Filed under: Uncategorized
The problem with being me, is that late afternoon on a Saturday, I get hungry, and not for baby carrots or celery sticks. I want crap. I want cheap Great Value from Walmart barbeque potato chips. Or maybe sour cream and onion. And a mojito. Which I have, right there next to me on the table. It’s delicious. But it’s not cheap bbq or SC&O chips. Nothing takes the place of those, not even the small plate of dill triscuits and monterey jack cheese. Not even the hamburgers and tots being fixed up even as I type.
I get a haircut maybe twice a year, more likely once a year. It grows very slowly, and I like it to be long enough when I *do* get it cut that I have style options.
What generally happens, is that it gets long enough that I can pull it back in a band and a (sad, thin) ponytail, then I wake up one morning knowing that if I don’t get it cut THAT DAY I will cut it myself, and that never works out well.
Today was that day. At noon I reached critical mass, and called Sherry, begging an audience. “3:30″ she said. And so it was.
Terry gets very nervous when I announce the haircut is imminent. For some reason, he has it in his masculine mind that I am going to get my head shaved. I have never shaved my head. I have never even had it cut CLOSE to as short as his is. And yet, he starts to pace and say things like “I’m going to call Sherry and tell her how I want her to cut it” and “you know I don’t want you to have it shorter than mine”. As if I ever have.
What I find interesting is how my hair has changed over the years. It used to be platinum blonde and absolutely straight. When I started having children, it got darker, and Lady Clairol and I did our best to hide that. Then, about 7 years ago I became tired of the battle and quit coloring it, and discovered there was actually quite a bit of silver in there. Not grey,but a metallic silver…Cool! It also started curling, and now when I wear it short, it’s quite wavy/curly, and I love that! I can just sort of fluff it up when it’s wet, and leave it alone to dry in these crazy wavy curl things that look like…I don’t know….wavy curl things.
And now it is out of my face and off my neck and feels cool and wonderful and I don’t have to do ANYTHING to it!
Filed under: home and hearth, In The Garden, In The Southland | Tags: Life in the South
I wish Summer would hurry up and get here. Philosophically it is already Summer in these parts. That happens when you have to close the windows and turn on the air conditioner. Which happened the first of May, a full month earlier than I like. Really, mid-June would be ideal, but 90F+ days in early May, and a husband who likes his creature comforts (and he deserves them, because he works hard), and a constitution softened by life as a Precious, Precious Princess demanded that the interior household climate be held steady at 75F and low humidity.
A friend told me this:
“The pioneers did not have air conditioning. They all died.”
He may have a point there.
I have picked several nice batches of snow peas, and they’re about done and ready to be pulled up and replaced with climbing green beans. Burgundy beans, actually. The English peas are just starting to produce, and I was able to throw a good handful of just-picked ones in the wheat pilaf for supper. Supper also involved a salad made entirely of stuff from the garden: romaine lettuce, arugula, beet greens, and a wayward head of oak leaf lettuce found growing out in the yard. I have no idea how *that* got there, but there it was, and lovely too. The tomatoes are growing nicely, as are the peppers, eggplant, basil, and poona kheera cucumbers. Lest you get all impressed with the size of the garden, I have maybe 2 or 3 plants of most things, not whole rows. Except for the snow peas, English peas, and beets. It’s purely a hobby garden, not an attempt at feeding the family in some money-saving fashion. I’d like to do that, but the size of the spot that is sunny enough t grow things simply isn’t conducive..unless I were to dig up the rose bed and plant foodstuffs in there. But that will only happen when the Great Economic Collapse happens and we have to resort to picking chicory from the side of the road.
Anyway, Summer…right.
School is out in 2 weeks. No more toting people back and forth twice a day, no more requirement to get up at 5:30am…tho I probably will because I cherish the early morning hours with Terry, but not having to be showered and dressed by 7:30 will be sweet.
There are so many things about Southern Summers that I love. Afternoon thunderstorms that cool things off…or make the air so thick with humidity it’s like a hot, wet blanket thrown over your head. The chorus of tree frogs that start barking at dusk. And no, they do not chirp sweetly. They bark like dogs, answering each other back and forth so loudly it can interrupt a mint-julep enhanced conversation on the patio.
As a child, our house had an attic fan, and Summer nights meant open windows and the rhythmic thrum of the fan, forcing a breeze through an open bedroom window, cooling the house enough that a light blanket (mine was a flannel sheet with purple pansies printed on it, and bound in lavender satin tape) was sometimes needed.
What I wonder now, is what will Summers feel like once there are no children in the house, and it will no longer mean a change in routine? Will there still be a relaxed sensibility? Or will it just mean “same old thing, only hot”?
Filed under: family, Holidays!, home and hearth, Hooray!, oh you self indulgent hussy!, Rest and Relaxation | Tags: birthday, Kentucky Derby, NASCAR, Talladega
My parents came for a visit over the weekend. Friday was the 19th anniversary of my 27th birthday, and Mom went over-happy at the Antique Rose Emporium and brought 5 (!!) very old varieties of roses to put in my garden…I knew she was going to bring one, maybe 2, but apparently choosing was difficult so she got 5. She said she has trouble making decisions these days.
So anyway, we watched the Kentucky Derby and also the Nationwide NASCAR race at Talladega…and I was…well, let’s say flipping the channels back and forth between the 2 caused cognitive dissonance that was only alleviated by holding a beer in my left and and a mint julep in my right one. No boob-flashing tho, much to Terry’s disappointment.
Watching the Derby was fun. everyone sings My Old Kentucky Home at the start of it all, and the camera kept going to his very elegantly dressed woman in an enormous hat. She had expensively blonde hair, smeared lipstick, and seemed to be enjoying herself enormously. I suspect her fun was chemically enhanced by whatever was in the frosty silver cup she was holding. What a great race tho! Wow! Youtube it…Everyone was all like “oh, Bodemeister’s gonna win, we all know that blahblah There’s Bodemeister all in the front like we all expect blah blah” and the boom, right out of the middle of the pack comes this horse (I’ll Have Another) no one expected to do much and he blows past Bodemeister like he’s sitting there picking his horsey teeth. And it all happened about as fast as it took you to read my description right there.
Today we’re watching The Sprint Cup race at Talladega…wow what a fast track. 203 mph roaring around. I want to do that, or at least get a taste of it. In 3 years I’ll be 50, and the desire for this 50th birthday is to take the Richard Petty Driving Experience, and to get to drive a stock car. I love to drive, and I love to drive fast (much to Terry’s discomfiture) A couple of years ago, when I got Carmina (a red VW beetle convertible, the Sport Model with the Bigger Engine waahoo!) it was necessary to See What She Could Do, and learned that someone, in their infinite wisdom, decided a governor was required to keep perimenopausal women from scaring their husbands (much) while blasting down backroads in South Georgia at unreasonable speeds. Apparently 137mph is Fast Enough to German Engineers. It is also exhilarating, when the top is down. The RPDE will allow you to go up to 160, I think. That’s probably fast enough.
So, after watching the race (and the funny commercials), I’ll figure out where to plant the roses.
Oh, and for my birthday? Terry’s done all the cooking and cleaning 
Delicious food, too.
Filed under: Uncategorized
I got to watch a friend’s 3 yr old daughter for a couple of hours today.
Holy crow, the differences between boys and girls start early, don’t they!
When my boys were 3, they were picking up sticks and pretending to shoot each other, and sword fight, and trying to poke each other in the eye. And no, I didn’t have guns in the house then, nor did we watch violent movies or anything like that. It came naturally to them.
But this sweet little girl? Oh mah word.
The estrogen…it was…intoxicating.
I sat on the floor and she ‘painted’ my fingernails. “Blow them!” she said. “Like this!” and she showed me how.
Then she played with my hair. “Pink and red stripes! You look beautiful!” she said.
Then she announced it was time to dance. “Play a song!” she commanded. So I played Chopsticks, then a minuet by Mozart. She preferred Chopsticks and showed me how to dance like a bumblebee to it.
Eventually she required a fudgesicle, and absorbed it through the skin of her face and hands. Washing her off was easy, she knew just what to do. My boys never knew that, and considered water some sort of offence against them.
Someone had better get me a granddaughter. Not too soon, I’d like things to be done in the traditional order, but soon enough that I can still get in the floor to have my hair and nails done.
