Tis the Season

Ah, another holiday season. As I looked out the window of our office building yesterday it filled my heart with anger to see all those shoppers clogging up my commute home. Must they leave the mall at 5:00 when the rest of us schmucks who have worked all day just want to get home to some Christmas cheer?! Preferably cheer that comes from a bottle with a cork on top.

Speaking of shopping…. who are you people that drag your kids shopping with you? Have you never heard of a babysitter? Great idea bringing them along to clog up the aisles and of course we all love to hear you tell them no less than 1,000,000 times not to touch anything. Lady, if you’re going to bitch at them the entire time why not tie their hands to their thighs with duct tape? It would make the whole experience much more pleasant for the rest of us, not to mention cut down on the copious amount of germs they are undoubtedly spreading from their snot nose friends at school.

When did gift wrapping become advertising? These days stores want to charge you $12.00 to stick paper with their name all over it on your package. Give me the good old days of department store gift wrap departments. You know the ones with their generic boxes wrapped in hideous red and green paper on the wall. “I’d like this wrapped in #14 please” Truthfully, the only stores to get away with this shameless self promotion are Hermes, Tiffany’s and Cartier. Those are classics. Everyone knows the orange, blue or red box but these new guys need to keep their name off my boxes.

Also what is with stores that “run out” of boxes? You knew it was the holiday season. You sell merchandise that needs a box, yet you ordered enough for the first 50 customers? Short people on the giveaways, short them on service (which you do anyway by hiring kids who should have their high school diplomas ripped from their hands), short them on the hottest new toy (what would the season be without a few totally panicky parents) but don’t short them on boxes. Boxes are an essential part of gifts. Without them you have a wrinkly blob under the tree leading everyone to believe you wrap like a one handed chimp.

One way gifts. I am the first to jump at any fun stuff coming my way but I find it incredibly irritating when I get a gift from someone with which I have no relationship. This does not lead to good will. This leads to guilt and embarrassment and I have enough of that in my life. I do however accept these gifts because after all they went to the trouble. I’ll work it out in therapy later. The flip side of the one way gift coin is the “you are new to the family and I haven’t a clue what you like” side. Fun! I have trouble buying for people I know inside and out let alone someone I just met.

If you haven’t picked up on it yet I am gearing myself up to finish our Christmas shopping this afternoon. I thought if I ranted now I wouldn’t have any left when I hit the stores. Time (and the level of champagne left in the bottle in my fridge when I go to bed) will tell.

Another year older, another year closer to middle age.

Today is my birthday. My thirty sixth birthday to be exact. I am officially closer to 40 than 30 and although I sat and cried as 30 approached, I feel oddly at peace today. Carrie let me sleep in this morning and Isaac crawled in next to me to keep me warm until it was time to get up. Every time I stirred, I heard the soft thump thump of his tail on the comforter. Carrie’s dad woke me up to tell me happy birthday then my mother called as I was pouring my first cup of coffee to sing me Happy Birthday. I made the grave mistake of interrupting her midway through, prompting her to start all over again. Not wanting to endure hours of cheerful singing before I finished my first cup of coffee, I let her roll with it the second time. My co-worker brought me white cake with raspberry icing which is the best breakfast I could have hoped for on my birthday. She also brought me egg nog waffle mix and butter maple syrup. Yum! No, you cannot have her.

So far thirty six is proving to be quite nice. Sure I have had moments when inwardly I think, shit, soon I’ll start with hot flashes, night sweats, hormonal hell, ass sagging, wrinkle accumulation and everything else that comes with age but I’m thinking that is a longer ways off than I once believed. How foolish I was to begrudge aging. With age comes the realization that the older you get the more control you have over your life. Ah, the old control issue. But seriously, I can spend all day on a Sunday in my pajamas doing nothing but watching a Real World marathon and no one can tell me to get dressed. I can watch the entire Grammy Awards and count on one hand (maybe even half of that) how many bands I’ve actually heard of let alone name one of their songs. I officially listen to the oldie station now and can sing along to any Rick Astley tune they play. “Never gonna give you up, never gonna make you cry…” Take that Nickelback! Sure, I still look at current fashion trends and think I wish I were young enough to wear that, but I had my time. Remember boxer shorts over leggings and rubber bracelets? Thank you Madonna. Glad to see you grew out of it also.

The best thing I have received this birthday was a card from Carrie. Yes, she gave me a wonderful, beautiful gift also but this card. This card, this card. Every once in awhile someone gives you a card that is worded so perfectly it brings tears to your eyes. The moment I read her card, standing in our kitchen in my nightgown with barely enough caffeine in my system to function, I realized that I have found someone to grow old with. That makes the aging pill a little less difficult to swallow.

It’s Not What You Think Moment

It started out with my co-worker innocently fishing for a birthday/Christmas gift to get me. A couple of probing questions that I answered without much thought, then later as I am standing outside his office at the copier he asks me; “Have you ever tried Opium?”

I wasn’t entirely sure why he was asking except that he recently had surgery so I immediately piped up with; “Yes. It was prescribed to me once. Belladonna. Good stuff.”

He looked at me. He looked at me harder then said; “I was talking about the perfume.”

Oh, that Opium. The one they sell without a prescription. I thought you said “opiate”.

Winston

I think we knew something was wrong when he didn’t come home Sunday night but Carrie and I never imagined the worst. We kept telling each other that, although out of character, in his younger days Winston sometimes went out catting around for a day or so then showed up on the front porch singing for his supper.

Last night while I walked our street, flashlight in one hand, shaking a can of Pounce in the other, our neighbors informed me that another neighbor down the street found our kitty, Winston dead in a driveway on Sunday morning. He was on the losing end of a fight with a wild animal. Sobbing I knocked on the man’s door who found him to ask if he still had Winston. He took him to the SPCA, not knowing it was our cat without a collar to identify him. We tried in the past to get Winston to wear a collar. Early attempts resulted in his getting it halfway off with his bottom jaw stuck until someone got home and helped. Then we tried break away collars which he learned very quickly are easy to break away.

My heart is heavy today. I am sad. I am angry. I want to go home and curl up in a ball and take a nap but I know I will only miss his insistent meowing to wake up and feed him yet again. I will miss the thump of his paws hitting the cabinet each morning when he jumped up to eat. I will miss the dramatic way he would rear up with paws flat on the glass door asking to come in. I would give anything to have him sit next to me on the couch kneading my legs and purring despite the fact that in the past this behavior often sent me over the edge.

I am sure this is all too dramatic for a cat but I really don’t care right now. I am sure I will be better tomorrow and better still the next day but again I don’t care right now. Right now I want to mourn my cat. I want to miss him. I want to cry. If he’s up there in Heaven and I know he is I want him to know he was loved and missed.

Pandora’s Pill Box

Went to my GP today to see if he could give me something to help me sleep and take the edge off my anxiety. I really didn’t think this was such a big deal in this day and age of a medication for everything and everyone on medication. I hadn’t been to this particular doctor for years choosing instead to hit the local clinic around the corner for common colds and the like. He was my GP through Junior High and High School as well as my grandfather’s doctor after he moved to Houston. In fact, this is the man who had my grandfather briefly committed to a psych ward. How would you like to put that on your family medical history?

He tells me he doesn’t want to prescribe anything until I have seen the psychologist upstairs because he doesn’t want to give me something that in six months we realize wasn’t correct. Okay, but all I really want is something to help me sleep. We’re not talking Lithium or Haldol here just a mild sleep aid. His nurse called the man upstairs and sets me up to go back at 1:30 to see him. The whole thing was starting to have a dream like quality at this point.

I go back at 1:30 sit down with the shrink and let him know I am having trouble sleeping. I haven’t always. In fact, I used to sleep like the dead. He wants more. Do I have mood swings? Yes, but again this not a new thing. Do I drink? Yes, socially and we are very social animals. Family history of depression? Yes, several members, almost too many to count, are currently taking one antidepressant or another. Appetite? Yes, too much of one as a matter of fact, which is one reason I do have to be depressed. Do I think I’m overweight? No, I think I weigh as much now as I did when I finished my first semester of college and quite frankly it sucks. On and on the questions went. Where did we live? Why did my parents divorce? What are their moods like?

At the end of the forty minute speed session he tells me he can’t make a diagnosis without more information. He thinks I may not be a black and white case of bipolar disorder but clearly my universal reference points are skewed. Why is it I have friends who have been prescribed Lexapro, Zoloft, Paxil, Ambien and everything else under the sun when they’ve gone to their doctor with similar problems but I feel like I’m being led by the nose towards a padded room? I just want to sleep but now I’ll have to lie awake wondering if I do in fact have a gray case of bipolar disorder although I know damn well I don’t.

Maybe I think too much but somthings wrong.......

I’ve been putting off this post for a few days. In fact, I’ve gone over and over it a million times in my head. What do I want to say? What am I feeling? My emotions are all over the map. A friend called Friday night at 12:30 a.m. She was at a bar with her husband and had run into another friend that we haven’t spoken to since March and the last correspondence received was back in July. Friend A was calling to tell us Friend B is now engaged.

The call only lasted about 5 minutes but I’ll be damned if I didn’t lay there in bed for another hour, staring into the dark, thinking how hurt my feelings were that I learned this from a third party. I thought of things we have done together in the past; vacations, sitting by the pool with a stash of cheesy entertainment rags, going out, staying in, births, deaths, holidays and camping trips. I was overwhelmed with sadness that we no longer qualify as friends you would call with news of an engagement.

Quickly I moved on to the why emotions, then the anger and now it’s just this resolve that I/we have been dismissed. Erased. I know this is all part of life, growing together, growing apart but does it have to hurt so bad when it happens? Maybe I am making a bigger deal of it than I should. Can you really be that close to someone you haven’t seen since last December, spoken to since March and e-mailed since July? If you asked me right now I would say no, but give me another few minutes to get back on my emotional roller coaster then ask me.

Let Me Call You Sweetheart

Yesterday was the anniversary of my grandfather’s death. I did not remember, terrible as I am with dates but my mother reminded me this morning. It was three years ago, on a Friday and my mother called me at the office to tell me to come by the hospital on the way home. I didn’t even know he was in the hospital. I was still getting over the sudden death of my father’s father who died on the 8th. I also didn’t take it too seriously when my mother said this may be the end. Maybe I didn’t want to believe it or maybe I just couldn’t fathom another loss so soon.

Carrie came with me to the hospital. He was in the hospice ward. If you’ve never been in one, hope you never will. They tried to dress it up like a park. A porch swing with fake vines crawling up lattice behind it sat in the hallway. It was a nice gesture but plastic greenery on hospital walls makes the whole experience somehow sadder than the sterile white of a regular ward.

I was not prepared. I don’t think anyone could be prepared for what we saw. My grandfather unconscious with one leg cocked at the knee, every breath rattling like bubbles in a fish tank. I lasted approximately half a minute before running to the porch swing, reduced to great heaping sobs. My mother said she was staying the night. I told her I couldn’t. I don’t have the constitution to watch a loved one die. So I went out and got as drunk as I could. I woke up the next morning to the sound of my mother leaving me a message on our answering machine that he died.

I don’t think about those minutes at the hospital when I think of him. I think of how he always slept under an electric blanket. When I would stay with him I would crawl in under the blanket with him and we would watch The Odd Couple together, laughing our hearts out. He was obsessed with a bargain, clipping coupons weeks ahead of my visits so we could walk to Peoples Drugstore to buy twenty four packs of toilet paper on sale. It was one per customer so I would stand in line by myself with my money and coupon then wait for him to make his purchase after me. When we returned to his apartment we would have to wrestle the new purchases into the hall closet filled to the brim with past bargains.

He loved horse racing. Anyone who knows me and reads this knows that his love for the races is alive and well in my mother and me. The day that Secretariat won the Triple Crown my grandfather and my uncle were there at the finish line. At my grandfather’s funeral I couldn’t help but smile at the horseshoe shaped arrangement covered in Blackeyed Susans. He and Margo, my grandmother, had taken one of there friends to The Preakness Stakes. They were sitting at a table when my grandfather saw some friends of his from the liquor distributing business. He went and chatted with them for a moment then came back to the table and told his friend he had arranged for him to watch the race from the finish line.

My grandfather loved life. He loved cocktail hour, pretty women, dirty jokes and music. One of my favorite photos of us is me sitting in his lap, both of our mouths opened in song. We were performing for anyone in the room. It is a song we sang countless number of times to countless people at countless gatherings. The tune is from “Let me call you sweetheart, I’m in love with you…” but we are singing about a Chevy. “Let me call you Chevy, I’m in debt for you…” I have no idea where this version came from. I don’t know if he made it up or heard it somewhere, but he taught me every word and I loved sitting on his lap and belting out the words, my screechy eight year old voice competing with his.

Wherever he is now he is sipping a tumbler of Scotch, telling dirty jokes to anyone who will listen and singing. One day I will stand at his side and we will do it together but for now I will make due with seeing his face in my own features when I look in the mirror.

Harder Than a Rubik’s Cube to Figure Out

When I brought the mail in yesterday I was so excited to see cards and a letter mixed in with the junk mail. I opened the cards first as they were addressed to Carrie and me and that way I could read them then pass them on. The letter was, curiously, addressed only to me. More curious was the name and return address was no one I recognized. I opened it thinking it was a piece of mass mail that was printed to look like a hand written letter.

No. Not exactly. It was a letter from a girl I went to high school with apologizing for mean things she said to me SEVENTEEN years ago. She wrote that recent events led her to think about what she did and she wanted to apologize in case she hurt me. I was more than a little shook up. For starters how was I supposed to remember her amongst the 500 or so other students who taunted me in high school? I was the class reading-while-walking-open-about-my-homosexuality outcast. Maybe if she’d poured pig’s blood on me at the prom I would remember her but saying a few ugly comments isn’t going to stick out.

I couldn’t let it go. Who was this person? I got on classmates.com. No photo but her name listed under my high school did confirm that she indeed go to my high school. I googled her. I image googled her. I looked through archives of the local paper by her maiden and married name. No luck. Finally, I called her. She seemed a little shocked that I was calling. I guess other victims of her apologies have received the letter and moved on with their lives in silence feeling warm and fuzzy inside.

I wanted to know what she said back then but she never let on and I was too chicken to ask. What happened isn’t really what’s bothering me. It’s the fact that I can’t even conjure up the slightest guess as to who she is or what she looks like. Or how she got my address for that matter. That’s a lie. I am dieing to know what happened but am also too afraid to ask for fear that memories of my four hellish years of high school will come rushing back. I lived through them once. I don’t think I could do it twice. Still, I’m going to have to find my yearbooks and look her up because the suspense is killing me.

When Nothing is Black and White Anymore

First came the knowledge that I need to wear magnifying glasses at work and while reading. Then to add insult to injury I am washing my hands at the sink this morning and what do I see? A gray strand of hair staring back at me. Anyone who knows me will ask, how did you see it through the highlights? To this I say, it’s been since July since my last touch up and gray hair stands out against dark roots. Ugh!

I dug out a tuft of hair and separated the offending strand. Pluck! There in my hand was my first gray hair. I held it up to light, turning it this way and that, making sure it was indeed what I thought it was before I rushed out of the bathroom to tell my coworker. She hated to point out with the recent recommendation of glasses and now a gray hair it is time I face my aging. Ugh!

I came back in my office to call my mother. I’m not sure why since she is still laughing and calling me four eyes. She seems to take great pleasure in my age anxiety. This little tidbit of news started her laughing all over again as I sat there on the phone holding up the hair to anything black in my office, willing it to be blond not gray. Mother reminded me that when I was four years old or so she would sit on the floor in front of the couch while we watched television and I would scour her head plucking any gray hair I found. Well now it’s her turn.

The symbol of my rite of passage now rests in an envelope in my desk. I thought about labeling it in the event anyone goes looking for an envelope to send correspondence to an unsuspecting client but I couldn’t think of label that wasn’t too weird. “Jacqui’s First Gray- Do Not Open”. “Personal and Not So Confidential-Do Not Touch”. I’ll need to throw it away before days end but I’m just not ready. First I’m going to call my hairdresser and make an appointment to get these roots done. Any longer and who knows how many of the suckers I’ll find.

Dilateus Permanitis

Yesterday I went to the eye doctor for the first time EVER. It was a bit like Disney World in that they are constantly moving you from one room to another so you never quite feel like you’re being made to wait. I almost cried when they put the numbing drops in my eye (BEFORE THEY TOUCHED IT!) but I didn’t which I had to remind Carrie of lest she feel the need to further cement everyone’s view of me as a wimp.

I was dreading this appointment because no matter what routine exam I’m going to have I invent 100 different freak accidents that could occur. So when the doctor was walking us to the counter and I asked if anyone’s eyes have ever stuck this way, it was no wonder she looked at me a bit cross eyed.

“Like how?”

“You know. Dilated. They never went back to being undilated.”

“No. Not to my knowledge.”

What you don’t see in the above exchange is the completely mortified look on Carrie’s face that I asked the question or the look of sympathy the doctor gave her when she revealed that I was indeed serious.

Tootsie Roll Pups

I walked in today to find the equivalent of a Labrador Kegger. First were the guilty faces staring back at me. Then, barely visible over the brown and blond fur, an EMPTY brownie pan. Blood pressure: Elevated. One step into the sun room revealed what was left of THE UNTOUCHED BY HUMAN HANDS pound cake that last I saw it was resting nicely on the kitchen counter this morning. Blood pressure: High. To add insult to injury when I rounded the corner there on the bathroom floor, as if they were looking for a tissue to wipe their choclately, sugary snouts, were the contents of the bathroom trash can. Blood pressure: Somewhere over the rainbow.

As a side note, the photos you are about to see in NO way absolve my dog from guilt. He's just too stupid to look at me with a guilty face!

LBD

She's sleek and a vixen. My girlfriend and my dog love her but who loves her the most? Her mother who has to keep herself from calling in any 24 hour period to ask how she's doing. Our answer has always been the same: "She's fine. Driving Isaac crazy. Kicking all of the pillows off the couch. Well, tonight we all say see for yourself......































































































Ed would be proud of the last two. I am personally jealous of how good she looks in my fur wrap. See you next week.
J, C & C

The Ranch

Carrie and I go to the ranch almost every weekend. We have been doing this for almost the past two years. It is a place full of everything. Hope: every sunrise brings the promise of a new day and an unsurpassed view of cattle waking to the new day to begin to graze. Anticipation: each calf crop brings with it the excitement of speckled babies bedded down in the grass as new mothers stand guard nearby. Love: the love we bring for each other to this environment as well as the love of animals who trust you to feed them and scratch them behind the horns now and then. Trust: they trust us to care for them, we trust them to provide that love mentioned above. Dread: when a calf falls ill and you spend the following days hoping it will make it through. Thanks: for the rain, for the wind, for a cloud covering the beating sun, for fresh air, for the ability to bask in the joy that is the ranch. Regret: I would love to say there is none but at times we all think we waited too late or did too little. As a part of human nature and mother nature I feel the need to include regret although we all try not to dwell on the past. The ranch is the circle of life in its purest, most basic form and every Friday night I am hopeful, full of anticipation, in love, and trusting there will be no dread or regret. If there is I accept that it is the circle of life and we all have to sit back and enjoy what we can. There is also sharing. Share in my experience with the photos below:

Who Is That Masked Girl?

We are heading out of town this afternoon (again). We worked half the cows on the ranch last weekend saving the really mean ones for this weekend. I thought I should pick up on this blog again since after tomorrow I may be short an arm from one of them slinging their heads in a tight space making future blogging highly unlikely.

Carrie had four new tires put on her car yesterday. She had taken it in for a routine tire rotation and balancing. Routine for A-type anal retentive people like her, rare occurrence for change your oil only when told to people like me. They called to tell her all of her tires had splits in the sidewalls and would need to be replaced. I immediately attributed this to her careless, break neck speed, driving but apparently it was just a defect. The tire man did say however that it could have been really dangerous if she had had a blow out. “Really dangerous” because we would have been going 95 to 100 miles per hour. That is miles per hour not miles per day.

This very scenario is what I think about for two hours and fifteen minutes every weekend on the way to and from the ranch. I imagine the sound of the blow out and then my life flashing in front of my eyes in my final moments. My stomach is a hard ball of wax the entire trip, flipping and turning circles. Carrie says there’s medication for my condition. In lieu of medication she and Alison have also suggested putting a dog mask on my face for the duration of the trip that they found in, thank you, Bark magazine.

Young at Heart

Striking Her Silent

From time to time our office receives marketing, promotional items from companies that we deal with. Today we received two large golf umbrellas. My first thought was we could pass these along to a couple of clients who play golf regularly. Then for no reason at all I started thinking that having an umbrella that large on a golf course on a wide open fairway is like having your own personal lightening rod.

Only once have I been on a course when it started raining and all teams were brought inside to the cart barn to wait out the thunder and lightening. I was part of a foursome which included Carrie and two of our best friends at the time. None of us are all that spectacular at golf but our bags contained a full bar so we were happy. After a few minutes of sitting around waiting everyone was getting restless.

The caddy for the course insisted that we did not want to go back out until all threat of lightening was gone. He went so far as to say that a lightening strike was how he lost his own leg. Not one to be taken advantage of easily, one of my teammates told him “Suuure you did. Prove it.” He promptly pulled up one pants leg on his coveralls revealing a metal prosthesis. She turned as red as the Bloody Mary she had been sipping and didn’t say another word. Back on the course we could hear her muttering to herself every time she teed off “Suuure you did. Prove it. Ugh!”

Times They are a Changin’

My sister turns 9 on Sunday (if you don’t know already she is my half sister and there are 27 years between us). My parents are having what they refer to as the family party that day and then on the ninth she will have another slumber party. The family party consists of my father, my stepmother, my grandmother and me. Sometimes I think he separates the two so he can have two cakes. I feel for my stepmother because my father tends to go a little overboard every year. Year before last he planned make overs, panning for gold, swimming, make your own pizza, and movies among other things as activities for the slumber party. Are kids that much more difficult to entertain these days? When I was ten I had a slumber party but all we did was eat pizza and sit around giggling. No make up, no panning for gold, no swimming. Last year it was rock climbing then swimming then on to the house for cake and ice cream before the slumber party started.

I called her Monday night to see what she wants for her birthday. Last year it was Neopets. If you don’t know, look them up. They are these creepy Pokeymon looking things with the weirdest names and they are hard to find. This year she tells me that she has made a list of movies for family members to buy her. Her friends it seems have another list. So I asked which movies. My dad maintains the family gift list so he got on the phone and gave me the following:

“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”

“The original?” I ask.

“No the new one”

“Shaggy the Dog”

“The original?” I ask again.

“No the new one”

At this point I am beginning to see a pattern and I can honestly say I do not like it very much. These are classics! I guess much like everything else her generation needs more special effects to enjoy. What are we teaching them by over sating their desire to be entertained? I can’t help but think that imagination is going to be loser in the long run.

Lend Me Your Ear

Love Letter

Dear Nola,

Sorry to have not written sooner. It’s not that I’ve forgotten you but things have been crazy here this last year. Just after tragedy befell you, we dodged a bullet of our own. I thought of you as we awaited Rita’s visit. We knew we would probably lose power so we started cooking everything in the refrigerator in preparation. I was able to throw together your famous barbeque shrimp. Knowing what it is like to evacuate via water, we blew up all of our pool floats just in case the boats took awhile to get to us again. In the end our preparations were all for naught as Rita chose to visit our neighbors in the East instead.

I am thinking of visiting again for my birthday. I miss your food, your music and your culture. I want to wake up to sounds of laughter outside my window from people intoxicated on your never ending entertainment. I want to sit at Café Du Monde licking sticky, sweet powdered sugar from my fingers. I have thought of having Central Grocery UPS me muffalettas but know that eating them on a bench in Jackson Square cannot be beat. Later maybe we’ll stuff ourselves on oysters at Desire. Last time I visited the shucker behind the counter kept them coming until we finally surrendered, unable to eat another bite.

When I get there can you arrange street musicians to welcome me? In particular make sure the little boy who always stood outside of the drug store in the Quarter is there playing his spoons. Oh how I love to watch him dance and play. If he’s not available don’t worry, I’ll take any jazz or Dixieland band you can find. I promise to be generous with my tips.

I hope the weather is nice because I am really looking forward to strolling through Audubon Park and visiting the zoo. I heard how the animals were lonely for awhile so I am ready to lend them my ear for a few hours at least. When we leave we’ll be taking the streetcar from the Garden District back to the Quarter. I hope that it too is up and running.

Nola, do you remember the time Mom and I brought Uncle Phippy for Mardi Gras? I remember sitting on her shoulders screaming “Mister, throw me some beads”. I remember standing in line at Popeye’s to get free chicken with the doubloons we caught. Mother and I still laugh about her forgetting I was on her shoulders and grabbing at beads on the ground. I thank God that police officer grabbed me before I was crushed by a float.

Now I know you think I have lived in Texas so long I have all but abandoned you but I assure you my roots stretch from my home here in Houston to Zachary, Daddy’s birthplace, to Baton Rouge, the city of my own birth and right to your doorstep. To me you are a bloom on a big Magnolia. Your petals may be a bit bruised and brown by last year's events but you still smell just as sweet. I’ll see you soon.

Love,
Jacqui

Special Delivery

My magazine arrived yesterday and by the way it did come in a slender, brown cardboard box stuffed full of Holly, Bridget and Kendra. No identifying marks on the return address. No averting my eyes from the mailman every time I see him. First thing I did was plop down on the couch with my magazine on my lap. I was awed by the sheer masculinity of it all, the ads, the music and movie reviews and obviously the pictures. I think the last time I looked at a Playboy magazine I had taken it from the stack my father had under his bed. Safely locked in the bathroom at my grandmother's house, I did a comparison study between my flat as a board body and the buxom blonds. This time I read the articles.

Ghosts of Friendships Past

Old friends have been visiting me in my dreams. It has happened a few times the past week. I have been racking my brain to figure out what is triggering these visits. Am I repressing a need to relive my past and that need gets its only release when I lose consciousness? I wouldn’t mind so much if these dreams didn’t leave me with the most profound sense of loss the next day when I realize that I truly miss them.

My first ghost was the girl I called my “best friend” for years. Back when everyone had a “best friend”. Back when we weren’t too old to use the expression “best friend”. We met when I was thirteen after she stole my boyfriend and formed a close friendship that continued until I was twenty-five at which point we grew apart. Occasionally we call each other and catch up but ever increasing amounts of time have been wedging themselves between those calls. Before long I fear we will only see each other at funerals. What I miss about her is how well she knew me. It was a bond that had no need for verbal communication.

My second ghost was the opposite. We met when I began seeing Carrie eight years ago and for the first year she didn’t like me. It is always hard when your friends break up to see someone replace one partner or the other and besides, I am not the easiest person to get to know. Our friendship moved in baby steps until eventually we arrived at a comfortable spot. She has a wit that awes me and a sense of style I always envied. We didn’t so much grow apart as she went in a new direction. A journey she didn’t want to take too many of us from her past on with her. I miss her and the little ones she brought into this world. I consider calling but feel disappointed when we make plans that are canceled or changed or only promised that I shield myself from the possibility. Instead I wait to see them in a store or at a restaurant or any number of places you run into people in passing. If I never see them again at least they are visiting in my dreams and I guess that will just have to do for now.

Weekend Wonders

The Bull Pen

Missing Fatty Lumpkin

Our New Flock

Snakes in the Water

It is too hot these days to do any big projects at the ranch. Lately we’ve been thinking of a couple of small things that need to be done, things that don’t take too much effort in the broiling sun. This weekend one of our projects was to remove the hay ring that has been sticking out of the pond for the past two months. I was selected to perform the task because I am a veteran in pond retrievals having recovered a skull from its murky water this time last year.

With no rain and the pond at a record low, the water is a greenish brown that you absolutely cannot see an inch into. I stepped in wearing my rubber boots, took a few steps then panic rose in a giant wave inside me. I ran back to Carrie who was waiting on the banks saying, “I can’t do it, I’m scared.” She gave me sufficient encouragement that I entered the water again. This time I tried to throw a ratchet strap with a hook on the end from about three feet away. Instead of hooking the ring, I released the whole thing watching as the strap sank from the weight of the metal hook. Turning around Carrie informed me that now I would be expected to get the sunken strap out as well. I once again retreated to the dry bank to regroup.

My third time in the water I reached the hay ring. The water was up to my chest and I was shaking from fear. My rubber boots were full of nasty water and all I could think was in a second I am going to feel something crawling into my boot. I grabbed the hay ring and started to rock it towards me trying to get it to roll along the muddy bottom. When the first couple of inches were exposed, on the other side of the ring, there were two snakes coiled around the metal staring directly at me. I began running for the banks screaming “SNAKES IN THE WATER! SNAKES IN THE WATER!”, while Carrie for her part started laughing so hard I thought she would pass out.

It took me two more attempts to shake off my fear and the snakes but eventually the task was accomplished. I don’t know if there is any truth to “they’re more afraid of me than I am of them” but at least they had the decency to swim away from me after uncoiling. If anything else goes in that pond it’s going to have to stay there. I am not tempting fate another time.

Hello from Kampala!

We are opposites. She has a creativity and talent for writing I have never processed. She would write my grandfather poetry books that she illustrated herself with colorful paintings sharing the pages with her words. She is quiet at family gatherings while I consume too much wine and debate with the others. She graduated Princeton last month with highest honors from her department. Five mentions in the official programs. Five! All were properly tagged by her mother for easy identification.

I called her last month to say congratulations on her graduation and to see what we could buy her as a gift. She had not sent out announcements because she doesn’t like to be the center of attention. A friend told me on the phone yesterday when I told her about the lack of any formal announcement, “If I had graduated from Princeton I would have taken an ad out in every newspaper in the nation.” No doubt I would have done the same. That congratulatory phone call was my first real conversation with her. During the call I realized that I had let jealousy come between us for all of these years. I wanted to impress my grandfather the way she did. She in turn wanted to be close to my grandmother the way I am.

She asked for a water bottle to carry fresh water in because she was leaving for Uganda to work with the CDC and World AIDS Organization for a year beginning August. We bought her two and a couple of shirts that are supposed to keep the sweat away from your body. It was more than she asked for but again she is the type who won’t ask. She and I agreed that once she was overseas she would e-mail me every month. I would print them out and mail them to grandmother who refuses to get e-mail and make it easy on us all to stay in touch.

Today I received her first e-mail. Hello from Kampala! is the subject. There was a mix up with her fellowship while she was in Spain hiking the week before she flew to Uganda. It seems the CDC no longer has the funds to employ her but they are working that out so she can stay. While they work it out, she is exploring the city. There are women in brightly colored African dresses carrying plantains and tomatoes and storks which are as common as squirrels resting on top of her apartment building. She feels full of color and sound at the end of each day. I in turn feel full of pride and love for this cousin I have neglected for far too long.

Reaching an All Time Reality Low

Friday night, as we sat around with a group of friends visiting, the conversation turned to guilty television pleasures. One most unexpected revelation from a friend was her obsession with Dog the Bounty Hunter’s recent wedding. Should she watch the wedding or Rock Star Supernova? Rock Star won out on the logic that the Dog episode would likely be replayed soon. Other favorites among friends included Lock Down: Life in Maximum Security, American Idol, Big Brother All Stars and Intervention.

Feeling safe with the conversation I put it out there that I am obsessed with The Girls Next Door, the reality show chronicling the lives of Hugh Heffner’s three girlfriends Holly, Bridget and Kendra. So much so that I had Carrie DVR all new episodes in the event I miss one and consequently don’t know what’s going on the next week. Carrie groaned when I admitted this but was soon comforted in the sympathizing faces of our friends that she has to put up with me at all.

Last night was an all new episode centered on The Girls second photo shoot for Playboy. I know you would think there would be more but apparently dating Hef doesn’t get you too much special treatment. So I’m watching thinking I must have that issue of the magazine. Why? Not sure but it must have something to do with my absolute fascination with these girls who live with a man my grandfather’s age and seem to really love him. It is a fascination I can’t quite explain myself but it is what it is and I am positive it won’t last like my fascination with all things Asian didn’t last. This obsession is so much more tawdry than wanting to learn calligraphy and wear a kimono. At the end of the episode I found myself online at Playboy.com ordering the upcoming issue. Oh how I hope that sucker comes in a brown paper wrapper.

When The Mind Takes An Unannounced Vacation

A good friend is having to care for her mother who in addition to a stroke is now suffering dementia. I speak to her every morning and my heart goes out to her as she recounts the previous evening’s events. Fortunate to have parents that are very young, I have not idea what it feels like to care for one of them. What her stories have brought to mind however is memories of my grandfather when dementia settled inside his head like an unwelcome visitor. One who moves all of your furniture and places things out of reach where no amount of searching yields the desired object.

Before we knew Parkinson Disease was taking a neurological toll, we assumed he had gone a little nuts. Common variety craziness is what we thought. He had other thoughts. For a long time he was convinced of the knowledge that the FBI was after him. His crime? Transporting a typewriter over state lines. You didn’t know it was a illegal did you? It’s not. The trash men? My father sent them to spy on him. Why? Not sure since my parents had been divorced for nine years at this point. The smoke detectors in his apartment? Listening devices. He would call the apartment manager to ask that she do something about the residents upstairs who were so obviously spies sent to listen in on his conversations via the smoke detectors.

The first time Carrie met him he showed her his emergency kit. He kept it nearby in the event he had to flee at a moments notice. Inside were the essentials; clean underwear, clean socks and lottery tickets. Yep! He was going to run away from home with nothing but underwear, socks and lottery tickets.

Eventually it became clear that he could not live alone so my mother moved him in with her. She would wake up to him crawling in the dark into her room to let her know “they were out there”. A few times he actually got out the front door before she woke up and convinced him to come back inside to safety. We laugh about it now. Not because it wasn’t serious but because sometimes life throws stuff your way you can’t do a damn thing about. It sucks and you find yourself mourning a person who is living and breathing right in front of you but you know it’s not really them. What was that line in Steel Magnolias? Laughter through tears.

A Conversation I Would Have Never Had Prior to Turning 30

Her: "You're hungry already?"

Me: "Yes, I'm starving. What are we eating tonight?"

Her: "You have worms."

Me: "I know but not the good kind because I'm not losing any weight!"

Happy New School Year

The Yorktown News View and the Schulemberg Sticker both published school supply list this week for returning students. What joy it gave me to read through the lists and remember how much I loved buying supplies for back to school. Spiral notebooks with their covers and pages clean. Ready to be filled with class notes, doodles and notes to friends when I should have been paying attention. The smell of No. 2 pencils being sharpened. Brand new colored pencils standing at attention in the yellow Crayola box.

One year my mother bought me a folder with a picture of Nadia Comaneci on the front doing a back bend on a balance beam. Oh how I coveted that folder. Unlike the others that sported stains and drawings, this one remained perfect the entire school year. In fact I saved it for years in my closet. Nothing it in just sitting on a shelf like a shrine.

School supplies embodied hope for a new beginning every year. It was a do over wrapped up in a three ring binder. This year I will make friends. This year I will try playing a sport. This year I will make all A’s. How could I fail with all of these tools at my disposal? Most school years ended the same. I didn’t make many new friends because I was too afraid to make the first move. I tried a couple of times to play a sport always with the same disastrous conclusion. As for the all A’s, never did happen until my fourth year of college. Still I look at these lists of school supplies for kids I will never know and I think how lucky they are to be getting a do over once again.

The Jury’s Still Out

I don’t know about anyone else, but from time to time I read a book and so relate to the character it feels as if I have found the missing link in our family tree. My long lost twin. You get the idea. So this weekend I started ‘Just Checking ~ scenes from the life of an obsessive compulsive” by Emily Colas and I am starting to have that old familiar feeling.

She:
Worries incessantly about contracting any and every illness.
Won’t eat out for fear someone has slipped drugs into her food.
Drives her husband nuts with her constant worry.

Me:
Have at one time or another believed I have a brain tumor, breast cancer, lung cancer, among other life threatening illnesses.
Will eat out but don’t like my foods to touch on the plate (not one word about "what do you think it does in your stomach?").
Drive Carrie crazy with the fact that if we leave through the front door I MUST click the handle THREE times to make sure it is locked, cannot sleep at night without asking if she has set the alarm (I’ve been really working on this one), and am always touching the tips of my thumbs to each finger's tip then first knuckle. Once the finger tapping has begun it MUST go one full round (all five fingers) then back the opposite direction. Stopping, I am certain, would be fatal.

I am beginning to believe I have OCD but can’t decide if it I really do or if it is just another imagined illness. Hmmm?

Over The Ledge

My father has at last finished his novel. I finished reading it last night. The really fun thing about reading his book is that I recognize so many of the characters. One in particular was almost my stepmother until she went completely nuts. We’re talking about loony bin nuts here. I won’t mention her name but bear with me while I tell you my favorite episode. The three of us, my father, me and Nutso, packed up for a weekend at Aquarina Springs in San Marcos. It is no longer there but if you visited it as a child you remember it well. There was the old west depot with the dusty saloon that housed the tic-tac-toe playing chickens. You would put a quarter in the slot then push the square you wanted for your X on and the chicken would scratch a square in response. I was much too young to suffer the humiliation that should come from losing to a chicken so this was one of my favorite games. You could also dress up in old west style clothes and take a sepia tone photo next to the long bar. I have one of these to this day that shows my father smiling in a confederate soldier uniform with me sitting on a saddle mounted on a saw horse next to him in bar maid garb, my right hand pointing a small pistol to the sky. In addition to the wonders of the old west there was Ralph the swimming pig and glass bottom boats. Ah, the fun.

So we get to Aquarina Springs and I am busting a gut to get to the chicken. First we check into the hotel and that is when all hell broke loose. I was sent to the bathroom and told not to come out until my father told me. I could hear them arguing so I laid my cheek against the cold tile and tried peeking beneath the door. No going. The room had carpet that elevated over the tile bathroom floor. I made an individual pot of coffee since really there isn’t much else to do sitting in a bathroom by oneself. At last my father opened the door and said let’s go glaring at Nutso sitting on the bed crying.

My father and I exited the building hand in hand when we heard our names being called. We turned around to see if it was someone behind us. No, no one there, but why is everyone looking up? Leaning over the ledge yelling our names was Nutso telling us to look so we could see her jump. My father sprinted back into the hotel as I stood there contemplating if I had enough quarters to get in a couple of mean games of tic-tac-toe before anyone noticed I was gone. I ended up waiting in the lobby watching hotel staff run around in a panic. It was my father who pulled her off of the ledge and dragged her straight back to our room to call someone to pick her up. This was not the beginning of the end but the end of the end. It was but one episode in a long line of insanity that my father had put up with for months. We didn’t wait to see her off but she was still waiting for her ride when we returned. There she was in the lobby with a big old shiner covering one eye that she was telling anyone who would listen my father had given her. He didn’t. She gave it to herself with the handset of the phone in the room. At least this time the police didn’t think he had murdered her but that is another story for another time.

Jolly Green Lab

A Musical Collection No Thief Would Bother To Steal

I have found a radio station that plays old rock (well, okay mostly oldies) and have been having a ball while I work. The occupant of the cubicle outside my door must want to throw a stapler at my head but that’s okay because I love some of the songs they play. For instance today I was working on this incredibly boring, long spread sheet that not only doesn’t challenge my brain but I am pretty sure if you took a look inside right now you would find nothing but mush. So, I have my radio at a modest volume listening to my new favorite station when what should come on…… Bad Bad Leroy Brown. I ask you who would be able to resist turning it up and singing along…”Leroy looked like a jig saw puzzle with a couple a pieces gone”! Oh yeah, I was jammin. Then as a follow up they played Cats in the Cradle. What a tear jerker when the dad calls his son who doesn’t have time for him anymore. So, if you are reading this from home be thankful you are not C and married to the biggest musical dork in the world. If you are reading this from work thank your lucky stars you won’t need to use that stapler as an instrument of death.

What would you do?

Reading this article I have a couple of questions:

1) If you were going to die would you want it quick and painless or drawn out?

2) If Dr.'s and nurses who stayed to care for the ill for four days without electricity in over 100 degree heat are being arrested do you think we could arrest the assholes at the top who left them there in the first place (Brownie? Bush? Nagin? Blanco?) and charge them with second degree murder?

Walk Tall, Carry a Big Stick, and Scream Real Loud

Growing up in Baton Rouge, my father and I would go bass fishing at my Maw-Maw’s pond. Her nickname would lead you to believe she was of some relation but Maw-Maw was the mother of a boy my father had mentored in Big Brothers. She and her husband, Doc, welcomed us into the family, sharing their lives including the pond on a piece of land they owned close by.

Dad and I would pack up our tackle box, a bucket of worms, our rods, and a cooler then head off in the green Torino. You had to park quite a ways from the pond and walk through thick, tall grass. My father would gather up all of our gear and begin to head off. It didn’t take long for him to realize I was frozen at the edge of the grass, too afraid to proceed. “Come on, Jacqueline” he would say “walk right where I walk.” Thus began my pleading for him to carry me. I was terrified a cotton mouth would bite me if I walked through that grass. I don’t know why I thought the snake would leave him alone and bite me but it made perfect sense at the time.

Back he would walk to where I was standing and explain that it was impossible to carry me and everything else we brought with us for the outing. I could ride piggyback I argued. It was too hot, I was too big and nothing was going to get me in the grass he said but he did have the answer. Sharing with me a word passed down from generation to generation, he taught me how to say “go away snake” in ancient Indian. “Geeeee ya” I screamed walking through the grass. “Geeeee ya”! We never caught many fish and in hindsight it is easy to see why they fled to the cool waters of the bottom when they heard an insane child approaching screaming gibberish.

That was twenty-seven years ago but when I walk through the woods at the ranch I still mutter “geeeee ya” under my breath. It can’t hurt and its kept me alive this long.

Recently Read

How you see a country depends on whether you are driving through it, or living in it.

How you see a country depends on whether or not you can leave it, if you have to.

I am reading Alexandra Fuller’s “Scribbling the Cat”. The words are hers but I liked them so much and they made me think of really great countryside (here and elsewhere) seen from a car window.

What’s with this hair on my chinny chin chin?

A month or so ago while driving to work my hand brushed against something on my chin. After further, frantic inspection, I found I had a rogue whisker on my chin. A long, blond, whisker! As soon as I stopped at the next light I yanked down the cosmetic mirror on my visor to inspect the interloper. Yep, it was a whisker where none had been for the past THIRTY FIVE years of my life. Where did this bugger come from? Without the benefit of a set of tweezers in the console I began frantically plucking at it with my fingernails. When the offender was successfully extracted, I sat there holding it up to the light inspecting it as if it were a diamond. Realizing I was not the only car sitting at this light I began to look around to see if anyone was looking. I could not have been more embarrassed if I were caught picking my nose.

For the couple of weeks following my discovery I constantly checked for another unusually long hair on my face. Was this going to become commonplace? Had my hormones gone crazy? Was this the beginning of early onset menopause? How long before I looked like George Michael with his five oÂ’clock shadow? Should I immediately begin waxing? Why had no one seen that sucker?

Months have passed without incident since that hair-raising revelation, until this morning. Standing in front of the mirror putting on my make up something caught my eye and there on my chin was a long blond whisker shimmering in the light. This time with tweezers in hand I eradicated the freaky follicle, taking out a few of his friends who had the unfortunate fate of growing too close. WhatÂ’s next hot flashes? Clearly these things crop up overnight and I will just need to be more diligent in my weed control efforts.

Carrio Andretti

Carrie drives like a woman trying to outrun a nuclear mushroom cloud. I lose seventy five percent of my water weight every trip we take to and from the ranch, from my sweating palms. I try to read, I try to listen to music, I try to imagine the impact of the air bags, but nothing really soothes my safety first nerves. Yesterday’s trip home was no exception. Seeing that the car in front of us had slowed to a modest 86 miles per hour, Carrie decided some passing was in order. She moved to the right hand lane which lo and behold was ending. That’s right it was ending, merging with other moving traffic. She could have slowed down, accepting her place behind ole pokey who at this point had slowed to a 75 mph crawl or she could do the very Carrie thing which was punching it so when the lane ended she could be the first to merge and consequently the first to slam on her brakes to avoid the cars taking a Sunday drive in the fast lane.

For my part, during the actual passing I sucked in the biggest breath I could, curled my toes, gripped the arm rest with my sweaty palms and shut my eyes as tight as they would go. As soon as we were safely in the fast lane I let loose a tirade of insults about her driving. At one point letting her know that in all the time we have been together I wanted to ring her neck more at that moment than any other. Sure, she could have apologized for endangering me and poor innocent Isaac sleeping in the back, unaware of his impending doom. She could have even argued her point. Instead she put us in danger once again because I am sure there is no way she could have seen through the tears of laughter in her eyes. As an insult to injury she laughed about it all night. Next week I think I’ll drive and see if she doesn’t want to strangle me.

Owning Up

Reflecting on the degree of drunkenness she achieved last night C said the following at lunch:

"Someone must have slipped something in my seventeenth vodka."

Nighttime is for Day Dreaming

This morning over our normal breakfast of coffee and cigarettes, C asked if I had slept well. I told her I guessed but I wasn’t sure because I remembered having trouble getting to sleep and the next thing I knew the alarm was going off. I usually wake up several times during the night but last night was like those nights when you drink too much and the last thing you remember is saying “sure I’ll have one more but then I really am going home.” I turned out my light last night and rolled over to C, spooning her back. That lasted all of two minutes before my legs were restless and the need to turn on my stomach was too great. Onto my stomach it was but which way to face? Left didn’t feel right, right was hurting my neck and so it went as I tried to think of something to keep my mind off the fact that thirty minutes had elapsed and I was still wide awake.

I tried thinking about what I had ahead of me today at work. Ugh! That only made me more agitated. I tried counting which works sometimes but once you get past two hundred you simply have to surrender to the fact that by the time you go to sleep you will have counted dollar for dollar the size of the national debt. So I turned to method three. Where would I be if I could be anywhere? What would I be doing? What would my surroundings look like?

Soon I was sitting on the back porch of our tiny cottage by the water. Its exterior is wood plank painted mint green with white trim. We bought the plans from the back of Southern Living and built it ourselves. Inside the antique iron beds are covered with white chenille spreads. C is watering the garden we can see from the kitchen window. She is standing over rows of tomatoes, purple hulls, and tall stalks of corn smiling with the possibility of fresh vegetables. I am on the back porch watching her taking slow sips from a cold glass of champagne. There is a ring of condensation on the table in front of me from the glass. I move my book so the cover doesn’t get wet. At my feet is our dog, stretched out on his side, his legs straight in front of him. I am rolling my ankle back and forth mushing my toes into his downy fur. His tail makes a soft thump thump on the boards that rises to my ears where it mixes with the trill trill of cicadas in the trees. The alarms sounds and I am immediately cranky from the dreamless night sleep until I remember my dreams played out in my mind before I even nodded off.

A Mother of Invention

My friends and I have always joked about the odd combinations of businesses you find across the border. Is there a great need in Mexico to have your bicycle repaired while getting a root canal? Did some unnamed man go out one day armed with a list of to-dos: 1) pick up prescription at pharmacy 2) pick up bottle of tequila for later 3) stop by tailor to order custom made shirt 4) get new car battery 5) laser hair removal on chest and back. Wouldn’t it be nice to do one stop shopping for all of the above he thought and an idea was born. Again, I admit I have always found the combinations odd but on the other hand all very practical tasks. Ingenuity I think it’s called.

Necessity is the mother of all invention after all and no one I have seen can top the woman in front of me at the convenient store this weekend. When I stepped in line behind her to purchase cigarettes, my eyes were immediately drawn to the little boy at her side. He was adorable, small perfectly round head with a white bandana do rag on top, white wife beater tucked into his dark denim shorts and tennis shoes. Cute as a future rap star button! Mom was desperately trying to keep him from pulling one of every candy for purchase. When she bent down to point to a few choices he could have, it was then that I noticed mom had her very own fashion sense. Flip flops showing off painted toes, denim Capri pants, tank top, all very common trends these days. Ah, but look above the neck and there, there is where her true ingenuity shined through. Junior must have borrowed mom’s bandana and not wanting her hair to frizz in our humid weather mom wasn’t about to go out without covering the mop. So, she put his underwear on her head. It is one thing to do this in the privacy of one’s bedroom with enough wine in one’s system to kill an elephant. It is quite another to wear underwear on one’s head in public. Took everything I had not to burst out laughing at the tufts of pink toned hair sticking out of the leg holes on either side of her crown.

Two Weddings, Four Funerals and a Host of Other Painful Events

My cousin is getting married at the end of July in Denver. My mother, the queen of family functions, the woman who uses every vacation day to see her family has started hammering me on whether I will be attending. Last week she called me at work to have what I thought was a perfectly normal “how is your day” conversation then out of the left field drops the “Are you and C going to your cousin’s wedding? It is really going to hurt my feelings if you don’t go” bomb in my lap. I told her we haven’t decided which led to the run down of every wrong I have ever committed. I did not:

Go to my great aunt’s funeral at a convent in Pennsylvania.

Go to my other great aunt’s funeral in Washington.

Go to my other great aunt’s funeral in Washington.

Go to my cousin’s wedding who I have no more than two words to say to at any given time. Nor does he have much more to say to me.

Go to my cousin’s graduation in Denver. This was a toughy because he graduated Mother’s Day weekend and I STILL didn’t go.

I did:

Go on vacation with my father last summer (it must be added that this was the first vacation I have gone on with my father since I was eight)

Go to Belize with C’s father (this is how my mother says it but in reality I went with C for her 30th birthday which her father and four other friends joined her to celebrate therefore this does not technically count as a vacation with C’s father).

You get the idea. I went home fuming. How could she try to guilt me into going? If she was going to bring up places I went eight years ago I should be allowed to go back as far as possible to dredge up enough places I went with her to counter those she was mentioning. I could have ended the cycle of abuse right there but instead chose to hammer C all the way to Yorktown that I want her to go with me in July. If you are wondering, yes, I started listing all of the places I have gone with her, trying to fill my column with enough selfless attendance that she will come with me in July. Like mother like daughter. It pains me to admit that.

A Tomato for your Thoughts

This morning when I got to work, I noticed plump, red, home grown tomatoes on my boss’s desks. I knew they were from a gentleman in our office whose past gifts have included homemade jelly and other fresh vegetables. I went into my office feeling dejected but talked myself off the ledge by reasoning that he must have only given his peers the tomatoes. I am for all intents and purposes a rung or two down the ladder and therefore didn’t warrant a tomato at this time.

Come lunch time I ventured into the kitchen for a cup of water. I hate office kitchens. There seems to be no way to make people realize that parmesan cheese should NEVER be heated in a public microwave. Or broccoli for that matter. You who drain your tuna can in the sink leaving slimy pink chunks marinating in fish juice for the rest of us to smell- you are the reason I hate our kitchen. So, I am holding my nose and getting my water when I see two women who hold close to the same status around here as I do cutting up fresh ripe tomatoes. Coincidence that they too brought in fresh tomatoes? I don’t think so.

Back to my office again and now I begin wondering. Did I say something inappropriate to this fellow? Was it at a happy hour? Because if you get me around a bar and a corporate card at the same time I can become very happy. No, couldn’t think (remember) a thing. Hours pass with me letting this push me deeper into a funk. I will never get ahead. I will never be on the same level as the tomato recipients. (At this point I think it is only fair to point out that this week I am a bit more hormonal than usual which results in a bottomless pit of need to feel worthy).

Tomato man walked into my office a few minutes ago to see if my boss would be in because he had put a tomato on her desk from his garden (saw it, thanks). He said he ran out but would bring me some next week. What’s that you say? I am vegetable worthy? This is excellent news. I am leaving now to get my weekend started a red tomato in hand. My boss is out today so I figured I would take hers and she can have mine next week.

Internet Palm Reading

Duly Inspired tagged me with this and seeing as it is the end of a LONG day and I just got out of LONG appointment, I decided to give it a go.

Jacqui needs to ensure she has saved enough during the first twenty-years to have this.
Jacqui needs to open and sing.
Jacqui needs eye drops to help her vision.
Jacqui needs more bread…
Jacqui needs to talk about someone named Jack.
Jacqui needs to improve her speed around the field.
Jacqui needs more help with fundraising committee.
Jacqui needs help solving a baffling public folder calendar.
Jacqui needs Bert and John.

Jacqui wants her Virgins and saints on shelves facing her bed.
Jacqui wants to write a book
Jacqui wants a Darwin show bag
Jacqui wants to suggest a joint event with local scouts…
Jacqui wants a tummy tuck
Jacqui wants to go shop for yarn…
Jacqui wants to study vet science…
Jacqui wants to find out more about alternative therapies…
Jacqui wants to believe Patrick but she is unsure therefore keeps this from Phil.
Jacqui wants to sue a major company.

A bit like having your palm read except I don’t know a Jack, Bert, Patrick or Phil. I do however need to increase speed on the field, need help with a fund raising committee, want to write a book, and want a tummy tuck

Like Chinese Water Torture Only Worse

My father called while C was watching the NFL draft this weekend and when he found out she had it on he began asking me question after question about who was picking who. Does this man know me at all? Not only do I not know, I am not going to ask C every two seconds and relay an entire conversation (about football no less) back and forth over the phone. So he asked which station it was on. This too I had to ask C. Before I got off the phone with him he walked into his living room where my 8 year old sister was watching Discovery Kids or something similar and said; “Hey Morgan, I’ve got something better to watch.” I would have given anything to see the look on her face when he changed the channel.

Too bad it wasn’t a prayer chain.

I’m not sure how James Carville and Mary Matalin do it but I’ll bet it can’t be easy. In our house I am the bald little man with the crazy eyebrows screaming that The Conservative Movement is RUINING THE WORLD. Only I’m not bald or a man. I take great pleasure in repeating newscasters (aloud for the Compassionate Conservative in the red leather chair next to me) when they report Bush’s approval ratings at an all time low. Dick Cheney does remind me of Darth Vader and I will not call Condi anything less than Condosleeza.

C for her part is partially to blame for all that ails the world or at least that is what I tell her when I remind her who she voted for in the past two elections. I say you’ve got to learn from your mistakes or all is naught. She either disagrees or it was too late to take back that second one. I have most of our friends on my side of the fence but not all. One friend in particular has been the target of many, many, many drunken political rages of mine. In the beginning it was a bleeding heart Liberal's dream come true, a real live person that will fight back while you bleed all over her. Not so anymore. I must have made the mistake once of giving up too soon and as they say an elephant never forgets because these days it’s harder and harder to get her to bite when I really need a good political bloodletting.

Today it was me with the hook in my mouth swimming in a sea of hell. C forwarded an e-mail to me and Duly Inspired . They were both Duly Inspired to Make Me Crazy. I could feel the shared glee they took in raising my blood pressure. Just so you both know you have bought yourselves a very long night listening to why that e-mail was all wrong. Duly Inspired this does not replace your grand prize of a good slap.

Suburban Cowgirl

For awhile when I lived with my father he insisted on hiring live-in housekeepers through an agency. The first go round was a very sweet lady from Brazil who I liked enough, with the exception of her insistence on trying to read me the Bible every night, in Spanish. He left it up to my stepmother the second go round and she hired a sweet, elderly woman named Esther. Her theory must have been that an old Southern woman would cook dishes for my father more reminiscent of what he was used to instead of the fried tofu he was turning his nose up to when she would cook. Esther did try to cook but her toast always ended up looking like a freshly polished black loafer.

Once (and only once) on her night off, Esther decided to drive from my father’s house in Katy all the way to Gilley’s for a hair raising good time. It must have been a doosy because at around 3:00 a.m. my father awoke to our neighbor, one that he had been feuding with for years, pounding on our door. Esther who had been in the house all of three seconds came running down the stairs screaming “It wasn’t me. He’s a liar!” Note to readers: Wait until you are accused to deny.

It seems our neighbor, who hears everything, (The feud was because he claimed to actually hear my cat walking around on his roof at night. So much so that he installed a tiny electric fence where the roof eave was close enough for Kitty to jump from the fence) claimed he heard a crash and that when he looked outside his white brick mailbox was gone. Esther was then seen fleeing her car for the safety of our house. My father calmly asked Esther if she had in fact run over the neighbor’s mailbox. Again Esther denied any involvement. It was then that the neighbor asked my father to step outside. Upon doing so he was faced with Esther’s brown, wood paneled station wagon parked in our driveway. The hood and roof were covered in brick and mortar.

Esther left us shortly after that night. She has probably since left this world for the big honky tonk in the sky. It is a shame she will never know just how much secret satisfaction we got out of her running over that mean man’s mailbox.

April Showers

After our flaming mishap at the ranch last weekend I vowed I would find the Patron Saint of Rain. Well that's him, Saint Isidore of Madrid. His picture has been my desktop background for a week and every morning I've said a little prayer that he bless us with some rain. This morning the little guy answered my prayers and we woke up to thunder, lightening and a pouring rain. It didn't last long but beggars can't be choosers and I am just down right giddy over the storm. The ranch got an inch and a half last night. Let the green grass grow! Now, today I think I'll search for the Patron Saint of Weight Loss.

Stop, Drop and Cry

I am not good in a crisis. That is to say that during a crisis my normal reaction is to drop to the fetal position and cry. Actually it is one, the other, or a combination of both. Now, so as not to confuse you, I deem a “crisis” anything remotely unpleasant. My definition ranges from cutting my finger to funerals. It is my Scarlett O’Hara syndrome and I have had it for as long as I can remember.

When I was seven or eight, my father took a night job to make ends meet. During the day he would sleep late then attend classes at LSU while my mother worked all day. I cannot remember why I was home with him one day, but can only assume it was spring break or teacher's in service. My mother had left for work and my father was sleeping in. I had the brilliant idea to clean the house. Not wanting to waste any time, I stuck a couple of barrettes in my hair to keep both sides of the mushroom back and rolled up my nightgown sleeves.

I decided to start with the dishes. Seemed easy enough since all this really requires is a good rinse, load said dish in the dishwasher, throw in some soap and push a button. Simple really. But we were out of soap. Thinking back I thought I recalled that this had happened once before and my mother used laundry soap. Considering the results, I think I probably made that memory up to spread some of the blame. I loaded the entire little door thingy with laundry soap then for good measure filled up that little cup next to the one with the door for really tough baked on dirt.

Dishwasher loaded and turned on I went about dusting the living room the entire time patting myself on the back. I was the perfect daughter. I was letting my father sleep after a hard nights work and helping my poor overworked mother at the same time. I was definitely in the running for special treat. Maybe my parents would buy me a Wonder Woman comic book or give me chocolate pudding for dessert. My mother would tell all of her co-workers the next day who would have no choice but to ooh and aah at what a great daughter Connie has. Yes, in my mind I was a star. That is when I noticed the four inches of white foamy bubbles escaping from the kitchen.

A person without the proclivity to freak out at the slightest bump in the road would have waded into the bubbles and shut off the dishwasher. I am not that person. Not even a shadow of someone that sane. No, I ran crying out the door, nightgown flying behind me, mushroom hair bouncing with every desperate step I took to find our apartment maintenance man. Who, by the way, upon accessing the situation, waded through the bubbles and shut off the dishwasher. My father was awakened from a dead sleep to the sight of his daughter staring into a kitchen buried two feet deep in bubbles, crying. For his part, he shook his head, and told me I could have just woken him up. Clearly I did not get my penchant for drama from him.

There's nothing you can do about it Sugar!

The last time it rained in Yorktown was last Memorial Day. We had spent the afternoon following a cow in labor through the pastures waiting for her to lie down and calve. Thunderheads rolled in from the South and gray sheets of rain began falling. We watched from the front porch as the cows huddled in the pasture against the stinging rain.

Next month it will be one year since that storm. One year since any rain has blessed this part of the country. We are obsessed with news of this historic drought. Three months ago we watched a grass fire on the horizon. Yellow smoke filled the air like a thick curtain. The volunteer fire department's siren echoed through our pasture as men were called from their daily duties to offer assistance. Later, we prayed that they were able to contain the fire before it destroyed too much land. We prayed that whoever's pasture had burned did not lose livestock. Sadly it turned out he had.

Today Fate's wheel stopped and it was our turn. We had spent the early afternoon parked under an Oak tree in the back pasture taking photos of the cows. We sat with the wind whipping through the field and watched the new calves sleeping or playing. After awhile I said I smelled smoke but we didn't see any on the horizon so it was just a fleeting thought. A forgotten comment that later comes back to haunt you. How could we forget that "where there's smoke there's fire".

We were up at the house around thirty minutes later when the phone rang and a neighbor asked C's father what he was burning in the back pasture. Knowing there is a burn ban in effect and taking into consideration the strong wind, she couldn't fathom what he would be burning back there. As it turns out the catylitic converter on C's Suburban had ignited the grass underneath it and that was what we had smelled earlier. C's father called 911 while C and I raced to the back to make sure the cows were out of harms way. I have read articles on ranchers who lost cattle to fires. I always assumed it was because they had been trapped by a rapidly moving fire. Not so. When we arrived in the back pasture two of our favorite cows were standing less than three feet from flames that were rising two feet off the ground sniffing at it as if it were food.

C went into Mario Andretti mode as she did donuts in the pasture herding the cattle out of the gate with her car. I was running behind them screaming, waving my arms like a mad woman. We were able to get everyone we could see out of the pasture but until the fire was under control there was no way we could be sure we had moved everyone.

I can name at least three country songs that poke fun of the VFD but until the day comes that you need them you have no idea how dedicated these men are to do such a selfless job. In less than fifteen minutes three trucks were on the property fighting the fire. One man must have been out shopping for Easter Sunday because his wife and kids were in the car as he sped past me (having my first of a few miny breakdowns that day) to fight a fire on someone else's land. In addition to the volunteer fire department, two neighbors immediately came to help on their tractors, churning the fire line to dirt that wouldn't burn. This is what we lack inside the city limits. It is a sense of community where any one man's tragedy is a communal tragedy and therefore the community goes to all lengths to help.

In the end approximately fifteen acres burned. The fire department was able to extinguish the fire in two or so hours. We didn't lose any cattle. Now if it would just rain that patch will be the greenest reminder of a day that while traumatic taught me a very imprtant lesson. On the porch that evening still shaken from the day's events, I commented to C's father that he had kept amazing composure while this was all going on. He looked at me in all honesty and said "It's part of life. There's nothing you can do about it Sugar."

Rounds 2-4
Beaten but Not Broken

Ah, two days later. Tuesday started out on the right foot. A walk in the morning for the Tasmanian devil then off to work. He and Isaac spent the first part of the day lazing in the sunshine in the backyard. Not a stick, pool cushion, garden glove, dog brush, or plant was chewed. No one escaped and we were pretty pleased with ourselves when we got home. After work it was time for another brisk walk then C and I went to dinner.

Now, a friend in need is a friend indeed, but a friend in need with a big backyard is the greatest! After dinner we went to a friend’s house around the corner dogs in tow to sit outside, solve the world’s problems, and let the dogs play. All was well until we got home. One second C was on her way up the garage stairs the next she was flying backwards, rolling down the concrete steps. It seems in his rush to get in the door for some more play time, crazy man clipped her just right. She hobbled up to bed while I sat downstairs waiting for him to go to sleep before I tiptoed up to our bedroom for some much needed rest.

With C injured it was up to me yesterday to run the ship. Dogs get breakfast, cats get breakfast, play time, then off to work. I was home early but too exhausted for an early walk so he of boundless energy was forced to wait until after dinner when we once again headed out the door. Me and my shin splints hobbling along, this big brown bouncing puppy taking a walk that was sure to make him sleepy. Not so. He laid down for a total of five seconds when we returned home then promptly picked up a tennis ball and began throwing it at me. Back to our friend’s house for more backyard ball play.

Again, when it was time for lights out I curled up on the couch as if I would be sleeping right there by him and waited for his breathing to become a slow, soothing rhythm. I think his sleeping from 10:00 p.m. to almost 7:00 a.m. on Tuesday had made me overly confident that last night would be much of the same. All went well until around 4:00 a.m. when the cat decided he would walk right up to the back door and meow at the dog through the glass. Lots of barking and whining later (on his part and mine) we again settled down with me back on the couch and him on his bed keeping a close eye on the porch through the door.

I should have just fallen back asleep but I’ll be damned if I didn’t need to go to the bathroom. Choosing to step over the dog bed to go to the bathroom in the sunroom, I felt all of this rubbery stuff under my feet. Again, if you find yourself in this position just go back to sleep. Do not turn on the light. Because if you do you will find you are walking on what is left of your girlfriend’s favorite sandals. You will want to spend the next two hours gluing tiny pieces of rubber back together because when she wakes up in a bad mood over her broken rib you don’t want to be the one to tell her that she can wear the sandals but only one heel will have something separating it from the ground.

There is a bright side to all of this. First, the sandals cost $9.99 a pair. Second, C has a couple of pairs. Third, it is only fair that their dog went after C’s shoes because when Isaac was a puppy he chewed a MUCH more expensive pair of loafers of said puppy’s mother. Fourth, tomorrow we will be heading down to the ranch, puppy and worry free.

Round One:
Dog 1 ~ Dog Whisperer 0

It’s true that all of our friends call C the dog whisperer. When we go to people’s homes, dogs flock to her like cats in a room with someone they somehow know is allergic to them. She has an affinity for making dogs mind her and love her with little effort on her part. Sadly her reputation is now at stake. We are babysitting our friend’s puppy for the next four days while they toast margaritas in Cabo soaking up their sunny puppy free environment.

Yesterday was day one and it gave us just a taste of what’s to come in the next week. Sort of like tasting milk that expired in December. When we both got home from work it looked like the sunroom had been ransacked, the kind of Law and Order job where the perp is desperately looking for the one thing that could put him away for life. Not an inch of the floor was toy free. Okay, we can handle him playing all day if that exhausts some of his energy. It doesn’t.

Plan B: We’ll take him for a walk and expend just a little bit more of that energy. We took turns RUNNING with him on the walk. By the end of the second block C and I are panting messes where as he of boundless energy is just gearing up. Back at home after our walk and feeling pretty good about himself he took the opportunity to relieve himself on the sunroom floor. A pretty good size puddle I might add. It left us both asking; “What was wrong with the hundred trees we passed?” Water bowl picked up and clean up crew to the rescue and again we settle in for the night.

Or so we thought. When we moved into our house we babysat another friend’s dog who took it upon himself to claim our bed as his own with a hike of the leg and a little squirt. Well, you know the story one dog smells another dog and MUST reclaim the property in question as his own. So, we brought him downstairs to sleep in the room that he felt comfortable with ALL DAY LONG. A room free of other dogs previous markings. Turns out he only likes that room when we are gone. When we are home he doesn’t want to be in that room. He told us in no uncertain barking terms that either one of us was going to spend the night downstairs or he was coming up. Consequently while my dog and my girlfriend collapsed in exhaustion upstairs, I laid on the couch until said puppy went to sleep.

This morning when I would normally be loading up on coffee and cigarettes doing the crossword puzzle, I was out walking him again. Again his energy is no match for my sedentary self, but at least I tried. Who knows I may lose a pound or two this week. Tonight we revert to Plan C which is play ‘til he drops. Maybe at the very least we can even the score.