Back to Black

I often wonder what happens to talented young people when they hit their twenties.   They've been told all their lives how wonderful they are, their art, their music, their intellect is so far above the norm that they  stand out in the crowd. They not only stand out, they stand head and shoulders above it.   When does that constant idolization of family and then new made fans become not  enough?  It seems that suddenly the more bizarre the behaviour the more outrageous the appearance the less the  talent shines.  I first heard Amy Winehouse several years ago.  I can't remember what she was singing,  it may have been Back to Black or You Sent me Flying...but her smokey jazz voice brought a faraway feel to the heart.  You could listen to her, close  your eyes and imagine yourself in a speak easy of the 30's or or in a front row seat at a high class night club.  If you glanced behind you there would be other patrons dressed to the nines, band box bright.  And through it all, Amy's voice was the tenuous thread keeping you rooted to  the dream.  Hers was not a rock voice, it was mellow and liquid and had she not fallen on drug addiction we would be listening to her long into the century. 
There was another artist I admired, also not a country artist, not a jazz singer...a rock singer like almost no other.  Janice Joplin lived life high and hard from the beginning, it seems.  Of course the one I remember her for the most was Me and Bobby McGee...Janice could belt out a song like no body's business and when she was gone, there was no one like her ever again.   She too was twenty seven years old.  She too couldn't kick the habits of her youth.  She too was missed almost immediately, her record sales going up.  Like Amy's.  Amy's record sales have gone through the roof.  That's because there will be no more, no more smokey throated liquid lyrics sometimes emotional, sometimes slightly vulgar sometimes to vulgar for airplay, but no more all the same.  I wish that the love and adoration of family and fans had been enough.  I hope that lessons of her shattered life will serve as a warning for others in the same position.  Sadly, it won't be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpuL7FpDeMA&feature=related

How many pecks in a bushel?

Last year, Mac said he wasn't going to plant so many tomatoes.  This was after our tomatoes were like zuchini in that we couldn't give them away.  I canned and froze tomatoes and wrapped green ones in newspaper and stored them in the pantry.  We were eating tomatoes at Thanksgiving.  He grows some really great ones in these things he call "growtainers".  They hold two plants each.  He has four of them.  The tomatoes get to be softball and bigger size.  They make great sink sandwiches.  He has the makings for four more of these growtainers out there.  Okay, so that's eight tomato plants already bearing.  But wait!  He has nearly an acre planted in melons, beans,  Armendian melons (a great cucumber), eggplant and peppers...we have strawberries (still putting on fruit) and YES we have TOMATOES.  There are Celebrity,  Mortgage Lifter (three different varieties) and lord knows what else.  He even has some grafting stock to try grafting.  Like we don't have enough already. 
I saw this little marvel  of a gadget on The Price is Right.  It was called a Tomato Press.  Okay, so lots of you already knew about this thing, but I didn't.  So this weekend, I used it for the second time.  I put on a big pan of boiling water and started blanching the baskets and baskets of tomatoes that were sitting on every available space in the kitchen and dining room.  I just plopped the tomatoes, skin and all, into the hopper and started turning the handle.  Out poured lovely tomato sauce.  I put the skin and seed back through and got more juice...I worked for nearly an hour and ended up with ten quarts of lovely tomato for use in sauces of all kinds.  And it made a pretty good juice, too. 
I have just spent the last two hours watering the garden.  I have watered the fruit trees and all the tomatoes, the strawberries and the eggplant. I watered the peppers (bell and HOT) and the flowers even got some attention for a change.  Done with the front, I turned the hose over to Mac and came inside for a cup of coffee!   Mac is down in the big garden watering now.  I went down to take him a cold drink and he was shaking his head.  "What's up?" I asked him.  He looked around at the forty+ tomato plants (including the three he had planted on Saturday) and said "I'm not going to plant so many tomatoes next year."  I nodded wisely, but a mental eye roll was what was going on in my head.  Yep, I've heard that before!

A 4th of July Tribute

I've often found it odd that almost every national holiday on our calendar is accompanied with a blow out sale.  It seems almost obscene to hear the commercials this year while we celebrate our Nation's birthday.  So many have died to protect our liberties and while I find parades and picnics, cookouts and family gatherings to be the very soul of the day, I have to ask.  What is it with the sales?  Today we celebrate our country's birth, her peoples contributions to the safety of others and we mourn the loss of all the men and women who shed their blood for her and for us.  I am including in todays a post an original poem I wrote several years ago.  Also, I am including a link to the song Arlington, by Trace Adkins.  You may not be a country music fan, but only a stone would be unmoved by this...no, on second thought, that stone would weep.  TO listen to it go here: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=arlington+trace+adkins&aq=0&oq=Arlington

She buried her son today
by Sandi McBride

She buried her son today,
That is why she sits in the dark with her cloak of grief pulled tightly around her.  That is why her eyes are empty, turned backward toward the past where he still plays , laughs...lives.
She buried her son today.
There is no consolement you can offer her that will lighten that grief and melt that capsule of ice that surrounds her heart and freezes her soul.  She means no disrespect in her failure to acknowledge your carefully chosen words, your outpouring of support.  At the moment she can not bring herself to reach out to you and accept your living warmth...she hugs her pain selfishly to herself separating herself from all but the one who was taken from her forever, the words God and Country an anathema for now.
She buried her son today.
And in her torment wonders had he lived, what great things he may have done to make a name for himself in this world, so that someone other than she remembers his name in years to come.  What beautiful flashing eyed girl would have captured his heart?  (His heart now beating in anther's chest, giving hope to some other woman who sits in some other room daring to smile because maybe, just maybe, her child would live to see another day.)
She buried her son today.
He was not her whole world, but a great portion of her world had revolved around him.  There will never come a day that her thoughts will not turn to memories of his birth, his first steps, his first ballgame, his first love.  She will forever see his sweet smile and clear unclouded eyes.  (Eyes now viewing the wonders of the world while looking out from a strangers face.)
She buried her son today.
And just for a moment marvels that the things she loved about him still live on, beloved Country in the future.  Just not today.  Today she buried her son.that while they could not help her beloved boy maintain life, somewhere out there her darling's heart still beats, his eyes still see.  But her grief lifts just for a moment.  She knows that she will rejoice in his gift to mankind and his

In Simpler Times

We hear it all the time, "I'd love to go back to simpler times and live life the way it was intended". In fits of madness, I have said the same thing myself and I actually lived in those simpler times. Funny, they didn't seem so simple at the time. We had no microwave, our radios came from Japan and were called Transistors (and I loved mine even when it couldn't pick up a channel that was right down the road...Donnie Goodale was the disc jockey. Whatever happened to Donnie? I should google him and find out. Now that's not something I could do back in the simpler days. There were no cell phones. Our telephones had party lines and that's where a lot of folk got their news about their neighbors. It put a whole new spin on the term "eavesdropping". There was no a/c and when we had heat waves like we are in now, we kept every light in the house most determinedly in the OFF position, kept the drapes drawn to keep out the heat and the rooms with their high ceilings were actually cool. Well, coolish I suppose.



We ate our main meal at noon and called it dinner. We still call the noon meal dinner even though we eat far to much at what is supper and should be a light repast to get us through til breakfast. When did all that change? It probably didn't change for the farm families still out there, and I've tried to change us back to the old time way of eating. It's a hard job to change a generation of habit, I've found. We had no microwaves to make the preparations of meals a bit easier and faster, but we did have a toaster. It mainly burned the bread when you weren't looking and we all learned to spot the signs of scraped toast. We hated the taste of burnt toast at first then got used to it till I have to have mine so near burnt that it could use a bit of scraping. Where I once had to pile that homemade jelly on to give it an acceptable taste, I find that I now have to have that slightly scorched taste to make breakfast taste like breakfast.



Given all that, I can remember hearing my grandparents complain that times were changing to fast and they wished they could go back and live when times were simpler. Overhearing this, I would wonder how far they wanted to go back. No electricity, no cars, I mean how much more simple could life get than we had it in the 50's and 60's! I know one thing, I don't want to go back to simpler, I like my a/c, my fast truck, my cd's and dvd's, my microwave and dish that gets me 500 channels (but only shows three shows at one time that you'd admit to watching). No way would I go back to simple. That is proven to me every time we have a storm so severe that we lose power! For the first half hour we talk about how people used to live without power (this while we're looking for the nonexistent candles) for the next hour we're on the phone calling the power company to make sure they know what's going on...you know, power is out come fix it NOW. If it lasts for more than a couple of hours, boredom usually drives you to take a nap or fight. If the nap wins over the fighting everyone is glad that no one had to go to jail. That in itself is a good thing. So, simpler times anyone? Please Lord, NO.

A Mailman by any other name

The mail has always fascinated me. From the time I was a small child, I wanted to be the recipient of mail I could hold in my hand, mail where my name appeared in the little glassine window proudly proclaiming that this piece of mail belonged to me and me alone. Once after coming upon a postage paid advert card in one of my grandmother's magazines, I carefully filled out the details, including my name and Mammy's address and phone number then popped it into the mail box. I didn't get mail from them, but my grandparents got some rather annoying calls for years from them trying to sell hearing aids to my perfectly hearing elders...and after all that, for me still no mail.




It seems that no matter what town you live in, your Post Office is one of the first places of which you want to know the location . You actively hunt down that (usually) brick facade, the familiar Eagle insignia posted on the wall with the words United States Post Office. The grounds are well kept and nice shrubs usually skirt the front of the building. The towns in our county are lucky to have some lovely examples of architecture. Chesterfield and Cheraw especially come to mind. It would be a pity to lose these buildings to progress. They have meant so much to so many people over the years, from the Mail Carriers to the workers behind the counter, always smiling always friendly and available to give information you might need. They've even helped with directions to unfamiliar places.



As a young Navy wife, the mail carrier was always someone I looked forward to seeing come up our walkway as he delivered mail from Mac who was often far from home aboard a ship. I wouldn't wait to get inside the house to open the letters that arrived but would rip them open and begin devouring the words right there on the porch before I turned to walk back into the house, mail still clutched in ever tightening fingers. This was my link with someone I loved and missed.



The singing group Alabama had a song out about the rigors of mail delivery that covered the history of America's mail service from the Pony Express right up thru delivery in space. At the time no one had heard of e-mail or even dreamed of it. In the cities I lived in here in the US they were Letter Carriers, in England they were Posties (and walked right in the front door to lay the mail on the entry hall table) and of course collectively they are mostly known as Mailmen, weather they are male or female. I was in awe of our Rural carriers who could sit in the middle of the front seat, drive the car while reaching for the mail bundle at their side as they pulled up to the mailbox without knocking it down. Here in the south we of course know our Postmen by name. In Chesterfield it was at first Scott then it was Bonnie...here we have Jimmy. Their cars are personal vehicles with many miles on the odometers. Sometimes we see the familiar mail Jeep, but not often. Don't get me wrong, the job is still hard the hours still long, the roads still rough and it's not one I'd want to take on myself. I had still much rather be the recipient than the deliverer. Do I appreciate our Postal Carriers? You're darned right I do...here's to all the Jimmy's out there, still doing the hard work.

All In the Merry Month of May

I am not sure why it is so, but the month of May is not one of, but my most favorite month of the year. I start looking forward to it in April when the words "April showers bring May flowers" is on every body's lips. It's the month when all the trees are fully clothed, blossoms have pretty much begun to turn to fruit and best of all the Strawberries are in season. I find myself in McBee at least four times during May, headed for the Strawberry stands...(you notice I did not say patch...I'm afraid if I picked my own I would eat far more than I deliver to the shed to be weighed and paid for). May is so lovely and cool in the mornings, you can get your yard work done without suffering heat stroke and so warm in the afternoon that a fit of lazies washes over you like honey from the comb. Sitting on the porch can bring on a case of the dozies for sure, a cat in my lap and a book in my hands, a tall glass of iced tea at my elbow. Even the word "May" gives you a warm feeling...yes you may, mother may I, which puts me in mind of the games we played in childhood that had nothing to do with a game of wii. Mother May I, Red Light Green Light, Red Rover Red Rover and best of all was "Coming to See".



How many of you remember the game of Coming to See...it was a game we played inside and out...we would build little houses under the elm trees at Mammy's house blocking out our little dirt wall bounderies. We'd set up little table and chairs made from stumps and pieces of tree limbs, describe our imaginary curtains to our neighbors who "came to see" us. Our little houses were always close together and extremely visible in our mind's eyes. As cousin Becky described her gingham curtains hanging at her kitchen window, I could see the blue in the check and knew that a white ribbon held them back for the sun to shine in. As cousins Kay and Crystal came to visit me I would proudly point out the new breakfront I had lately installed to hold the dishes that were made of leaf and pebbles in fact, but porcelain in imagination. We played all this under the canopy of Elms next to Mammy's house. But if it was raining, we played just as happily in the three bedrooms upstairs, only we had actual furniture to display, not the gossamer furniture designed and distributed totally from our imaginations.



May 12 is also Mama's birthday. And I remember the Strawberry pie that she made for us with the first batch of strawberries that came into the house. Mama was such a great cook, I don't think she ever made anything that wasn't perfect. For her birthday I'm going to give you a gift from her since she is no longer with us to receive a gift. I'm sure she'd be quite happy with this arrangement. So, here's Mama's recipe for Strawberry Pie. Keep in mind that you can substitute the sugar with any sugar substitute you like. I use Splenda, but whatever you prefer. Happy Birthday, Mama



Mama's Fresh Strawberry Pie



4 cups fresh strawberries

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1 cup sugar (or splenda works just as well)

1/2 tsp baking powder



Line a baked pie shell with 2 cups of fresh strawberries and take the remaining 2 cups of berries and cook with the cornstarch blended in with the sugar and baking powder until clear and thick. Pour the cooked berries over the fresh ones after it has cooled. Top with whipped cream. This will be the only Strawberry Pie recipe you'll ever crave!

If it's Spring, can Summer be far behind?

If it's Spring, can Summer be far behind?




I spent my Sunday afternoon doing something I've looked forward to for weeks now. I packed up the winter clothes to banish them to the back room closet for at least six months! Gone are the days of sweaters and scarves, coats and boots, earth tones and dingey grays. I checked each garment carefully for any repairs that may need doing, making sure they were pristine clean for their banishment. The ones who were candidates for the ragbag were tossed carelessly aside, no longer repairable or even wanted. I took down the button tin from the top shelf and prepared to cut the buttons from those ragbag frocks. I remembered Mammy's (my grandmother) button tin, a big old coffee can (Lousianne Coffee with Chicory) which we loved to plunder through as children. She had such beautiful buttons in the depths of that can, they were like minor works of art. I remember her going through the buttons to add to a blouse she or my mother might be making and she would match them in size and color though not in appearance and make a blah blouse a wow blouse. Very innovative, was our Mammy.



So, now the winter things are packed in a box and ready to be put into the back of the closet. Funny how my Spring clothes get hung on the rail, not packed into boxes. It would be like packing the sunshine away to hide those sweet pastels and bright yellows in a box. I drew out the first of them, a warm yellow blouse with soft pale yellow slacks. I pulled it to my face and smelled the lavendar and rosemary sachet that had kept them company all winter and fall. It made me smile. I don't suppose the youth of today think about making their own sachets when they can just go into the nearest store and buy them. Or can they? Do they even know what a sachet is? Do they know how to make that little envelop of linen, stuffing it with dried herbs and spices so to scent your delicates or your closet?



So there I was, bringing out the bright colors and hanging them on my side of the closet and in walks Mac.

"So, whatcha doing?" asks he.

"Packing up the winter stuff, bringing out the summer stuff, " I reply. Oh, I was doing so much more than that. He could never understand.

He looks at his side of the closet, the jeans, the khakis the dress pants and long sleeved shirts mixed with the short sleeved shirts, the belts and ties. He snorts a laugh and wonders aloud why HIS side of the closet never gets the attention that mine does.

"What's the point?" I ask. "You're sort of a guy for all seasons. A one size fits all..." Lets face it, I gave up on getting him to wear bright colors and yes, even pink, years ago. In the long run, his refusal to wear fashion gives me more time to play on my own side of the closet! I'm a selfish wench!

The Baptisms

Week before last we held a Baptism at Douglas Mill Baptist Church. It was the first Baptism to which I've been witness since returning to my home Church. Actually, just walking in the front door door is forever a source of amazement to me. It is so very different from the Church of my childhood that it boggles my mind.




I spent every summer with my Grandparents, Dwight and Nancy Douglas, from a small child into my teens. I was a Summer Baptist, you understand. A Catholic girl when at home with my parents, a Baptist girl when with the elders during the summertime. The Douglas Mill of my childhood had broad planked wooden floors and hard backed pews, burned oil in a big old oil burner for warmth in winter and wooden window sticks for air conditioning to cool you in the summer...oh and those wonderful Miller Rivers Funeral Home fans on a stick for constant movement of said air. The pulpit was a simple wooden stand to hold Preacher Entzminger or Preacher Giffen's Bible, a simple wooden chair to rest in during singing. We had Deacons but they took up the offering and as far as I can remember never sat either side of the Preacher during the Sermon.



So, last Sunday I was witness to a Baptism that took place in the Baptismal water that is directly behind the Pulpit. Preacher Wayne had accepted that Harley and Will knew their hearts and had accepted Christ as their Savior and proceeded to make their knowledge Word. I watched them along with other family members as these two young people made their way into the water and Preacher Wayne took care of the rest. I couldn't help but remember the days when Baptisms only took place in late Spring and Summer. The entire congregation would walk down to Douglas Mill Pond and the Preacher would take the person down into the pond water to baptize them. In my mind I see them dressed in white sheets, but I'm sure it was Baptismal robes only worn for this special occasion. I can hear the singing as we walked down to the pond, the voices rising with pure joy as we went, I AM A POOR WAYFARING STRANGER.... listen to Trace Adkins bring it home...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXX0S9P1SUo&playnext=1&list=PL68A5F68E91A00717


So, now in our little church by the roadside (where everyone is someone) we have stained glass in the place of plain window glass, the carpet is appropriately red, the pews offer comfort rather than rigidity and the Pulpit is still plain but oddly lovely. There are three chairs behind the Pulpit, one for the Preacher and one each for the Deacons, though I've never seen a Deacon sit there. We have central air and heat and no longer can you raise a window to get a breeze. But that's okay, there are ceiling fans to keep that air moving. But still, I missed my little Miller Rivers Funeral Home fan of long ago. My grandparents and Uncle Gary and Aunt Edith (Douglas) would be so pleased to see the changes that a constant congregational offering has wrought. It's such a lovely little Church that anyone would be happy to attend the Services. But I can still see the original rough draft and can smell the honeysuckle scent that came through the upraised windows, held open with simple wooden sticks. I can see my grandmother on the second pew, fanning a grandbaby with that little fan. I can feel the texture of the religious tracts she kept in her Bible, the ones we would read when the Preacher's sermon became to long and complicated to keep our attention. My favorite was always the one about the man who wept because he had no shoes till he saw the man who had no feet. Yes, our little Church is lovely, but my memories of how she was are precious to me. Nostalgia causes lumps in throats and hitches in hearts. I wouldn't trade the way Douglas Mill Baptist Church is today for that church of long ago, but the memories, I wouldn't take a million dollars for a one of them.

Daddy and the Lady Banks Rose

We moved back to Chesterfield County in 1989 after Mac retired from the Navy. I had told him that since I had followed him all over the world for so many years, it was time for him to follow me, and that I was going to Chesterfield. Like any sensible man, he followed. My parents were happy that we were settling nearby and that they would get to be closer to their grandsons.


Mama, who was a master gardener in all but degree, was eager to share her plant knowledge with Mac and me. She took us all over their massive yard pointing out the beds of roses, the scattering of daffodils in the woods and in particular the Lady Banks Rose that was growing up the side of the garage. She had planted it as a stripling about 12 inches high and had pampered it and babied it for six years. Now in January, she was anxious to show us how she had placed brackets on the garage to secure it to so that it was 15 or so feet up and then swagging down. She told us the blooms this year would be spectacular and it would occur around Easter. I shared in her excitement and everytime I went to visit was greeted by the site of the bare limbed Lady Banks. I would go over and examine it for signs of first leaf.



Okay, now Daddy had a pair of loppers that he used to trim the trees to keep their branches from assaulting him when he was riding the mower or driving the car down the drive. He loved those loppers. They weren't much to look at as loppers go, but they were kept lovingly oiled and ready for action on a hook on the wall inside the garage.



Weekends starting in early spring were dedicated to neatening up flower beds, opening garden plots out back for the veggies that Mama grew with pride and aplomb and general yard work and weeding was carried out. Our younger son Michael enjoyed spending weekends at his "sweet little Grandma's". He didn't mind helping out there, though I couldn't get him to turn his hand in the yard at home. I would go to pick him up and take the chance to admire the Lady Banks and ooh and ahh over the new leaves it was putting on. It really was going to be glorious this year, I could tell. So one warm Saturday morning, I took Michael to spend the day at Grandma's. Daddy was out and about, no suit and tie but dressed in his yard work gear, a well worn pair of khaki shorts an old plaid shirt and faded green hat on his head. Oh, and loppers in hand. He had trimmed the magnolia tree limbs and was clearing the circle of dead branches and weeds that Mama and the kids had pulled. He waved at me as I dropped Michael off. I glanced at the beauty of the Lady Banks and dreamed of having one like it one day.



So it's about 4:30 that afternoon when the phone rings. On the other end, Michael is breathless with something akin to fear. "Mom, you've got to come here quick, Grandma is going to kill Grandpa!"

Okay, now having heard Mama threaten to kill Daddy at least 100 times a year for most of my life, I'm not getting so excited over this piece of news. Stifling a yawn, I ask him casually "so, what did Grandpa do this time?" A tremble

was in voice, he couldn't hide it. "He lopped off Grandma's Lady Banks." I sat straight up, rigid with anger of my own.

"Go tell Grandma to hold on I'm on my way."

"So you're gonna stop her?" he wanted to know.

"Oh no, I'm going to help her!" I told him, a deadly calm in my voice. I heard him yelling "run Grandpa run!"

Okay, so we didn't kill him. But Mama took his loppers away. He was not allowed to use them without strict supervision and only when Mama saw the need of them. Funny, but she didn't feel the need of their use for many years after that...
oh and ps:
yes, I do have a Lady Banks Rose, she is 10 feet high and no one but no goes near her with anything sharper than a camera lens.

Dudley Cock of the Walk

People who follow my blog all know about my cock eyed Rooster, Dudley. He came to live with us when his former owners' dogs tried to eat him sans dumplings. He showed up in the yard, tail feathers ripped out, one wing injured and just in a very sad way. Except for his voice, that is. His voice was as strong and vibrant as ever it had been. Mac very generously went to the feed store and bought cracked corn for bedraggled rooster, but he preferred to eat cat food with the cats. Yes, you read that correctly. Dudley (as in Dudley Doright) has a fan club of cats and and kittens. We haven't decided if he thinks he's a cat or they think they are roosters, but they get along together very well. The kittens will even cuddle up to him to sleep when Dudley calls his day done.


Dudley's tail feathers have grown in so thick and luscious in irridescent colors of green and purple that I feel sure he has a guardian angel in the late Mr Will Eddins. Mr Will raised some of the most beautiful roosters ever seen. And not for any reason other than the sure joy of their beauty. Our old boy never leaves the place, he's cock of the walk and sings all day long. He greets the sun before the sun even thinks about coming up, he hits the hay before Mr Sun says good night. I put out cat food twice a day and Dudley always races me to the food bowl, he and his favorite kitten, SuzieQ. Yes, he has a favorite kitten. The little black ball of fluff often gets her catnap next to Dudley out in the garden where he has scoouched out a warm nest of dirt. The cats are all very protective of their big odd brother. I've seen them gather around him, circling the wagons as it were, if they felt he might be in danger. I've never seen anything like it before, nor do I expect to see anything like it again. Sometimes I think God scatters little jokes amongst our lives to lighten us up. After all, I can't take anything to seriously as long as Dudley has his flock of cats.

Earthquakes and local disasters

I woke up this morning wearing a blanket of cats. JJ and Hound were wrapped around my head and Pyewackit and Caroline were clinging to my feet.  BatGirl had long since gone outside but I could hear her mourning her lack of thumbs to get the back door open to get in, so I got up.   I turned on the coffee pot (if you can legitimately call the Keurig machine a coffee pot) grabbed my cup and shooed the furrbies away all the while letting the yowling swearing BatGirl in.  I plopped some cat chow in their bowl and demanded they leave me alone.  Turning on the tv to catch the early news, I sat down with my coffee and had to swat the crazy cats off me yet again.  Mac was getting up, and I heard him telling JJ to get off his feet and leave him alone.  "What in the world is wrong with this kitten?" he was asking as he put his cup under the deliverer of wonderful brew.  "Couldn't say, they have been very clingy even before I got up.  I thought I had an electric blanket on my head, " I told  him.  The news came up and we sipped and watched.

Charlotte had their normal 2 or three shootings, the usual fire or three, the normal amount of burglaries and even mentioned an earthquake in Chesterfield County.  WHAT?!  Seems an earthquake of 2.9 hit our county this morning, causing a bit of a shake up, but nothing thank God of the sort that has hit Japan.  But still, we don't get earthquakes very often.  It's why we don't live in California, after all.  We don't want to live where the house shakes and walls tilt and books fly off shelves.  So now I know why the cats were so spooked.  They were not trying to protect us, I am sure...they wanted to know why we were not up and fleeing the scene.  I'm surprised I didn't find packed luggage by the door.  Of course there would only be Temptations Cat Snacks and Cat Chow inside...but still.  They're pretty smart these furrbies of ours. 

Understandably,  I wasn't surprised to hear my home county mentioned on national news.  Unfortunately it's beginning to be a pretty common occurance.  Chesterfield County has been undergoing a barrage of bad press because of some horrendous happenings at our Animal Shelter (tongue in cheek on calling it a shelter) and I will be writing more on the horrible things we have uncovered when SLED is finished with it's investigation of the Sheriff's Office and the officers involved in what can only be called a crime in anyone's book. I want to be able to write without crying.  Well, that's all for now, I'm headed out to plant flowers and enjoy this early summer weather.  I'm beginning  to think there may be something to this 2012 thing since it's only March and we've already had several days of 80+ weather and expect it to hit 84 today.  All in all, it's been a pretty exhausting month one way or the other.  Hope your day is a good one.

My Love Hate relationship with Facebook

Everyone was doing it. I heard so many stories about the fantastic features of Facebook, I began to believe the hype. Bloggers were abandoning their blogs for the convenience of it. They were throwing away their marvelous stories to keep up with people they once knew, barely knew, thought they knew or regretted they knew. Heck, some of them they never knew. What's worse some of these new old friends knew things best left forgotten. Quite a few of them were losing their jobs, finding out that free speech isn't quite as free if you are out there talking trash about your employers worker bees. So why, I wanted to know, was everyone so lady gaga over this site. Okay, admitting my folly, I fell into the pool along with the rest, hoping I wouldn't drown, dog paddling like hell just trying to keep my head above water.




After signing up on Facebook, at the urging of blogging friends and family, I had over 90 friends the first day. Mac came along and looked at my screen and asked when I had signed up. "Today, " I admitted "And I haven't even done a lot with it yet." He shook his head and asking of no one in particular, " and how do you get 90 friends in one day of doing not a lot?" I had to admit I didn't know. I mean, yes, I knew a goodly number of these people that I had friended. Most of course were people who read my blog. Some were family. Others were friends of friends who because I knew their friend thought they might like to be my friend. Yes, I was confused too.



Of friends on Facebook, the most unforgiving are family. They will "unfriend" you the moment you disagree with anything they say about anyone also in your family. They are allowed to call your sister (their mother) any number of foul things, and if you try in the least to raise a hand of discipline, (via Facebook wall postings) Bob's your Uncle, you're unfriended! Many of my younger family members apparently missed out on the "airing your dirty laundry" lesson given by my Grandmother, Nancy Douglas. She always preached to us that if we made mistakes in life, they were a family matter and not to be aired in public like so much dirty laundry. Well, I have noticed a lot of dirty laundry wafting in the Facebook breezes. And I wish they would stop it. I have signed off the site twice now, and feeling the urge to sign off once more. I just have one bone to pick with a certain someone about they way they are talking about someone I happen to love dearly. If they don't like it, they can unfriend me. Please.

Where is that lying little rodent hiding now?

Well I'm over my first flu illness in more years than I care to count.  Something went wrong  after I retired. My body started working against me.  Where before I was like super woman, never getting sick, injuries healing  in record time , working  twelve hour shifts then coming home to work four more inside and out without batting an eye,  to this.   (I can hear Peggy Lee singing "I am woman, W O M A N" in the background.)  I refuse to let the weather changes make an invalid or a hostage of my spirit, whatever it may do to my body.  While my body may cringe at the thought of rain, my spirit knows we need to break the drought that has taken hold of our state.  We've started the planting and come wind (OMG the wind!) hell or high water, we're going to get some veggies out of this ground!  The peas have popped up, the garlic is doing well and the tomato plants are showing off their little green leaves .   I have a feeling that lying little rodent Pauxatauny Phil may be a liar, but we have a heater in the green house, so raspberry to you dear Phil. 

This has been the coldest and roughest winter in many of our memories, I'm sure.  We had more snow than usual, so much in fact that the only state left snowless was Hawaii.  I normally love snow.  But I love the magical snow, you know, here today gone tomorrow.  Not this here today gone next month stuff with which we've been damned   blessed.   Our peach trees, plum trees and pear trees are all blooming, the apple tree is holding tight buds, and we've had 32 degree temps three days this week.  Luckily the low temps don't last long, so I think we may be alright.  I can only hope and pray that we stay above 32 til Spring finally arrives for real.  It's a scary thought, but that Mayan Calendar thing might be on to something!

And the flu has gone all Egypt on my ass

I'm sick.  Funny, I got the flu shot when everyone was haranguing me over its benefits.  Yet, here I am.  Temp this morning 101.  Better than the last three days orf 103, but still.  I'm sick.  Mac spent a night in the hospital for rapid (excess of 180) heartbeat again.  We spent two full days and a night there with the sick and afflicted all around us.  He took his flu shot, too.  He's not sick.  Yet.  However our son Wallace and I are.  Sick that is.  We have Mac mostly straightened out and on blood thinners (he's doing lovenox right now, or at least I give him the injections twice a day for a week.  I crawl off my death bed and warn him I'm to weak to chase him down.  He hates needles.  He sees I'm sick.  He behaves. 

I'm sick.  I'm sure I got it at the hospital and wonder to whom I would complain about it.  It appears I have no recourse but to lie on the couch and attempt to recover.  Today is not as bad as Friday was.  Friday night was awful.  I spent more time in the bathroom than in bed for two days.   I did everything at a crawl.  Still do.  It's taken me 2 hours to write this. 

Yes, the flu has gone all Egypt on my ass, I'll be glad when the revolution is over.

Temper Temper!

The header is my new one for the winter.  This is what it looked like for nearly 2 weeks.  There was ten inches of snow then three or four inches of ice on top of that and when I looked out the back door I knew we weren't going anywhere.  Not anytime soon.  Or as my Bubbles (Violet Loxley) would say, if the snow is shiny, it will hurt your hiney. 

So we've sort of been stuck in here together for days, getting on each others nerves.  War broke out once or twice, but luckily older son was iced in with us and acted as referee.  It could have gotten bad, but at least we never lost power.  That in itself was a blessing from heaven.  We had to go rake snow off the satellite a couple of times but other than that, we kept each other entertained with tales of who had cabin fever to the nth degree, me or him. 

Funny how much I love snow.  I mean I love our kind of snow, the here today gone tomorrow kind of snow.  Then we got Jersey Snow.  The snow that is here today and here tomorrow and still here in April.  Yes, I've lived through snow where Evil Sister and I had to hack a path from her back door to mine so we could play hours of Scrabble.  That was called keeping ourselves sane.  And the kids never missed a day of school.  The snow was half way up the picture window and they had school.  Chesterfield County in 1987 had 1 inch and the school was closed for days.  The boys really hated that.  A lot.

So here we are, with Jersey Snow, and high winds on top of that.  Mac had a colonoscopy scheduled for last Friday, but we couldn't get out to get the solution and tab he had to take.  So, it's was rescheduled for tomorrow.

I looked forward to getting out of here on my own Monday.  I dressed in my best wool slacks with my cashmere sweater, the beautiful shawl my sister Toni gave me and my fur hat.  I looked pretty good,  if I  do say so myself ,it made my spirits hum.  Put on my lipstick, grabbed my bag and hit the porch.  Slid three feet to the gate, looking to be sure no one saw me, straighted my hat and walked gingerly to the truck.  I was in such good humor! 

Now, we have had one insurance company for years, Tricare...most of the meds are mail order, but we get things like this from CVS and have never ever had a  problem.  I waltzed into CVS Pharmacy, handed over the prescription and went to wander around the store while they filled it.  I heard someone calling my name, and got over to the counter as quickly as I could.  The lady behind the counter told me that the insurance company had declined to pay because we had other insurance.  I asked what DOB she had used.  It was the right one.  I asked if it was Tricare.  It was.  She said she would call them to see what might be the problem.

So, she gets someone on the line and begins to explain that the prescription was being turned down for payment and that the customer claimed no other insurance.  She was nodding and rolling her eyes and she looked at me and asked if I would like to talk to her.  I narrowed my eyes and held out my hand for the phone.

"Now, just what seems to be the problem here?"  I asked her. 
"Well, " she says, "it appears that you have another insurance that should cover this,  madam, and you should use that one before trying to make  the government pay."

Remember the little girl in The Exorcist, the one whose head spun around and she began to spit green soup?  Well, no, I didn't do all of that, but I did choose my words carefully.  "Now, you listen to me, I don't know where you are, but I can assure you that where ever you are, my husband spent a lot of time keeping you safe.  It's a pity that a man can put thirty years in the Navy and then you make a statement like that!  My husband's time in service has more than paid for any medication or medical treatment that this government, such as it is, provides.  We only have the insurance that we have had for the past 21 years the one that you are trying to represent.  I suggest you fix this error and quickly. And DON'T CALL ME MADAM!"  I handed the phone back to the lady behind the Pharmacy counter.  She was smiling from ear to ear.  She kept saying "yes, yes, of course.  No the customer is still here, we'll take care of it right now."

She hung up as I was straightening my hat again and looked out at me and told me that they had taken the red flag off the account and the order would be filled.  Then she started laughing outright.

"Mrs. McBride, I don't know when I've enjoyed a conversation with an insurance company more.  And might I say, you looked quite elegant up there on your high horse!"  I started to laugh with her, and told her I might need some help getting down from it to insure I didn't do myself an injury.  I don't know when I've enjoyed losing my temper more!