Monthly Archive

It’s “up and at ‘em” early today. Sleeping in’s simply not an option. Besides, the local Cantonese (not right, but sounds good) inform me that I’m a still a decent three and a half to four hours away from New Orleans. Though their town continues to call my name and I’m dying to call right back, “Here am I!”, my original and primary goal of the trip was to get to a wedding in the French Quarter of the Big Easy, so for the time being, I must vacate the town which now proudly has its name etched in my heart.

All of the coffee I’ve consumed simply will not let me get to ‘Nawlins without making a trip to the restroom and while I’m inside a quick stop just inside the Louisiana state line, I quickly snap this picture of the bathroom door.

It’s an answer to a message about the KKK, but instead of refuting the content of the message, it refutes the construction. “Hey! Watch your grammar. If you were educated past the third grade you’d know it’s ‘all of you’ not ‘all y’all.’” This keeps me pondering and laughing for the rest of the drive.

With good humor now on my side and the sun peeking back and forth out of the clouds, I boldly make my way across the miles and miles of bridges leading into New Orleans and swallow the sinking feeling in my stomach that driving across Lake Pontchartrain gives me.

No time to pay attention to the sinking, however, because it is now being replaced with tears of joy and admiration. The first sight I see when pulling off the interstate is the now-intact Superdome. Just take a look at this picture and imagine the sheer size of the arena and then imagine winds sweeping through that are powerful enough to shed the roof like a layer of onion skin. That’s how powerful Katrina truly was.

Only a block over is the arena housing the New Orleans Hornets.

The hotel I’m staying in is just off the interstate on Canal Street. As I pull into the garage, I look just over to my right and reality sets in and it sets in very very hard. Here I am staying in a hotel on the edge of the French Quarter, getting ready to go celebrate a marriage at a very swanky wedding and getting ready to enjoy a city that has become near and dear to the heart of most every blue-blooded American and to my immediate right underneath an overpass are literally hundreds of tents, sleeping bags, recliners, couches and cardboard boxes containing individuals and entire families displaced by the hurricane. And my heart aches because it’s not over. It’s really not over. Moms, dads, kids and grandparents are living under the interstate and occasionally going out with cups, asking for money. But, really, how good is a dollar going to do? Even a hundred dollars? A thousand dollars? It won’t buy a home. This puts a seasick edge on the entire day, but I must press on.

My spirits are raised a bit when I find a familiar restaurant and seafood gumbo good enough to tell your grandmother to give up and go to blazes.

In continuing to explore the Quarter, my travels take me to some more familiar sights.

Cafe du Monde!!!!!!!!!!!!

The one and only Preservation Hall!!!!!!!

St. Louis Cathedral!!!!!

But it’s getting late and I must get ready for the rehearsal dinner tonight. It’s being held in a restaurant in the quarter and I’m getting antsy for my crawfish.

When I leave the dinner, my head swims with the surreal nature of the city, the fact that it’s still thriving, the French Quarter is seemingly unchanged, the mood is festive, Jazz Fest is in town and people are smiling and then I lay my head down at night and I see tents, sleeping bags, cups of change and on the outskirts of the fun….sadness.

The road is positively (or negatively) littered with little dead overturned armadillos and signs warning motorists to stay out off the median. The warning signs and slaughtered animals just about equal each other in frequency. Armored rats would appear to be an endangered species here in Mississippi and apparently so were people who decided to drive in the medians until law enforcement saw fit to put up signs warning people to stay out of the bluffs. Maybe they need to order signs telling people to please not hit the armadillos.

Driving in this state isn’t particulary like driving on the pancake that is the better part of Illinois and Missouri, but still it feels like progress is literally miles away. The tourist board has cleverly planted Magnolia trees along the road as a constant reminder that you’re driving in the deep south and not the backroads of Timbuktu.

And then, just before giving up on civilization completely, you reach Canton.

The movie theater around the square is missing its “n” so that it calls itself ”canto” and appropriately so because it would be quite easy to sing this town’s praises all the day long. The courtsquare, a true staple of a small county seat, so often dies out due to the construction of Wal-Marts, mini-malls and other businesses around the outskirts of town meant to draw tourists into the area but mostly only succeeding in drawing the life and breath out of the heart of the town. This town appears to have none of the usual signs of illness, however. 

A school band gears up to play a concert right inside the gated courthouse lawn. 

The storefronts lining each side of the square give no appearance of being bare. They don’t have the appearance of the knocked out teeth and black eyes that have become characteristic of courtsquare storefronts whose shops are forced to leave.

History is not forgotten but paid a small token of tribute as buildings proudly display their year of birth and their former identity above their new identity.

Interspersed throughout surrounding neighborhoods, the town pays tribute to its antebellum roots.

Tomorrow, it’s on to the Big Easy, but for today and tonight, I’m staying put right here. Maybe, one day, for good.

It’s great to be in a town that doesn’t have to put up warning signs to keep away death. And I no longer see any armadillos on the side of the road.

I’m all packed and in a matter of minutes I’ll be off on the seemingly longest and straightest stretch of interstate in the country. I’ll most likely kiss the Welcome to Louisiana sign when I see it. Yes, my main intent is to go to a wedding, but certainly I’ll spend oodles of time here and here and this will be going on as well.  

Nervous about the drive, but my excitement about java and jazz will hopefully make it all go away.

Well, I’ll miss you. I’d love to take a few of you with me, but a box of beignets a bag of chickory coffee will have to suffice as souvenirs when I get back to the Volunteer State. Those of you with my digits, give me a call or shoot me a text. I’d love to converse.

And now, until we meet again, I’ll leave you with a little Louis and I’ll now leave the state.

Lookie what came in the mail today!!! Pages and pages of old b & w movie goody goody goodness from “All about Eve” to “Ziegfeld Follies” and everything in between to satiate the appetite of the old soul living inside me.

Man, I feel exactly like what Ralphie from ”A Christmas Story” must have felt when he looked inside his mailbox and discovered his Little Orphan Annie decoder pin he’d been so looking forward to receiving. This will definitely make for some good reading on the way to and from ’Nawlins. 

a room could be full of people but seem completely empty when he walks into it.

whether it’s drinking coffee, going to a ballgame, going fishing or simply talking on the phone, an ordinary day becomes a great day as soon as I’ve made contact with him.

he has the most infectious giggle I’ve ever heard.

when he’s on the road, I worry about his safety until I hear from him again that all is well. I watch his vehicle until it gets out of sight.

he really is the sweetest and most caring person I’ve ever met. Truly one of a kind. 

i’ll probably delete this post later, but for now, I’m keeping it up. I’ll take my chances.

i’m blushing at this very moment and only I know why.

i love him. 

Last night I caught a very interesting show on Fuse called “Live Through This.” Its focus was singer Amy Winehouse’s brush with death last August from an overdose.

Winehouse, who went on a three-day binge last August of cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, horse tranquilizers and vodka, was rushed to a London hospital by her husband and by all accounts, she could have perished. Doctors injected life-saving adrenaline into her dying heart, pumped her stomach free of the toxins and she lived to see another day.

Former teachers of Winehouse compared her to the late great Judy Garland in voice. But even more eerily, this person who has the potential to be another Garland with all her jazz prowess nearly met her end in a similar fashion. The legendary Garland overdosed on barbiturates, ending her life all too soon and Winehouse found herself standing on the doorstep to the same end last year. 

As I was watching this show last night I realized that, as far as Winehouse has fallen, this great talent now has a chance to come back and be better than before. She has a second chance. She survived death and can now come back and be an example for others.

And I started thinking about second chances in general. Second, third, fourth and fifth chances. Sometimes, we are given second chances we don’t think we deserve, but there’s a very good reason for our having received them. It means we’re not finished yet. Something wonderful is still on the horizon and we might have to hit rock bottom before we find it, but the main thing is that we keep looking. Just because we’ve made a mistake or had something beyond our circumstances happen to us doesn’t mean it’s over.

We pick up and we start again. With singing, with a career, with friends, with anything. After all, it’s all about being happy, isn’t it? And a second chance is given with the hope of finding it.

Try not to let it go.

By now, everyone’s heard about the 5.2 magnitude earthquake that shook West Salem, Illinois early this morning. In varying degrees, most everyone felt it. But no one has yet to hear the reaction to the quake straight from the mouth of my guinea pig who decided to be very vocal while the shaking was going on.

He was already worried because his little sister Dixie had to go very early this morning to have her stitches removed, but when the earthquake came, he just couldn’t keep his little trap shut.

Isn’t he a handsome little devil?

Anyway, all during the shaking of his little pen, he cried out (in very discernable pig latin), “Mommy, mommy, please don’t let the big shaky thing get my cereal and my bananas! Oh, and by the way, would you give me some right now?”

He’s always been an early bird.

Run out and rent it immediately! It’s in stores today and it’s most definitely a must-see.

My grandmother goes to the cancer specialist every Tuesday to have blood work done and today as no one else was available to take her, I drove her to the appointment. Upon walking into the building, my hospital/clinic radar senses took over as they tend to do when I enter any medical facility and I began to take note of everything in the room and analyze it carefully while my grandmother went in for her test.

Yup. Same chilly, sleepy medicinal feel to this place as most doctor’s offices as if the room is being pumped with nitrous oxide. Must…stay…awake…if possible. A wide variety of ages and backgrounds sitting among the chairs of the waiting room. Not good. Always scares me to see people my age and younger coming in for treatment. Judge Brown is on the telly and someone owes someone else for medical damages. This is bringing some laughter out of a few of the patients waiting in the chairs. In the corner are children’s toys. Lincoln logs, Legos, a few Beanie Babies. At the receptionist’s counter are pink ribbon necklaces for sale. Three dollars each. Beside me on a table are several copies of MAMM magazine. I pick up one and read it from cover to cover. Ironically enough, inside there’s an article devoted entirely to blogging about cancer. Several people across the country have started openly talking about their experiences with cancer and are getting hundreds of thousands of hits from people with cancer who are looking for a friend to talk with about their scary experience. It’s heartwarming.

Gma walks out before I know it and as I pull the car around to the door to pick her up, she makes an announcement that is music to my ears:

“Let’s go to Jack’s and get us a coffee.”

We’re not sure if the store will be open or not, but gma tells me to go to the door, check and then give her the thumbs up signal if it’s open. The store is indeed open and we place our orders while chatting with the barista about local baseball and the sleet we’ve been having over the past two days.

On the way home, with our coffees in hand, gma tells me that her report was good. Her white blood cell count was very high last week, but it has decreased somewhat this week and is looking positive. She told me, though, that at the same time we were visiting the Paris clinic today, one of my aunts who has already had a partial mastectomy was waiting to undergo a second biopsy in Union City.

The conversation changed to the subject of my sister and her recent problems with a guy who just won’t leave her alone. She has been working lately from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and the other day, the guy texted her at 1:30 in the morning and would not stop texting until 4 a.m., about an hour before she needed to wake up for the day and get ready for work.

“She just can’t stop talking to him even though she knows it’s wrong,” gma said.

“I wish she were dating someone right now,” I admitted. “She has no one right now and that’s why she keeps coming back to the wrong guy. A real friend wouldn’t text you that late unless it were an emergency. I just think it’s funny that every time she wants to talk, he has an excuse not to, but when he wants to talk, she’s right there at his feet.”

Gma laughed. “She sees only what she wants to see.”

When we pull into the driveway, I hand her the keys and get ready to go home.

“I’m glad you got to come with me today,” she said. “I’m glad you got to see what goes on in there. It’s not always nice, but then again, we go through a lot of things we don’t choose to go through. It just happens.”

She didn’t choose to have cancer, but she chose to fight it rather than give in. We don’t always choose our paths. Sometimes they’re chosen for us. But thankfully, we can choose our friends, jobs, attitudes and coffee we want to take along with way.

Today, I’m glad I chose to walk into unfamiliar territory with my gma. It gives me yet another reason to admire her.     

If April showers are supposed to bring May flowers, then what about April sleet? Ahem. I think I got something caught in my throat so I’ll try again. It’s SLEETING outside. Solid sleet. Perfectly little round balls of white frozen precipitation. That’s just crazy! It’s a crazy day!

In honor of this crazy day, here’s a famous crazy scene from one of my favorite crazy movies. You know it. Talk along with the actors and let’s celebrate the craziness of this day.

This news has been floating around the ‘Net for a few days now, but I thought I’d wait to post anything about it. Had to pinch myself several times, ya know, to make sure it was true. Apparently, it is. Oh, yesssssss! It’s reunion time!

Answer me one question. Honestly. Has it all of a sudden or for a long while now become very unpopular to be nice, especially about sensitive topics?

While, yes, I’m becoming totally supportive of repealing the Mary Sunshine Law, if you’re friends with someone, shouldn’t you be….um….supportive? Positive? Uplifting? No matter what? Because….it’s good for the person?

Last night, in a very underhanded way, a “friend” informed me that I am fat. Yes, that blunt. I’ve always been sensitive about that and always will be. No, I’m not obese, but let’s just say I’m not in conditioned basketball shape like I used to be. I could use a few good workouts and I could stand to drop Starbucks off my menu chart, but I’m not a lost cause.

I once dated a guy for two years who, along with his parents, told me this constantly. So, when you’ve heard it over and over again for two years, you start to believe that maybe, just maybe, it’s true. And the person, last night, with bluntness and just overall meanness, brought up this old memory.

I hate bluntness. Hate it. I really let it get under my skin. Can’t help it. I’m just that sensitive. 

Now that I’ll never get this off my mind until I can take some quick action, anyone know of a good diet I can try? Something effective but safe?:)   

P.S. Are any of you of the impression that I might just need to make a whole new set of friends? I mean, two of the last three posts have been about the offensive statements of friends.

You didn’t actually think you wouldn’t read a post on here about the wonderful achievement of the Tennessee Lady Vols last night, didja?

As Newscoma mentioned, Pat Summitt has some Hooterville ties. Her #55 jersey hangs from the rafters of the University of Tennessee at Martin’s basketball arena. Her college coach and the athletic director are friends of mine and when I interviewed them for a story on Title IX and its effect on women’s athletics, I learned what a rags to riches path women’s sports has truly had to take. It’s one that Summitt has had to travel. Three players on offense and three on defense was implemented because women might faint if they had to run up and down the court too much. Because no budget (or a very tiny one) existed for women’s basketball, if the team had to travel to a tournament, the players had to buy bologna and crackers beforehand (or whatever they could afford) and sleep in the locker room in sleeping bags. Restaurants and hotels cost too much money. But, above all, players were happy because at least they were allowed to play.

Because of hardships like this and persistence by people like Summitt, her coaches and native Hootervillian Linn Dunn, the NCAA opened up to women and tremendous budgets for women’s athletics now exist to anchor those programs and ensure they continue. 

Every time I see Summitt succeed, in some way, it’s like having a distant cousin succeed. There’s a lot of community pride there and it’s unmistakably in the eyes of everyone who resides in our area.

Congratulations to the Lady Vols and congrats to our local girl who continues and will continue to make good.

I have really been debating whether or not to post this, but it offended me so much that I’ve decided I must put it out there and get some feedback on it.

I was on the phone with a lady yesterday who, over the past year, has begun to think of me as a friend and even calls me up to come and cover events that her organization sponsors. That’s all well and good, BUT, because I’ve been so quick to fulfill her requests and so friendly to her and her friends, she’s somehow gotten the impression that I’m a die-hard Republican. On the phone, she regularly throws out phrases like, “Things will be much better when McCain gets in office,” and I can only either giggle or say something like, “Well, you never know.” It’s important to remain non-biased in interviewing.

But, back to yesterday. She was talking about meeting up with a friend she hadn’t seen in a while and shared that the first thing he’d said to her when they met up was, “What do you think of Obama’s preacher?”

Then, she went on to say, “I bet a lot of this kind of stuff (his way of preaching) is going on in black churches across the country.”

Wha????? A blantly racist statement, don’t you think? If you want to completely offend me, just use a racial slur or make a racist statement in front of me and just see if my expression doesn’t do a total 180 on you. My jaw literally hit the floor. I was speechless. I had nothing to say back to that. Oh, I had plenty I wanted to say, but mostly I just wanted to get off the phone ASAP.

What bothered me the most is that I know a few people who would say the same thing. They’ll shake your hand, invite you to dinner, tell you they love you and etc., but for some reason, they want to still hold on to that little seed of prejudice they had planted in them once upon a time.

People are wonderful and my friend is a wonderful person, but I just wish she’d really thought about it before making a statement like that. It still offends me.  

After tonight’s disappointing NCAA tournament outcome, I really want to scream, pull out my hair and go murder a few pundits who refuse to give props to a Conference USA team, but there are two things right now that are keeping me happy.

1. I’m watching this on television. Absolutely, without a doubt the best screen version of the legendary novel.

2. In about three weeks, I’m going here.  

As Jo March famously said, “Christopher Columbus!” 

It’s back to the vet today for a checkup for Dixarooni. She’s not looking forward to it, but her day was made and the vet was forgotten when she received a package in the mail from her favorite Chocolate lab cousin, Finn’s son Cooper.

As any typical little kid would want to do, Dixie went straight for the package, but I made her open the card and read it first. She’s going to have to get better at that. Oh well, I guess it comes with age.

Cooper has very nice handwriting for a canine and a boy at that, don’t you think? He outdoes me hands down.

After shedding a few tears over the sweet message, Dixie went straight for the goods and was delighted to receive the following.

Having worn out both of her other chew toys, she very much appreciated the new one and she’s been eating on the yogurt drops as if she hasn’t had a bite in four days which she hasn’t until now.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to Cooper and his mommy!!! You’ve definitely put Dixie in a better frame of mind to go to the vet and hopefully, she’ll get a good report.

A few months ago, I had the honor of being invited to the county mayor’s house for dinner. While I came there primarily to conduct an interview, we conversed about most every subject under the sun and invariably the county mayor who is a huge fan of the English language and its construction brought up the subject of signs we’d seen out in public that dared to boldly display incorrect grammar.

He talked about a sign that had been engraved in the stone of the courthouse since it was built that was most definitely and undeniably wrong. I brought up the oft-studied subject of the signs located at the express lanes incorrectly proclaiming “10 items or less” when, in fact, according to my advanced grammar teacher in college, the signs are supposed to say ”10 items or fewer.” 

The Squirrel Queen and I were just talking about the subject today and she admitted that she’d seen a video on youtube of someone going around correcting incorrect signs.

And they even have grammar police.

 
To end this post, I’m issuing the same challege I issued to the county mayor. Find an express lane sign that says “10 items or fewer,” take a picture and send it to me. You might just make my day.

I’ll go ahead and get the negative out of the way. I just have two things to say in summation of last night’s Lady Vols’ victory over LSU.

1. It was one of the nastiest games I’ve ever seen. Truly, if you like scoring then this wasn’t your game. For most of the contest, neither team could put the biscuit in the basket even at close range. Forget not being able to hit the broad side of a barn. They couldn’t hit the broad side of Alaska. The final score, 47-46, was certainly anything but satisfying for my basketball appetite, but…… 

2. I’m so freakin’ glad Tennessee won!!! Alexis Hornbuckle (much like most of the other players on the court) couldn’t buy a basket all night, but she put in the offensive board with .9 seconds left to elevate the defending champs past LSU and into the title game.

My advice: Symbolically, in honor of playing on a court painted up like an orange, the Lady Vols could do with a good shot of vitamin C to help their sick shooting. Here’s hoping they look as good as new Tuesday night against Stanford.

And now, how about Memphis?

I hold my head in shame as I admit that I’m a Tigers bandwagon jumper. Well, not completely. As I’ve said before, I’ll support any Tennessee team who continues to live to see another day whether it be the Vols, the Commodores, the Tigers, the Governors, the Bruins, the Blue Raiders or any other team from the Volunteer State.

Tonight’s the night. No toenail trimming or booger picking party for me. Sorry to disappoint, but I’m watching the game. At our office we have a die-hard dyed in the wool Kansas fan and, my, we’ve had fun chiding her today. She claims that in the end, we’ll all be eating crow rather than jayhawk, but we’ll just have to see.

Whether you’re a fan or not, though, you must give the Dream Team some credit.

Go Tigers and Lady Vols!!! 

Come on now, people. Say it with me. Grammar rawks!

And? But? Either or? Neither nor? Here’s your function.

This really is too much fun. I need to stop, though, because the Memphis Tigers are about to take the floor. And if they win….oh, there will be mucho interjections on my part.

Fin.

Dixie was released from the doggie hospital yesterday after staying there for nearly a week. Though we were all happy to see her home and, of course, especially happy she made through the surgery and is alive today, it’s definitely going to be an adjustment for poor Dixie from now on. Simply put, she’s never going to be the same dog and that’s something we’re all going to have to accept.

Being a Rat Terrier, she’s super hyper by nature. When I first got her and brought her home about a year ago, her way of letting me know she wanted to go outside was to do her now-famous pencil jump in which she’d bob up and down at the door knob in much the same fashion as having a fish on the line and watching the floater go in and out of the water. On cue, she’d howl, sing, yodel and emit a growl that sounded a bit like a rabid hampster. Her oversized ears missed nothing and we’d affectionately refer to her as “Radar” when she’d pick up on a strange noise.

But now, her back right leg is so swollen it’s as big as her other three legs put together. Her stomach is bulging from the operation and (I know you don’t want to hear this, but here goes) she passes blood which the doctor says is normal at this stage. She really has become a different dog. She hobbles from one room to the other and when she takes a notion to go outside, she must be picked up the one step we have in order to get back in the house. Her ears remain plastered to her head, her head stays down as if she’s in some sort of depression and she hasn’t made a sound since we’ve brought her back.

It’s going to be a real adjustment for all of us, but at this point, we’re overjoyed she’s still breathing.

It will be wonderful, though, to hear that little yappy bark again.

Created by OnePlusYou

Had to jump on the bandwagon and give this one a try.
I was sure I’d let a word or two slip before, but apparently not.

After being run over by her very neglectful mommy, my little Doggie that Could underwent a three-hour surgery this past Tuesday morning at the local vet to repair a hairline fracture in her hip and patch up a severly torn bladder. Though the operation was tedious and precarious, the Dixinator passed with flying colors and is now in recovery until Friday when she’ll finally be able to come back home.

We’ve been allowed to visit the past couple of days and yesterday, upon hearing us call out her name, her little radar ears perked up and she tried her best to stand up and see us, but it’s still very hard for her. That little grin got about halfway across her face and just to show off to us that she was recovering nicely and was ready to go home, she drank a whole bowl of water and immediately peed right in front of us with an unmistakable look of mischief.

Can’t wait for her to come home and drag up her ragged old striped cat chew toy so that I can throw it out for her to fetch again and again. Can’t wait to hear her sing (She thinks she’s bound for the opera one day).  

That’s my doggie!  

As this post will become increasingly heavier and heavier in emotion, I’ll start with the light stuff first.

Happy 26th birthday to my cousin, Josh. If I could, I’d sing him the whole birthday song altered with the references to smelling like monkeys and living in zoos, but for now, this wish will have to do.

Five years ago today, I was gussying myself up in my dorm room to attend the Greek stepshow being put on in honor of Homecoming Week and featuring cousin mentioned above when I received a phone call that would change my plans considerably. My sister was on the other end of the line and she was crying hysterically. In between sobs, she somehow managed to get out a few words that my uncle who’d been sick with cancer for about three months had died in his sleep. Of course I was extremely devastated and shocked, but even more than that, I was confused. My uncle had taken six chemotherapy treatments for a tumor that had developed in his throat that had progressed to the point it was causing his lungs to fill with fluid, but at the last doctor’s visit, the doc had declared the tumor to be gone.

And then I found out that the cancer didn’t kill him. The doctor elected to give my uncle a seventh treatment ”just to be safe,” and the treatment lowered his potassium level to the point that he never recovered from it.

That was five years ago today. Five years ago, my dad lost the last member of his immediate family. His mom died a year earlier and my grandfather died in the mid-80’s. Both of them from cancer. It’s sad to admit, but my dad’s a very heavy smoker and always has been. We’ve all tried our best to get him to stop, but since that day in 2003, he now throws a new bone-chilling excuse at us.

“What does it matter? The sooner I die, the sooner I can see my family again.”

Let’s now turn a total 180.

One year after that, on April 3, I found myself driving down a long road to Atlanta, Ga. armed only with a bff who was dead set on making the NCAA tournament no matter what the cost, a map, a bag of Sunchips and a carton of Minute Maid lemonade. Despite getting caught up in a very intense traffic jam in Chattanooga, getting regular cases of the giggles so badly I thought I just might have to pull over, having to use the bathroom at nearly ever rest stop and nearly kissing the Atlanta welcome sign as soon as we saw it, we made it to the Georgia Dome with time to spare, shelled out $120 a piece for tickets and watched Tennessee advance to the championship game to face UConn. Then, we turned ourselves right around and headed home only to come back the very next day because it had been pointed out to us that we had a ticket to the national championship game and we certainly weren’t missing that.

Yeah, I never get tired of telling that story. The last time my bff and I got together, of course, we had to talk about it again and we laughed harder than ever at the realization that, in college, we’d tutored international students, led some English classes at the campus BCM, made some wonderful friends through the tutoring and even given extra help with English beyond just grammar and structure (Everyone wanted to learn as much slang as possible), and the person who pointed out to two little blonde dimwits that they had an extra ticket living inside their ticket books was an international student!  

Happy April 3rd, everyone! 

….and I have yet to pull the perfect April Fool’s Day prank.

Rats! I was really trying to think up a doozy, but I may have to go with an old standard of mine. Let’s see. I have no pull and pop fireworks to tape across any of the neighbor’s screen doors. (Did that once with about 40 of them, knocked on the door for the person to come out and then, when the person finally threw open the door…..well….you can imagine. I know. I’s right evil.) I have no firecrackers to light in front of anyone’s window early in the morning and besides, it’s already late in the day.

Okay. I’m gonna try my old Kool-Aid trick. It’s one of my tried and true recipes for April Fool’s Day screams. And the butt of this joke shall be……..Elizabeth. Before her shower tonight, I’m simply gonna mix four or five different kinds of Kool-Aid together, take off the shower head, pour the Kool-Aid into the shower head, put it back on and then, when she takes a shower she shall be rainbowed from head to toe. It’s a simply marvelous trick if I do say so myself.

I’d love to take a picture, but I don’t want this blog to suddenly become X-rated. And I’m really not that mean. Well, I’m almost not that mean.

Hee! I’ll let you know how it goes. Gotta get to work now! 

As the Queen of the Squirrels mentioned, when April Fool’s Day rolls around every year, I like to take advantage of the rare opportunity to throw a killer prank or tell an amazing whopper if nothing else than to get a big chuckle. Yeah, I’m like that. Gotta spread cheer whenever I can.

But this year, as I’m thinking of a specific trick to pull and a specific person (or people) to try it on, I have a couple of other things on my mind and unfortunately, they’re not so funny.

My dad and his brother, once upon a time, were state and national champion tractor pullers. In case you haven’t been to one or haven’t seen one on television, tractor pulls feature regular John Deere’s, Internationals, Massy Fergusons and every other tractor you can think of hopped up on massive steroids and splitting at the seams with big block engines and enough raw exhaust to kill a whole field full of corn they’d originally been intended to cultivate before they’d been forever banned from the sport of corn cultivating due to steroid use. These super tractors are loud — extremely loud — and they pull heavy sleds behind them with the intention of making a “full pull” or pulling farther than their competion. I’ve been to a few of the events. Industrial strength earplugs are a must. I wasn’t with dad, though, 30 years ago in Decatur, Alabama. Wasn’t even close to being thought of, in fact.

A lot of people ask me what happened to my dad’s left hand and I have to admit to them that I never notice it anymore and haven’t noticed it in a long time. I tell them, all I know, is that at a tractor pull in Decatur, Alabama, when he was working on his tractor, a chain slipped and sliced off his pinky, ring, middle and half of his pointer finger on his left hand. I tell them that it really must have been some April Fool’s Day for him, but that I’ve never known him any other way so if he had a fully intact left hand, I guess he wouldn’t be my dad. For me, it makes him who he is.

Now switching to a sad note, yesterday, in a hurry to get home, I ran over my dog, Dixie. She has developed a terrible habit of running right at any of our cars that come up the driveway and she usually veers away at the last minute to avoid getting hit. Yesterday, though, I guess she was just a little too excited to see me and didn’t veer away as I was expecting her to do. I hit her hard and we had to rush her straight to the vet.

She’s still there and they’ve informed us that she has quite a bit of internal damage and requires surgery. Things are not looking good at all. I become attached to people through getting to know them over time and finding commonalities, but I form an instant attachment to animals. Needless to say, what I’ve done has kept me from sleeping, eating or doing much of anything else. Please remember Dixie and send her your best. Hopefully, she’ll make it through this.

Until next time, watch out. You may be the recipient of a killer April Fool’s Joke!