REK

This weekend I went to the Robert Earl Keen concert in Linden, TX. Did I love it? Yes. Did I dance my little butt off? Yes. In the beginning of the night I had a blonde sitting in my lap and she danced and sang. Then she got a little tired and started complaining. She finally moaned and complained until she just passed out. No it wasn’t Lacy, it was my youngest child.

We took all of the kids to the concert mainly because they know all of the words to his songs. That and we didn’t have a babysitter. We had a wonderful time and he sounded just like he did years ago when I first heard him. It was a festival in downtown Texarkana when I sat for hours and laughed at his songs and commentary. The next time I heard he was coming into town I was fired up about seeing him in concert again for many different reasons.

One was that my second child was about to be 9 months old. I had weaned him, lost all my baby weight, and my hair had grown out again after I cut it shorter when he was born. On a side note, I got knocked up again 2 months later. Got to watch it when you bring sexy back. I was also so fired up because everyone in the family had just recovered from a stomach virus. It is never good to help a houseful of little and big people vomit all over your house, especially when one of them is three and cannot make it to the bathroom. I remember her throwing up all in my bed, hair, and on the wall one night.

I was ready to party! We were at a club in town which later burned down. We were all sitting around and I finally got a beer. The opening act was on stage and I took one nice long drink of that cold, cold beer. I made the comment that I was the only person in the family who had not been throwing up the past week. I decided to walk back to the bathroom before REK started to play.

I do not know what the onset of Cholera feels like, but I was damn sure my body was riddled with it by the time I made it into the bathroom. I am certainly not above throwing up in a bar bathroom. I have been known to do it before under completely different circumstances, but this was miserable. I was in a cold sweat and could not get up and away from that nasty assed toilet. I finally told someone to tell my husband I needed to go home – now.

He called his father to come get me. He stood out front with me until his father arrived (in his robe and house shoes). I was barfing by the front door like I was at a damn pledge party when I heard “that Buckin’ Song” being played onstage. To top it all off I was a preschool teacher at the local private school at the time. I don’t know what was worse. People who I knew assuming Miss Melanie was drunk off her ass before the concert even started and was throwing up outside a bar, or that NO ONE raised an eyebrow over it.

It was all worth it when I saw all my kids this weekend perk up when they heard Shery Was A Waitress at the Only Joint in Town.

Thanks for reading my post, and I hope you feel a little better about yourself.

Retirement

I, like most people, had two sets of grandparents. On my father’s side I had Papaw Yancey (Charlie) and Gertrude. I only knew Gertrude as my grandmother because they were married around the same time I was born. My Father’s mother died when he was nine from breast cancer, and she left behind 4 other children as well. Ladies, check yo self.

When I am extremely stressed at work I think about Papaw Yancey. At his funeral, the written program pretty much summed him up in two sentences. “Charlie was a barber and a Baptist. In his retirement he liked to fish, camp, and visit.”

Oh hell yeah! I cannot wait to be retired so I can fish, camp, and visit. I am good at all three of those things! I might even change it up sometimes and visit, camp, and then fish! SHIT that will be fun.

I have a list of many things I would like to do when I retire. Like no longer having to kiss ass like I do here at work. That would be a nice change of pace. Just wear knee highs with my dresses. Let my facial hair grow with wild abandon. And bitch at every restaurant, store, and event I go to about some tiny problem I have.

I want to sit on the furniture at museums even though there are signs everywhere. Maybe eat dinner at 4:30, with my senior citizen discount. I know it sounds like I have this all planned out, but that is because I do.

Lacy and I plan to have an RV together with a young and handsome driver. Since both of our 401K’s are in the crapper, we might have to rethink that. I want to be sitting in my kitchen reading the paper and notice there is a free blood pressure check somewhere in town and know that will make my day. Lacy and I (because we will be living together regardless) will run and jump in my 4629 foot long Cadillac and high tail it to Caroline’s house. We will lay on the horn in her driveway and scream, “Get Your Shit and Come On!” until she finally drags her ass out of there wearing that damn visor. Still.

I will say whatever I think. I will have an ever present lit cigarette dangling from my lips, because if I make it to age 70 I am picking that habit right back up again. I will sleep in church. I will go through menopause and get really, really big and just not care. I might even start drinking whiskey again, but in small doses. Small doses means I will ask for” just a touch” over and over again until my glass is full.

Who am I kidding? I will hopefully still be running. I cannot wait to have grandchildren, and I would like a Mercedes – not a Cadillac. I am sure I will not be sitting on the furniture in any museums as I will still be working in mine. I am sure Lacy and I will take a few trips in our RV, but we will let Caroline drive. I will be a sweet loving grandmother who volunteers and writes blogs about her life.

But I am dead serious about the smoking.

Stupid things I have done

I've done plenty of dumb stuff in my life. I've also done plenty of stuff I am not proud of either. I won't talk about those things I am not proud of on here though. One reason is that my mother is still alive, and I'd like to keep her that way. The other is that Facebook would shut down because this blog would have so many hits. For now we can just stick with a few of the stupid things I have done while just rolling through life.

In high school the main building on our campus had four flights of stairs. While on the top floor I saw a boy at the bottom who I had been trying to impress. I tried my best to think of something cool to get his attention. I rolled out with, "Hey there!". He looked up at me and told me to come on down and talk to him. It had been raining so the stairs were slick and I slipped, twisted,and fell the entire way down all four flights.

At my freshman year of college you registered for class by filling out little bubbles on a sheet. I didn't bring my reading glasses to registration so my ass ended up in Air Force ROTC.

Clogs were never meant to be worn by real people. I was on the patio of the infamous JR's Lightbulb club and decided to go inside. One of my clogs broke and I fell down the steps. Thankfully there was a pool table to break my fall. I was on a date. A first date. There was no second date.

I was once arrested by campus security while on a date. He never called again.

Just because you think you know how to hook the jet ski trailer to your minivan and you tell your husband that damnit you do know how to hook the jet ski trailer to your minivan does not mean you really do know how to hook the jet ski trailer to your minivan. I drug that son of a bitch half way down State Line Avenue before I saw the sparks flying. I did have the safety chains attached so it really only weaved in my lane of traffic.

My assignment once when I worked for girl scouts was to make bath salts for a large group. I rounded up a list of ingredients and bought bags for the moms and girls to fill. Baking soda is a natural way to exfoliate your skin. Glycerin is a base for most soap. Yeah, I had girl scouts making bombs. I got calls for days about bags of bath salts exploding in cars, purses, and bathrooms.

Baking soda reacts with all kinds of crap. Never brush your teeth with baking soda toothpaste and then use your peroxide mouthwash. I was foaming at the mouth, and drinking water to get rid of it just made the whole damn experience worse. And no I wasn't in college, because this was about three years ago.

That means I will have many more years of material for this blog.

My Permanent Memory

When I was about seven I found a roll of money in my Grandmother’s top drawer.

When I was little my grandparents would spend half of the year in Tennessee on the farm and the other half in Florida. Sometimes on the way through Mississippi they would pick me up and I would ride with them in the RV. Well actually I would ride in that front part that was over the top and when I looked out the front window it felt like I was flying. Safety first. My Grandparents, Edith and Scott, lived next to Grandma’s sister and brother in Tennessee, and they also lived next to them in Florida. Aunt Ruby, Aunt Joyce, and Uncle Buster all lived within 2 blocks of each other in either location. I always thought it was normal.

I also always thought it was normal for your grandmother to have a small beauty parlor in her utility room. My Mamaw did. She was actually pretty hot shit in rural Tennessee in the 40’s and 50’s to be a woman who owned her own beauty parlor and beauty school. She just kept it as a hobby when she retired and moved down to Florida. Or so I thought.

Evidently Mamaw and Aunt Joyce were in business together in Florida because Aunt Joyce had a full blown salon in her garage. They had sinks, stations with mirrors, and a damn wall of dryers. Little old ladies would come in groups to get a wash, set, and curl on Thursdays and Fridays. They also gave permanents. Not some pansy assed perm; a PERMANENT. High and tight baby, high and tight. That place was hopping with Mamaw and Aunt Joyce working on all these ladies. Aunt Ruby, who had been a nurse in the Navy and a widow for 40 years, didn’t do hair. She was in charge of hospitality, or as she called it – “Visiting”. I would sit and watch all of these women talk and carry on for hours while I folded towels. Then that place would go silent at 11:00 when Young and the Restless came on T.V. I mean not a word for an hour. Mamaw must have been making money left and right in that shop in order to have all that cash in her drawer.

Until they got busted. Yes the po po came to shut down the illegal beauty shop in the retirement community. Evidently they didn’t have permit number one and sure as hell weren’t paying any tax. Aunt Joyce was mortified when they put police tape across the garage Uncle Buster had worked so hard to enclose for her. They also ranted and raved about who called in the tip. Some thought it was Pearl down the street. A real conspiracy theorist thought it was Aunt Garnett, although that got shot down pretty quick. They were madder than hell for a few weeks, and then they calmed down.

And started doing hair in Mamaw’s utility room instead…

As always thank you for reading my post. I hope you feel a little better about yourself…and your Mamaw.

Rotten

Are my kids spoiled? I usually run a pretty tight ship so normally my response would be no. Last weekend we spent 4 days on the lake. We have a ski boat and a fancy tube with enough room for all the kids, or so we thought. We also had our cousins and some friends as well so we added another tube. They said their legs and knees hurt, their tummies were being bounced around too much, and they wanted to be on the other tube. We let that go for one day and then hubs told them how it used to be...

"Grandpa and Uncle Larry drug us all over this lake on actual inner tubes. They were black and scalded your skin. We didn't have anything to hold on to, we just wrapped out arms around the whole tube and hoped for the best. There was a spout that would constantly spray water in your face and they used a ski rope to tie the tube so the handle slapped you in the head too. They drug us around buoys, stumps in the water, and skimmed us by the bridge pillars. THEY NEVER TURNED AROUND TO CHECK ON US. If you complained you were sent back to your hot assed tent. And all of this was done from a four foot wide Bass Tracker. No ski boat for us. WE LOVED IT!"

After this monologue, every kid stopped complaining. For about fifteen minutes.

On the way home they asked what we were doing the next weekend. I explained to them that when I was a kid we cleaned the house on the weekends, then we mowed the yard like it was the White House Garden. After that we might shovel gravel in the drive or mulch flower beds. In the fall we went to every Mississippi State football game. No tailgating, no visiting with friends like you enjoy. We would roll up to the game and listen to my Dad bitch about parking. Dad would hardly say a word and only stand up when it was third and long. Even then it was in silence with his arms crossed. Your Nana would scream nonstop for 4 quarters straight. Then on the way home we would listen to the post game commentary on the radio and listen to my Dad say,"Defense my aching ass!" Good Times!

My children enjoy weekends at the lake, football games with food, friends, and too much money to by them crap in both places. I would get a coke at the game and then had to take the plastic cup home since one of my sisters would need it in their apartment.

Next weekend I think I'll get a truck bed full of gravel for our driveway for the kids to shovel and spread. Our driveway is asphalt, but I think I'll just do it for shits and giggles.

The Schedule

Every morning I have certain rituals I like to go through before I start my day. If those rituals falter or change in any way, there is a chance I will be extremely bitchy slightly uncomfortable for the rest of the day. Here is my list and it goes like this….

The alarm on my iphone goes off and I quickly turn it off so as not to wake hubs. I truly try to not wake him on the days I run before dawn. I distinctly remember telling him many years ago that if he woke me up when he left to go hunting I would meet him at the door with a knife when he returned home. Or something sweet like that…

Once I put on my running shorts and multiple sports bras, I promptly check my email. I guess I think Michelle Obama will *finally* send me a message one day asking for fashion advice. I then move on to Facebook to see what happens in the world after 8:30 when I go to bed. By this time I am usually making my one cup of coffee with the same amount of fake sugar and skim milk every day. It NEVER changes, and I am just fine with that. Some people call it an obsessive rut. I like to refer to it as “tradition”.

This is where the plan sometimes falls apart. Take this morning for instance. I could not find a ponytail holder. My youngest daughter loves to keep a small arsenal of ponytail holders around her wrist at all times. I snuck into her room and gingerly removed one from her arm. I felt bad for taking the chance on waking her up, but at least my neck wasn’t so hot. Mother of the Year. Again.

My next dilemma was the toothbrush. I knew that if I ventured back into my bedroom and woke up hubs I might as well go sign a short term lease at the apartment complex down the street. My only option was to find a spare toothbrush in the other bathrooms. I found one that appeared to be fairly new and was not caked with hardened Spiderman toothpaste. Knowing how stuff goes down in my house, I had a feeling there was slight chance this toothbrush was not clean. Hell, there was a slight chance this toothbrush had been on the dog’s ass. Who am I kidding? I finally just dove into it and brushed my teeth with the hottest water I could stand. I grabbed my ipod, stretched my legs, and started to head out the door. That’s where the dog gave me a visual guilt trip for leaving him behind.

Or maybe he was just mad that I used his ass scratcher.