The Honeymoon Car!

Yesterday I posted a picture of our first car on FB and asked folks to tell me about their first car. This is a 1963 Oldsmobile F-85 and Mr. B and I bought it together just weeks before we got married. It was the first car for either of us and we were so proud of it.

That got me to thinking about the honeymoon we took in that car!

We hadn't had it but a couple of weeks and it had been a really good car right up until we said, "I do," and I promised to love, respect and honor Mr. B, to cook his meals, iron his shirts and make sure that house was clean when his mother came to visit. He promised to love, respect and honor me, to take out the trash, eat my food even when it was burned and never let his mother open the closet doors.

But the moment we said those vows that crazy little blue car started acting like it was possessed. Maybe it was the fact the neighbors saw me in that cute little white linen dress with a short veil on my head and came rushing over with their canister of rice to throw at us as we drove away. Or maybe it was the cans rattling along the alley as we left that embarrassed the poor little thing. The previous owner, a little old lady, who kept it in the garage and only drove it to the grocery store once a week and the beauty shop twice a week never tied cans to its tail pipe.

We made it to the first motel without too much trouble. It only died at a couple of traffic lights but hey, it had just had to climb two mountains so maybe it was a little bit tired. The next morning we got into Washington D. C. and the car went downright crazy. It had a full tank of gas. The oil had been changed when we bought it two weeks before. It only had twenty thousand miles on it and the tires would brand new.

But it stopped graveyard dead at every single stop light or stop sign that we rolled up to. Do you know how many traffic lights there are in D. C. Only three less than eight million. By noon I was ready to trade the thing in on Poppa's wagon and set of cantankerous mules back home. They might be slow but they were dependable.

We did some sight seeing, hit another motel that evening, and figured we'd bought a lemon. The car that was supposed to last at least until Mr. B got through college was on its way to that junkyard in the sky as soon as we got back to our apartment. I didn't care if it was a pretty shade of blue and the seats were comfortable.

We'd gotten used to the stop, try to start the engine, cuss and rant, kick the doors, try to start the engine, cuss some more and finally, right before we pulled it off to the side of the road and hitch hike home, try one more time. Give a sigh when the engine finally turned over, pat the dashboard, pray for green lights, slide through stop signs and promise to never buy another blue Oldsmobile in our entire lives.

When we got home, the family asked how the honeymoon went and we told them that we were going to shove the new car into the river as soon as we could get it there. And that's when we learned that Mr. B's brothers thought it would be a real cute trick to pull a wire of some kind under the hood. It was supposed to stop after about a block and refuse to start. Then we'd have to walk back to the in-law's house for help. Only they loosened the wire just enough to kill the engine any time we stopped.

Ten minutes later the wire was fixed and the car got Mr. B through college and his first years of teaching. We brought all three of our children home from the hospital in it and lived in three states before it finally went to that great junk yard in the sky.

I did not commit justifiable homicide the day we returned from our short honeymoon which was saying a lot for a short, loud mouthed Rebel. I don't hold grudges more than 40 years but I do not forget and I do get even so his two brothers still walk a wide swath around me!

Whole New Outlook on Make Overs!

Folks are always talking about winning a “make over.” That can involve any and everything from getting your eyebrows waxed to someone looking like Miss Piggy checking into an expensive spa and coming out six weeks later looking like Miss Crawford. The thought of anyone ripping away half my eyebrows causes words to erupt from my mouth that border on severe sinning. The idea of turning my Miss Piggy body into one like Cindy Crawford’s in a mere six weeks is straight-jacket goofy.

Since a physical make over is as probable as my gray hair turning black of its own volition, I’ve got a request to make. Could we forego the magical experience of turning my body into something tantalizing and instead could I please win a garage make over?

Last week I peeped into the garage. It reminded me of a movie ... Nightmare on Sixth Street! If an item has lived in my house in the past thirty plus years and is no longer living in my house it is now living in the garage. Husband is a renowned pack rat. Matter of fact, he may be in the Guinness Book of World Records. If you look under “pack rat” I’m sure there he would sit in the middle of his garage, surrounding by enough stuff to validate his entry.

Seemed like a really nice thing to want to win for him, and then behold if I didn’t see an article on the internet that said, “Win a Garage Make Over!” I was flabbergasted beyond words. Talk about someone being certifiably straight-jacket goofy. Had they never looked inside our garage?

I moved my little mouse around to click on the directions to put in my application. First name, last name, address, e-mail address, why did I want to have my garage made over?

The first four weren’t so hard to answer. I’ve known my first and last name a good many years. And after more than thirty years of looking at this address on the top of my checks, I’ve pretty well gotten it memorized. Husband made the e-mail address simple enough I don’t get too confused. But that last question was the stinger. I could say in 25 words or less why I wanted to have my garage made over, but they’d disqualify my entry for sure if I told them how tough a job they were facing.

Let’s see: My garage is organizationally challenged and would benefit from your expertise greatly. Pack rat Husband will be gone two days in August. Bring bull dozer.

That one sounded pretty honest but it didn’t say I couldn’t fill out more than one application to win this wonderful prize. Just to be sure I went out to the garage and took one more look. Yep, I’d better enter at least one more time. Fifty times wouldn’t hurt. So I closed the site down, pulled it right back up and started all over again.

Second attempt: Two boxes of every size wood scraps imaginable offered free to garage make over folks. Bring back hoe. Have sleeping pills for Husband.

Twenty first try: Bring camera for before and after pictures. Without living proof no one would ever believe how much magic you can work. Guaranteed to create business!

Thirty fourth: Promise to spray for spiders and scorpions. Lack of oxygen killed the rats. Door sticks. Bring WD-40. Can’t find mine. It’s in the garage somewhere.

Forty second: Taking Husband to Pennsylvania for two weeks. Please have job finished when I get home. Burn the trunk in the corner and all the contents.

Fiftieth and last attempt: Find it? Throw it out. Keep it. Sell it. Give it to your grandmother for Christmas. No questions asked. Pressing my black suit for divorce court.

All I ask if I win is to let me know which application they pulled out of cyberspace so I know what to do with Husband while they are out there yanking their hair out by the roots. When it’s over he’ll be so excited to have all his tools put on cute little bright yellow shelves; all his screws, bolts and nails organized into those clear plastic boxes; and the dried up paint thrown away. Why, he can sit out there in the middle of it all and cry like a baby

 

The Theory of the Disappearing Sock!

The sixty four thousand dollar question is not how to achieve world peace or who really is going to come out ahead on Justified on the last episode next week. But the big question is what happens to one of every pair of socks that gets brought through the front door.

 Can the “other sock” phenomenon be blamed upon the drier which must have a voracious appetite for socks?

Maybe so.

But it does seem strange that it only eats one at a time, and never, ever the same kind twice in a row.

Is it possible that we have a one legged ghost in our house? I haven’t heard a peg legged pirate stomping around at night but then maybe he’s a real quiet ghost.

Or does one of them crawl out of the dirty clothes basket to run away from home since it doesn’t want to be an identical twin? Maybe the poor thing feels bad about living the life of a sock looking exactly like the one of the other foot. Or maybe it depresses the poor thing because it’s been a left foot sock when it knows it was born to be a right foot sock its whole life?

Actually, I think the manufacturers make one sock out of that stuff that will outlast the Rock of Gibraltar. It will endure crime, grime and athlete’s foot. It will be around for the great grandchildren to inherit and we can rest in peace that something from our generation will be passed on from generation to generation.

However, the other sock is made of a secret fiber that is way above my classification to understand. It looks like the other one. It is attached to the other one with the same little plastic gizmo that would take an act of congress to detach. It’s been really close to the bionic sock of the century since the day it was created. It’s impossible to tell it from the one that our great grandson will inherit in the future.

However when it is time to wash the socks, presto! The bionic sock withstands the detergent, agitation and water all at the same time. But this new secret fiber disappears in the washer!

What we need to do is have a swap meet? We can take the “good” socks that survive the test of washing and drying to the swap meet to trade with other folks that might have one like it.

That way we will get a pair that will last through eighteen lifetimes and half of eternity.

When they dig up the remains of this age, the socks will be the only thing left of the whole civilization.

So I’ll trade one white tube sock with purple rings around the top for one white tube sock with no color around the top. I’ll trade a black crew sock with green stitching on the toe for a brown crew sock with a four and a half inch top.

And we’ll all go home happy with socks that will never, ever disappear again!!

Your Brain!!

I saw an advertisement the other day in a magazine, complete with color pictures, that showed me what two brains looked like. One was, “This is your brain.” Looked a good bit like a handful of curdled cheese to me. The one right beside it said, “This is your brain on drugs.” Dear hearts, that poor little curdled cheese brain looked like it had been dropped into hot bacon drippings and fried crisp. I threw out all the aspirin in my medicine cabinet and read the labels on all the canned food to make sure there were no drugs listed. Even the peanut butter went into the trash.

If they can take pictures of a brain like that, it caused me to wonder just what other brains look like. Evidently all brains, be they owned by rocket scientist or a common old ditch digger, look somewhat alike until they are faced with various tests and trials.

This is your brain on puberty. It would have pictures of rock music stars tattooed upon the frontal lobes. The back side would have an array of Techni-color impressions of wild hair, tongue rings and baggy britches with no belts. If they use advanced technology and take a picture of the inside of a puberty afflicted brain, it would show an enormous hole. Somewhat like that black hole in space. There’s has to be room for all the things they need to learn when they find out just how little they do know.

This is your brain before a diet. It puffed up with a nice big smiley face on the top. This is your brain on the first day of a diet. The smiley face is frowning. This is your brain on the thirtieth day of a diet. The smiley face is gone and there’s only half as much brain as before. It can’t make rational decisions and rattles around in the skull like an old maid in a two story house. This is your brain on the second day in which you fell off the diet wagon. The smiley face is back and it’s puffing up real nice.

This is your brain after spending the day with a two year old. The frontal lobe is pierced, somewhat like that metal art they do with a nail and a hammer. It has the letters W-H-Y drilled into it so deeply, they probably wouldn’t disappear even with a healthy chunk of chocolate swirl cheesecake to help puff it back up. The side lobe is purple and green. That’s a bruise where the little darlin’s sippy cup hit you sixteen times when you were trying to take it away from him. The other side is swiveled up like a piece of cheese that’s been left in the refrigerator for six months. That’s the side that dealt with chasing him all day. There’s a possibility it will never rebuild itself.

This is your brain after thirty years of marriage. It’s compartmentalized into color coded areas. The red one knows where Husband hides his dirty socks and all the tools he can’t find laying out in plain view in the garage. The blue one knows that he hates frozen Brussels sprouts, loves chocolate almond ice cream and tolerates fudge sickles. The orange one knows all his family’s birthdays, their names down to the third cousins once removed and fifth cousins by marriage.

This is your brain after a shopping trip. There’s little lightning bolts sending messages to your feet to get off them because they ache so bad. There’s a calculator in the frontal lobe adding up all the money you spent. There’s a file cabinet in the back lobe full of excuses as to why you needed a pair of red sequined high heeled shoes. A special form is provided in the right side that lets you fill out a request for a short termed loan at the local bank. Yes, you may use your puberty stricken daughter for collateral. Just don’t expect the loan to exceed the double digit figures.

This is your brain after your mother-in-law has spent a week with you. It resembles a little rounded piece of curdled cheese that someone hacked to pieces with a meat cleaver. It knows it’s supposed to be all in a piece, but like the kitchen drawers, the linen closet and the closets after she leaves, it can’t find where it’s supposed to go.

I figured the brain on drugs would look rather tame in comparison to those brains. I dug the aspirin and the peanut butter out of the trash, ate two aspirin and made myself a PB&J sandwich.

Luscious Lemon Delight

It is Recipe Sunday!!!

And I LOVE lemon anything...that's lemon tea, lemon pie, lemon cheesecake, even lemon bundt cake! This recipe looked so good I had to share it even though I haven't made it yet. When I was a little girl, my step-sister used to work at the Murray State College cafeteria and sometimes she would bring us leftover lemon chiffon pie. This recipe reminds me of that and I do intend to make it at our next family gathering! Would love to get some feedback on anyone who makes it before I do!!

Luscious Lemon Delight

Ingredients
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons chopped pecans, divided
8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, softened
1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1 cup confectioners' sugar
1 (8-ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed, divided
2 (3.4-ounce) packages lemon instant pudding mix

2 2/3 cups milk

Directions
Preheat the oven to 375F.

Combine flour, 1/2 cup pecans and butter in a medium bowl and mix well. Press onto the bottom of an 11 x 8-inch baking dish. Bake until lightly browned, about 15 minutes. Let stand to cool.

Place cream cheese in a medium bowl. Beat with an electric mixer set at medium speed until fluffy. Add confectioners' sugar and beat until mixture is light and fluffy.

Add 1 cup whipped topping to cream cheese mixture and fold in gently. Spread over cooled crust.

Combine pudding mix and milk in a medium bowl. Beat until thickened. Spread on top of cream cheese layer. Top with the remaining whipped topping. Sprinkle with remaining pecans. Chill, covered, for 1 hour. Store any leftovers in the refrigerator

Self-Control & Reading!

It amazes me that some folks have the self control to read a few pages of a good book, then lay it aside to wash dishes, water the roses or even go to bed for a whole night’s sleep.

There must be a special place in heaven reserved for folks with that kind of control…right up there beside mothers of more than one son or two daughters. They probably even get special crowns and get to sleep late on extra fluffy white clouds.

From the time I open the front cover of a book to scan the fly sheet…be it a number one New York Times best seller or poorly written trash…until I’ve sighed over the last words I’m as addicted to that book as Poppa was to Garrett snuff and Old Log Cabin whiskey.

I’m still not sure that Poppa didn’t meet Mama in the first level of eternity with a scowl on his face because she didn’t tuck that little metal can full of snuff in his front overall pocket before they buried him.

That’s every bit how addicted I am to reading. I do mean total and absolute addiction. Not to the point where I carry the book around with me while I vaccum, dust or talk on the phone. Forget that nonsense. I unplug the phones, turn off the cell phones, ignore the dust, forget what a vacuum cleaner is and curl up in my favorite recliner to read.

It’s the only time the grandkids can paint he walls orange and red with markers and do a mural of Old McDonald’s farm in ketchup and mustard on the ceiling. Just don’t interrupt me while I’m trying to get Skink out of trouble out there in the swamp land.

The house goes to the pits. By the time the last page is finished, the last giggle has ended and the last tear dried, the house looks like someone invited a few folks over for a party…like about fifty and they stayed a week.

By then I feel as guilty as warmed over sin on Sunday morning and I swear I’ll never read a whole trilogy at one sitting again. My eyes feel like 80 grit sandpaper and there’s a migraine trying to set up an abode in the back of my head.

This spring has been a mad house so I haven’t had time to indulge in binge reading.

Like a food-o-holic who has a chocolate cake in the house and not even tasted the icing with a thumb nail, I got it in my mind that I had conquered the terrible “reading illness.”

There are hundreds of hard bound books on the bookcase and dozens of paperbacks waiting to be read in my TBR pile. And I had that self control issue cured so I could take a couple of hours and start a book one evening about two hours before bed time.

But how did one ever stop at the end of chapter four. Good lord! I couldn’t leave the heroine in that state of mind. Just one more chapter and I would put the book down. I was in control. I hadn’t even unplugged the phones.

Then it was midnight and the heroine was locked in a dungeon with snakes and spiders and the alpha heroes were still an hour away. It was raining and the thunder was so loud that she could hardly hear the pounding of her heart.

I promised myself I would put the book down at one o’clock. After all I had a deadline to meet the next day with my own writing. But then the alpha heroes arrived and I had to read on to find out which one she was going to fall for.

The sun was coming up over the horizon when I finished the last page. So much for self control!

Bathtubs and Telephones!

I read a quotation that there were 25 years between the time that the bathtub was invented and the telephone came about. Talk about a heavenly time. Just think about sitting for hours and hours in a tub of hot, steamy water topped off with a foot of bubbles, reading your favorite romance book ... and the telephone does not ring.

I’m sure there were even a few years past that first quarter of a century when women folks could bathe without the phone ringing. Then the bathtub engineers joined up with the bubble bath, water company and laundry soap folks and came up with an ingenious idea. Put a pressure gizmo on the bottom of the bathtub that sends a signal to the telephone company to put forth all calls to your number immediately.

That way the person in the tub has to crawl out, wrap a towel around her body and answer the phone. While she’s gone the water gets cold, the bubbles go flat and the towel she wrapped up in is soaked. Consequently, the water must be drained and new run, another six ounces of bubble bath used and a new towel drug out when the second attempt is done.

Sounds like a conspiracy to me!!

A couple of weeks ago it happened just that way. Supper was over so all the telemarketers had gone home. I had a new book to read and bubble bath I’d gotten for Christmas and still hadn’t had time to use.

I’d just settled down to read at least half the book when the telephone rang. My first thought was to let it ring or let the answering machine pick up. But what if it was an emergency?

I hurried to find a towel, slid across the hardwood floor and grabbed the phone just in time to hear a click and the dial tone. Righteous indignation is the ability to be mad without using swear words. My indignation was slightly tarnished.

Back to the tub. At least the water was still warm and the bubbles still floated on top like froth on hot chocolate. That thought almost made me hungry enough to abandon the tub and go to the kitchen, but I fought down the urge and crawled back in. The minute my weight hit the bottom of the tub the phone rang. With murmurings far from having a halo I grabbed the soggy towel and hurried to the phone.

“Hello!” I said grumpily.

“Hello, Mrs. Brown, this is Minnie with Neiman Marcus and our books show that your account has exceeded the five thousand dollar limit. Could you please send us a check for two thousand five hundred and fifty dollars and thirteen cents by tomorrow afternoon?”

“Hey, I do my shopping at the Goodwill stores and garage sales,” I stammered.

“This is Mrs. Rudolph Hugh Brinson Brown the fifth of Oklahoma City, isn’t it?” She said tersely.

“No, ma’am. This is Mrs. Charlie Brown the one and only of Davis, America,” I informed her just as tersely. “And she’s standing here in a frayed, soggy towel while her bath water gets cold and she does not owe Neiman Marcus a single dime, darlin’.”

“Yeah, right, and I’m Minnie Mouse. When are you going to pay this bill?” she said. Icicles dripped from her voice. But I didn’t really care. They were dripping from the ends of my towel.

“Just as soon as Miss Piggy pays me for cleaning her house and when I can talk Donald Duck into providing an answering service for folks who can’t get the right number. Have a good day, Minnie Mouse.”

By the time I got back to the tub the bubbles were flat and the water was cold. I opted for a two minute shower and some hot chocolate to sip while I read the book snuggled up on the couch. The phone did not ring again all evening. I wonder if I can pay the bathtub folks to unhook the gizmo in the bottom of the tub.