in my bedroom always.
My shoes are strewn about my bedroom in the pattern of a mad woman looking for golden slippers in the bottom of a stack of casual canvas boots, but that, too, is somewhat normal.
I’ve had to say “Good-bye” to someone who hated me with the class and debonair air that would have made my Dad proud, and “Hello” to someone who doesn’t know me with a restrained giddiness. Neither of these things is easy for me.
My kid got a job, but his grades are wanting and after a round of going toe-to-toe with one of his teachers for her inane rules, I can’t seem to get him to realize that doing well at school and adhering to those stupid rules is more important than skateboarding.
My other kid can’t understand why I’m not jumping at the bit to chauffeur him off to Hickory, NC to see his online girlfriend and leave him there alone with her for a couple of hours. Did I mention that Hickory is “only” five hours away? Did I mention he’s only 14?
I’ve wrapped up one fund-raising event, but am settling in the realization that I still have several more to go, and the illusion of having a break between them is a pipe dream.
I’m a little homesick for Cincinnati, my friends there and its never-ending buffet of arts and culture, all the while ignoring, of course, its crappy football team, crazy politics and pollution.
There’s a part of me that wants to cross off everything on my “to do” list and replace it with “stay in pajamas, retire to bed and pull covers over head.”
There is an end in sight though.
Christmas is coming.
It’s only four days after Halloween and Christmas is upon us.
Since Saturday, November 1 by my calendar, I’ve received more than 12 holiday emails from retailers, avoided no less than six holiday specials on Lifetime and listened to zero holiday tunes on a local radio station, even though they are now playing them non-stop.
Usually, this is where I go into a holiday rant about giving me a break and allowing me to revel in one holiday before we go into another. Mostly, I think this is based on the guilt of not having even so much as looked at a single purchase in that “Oh, this would make a great present for someone” mindset or having knit a single stitch for that “oh so perfect handmade present.”
Usually, I get upset about the idea of Christmas decorations going up in stores on October 30 and how we ought to at least get through the Day of the Dead and Veterans Day before we start thinking about Thanksgiving, let alone Christmas. Usually, I’m already bemoaning what disasters will befall us THIS Thanksgiving day (and there are disasters) even without the sister-in-law from Hell in the house, and railing against how oppressive the Christmas holidays are.
But this year, it’s different.
This year, I think I need a little Christmas cheer. Maybe not 54 days of it, but still…
This year, I think I’m ready to start putting up lights and bringing out the Santas early.
In September, we put out the Halloween decorations in the yard. The inflatable “Pop Goes the Evil” maniacal clown Jack-in-the-Box with it’s creepy music has been playing in my yard and in my psyche for a month alongside the inflatable black cat, the inflatable overgrown spider and the inflatable “Witch meets Pumpkin.” Zombie corpses dot our graveyard front yard and a new skeleton dog has joined the troop. Tombstones line the top of my tea pot cabinet and Jack o’Lanterns loom from every surface of our living room, bathroom and kitchen. Wicked witches and ghostly pictures hang where we see them every day.
And I didn’t even get all the Halloween decorations out.
But now, I’m ready to put them away. I think I kind of want some joy.
I want to replace our black glittered roses in the bathroom with holly and evergreens. I want to see Santa and the promise of a happy Christmas morning instead of macabre faces and grimacing skeletons. I want to hold a season in childlike wonder instead of feigned fear.
Maybe I am getting old.
I miss the days when our kids looked forward to advent calendars filled with candy and presents under the tree and trips to the mall Santa who only mildly wreaked of cigarette smoke and bourbon. I miss the days when they counted down the “sleeps” ’til Christmas like the days ’til summer vacation.
I miss the days of my kitchen smelling of cloves and cinnamon and nutmeg and sugar cookies instead of barbeque and pumpkin spice.
I miss the days of happy embraces and red noses and long lingering hugs on the front steps, instead of the creepy movies on TV designed to scare the bejesus out of us.
That’s not to say we don’t have those feelings and expectations of happy anymore despite the season, but I want the most perfect of them now.
I want to feel that happy giddiness that comes with the expectation of a joyous morning and the coma-induced aftermath of present opening and unexpected surprises. I have plans for a few of those awe-inspiring surprises in store for the people who mean so much to me. I want to see them now. I want to linger on their expressions when they rip away the wrapping paper.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Thanksgiving. I love the feeling of having the people I care about close to me and eating with me the food that I’ve cooked. I love lounging on the couch and watching parades and football while the world’s most perfect turkey cooks in the oven. I love the lazy happiness that comes after a great party of mismatched dishes and more food than a family and friends could ever possibly eat.
Heck, I even like the bliss of a perfect Thanksgiving leftover sandwich, complete with turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce.
But I think this year, after all the hardships and all the stress and all the turmoil, I need to just be happy for a while. Maybe even 54 days worth.
There’s a carefree attitude that comes with Christmas that brings out the happy in those who let it infect them. And they tend to spread it amongst their friends and companions.
It’s the ebola of holidays.
So, for once, I’m ready to forego the whining and moaning about “One holiday at a time, please.” I’m ready to give up my pretense that I want to have breaks between my holidays and actually enjoy creating a warm, comforting environment. I’m ready to stop pretending that I don’t like it and I’m not looking forward to it. I’m ready to start seeing circles in the “Toys R Us” catalogue and turned down pages of “Wireless.” I’m ready to know that what I do over the next 54 days will bring some joy to someone.
This afternoon, I came home and gave my cat a bath.
Sounds like fun, I know, but it wasn’t as bad as you think.
It was, in a way, a release.
Stitch is one of three cats in our house, and he is by far the oldest. At 13-years-old, which is roughly equivalent to 417 in human years, he walks around the house like he owns the place, his breathing labored and wheezy, his steps a little weak and staggery.
Then again, he is 417, so that’s to be expected.
Last week, while we were on the porch, it occurred to me that he’s stopped washing himself somewhat, and that he really needed a bath. So, at 9 o’clock at night, I took him into the kitchen sink and washed him.
He didn’t resist. He sat there as the mildly warm water ran over him out of the spray faucet. He let me lather him up and wash him off again.
That’s the same thing he did today. He just sat there and let me take care of him.
Three years ago, he would have scratched your eyes out just to look at him.
For the first 10 years of Stitch’s life, he labored under the belief that everyone was out to pet him and that he wasn’t going to like it. I think it stemmed from being held by young kids too long and too tightly when he was a kitten.
We got him from a friend who knew that we were cat people. She dropped him off at our house and told us she knew we’d love him. Immediately our oldest son, then two, and our niece, then around six, decided that he was their personal petting zoo. It probably scarred him for life.
From then on, he’d hide in the chairs under the kitchen table and would lash out at people who walked by. He’d hiss at anyone who got too close to him and he spent most of his time letting everyone know how unhappy he was.
It was okay though. He was nice at times, and would semi-infrequently rub up against our legs or give us a yodel in the middle of the afternoon to let us know he was hungry and that even though he hated us, we should still love him.
And we did.
But sometime in the last three years, he changed. It was like one day, he forgot he was angry. In the afternoons, I would come home from work to find that all he wanted was to curl up in my arms and have me pet him. He would practically trip me going into the bathroom to get me to pick him up.
So I did.
It occurred to me that he was getting old and that this may be a form of kitty cat dementia. Maybe feline Alzheimer’s made him forget to be pissed off, mean and shitty. I can think of a few people I’d like to get that kind of dementia…
I looked at him differently after that though. I knew he was dying. I knew he was getting ready to leave us. I knew he had just a few more months to live the life that he hadn’t lived when he was younger.
I pet him more. I let him curl up in my arms more often. After 10 years of living inside all the time, I took him outside with me when I read on our back porch. While we were out there, he would roam a little. He would sniff all the new plants and planters. He would attack sticks and worms. He would sit beside me and let me pet him. Occasionally, he would curl up in my lap and fall asleep.
After all, he is 417 years old.
So when I came home this afternoon, and he looked weak and withered, I decided that he needed another bath. He’s not washing himself and the fleas are taking advantage of him.
He sat there in the sink and enjoyed himself. And later, as he was shivering in the towel I wrapped around him, I could hear him purring.
There’s a lot of love that comes from giving a bath to someone and from getting a bath as well. The giver has to accept the frailty of the bather’s condition unconditionally and to show their love by taking care of the other. At the same time, the bather chooses to show their love for someone by submitting to the act of being bathed and accepting, unconditionally, the love that is being given.
For a cat who hated everything, he had found a little to love. And so, finally, had I.
I decided that it would be best for him if I blow-dried his hair.
I know. As if a bath wasn’t bad enough.
But I figured with his deteriorating state, standing around shivering wouldn’t be a good thing. When I put him in the bathroom sink and turned on the blow dryer, he wrapped his paws around one of my hands and lay there. My 13-year-old cat getting a comb and blowout.
As I was drying his hair, I started thinking to myself, “Someday I’ll be doing this for my mom, as she did hers, and in time, someone will take care of me too.”
Our lives go on and we move forward with the ones we love. We give them our attention, we give them their space to be who they are and we love them for their differences in spite of how difficult they can make our lives. We usher them into our private world and slow their exit as much as we can, even if it makes us weaker in the process.
Even if that loved one is a cat.
After he was dry, I brought him onto the couch with me and put him on the back of it, in the sun, where he likes to sleep. He laid down and purred for a while, just barely touching my shoulder with his paws.
When I got up to get a glass of wine, I heard him get down.
He went to the cat litter box, but he couldn’t get out. He had laid down in the cat litter.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to stop reading you, I’m just not going to succumb to your particular brand of torture anymore.
I’ve read women’s magazines since I was a little girl. I drooled over recipes and wondered what it would be like, as a teenager, to have the freedom to make “Pan-seared Duck with orange confit and a bed of microgreens.”
I’ll admit it, I’ve been a foodie since I was knee high to a Kitchen Aid, but now… I just don’t think I can take this anymore.
You’ve all just gone over the top.
Like any good foodie mom, I read your “How to make a gourmet dinner for your family in less than 30 minutes” and I want to be able to do that.
Making a dinner for my family that would please the palate of Gordon Ramsey in half an hour using only 15 simple ingredients? So doable, I thought.
Gone are the days of salmon patties with buttered egg noodles and corn. Tomorrow, it’s Korean beef lettuce wraps with soba noodles and edamame. I can do this!, I thought.
But now, you’re just being silly. Now, you’re putting in your magazines things no kid who isn’t starving or on a forced diet would eat.
It’s just that, recently, reality has hit me.
I don’t care what your cooks do in your kitchen, no matter how hard I try, there’s no way I’m making a three course dinner for four in less than an hour. I know, I know, you’ve got all those timing things outlined in your directions, but honestly, how you do all that chopping when you’ve got to help with homework and clean the house is beyond me.
And another thing, do you think you could start printing recipes that use ingredients I might actually have in my kitchen?
One recently included mashed parsnips.
Parsnips?
Really?
Who the hell buys parnsips on a regular basis?
I’d like to make gourmet meals, really I would.
But I think if I were to serve pomegranate, watercress and roasted macadamia nut salad my guys would look at me like I had stepped off of the pages of Bourgious Kitchen and straight into the world of la-la land.
And as much as I’d like to make a panko and peanut crusted chicken breast with orzo and a side of pan roasted broccolini, I’ve only got stove top stuffing mix, a can of cream of mushroom soup and some french-style green beans in my pantry.
I can’t go out spending $40 on one dish that my family will say “Eh. It was okay” to, when I’ve got another 13 dishes to make and only $300 to spend, over the next two weeks – and that includes money for pizza night!
A quick look at some of my cookbooks proves my point. In the Betty Crocker Family Dinners in a Hurry cookbook, circa 1969 (yes, I’m well aware that some of my cookbooks are just as old as I am – almost), there’s a recipe for Broiled Round Steak with Mustard Butter and Herbed Tomatoes that lists 8 ingredients for the main and side combined – and that’s INCLUDING the round steak! – that takes less than 20 minutes to make and serves 6.
In Southern Living’s May 2014 edition, the recipe for Flank Steak and Cucumber Salad lists 16 ingredients, including Asian chili paste (“such as Huy Fong” it says) and English cucumbers (in my head, I swear I was thinking “I say, are you a regular cucumber, or do you come from across the pond, dear chap?”).
Sixteen ingredients. For a salad. That takes nearly an hour to prepare. And serves 4.
Are you kidding me?
When the boys were younger, I was an industrious chef.
I’d make Halloween dinners that looked like witches’ fingers with ghostly shaped mashed potatoes. I made weekday dinners of tuna melts that looked like little boats with American cheese slice sails. I made decorated cupcakes for school birthday parties.
(Just a note – when you make cupcakes in ice cream cones decorated to look like.. well, ice cream cones… uhm, there’s no way you can ever get over the look in your kids’ school friends’ faces when they realize it’s not, in reality, ice cream.)
But today, … uhm… not so much.
Tonight when I went into the kitchen, I had no idea what I was making until I found a freezer bag of the poultry variety, a box of long grain and wild rice mix, some potato chips, shredded cheese and a can of mushroom soup.
Thank God, for cream of mushroom soup.
Throw that together with sauteed onions, pimentos and frozen peas, and viola! Casserole surprise!
Still took an hour though. And that’s not counting the time spent pondering what the hell am I supposed to make tonight.
But it was affordable. I would say I probably spent $7-$10 on the whole meal, and that’s including the meat substance – whatever it was.
And they ate it! They actually ate it and said “Not bad, Mom.”
Running to the store to buy the ingredients of the aforementioned flank steak and I would have easily gone through $40, and that’s not including Huy Fong (whatever the hell that is, and depending entirely on whether my small town Southern grocery store would have actually had anything remotely resembling it).
It’s just too much.
If I’m honest, I just don’t have the time for that crap. Heck, I don’t even know where I would find pomegranates in my hometown.
I’m all about good cooking and living with nice things, but enough is enough. I’m not ever going to host a party where my friends are going to turn up their noses at my cornbread salad, or homemade guacamole. I like all your stuff, but, damn, it’s just too over the top anymore. Can’t you just print normal recipes?
I want my family to be happy, but not at the cost of spending beyond my means. And I’m not alone. Making a gourmet dinner for my family at the cost of their college funds? Not likely.
You all go ahead and make your spinach infused fish fillets with cous cous and sauteed Italian eggplant.
I’ll be the one making fried chicken in my cast-iron skillet and smiling when my kids actually eat it.
Course, that does cut down on the money I save in eating leftovers though…
It occurs to me that high school is the denouement of back-to-school shopping.
Or maybe it is the eye of the storm between kindergarten and college.
It’s hard to tell.
Mostly, because it’s so boring.
This year, back-to-school shopping for my high school students has been less than fun.
When my boys and I went shopping a few weeks afo – with obligatory stops at Hot Topic, American Eagle and Aeropostale – the reaction ranged from “Yeah, it’s cool, I guess” to “Mom! Stop! You’re touching me in public! Have we not discussed this?”
And no matter where we go, it’s all the same stuff.
I’ve bought enough jeans to clothe the entire male population of Bolivia.
Half of these jeans look as if they have been worn BY the male population of Bolivia every day for all 378 days of the World Cup. The other half looks as if they have been dipped in the vat of dye that changed forever the color of the Joker’s hair.
Everything else is black. Or blue. To match, one can only assume, my kids’ moods.
Where are the dress shirts and the kicky sweaters that got pulled out for the first day of school and on picture day?
No where, that’s where.
Which, of course, is also where their underwear is. Every time I ask if they need new ones, they mumble and shrug, leaving me to believe that all the good underwear I bought them last year has been traded to the Bolivians for pairs that show more wear and tear. Ditto their socks.
Come to think of it, maybe the Bolivians are to blame for our recent spoon shortage as well.
Gone are the long discussions where my sons and I anxiously decided between Iron Man or Bakugan for the perfect backpack personality for the new school year. Gone are the smells of a brand new Trapper Keeper, or the never before opened box of 64 Crayola crayons – complete with silver, gold and bronze. Gone are the walks down the aisles of Kmart, buying matching Granimals and Underoos.
Now, instead, I buy notebooks, dry erase markers, loose-leaf graph paper and 3-ring binders.
Bleah.
I used to look forward to back-to-school shopping as a kid.
The new backpacks, the new lunch boxes, the loose leaf paper and crisp sharpened pencils – it’s like you get to go crazy at Office Depot! And the clothes! Oh, my GOD, don’t get me started.
When I was a little girl, each August meant two new pairs of jeans, one dressy outfit, a new pair of Nikes, at least three or four new shirts, and a smattering of really cool skirts that would spend more time on my closet floor than on my hips, but that came straight out of the pages of Seventeen, so I knew I would look good whenever I got around to wearing them.
God, I loved those go go boots… is it okay for a middle aged woman to wear short skirts, sweater vests and go go boots still?
One year, I got a red plaid school lunch box with matching Thermos, that matched two of my new outfits in red and black. I even had red, shiny go go boots to go with them, which was WAY cooler than the year before’s purple corduroys and purple turtleneck body suit that SO did not match my Jonathan Livingston Seagull lunch box.
“Thanks, Mom! I love them!” I said, flinging my arms around my mother’s neck.
It really was much easier to please me back then.
In years past, I even looked forward to buying all the things my kids would need to be stellar students.
One year, their back-to-school supply list included, along with the regular paper, pens and pencils – one ZipLock gallon freezer bag, one box of Kleenex, one bottle of anti-bacterial liquid and one bag of candy. The boys used to get a kick out of picking out their candy, their favorite colored folders and their new pencils with their almost sharp enough to be deadly tips.
Not anymore.
This year’s list included: one artist’s sketch pad, one Pearl eraser (pink), two TI-83 calculators (cost $140 per), four packs of index cards (that I can guarantee you will never be used), post-it note pads and a different 3-ring binder for every subject.
Not one mention of a Trapper Keeper anywhere!
And when I ask my sons if they like the new stuff we’ve picked out, their responses range from “Eh.” to “I guess so.”
Joy.
This past week, I bought what we needed in terms of pens, and pencils, and paper. Whatever.
Seriously, how much paper do teachers think that two teenagers are going to go through in a school year? I’ve bought enough paper to keep my office in business for half a year, and we’ve got seven people in there! I’ve bought enough blue and black pens to write “I will not chew gum in school” for my junior high school teacher Ms. Ford seven BILLION times – which coincidentally, is roughly double what I wrote for her when I was actually in her class.
I know that in two years, it will get better. My oldest will tromp off to college and there will be new college-themed clothes, the microwave and the mini fridge to buy – along with the matching bedroom set and the bathroom towels. And I know most of this he will use and then inevitably throw on the floor, only to bring home to me to clean and get rid of the “funky smell.”
It’s just not fair. It’s like this let down after years of detailed lists and character stuff that forever reminded me that they were kids.
Where’s the fun in buying warehouse store quantities of office supplies? Where’s the challenge? Where’s the creativity?
Maybe it’s the fact that they are in high school. Maybe it’s the fact that they’re not “kids” anymore. Maybe it’s just another fact of being a mom to boys. But there’s no getting over the fact that it’s boring.
You’re all screaming at me and I want it to STOP!!!
Hardly a day has gone by this past week that someone I’ve never met feels like it’s their job to scream at me about what I need to be doing. With exclamation points, capital letters and strategically placed ellipses, they all want to tell me what I’m doing wrong and how great my life would be if I’d just listen to them.
“Ten sandwiches you should stop eating!”
“Eight beers you MUST stop drinking right now!”
“Seventeen recipes you should ABSOLUTELY make for your kids this summer!”
“I couldn’t BELIEVE what this whale did… watch to the end to be truly amazed!”
Frankly, I’m getting a little annoyed by it all. Who gave all these people the right to yell at me? Was it some kind of reverse email hack? Did I click on some “Scream at me from the Ether” button I didn’t know about?
Nirvana between two slices of bread… don’t tell me what sandwich to eat…
I gave in today and clicked on some of those links. I mean, what if my turkey and herbed havarti on dark rye with mayo and Dijon mustard was actually a silent killer, like butter and sour cream or out-of-date egg salad? If it proved worthwhile, I vowed I was going straight to my refrigerator to look for any of the “15 food you must NEVER refrigerate!” posted on Facebook.
But no, it was nothing more than a list of fast food sandwiches you shouldn’t buy – mostly, it appeared, because they were loaded with calories, carbohydrates and cholesterol, and the much healthier option that you can order at the same place instead. Here’s a thought… make your own damn sandwich and stay the hell out of fast food joints – healthier in a month, guaranteed!
Then, even the OWNER of the damned horse started yelling at me on YouTube! Sure, the dude was pissed, but dang… one minute I’m watching the race results and the next “It’s not fair… this is the coward’s way out!…” Whatevs, dude! Tone it down a bit! I know you’re upset and all, but get a grip! Even Meatloaf said “Two out of three ain’t bad.”
We’ve got YouTube videos of Gain McInness ranting on Fox News about Neil DeGrasse Tyson. We’ve got Rush Limbaugh on Vine spewing out venom about whatever seems to pop into his head. We’ve got Alex Jones screaming in podcasts that the government is actually covering up the REAL unemployment numbers and that it’s all part of an insidious plot to take over the country.
Really, guys, quit yelling!!! Ease up on all of us a bit. It’s all just a bit much. I guess they think that they have to yell to get our attention, to make their point, to vent their inexhaustible supply of bile. But it’s tiring. It just wears me down and turns me off.
You too, Interwebs, really, stop yelling at me. I’m not going to pay any more attention to you if you’re talking to me in all caps 16-point Helvetica Bold Italic font, than I am if you’re whispering in 10-point Brush Cursive Script.
And anyone who knows me knows that telling me what to do is a sure fire way to get me to do just the opposite. It’s just not going to work anymore.
But… if you insist, by all means, keep yelling at me. Keep telling me what I should or shouldn’t be doing, how I must or mustn’t do yet one more thing, or how I absoluely positively have to do something right now.
Don’t say I didn’t tell you what would happen.
Now, let’s see – anybody got some of those 8 beers? I’m a little thirsty.
Maybe I’ll just yell into the kitchen and get someone to bring me one…
Last Sunday was soup beans and cornbread night in our house.
Great Northern beans almost the way Dad made them… just need a little ketchup now…
It was 60s out in May in the South, so it was soup weather. And what good is soup without cornbread, right?
There was a time when I wasn’t exactly proud of telling anyone that we regularly ate soup beans.
I mean it is a reminder of my family’s poor upbringing. It’s rural Kentucky food. It’s mountain food. It’s not the food that anyone is going to put on the menu at a fine dining restaurant, but everyone has seen on the menu at Cracker Barrel.
Mine are nothing like what you get at Cracker Barrel… tonight it was pintos and salt pork with peppercorns. Throw it all in the pot with an onion and let it cook for hours and you’ve got a huge bowl of flavorful protein. Yum.
Sometimes, we have navy beans or great northern beans with left over ham. That’s my special favorite because it reminds me of my Mom’s house.
Sometimes, we have 15-bean soup, which comes with its own ham flavored seasoning pack, so you don’t have to add, you know, … meat. It’s the soup equivalent of Coors Lite – a little bit of flavor without any substance of any kind.
When I was a kid, it seemed like every time we went to my grandmother’s house to visit, we had soup beans and cornbread.
I hated it.
In fact, I dreaded it.
The smell is unique and has a smoky sweetness with a sort of bacony aroma.
And every time I smelled it, I groaned.
But, it made sense. My grandparents weren’t rich, and soup beans were the best choice for them when the house went from two to six. Cheap and easy to make, it was a way to extend a meal to feed a crowd, no matter how many showed up.
But I hated it. It wasn’t bad. I mean, it’s tasty, but I wanted pizza or hamburgers, or fried chicken even. For a spoiled doctor’s daughter, soup beans were NOT the dinner one looked forward to.
Of course, my mom loved it. It was her mother’s cooking, after all. She loved going back to the comfort of her childhood.
I grew up hours away from my grandmother in Central Kentucky, but still my mom made Kentucky favorites. Summers were spent eating cottage cheese and tomatoes fresh out of the garden with a little dollop of mayonnaise on top. We had corn pudding for Thanksgiving dinner. Derby time always meant Derby pie.
And soup beans were a rarity, but a still on the menu
I couldn’t stand them. I just let my mom eat them.
It was like when our family went to Florida. Everywhere we stopped to eat, someone was handing us grits. The further south we got the more plates of grits piled up on the table. Actually, they all ringed my mother’s plate, as we all passed them to her and let her eat them. It’s honestly a miracle that woman didn’t blow up like a hot air balloon that summer.
It was like when our family went to Florida. Everywhere we stopped to eat, someone was handing us grits. The further south we got the more plates of grits piled up on the table. Actually, they all ringed my mother’s plate, as we all passed them to her and let her eat them. It’s honestly a miracle that woman didn’t blow up like a hot air balloon that summer.
At the time, I was starting to cook. I was 11 or so, and I discovered that I really enjoyed cooking, especially cooking for others. I made quiche because I thought it was cool. I made barbequed hot dogs on noodles when my mom went back to school. My aunt taught me to make pies using gooseberries that had been in the freezer since the day I was born. I learned how to make Mom’s chicken and dumplings and beef stew.
Of course I also wanted to expand my knowledge. I devoured cookbooks like some people do peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches. I learned about French cooking and the specialties of New England, and the differences between Northern Italian and Southern Italian cuisine.
I all but turned up my nose at the Kentucky food I had grown up on.
One day, I was reading a cookbook and found a recipe for Senate bean soup. I was thrilled. If it had the word “Senate” in it, it had to be special didn’t it?
look familiar? yeah… you’ll find recipes for Senate bean soup in Bon Appetit, but soup beans and cornbread? Not so much…
This was going to be my culinary adventure into Northern cooking, I thought. Why, they even had cans of it by some famous chef in the grocery store! It had to be excellent when made from scratch, right?
Imagine my surprise when I looked at the ingredients… beans, ham, water. It was fricking navy bean soup! Only with a few potatoes added.
Yep… sorry folks, polenta is Italian grits. Seriously. You can do this at home…
Disgruntled at being tricked, I decided to only cook recipes from Europe from then on. I learned how to make shrimp scampi, paella and pate. By the time I had worked my way up to Italian polenta, I was a dutiful Europhile foodie … right up until I realized that polenta was basically fried grits.
All of the food I had hated during my childhood was loved by others. They just had different names!
Now in fact, a bowl of soup beans and cornbread is probably one of the most ordered side dishes in the South, right up there with macaroni and cheese, sausage gravy and biscuits and rice and gravy.
I’m telling you – don’t turn your nose up on rice and gravy until you try it…
But it wasn’t until after I graduated from college that soup beans and cornbread became my go-to comfort food.
Always on Sunday afternoons, when it was cool and rainy out, soup beans became this way for me to be home, without actually going home. It became the way to connect with my past, and rethink my future.
It’s the smell, I think. Its earthiness and richness grounds me. I can put them on the stove; take a nap and fall asleep dreaming of my old Kentucky home.
In our house, we eat soup beans differently – the way my dad did.
Traditionally, with soup beans, you eat them with raw onions broken up in the bowl and cornbread on the side. Since my husband can’t stand soup, he crumbles the cornbread right into the soup beans to make some sort of stew like substance.
My dad, however, ate them differently. You take the soup beans; you add ketchup and a forkful of sweet pickle relish. Why? I have no idea. Then again, my Dad perfected the fried bologna sandwich and was the first person to ever make yellow tomato ketchup.
I’m not sure that says anything about Dad, but I do know that’s the only way I will eat soup beans, regardless of the weird looks I get from waitresses in virtually ever restaurant I’ve ever eaten it in.
I know there are regional favorites that I’m sure some people identify with like I do bean soup. Maybe Mainers are like that when they eat New England clam chowder, or a lobster roll. Maybe Southwesternites are all happy when they eat Tex Mex. Maybe even Chicago-ites wax nostalgic when they eat a slice of pizza.
But none of them know what it’s like to eat a bowl of soup beans and be taken back to their grandmother’s house – with its heat vent in the middle of the hall, the smell of cigarette smoke and coffee in the air, and millions of memories lingering in the walls, the rooms and the furniture.
This past weekend, I made the guys French toast, bacon and grits. My kids rolled their eyes at the lumpy white mush. I’m hoping one day, they’ll look at a bowl of grits and think of their old Mom. Or at least take me on vacation and load me up with all their unwanted bowls of grits.
And maybe, one day, they’ll make a pot of soup beans and cornbread and smile.
As long as they eat it with ketchup and relish, I’m okay with that.
So, the castle down the street from my childhood home is for sale.
No, I don’t mean a really nice house.
I mean a castle.
The Versailles Castle as it stands now. The road on the top of the picture would be Versailles Road, the road between Lexington and Versailles… follow that road to the right, go about a quarter of a mile, turn left and go all the way to the end of the street? That’s where I grew up.
Let me explain, it’s a real castle. We’re talking about a huge multi-turreted-building-in-the-middle-with-a-courtyard-between-it-and-four-fortress-walls castle.
This palatial estate on more than 252 acres in the middle of horse country in Central Kentucky is roughly one mile to the left and up the street from my mom’s house – which we all know is my first castle. I grew up next to this thing.
Heck, the invitations to my wedding included directions to my reception (at my Mom’s house) that included the words “pass the castle and take the second left.”
It has literally been a part of my life since I was three. I watched it being built from the moment ground broke, until it sat dormant. Ever since I was in elementary school, the Castle in Versailles, Ky. has been a mystery, a landmark, a laughing stock and a wonder.
When I was in second grade, my friend, Jeff, and I sat on the playground of Pisgah Elementary School watching the castle and speculating about it.
To be honest, we would sit inside of a two-foot tall concrete tube left on the playground during construction, and we would periodically poke our heads above the side like little gerbils to look at it before burrowing back into the tube to furiously discuss in our 7-year-old furor over why it was there.
I mean… uhm… it was a castle… in the middle of nowhere Kentucky… and there weren’t any horses or playgrounds anywhere on it! Our 7-year-old minds boggled.
Granted it was in VERSAILLES, but in Kentucky (as in Ohio and Indiana) that’s pronounced Ver-sales, not Ver-si like they say in France.
At the time, we ALL thought it was a gift from the Six Million Dollar Man to one of Charlie’s Angels.
The Six Million Dollar Man and Charlie’s Best Angle
Because Lee Majors was then was married to Farrah Fawcett. And he had a horse farm in Woodford County, or so we all thought. And this was when every boy in school had a Farrah bathing suit poster on their wall, and the Six Million Dollar Man lunchbox was THE lunchbox to have.
We thought we were looking at a wedding present and that soon we’d be watching little Six Million Dollar Angels during recess.
Maybe if he had given her the castle, she might never have left him and gone kinda nutso. Or at least had a little more space to do it in private.
Can you imagine castle walls painted with a Farrah brush?
Boys everywhere would have been checking in to see bathing suit marks.
Not that they could afford it now.
Started in 1968 by Rex and Caroline Bogaert Martin, the castle was inspired by a trip to Europe. Cause doesn’t everyone come home from vacation and think “Hmmm. I’d like to have a little piece of medieval history right here that I can live in”?
But construction stopped when the two divorced in 1975. For more than a quarter of a century until Rex Martin died, the castle remained vacant.
In 2003, the castle was purchased by a Miami tax lawyer who had plans to turn it into a bed and breakfast.
Seriously… who eats beans for breakfast? I mean, come on! Where’s the oranges and muffins? And don’t even get me started on the tomatoes and mushrooms.
Now, I’ve stayed in bed and breakfasts in England…. And I have a hard time imagining that anyone staying at the castle would get scrambled eggs, bacon, tomato slices and baked beans for breakfast. Or have to share a bathroom. Or find themselves curled up to sleep under chintz sheets that smelled oddly like your 80-year-old grandmother and lavender.
When an unfortunate fire during the initial stages of construction in 2004 (uhm… Jewish lightning anyone?) destroyed the building, construction began again. In just a few short years, it was finished and opened to the public.
Well, at least the public that could afford the $750 a night it cost to stay in a turret room.
Currently, the 50-room castle includes a full library, a great hall, chandliers, marble floors, a game room, and a dining room that seats 40. The grounds – on the inside of the fortress walls, includes manicured gardens, a tennis court, a pool.
And let’s not even get started on the rooms that look like something out of Downton Abbey on steroids.
Now guest rooms go for between $325 for a state room and $1,250 for a turret room.
That’s inflation for ya. I mean, what is the world coming to when a turret room in a castle in the middle of nowhere increases in price by nearly 70% in just a few short decades and a complete renovation?
There are signs around the building now that say “Guests only!” This is a place that everyone who has driven thru Versailles – and I’m sure there have been dozens through the years – would stop to take a picture of. Now they want to close it off only to the one percent?
The view, almost, from where Pisgah used to sit.
Of course, that didn’t stop me from driving up the driveway, looking around and taking a few pictures the last time I was there. No Swiss guards came out and chased me off. No beautiful golden retrievers came bounding out to greet me. No one screamed out the turret “Get off my lawn!”
I’d always dreamed of going inside.
And now, I can. I could just buy it and continue running it as a “boutique hotel.”
It’ll only cost me a cool $30 million.
That comes down to renting out all the turret rooms 6,000 times to break even.
I think I’ll take the view from the concrete tube.
And by miracle worker, I mean hairdresser. No, stylist. No. High priestess of hair.
Leah, my miracle worker, is the religious equivalent of nirvana in black leggings. Irreverent, ballsy, out-spoken and always smiling, she is the confidante of my inner wildest fantasies – purple hair.
She has given me the hair cut of my dreams – the one I have asked for since I was 23 years old – “Just something that looks great, but that I don’t have to really work on.”
This is not as easy as it appears. For years, I have labored under the delusion that I had to work hours on my face and hair to look like I didn’t have to do anything at all.
But Leah, went one better than that. She gave me a beautiful hair cut, that made me look like I didn’t even curl it AND she made me look cool.
Just before I left for a writers’ workshop in April, I went to Leah. I told her “I want purple highlights in my hair. I want to look like the girl from the Kindle commercials. I want auburn hair with purple in it.”
I wanted to embrace the inner artist in me that I was sure was going to come out at that conference. And I wanted people to remember me, because, in my own head, I am completely forgettable. Did I mention I’m 48, overweight and about as boring fashion-wise as Charlotte from Sex in the City?
Leah didn’t bat an eye.
In fact, she said, “I love it! This is going to be fun.”
I should probably also point out that meeting Leah was the result of having my hair cut only weeks earlier by a 30-something girl who spent most of the time, while she had scissors next to my ears, talking about how awful it was that her ex-roommate told her parents she was dealing drugs out of the trunk of her car and they were threatening to take her car and kick her out of the apartment. She was ready to cut someone, she said.
not an exact replica….
I smiled and said I understood (even though I couldn’t possibly imagine) praying to the very depths of my soul that I wasn’t the one she decided to cut.
I mean, who says that to someone you’ve only known for 10 minutes and is giving you money for a quality hair cut?
In fact, it wasn’t a quality hair cut, even if my ears did stay in tact.
I didn’t have the guts to tell her how much it sucked. I did, however, decide that I was never going back to Great Clips. For the first time in 20+ years, I decided I needed a REAL hairdresser and wasn’t going to settle for a $12 hair cut anymore.
Just a thought – there’s a reason why some salons use as their slogan “We fix $12 hair cuts.”
And, of course, I turned to Facebook to bitch and to ask for suggestions, and that’s where the kismet began.
I needed a GOOD hairdresser. I needed a Truvy! I needed someone I could trust and someone I could relate to. No way a razor wielding drug dealer was going to cut it anymore. I needed to woman up and find someone special.
My Facebook friends said to call Leah.
Growing up, I had been part of that special woman/hair goddess relationship. I just didn’t think it was that important. Until now. Real women have relationships with their hairdressers.
When I was a much younger girl, every Wednesday night was spent with Dottie, my mother’s hairdresser. We would travel to the mall in Lexington, a full 30-minute drive, for an evening where I would shop and buy nothing, while my Mom sat in the chair and had Dottie do her hair… the same way… every week… for 10 years.
She was the Dottie Lama. My sister, her daughter, my mom, me… we ALL went to her for guidance and forgiveness for our hair sins. She was the ocean of forgiveness, my sister says.
And through those years, my tomboy years, I spent time shopping while my mom spent hours talking to Dottie. I would get bored with the “talk” and wander off to look at little Spanish Flamenco dolls and SuperTramp albums, before rejoining my Mom for dinner at Morrison’s cafeteria. It was a big night out for us.
Dottie did my hair too, occasionally. She gave me my first perm and my first dye job – beach blonde, naturally. She counseled me on how swimming (I was a competitive swimmer back when I wasn’t technically a whale) meant more hair care and how taking care of my hair, even when the chlorine, the work outs and the sun were on the verge of turning it green on a daily basis, would pay off in the long run.
When I got married, we went to Dottie’s salon where she did an up-do and gratefully understood my distaste for big hair.
When people understand the little things about you – like the fact that you’re only inclined to have “big” hair if, say, you’ve been under the influence of whiskey and Diet Coke for the past few days, it really makes life easier.
But Leah,…hmmm. She got those things the minute that I met her.
Leah is my size and my height, and gets my sense of humor, my attitude and my flippant outlook on life. She even cusses like me.
This ain’t no Steel Magnolias. This is more like Iron Roses. In the Truvy’s House of Beauty of Life, we’re both Ouiser. We’re tough. And we’ve got the thorns if you cross us. There are no seven different shades of pink here – we’re seven different textures of black, with a little leather thrown in just to show people not to mess with us.
We talked very little small talk the first time we met. I admit, I was a little nervous cause I was scared she wouldn’t like me and then we’d have nothing to talk about and I’d have to start the search to find someone I could relate to over again… kind of like dating, only with harsher chemicals. But almost immediately, we hit it off.
We talked about purple.
We talked about people.
We talked about not fitting in and how we didn’t care.
Cause women TALK to their hairdressers. We tell them things men can’t imagine… well, actually, it’s more like we talk to them about stuff men don’t care about. Being in a “beauty parlor” or “salon” is the female equivalent of going to the bar and having a few stiff ones and talking to the bartender to unburden our souls. Only hairdressers actually give a crap.
Come to think of it, salons probably would be even more interesting if we had a few glasses of wine while we talked.
Come to think of it, salons probably would be even more interesting if we have a few glasses of wine while we talked.
And yes, we talk about a few stiff ones.
It’s the one place where women can go and it’s all about them.
So, we unload our souls to our hairdressers.
I’ve listened to women talk about their vacation plans and how they were looking forward to having some time alone.
“Hell, I’m looking forward to the bar as much as I’m looking forward to the cruise – nothing like a pina colada or six at sea…while someone else watches the kids.”
I’ve listened to women talk about their husband dallying on Craig’s List looking for “a discreet encounter.”
“Are you worried he will find someone?” someone asks.
“Hell, no. I’m thinking that frees me up for 15 minutes a week” she answered.
Bless me Leah, for I have sinned.
And Leah will never say who said that. She will take those confidences and answer them back. You will tell her your secrets and she will tell you secrets back.
I mean, for God’s sake, the woman knows my real hair color, which is something no one has really known for the past 20+ years.
So she dyed my hair auburn with beautiful streaks of purple and blue and pink in it. It was a Friday afternoon and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. And she meticulously placed it in places that she could expertly cover it up with a wisp of hair here, or a curl of locks there.
And much like every beauty parlor I have ever gone to, when I got home I couldn’t replicate it because I am not a girl and I never learned how to do those things.
I had a Dorothy Hamill hair cut when I was 10, for cripes sake, and still managed to screw that up if I didn’t somehow manage to burn the perimeter of my scalp while curling it.
But she did it and it was beautiful and I loved it. I flaunted it. I sent pictures to my friends. I went to the store with it pulled back so the purple showed. I put on sunglasses and ran my fingers through my purple hair to show everyone how cool – again, at 48 and overweight – I was.
Until Sunday afternoon.
When I realized I had to go back to work.
And I had to look like a professional businesswoman.
And eventually, I would have to face my mom.
I was so scared – of both losing my job and of telling Leah – that I went to the store, bought a few boxes of chemicals, stripped it out and spent the next four hours putting dye in my hair to make it a color that looked somewhat close to normal.
When I talked to Leah days later, I explained it all to her. I have to tell you, I was damn close to tears. We had shared dye together. We spent two hours together discussing celebrities and local gossip. We were bonded.
And I had not only ruined her masterpiece, but I also felt I had washed our time together down the drain.
But instead of being mad, she said it was okay and that I needed to come see her. She said we were friends and she would have helped me.
I cried.
She soothed.
I went.
One look from her and I knew everything was okay.
“Honey, you come in after you get back from this workshop. We’ll put some highlights in there somewhere. Cause right now you look normal – and there’s nothing about you that screams normal.
probably more than some in fact. I love the secrets, the smells, the sights… even the sappy Christmas specials where the evil shopkeeper realizes there is more to the season than commercialism and peace returns to Happyville and little Timmy gets his dog back.
Your credit card is no longer smoldering and your mailbox is busting at the seams with with bills.
You’d rather watch “Ragin’ Cajun Redneck Gators” on Syfy than suffer through yet another showing of “Elf,” “Shrek the Halls,” “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” or “A Christmas Story.”
travel schedules is replaced with an urgent desire to plant a garden.
hip hurts. And even though the doctors say it’s arthritis, I’m way too young to hear that come out of any professional’s mouth.
My kid got a job, but his grades are wanting and after a round of going toe-to-toe with one of his teachers for her inane rules, I can’t seem to get him to realize that doing well at school and adhering to those stupid rules is more important than skateboarding.
In September, we put out the Halloween decorations in the yard. The inflatable “Pop Goes the Evil” maniacal clown Jack-in-the-Box with it’s creepy music has been playing in my yard and in my psyche for a month alongside the inflatable black cat, the inflatable overgrown spider and the inflatable “Witch meets Pumpkin.” Zombie corpses dot our graveyard front yard and a new skeleton dog has joined the troop. Tombstones line the top of my tea pot cabinet and Jack o’Lanterns loom from every surface of our living room, bathroom and kitchen. Wicked witches and ghostly pictures hang where we see them every day.
hellsfunnybelle 
