Travels with my Mother

I accompanied my Mom to Florida. In the beginning, my sister was going to fly down with her out of Louisville on Southwest because it was a direct flight to Tampa. But nooooooooo. Mom wanted to use her frequent flyer miles and so it was to be that I go to Lex and take to the skies with Delta as Mom's side kick.

It began innocently enough with our flight leaving at 715am. Still sipping coffee at 635am she announces that we should leave in six minutes. (I have no idea why six minutes was used, not five, not three...but six minutes). The airport is a mere 10 minutes away and so I did not think much of it.

I drop her off at the front and then, glancing at the clock and seeing it is now approximately 645, I step on it to find a parking place in long term parking. As I enter the lot I see it is packed!! WTH is going on? Why are there so many cars in this damn lot!! Where are all these people going? Why are they making my life complicated!

I finally find a spot on three floors up, against the far wall in front of a trash can, obviously a spot rejected many times before but there is no time for being choosy...it is now about five till seven.

I grab my suitcase, which I need to check and take off running. I have not checked in yet!!

As I hit the lobby and run towards the check in counter a young clerk reaches for my baggage and throws it on the scale and tags it in one grand swoop. The lady says, "Are you Mary?" as she hands off my ticket as if we are in a relay race in Beijing "Hurry, they are boarding!" she advises me and points towards the security line, which mercifully is empty except for a bored looking officer who makes me take my sandals off and then I have to return to take off my watch, and then I glance at the clock and it's now after 7am!

I'm in a cold sweat thinking I may miss the plane if they will not allow me to board!

I run up the moving escalator and round the corner to the gate at a fast clip, my purse and carry on bumping furiously against my thigh and I am on the move with my ticket clutched in my outstretched hand.

I pass a steward, "Your Mama is waiting for you" and he points to a wheel chair that is sitting in wait for boarding on the plane. "Hello dear, you made it! I was beginning to get worried!" she says as she clutches her carry on to her chest and has the death grip on her cane.

We are loaded immediately and I breath a sigh of relief except I only have my boarding pass, she has put hers somewhere in her luggage and is unable to lay a hand on it. I put her in my seat and head to the back of the plane and tell the attendant my take of woe. After everyone is seated (the plane is packed and not an extra seat anywhere, except my Mom's) I am seated in a row of three seats with a handsome couple from Bermuda with an 11 month old daughter, who slept from the moment her mother returned from the bathroom till we landed in Atlanta. And then she still was asleep as we left the plane!

At Atlanta they were waiting for Mom with a new fangled wheel chair! Race car Red and with fancy brakes that were applied the moment you took your hands off the back.

Of course all my worries were for nothing. Mom was treated like royalty with wheel chairs waiting for her at each leg of the trip down and back. On the last hop to Lex from Cincinnati we had to board the plane from the tarmac.




This was not a problem for the airline, as they rolled out a lift and Mom was raised to the door as I watched from the ground, with a worried expression on my face! But, I should not have worked myself up because she was treated with such respect and so gently that I was pleasantly surprised and very appreciative.

We boarded first, left last, got to sit up in the front section on most flights and they even let Mom have double treats!

I have to travel with her more often!

Only the Good Die Young

(Uncle Barney and My Dad in the back) (I am the in the dress second from the left)

My people are Irish. My fathers people came over through Ellis Island in the early 1900's. My mothers people arrived in Canada first, and then NYC where my mother is the only sibling to have been born on American soil. Both my families are solid New Yorkers as far as I am concerned.

Mom and Pop were married for several years when her brother informed them that IBM was hiring and that Dad should go apply for employment since they needed chemists. The story of Dad landing the job is legendary, where his soon to be boss came into the waiting area and unbeknowenst to Dad he was the head honcho, conducted the interview that subsequently landed Dad a job.

Everyone who has ever worked for IBM knows that the it does not stand for International Business Machines, but I've Been Moved.

And our (at that time) little family was moved from idyllic New York State to the Bluegrass. We left our entire families behind. All my Aunts and Uncles, Grandparents, cousins, and tons and tons of relatives that form the spider web of relations that had fled Ireland in the late 1800's and early 1900's for the promised land.

We became Kentuckians in no time, immersed in the culture. I am certain made my Mother's hair curl when we would use the term "ain't" and our northern accents suddenly took on elongated vowels. Our memories of New York faded. The land of our origin may as well have been a million miles away.

Every where around me were the families of my friends that included Aunts and Uncles, cousins and Grandparents. Mine were a million miles away. And somewhere in the heart of a little girl I missed my family that engulfed me and surrounded me as a much younger little child.

And so began the anticipation of every summer either we would load up the family station wagon and head up North or Up North would come to visit us! And the most reliable, the one that you knew you would see every year no matter what was Aunt Pat's family.

Mom and Aunt Pat had a special bond. Mom was Pat's first birthday gift, born exactlly one year apart they shared a birthday.
(Pat on the left, Mom with the more beat up leg)

And you can tell for the multitude of photo's that the angels were inseparable. That bond ensured that we would see Pat and her family every year. Aunt Pat and her husband Barney and our three cousins would make the trek in their variety of recreational vehicles which varied wildly over the years.

This one is my favorite.... (I am the girl on the left) (in the dress)

I refer to this camper as the Silver Bullit, but I think it actually is called something else.

To make a long story short, Aunt Pat passed away in 2003 and Uncle Barney passed away last week. My sister and I along with her husband made the trip to Florida (where pat and Barney had retired to during the 1980's) with my Mother for the funeral. We joined the shrinking members of my extended New York Irish family on my Mom's side.

This is the second time this year we have gathered to mourn and celebrate the life of one of our own.

And it is two times too many.....

As one of the grandsons said in his eulogy, "They say only the good die young, and he died 89 years young".

Round Robin Challenge

The Round Robin Challenge this time is to photograph your Home Town. At times I feel I have no home town. I live in Indiana and claim Louisville because it's easier to say to people, they all have heard of L-ville, but not the Indiana town I live in across the river.

And when I think of Home I think of Mayberry (my fictitious name for the Hometown), So, I have this picture of a flour mill that is not exactly in town, and actually not exactly in the county, but it is on the border on the Elkhorn Creek (which is lots bigger than two of the "rivers" in FW).

I happened to be in Mayberry today and made an effort to get a pic and compare it to one I took several years ago on a foggy day in winter.

I like the contrast.

Go here to see all the entries!

The Usual Suspects

Unfortunately I have had reason to spend time in another arraignment court room. Not that they are not amusing, with their cocky bailiffs fingering their gun belts, chains clanking and tat's galore, wisecracking with the judge, "Did you see that guys hair??!!" Well hell yeah! Everybody took a sharp intake of breath when he entered the room with his Yellow as sunflowers Mohawk that looked like a roosters crown not combed that morning and listing to the left slightly and totally messed up. I think I actually gasped.

The usual suspects, public intoxication, trespass, terroristic threatening,(astonishingly from a Grandma looking person) (she claimed not to have had her medication that day),concealed weapon, theft by deception, possession of marijuana, and several prostitution! (interesting, they look nothing like you would think a prostitute, excuse me, an alleged prostitute would look like! They look like the worn out house wife who lives across the way). The prisoners were shuffled in last because they did not have representation yet and had to wait their turn.

Every time I find myself sitting in a court room it seems so ripe and seething with the drama of living that I could sit there and be fascinated for days. yet, I understand it also represents pain and sorrow, despair and desperation, poverty and bad judgement.

It brings back the first time I set foot in a court room because I had received a ticket while racing to a wedding that was in another city and I went under a yellow light and was pulled over. I also had an open beer with me....this was over 30 years ago when I was very young and stupid, very stupid.

I was so scared. I had no idea what was going to happen as I had never been in such a jam. I was reluctant to tell my parents. I suppose I forgot they would read about it in the Weekly Mayberry (fictitious name for my home town) Newspaper. The Police Report is what every body reads. It's right next to Church News. (I swear).

I went to my parents house and grabbed some lunch to fortify myself. As I sat at the kitchen table the door opened and my Dad walked in. He had come home from work to have lunch.

In the 25+ year Dad worked for IBM he never once came home for lunch that I could remember. It was so out of the ordinary. I had to tell him what I was doing and together we went to Court. He went to the front of the room, swarming with lawyers and abuzz with activity and spoke for a few moments with one of his lawyer buddies, the county prosecutor.

Mr. G. went to speak with the judge and in a matter of moments we were leaving the court room as the case had been thrown out.

I had not thought about that afternoon in....over 30 years. Now that Dad is gone I find that I have these random memories just bubble to the top of my consciousness.

Sitting in that courtroom I suddenly remembered that day, how the sun was shining and the whiteness of the inside of the courtroom, the huge windows behind the judge and my Dad walking with that calmness and determination that defined him to get his wayward daughter out of trouble.

When Life Comes A-Knocking

Two weeks or so ago I convinced myself the only way to get involved and back in the swim of things in the Blogosphere was to just do it! Then, life stepped up and threw me a curve ball, a fast ball, and a spit ball. I was no longer able to spend countless mindless hours creating interesting (maybe only to myself) essays about...me!

I thought I would just sit in front of the computer and just let my fingers wander where they wanted. And it worked for a solid week! I am uncomfortable writing anything of personal substance, at least the dramas of my life that are going on now. Naturally in maybe a year, they will make some very engaging entries, but not now.

Yet, I will post this picture of my darling grand daughter when we went to the St. James Art Fair earlier this month. She is a handful and growing in leaps and bounds, which makes it extremely difficult to keep her in clothes! As a result, her outfits are a bit, shall we say, snug.

Since she is the first grandchild, there is not a soul to send her hand me downs!! I asked Joe if we could make a trip to the Second Hand Store, Once Upon A child (isn't that clever) or just the consignment shop in the ground floor of Mid-City Mall....just because the best Dive in Louisville the Back Door is also located in the mid City Mall has nothing to do with it! But Joe says that for some reason second hand clothes from strangers is out of the question.

So we all must suffer. And smile.

Monday Photo Shoot

Here is my entry for the Monday Photo Shoot titled Fences and what's behind them hosted by Ellipsis!!


I remembered this fence behind the garden shed being unusual. My compost pile is hidden back there and when I pass the bicycle and board I always smile. There is a dog that lives back there, but he is a gentle dog and only barks at the birds. He is not a curious dog, as I hoped he would come back and check out what I was doing. It would have been so cool to have the dog along with the sunset.

Alas, its just a fence with a sunset behind it.

Bloggers Community Photo Challenge

Changes - brought to you by the 1st Community Photo Challenge

I am surprised at how invigorated the AOL-Community has become since tearing up roots and relocating. Maybe its just me making the reconnection with this vibrant and diversified group. Over the years I have half heatedly tried to keep in touch, like changing jobs or cities. It's hard. I have said it so many times that it tastes like ashes in my mouth and my fingers feel heavy typing the words, but I dearly miss the AOL-J-Land of pre-advertising days. Before the 2005 mass Exodus. So many wonderful writers and personalities left never to be heard from again.

But this is a new dawn and new era. All of us have been banished from AOL-J-Land, all given the proverbial boot.

And so, I embrace the new Community by actively participating in the many activities that I have over looked or was unaware of. The first being this photo challenge!

This week's challenge.....CHANGE!

Last night I was talking on the phone to my husband and glance at the front door, which was bathed in the diminishing golden light of October and saw the tiny hand print of.... my grand daughter. She had left this mark behind to remind me that she had been there.

Actually she has followed Bridget and myself outside as we were about to leave on a trip to the store and she was to stay at home. Once she understood we were returning (she is two, almost three)she turned to go back into the house, but could not reach the door knob!

"Jo-Jo! Jo-Jo!" She hollered, "Let me in!!" and Bridget ran to open the door for her.

This little imprint reminds me that as things change and evolve an impression is always left behind.

As my little sweeties hand print.

Foridden

Brought to you by Sunday Scribblings

When I was a kid the whole wide world was contained in the confines of our small town. It held everything we could ever wish for. It was the 1960's and the world was still slightly innocent and wholly uncorrupted. Life was bicycle rides, snow days, idyllic days at the local swimming pool, Halloween without razor blades but nickles given out by the ex-Governor of the state along with home made popcorn balls, walking downtown to purchase a cherry coke, the corner grocery store with penny candy jars,gigantic leaf piles we could burn in town and kick ball games in the lone empty lot in the neighborhood.

It was okay to jump on your bike and truck several miles across town. My brother tells of an ongoing BB gun game where he and several of his buddies would dress in layers and layers of padding and chase each other around town for target practice. Life was good. We felt safe and unthreatened. Except maybe by the Russians dropping the bomb on us, even then we were well educated at school on how to survive a nuclear attack (squatting under your school desk...what if you are st home? Bomb shelters.)

There were several places you had to beware of. Like the park downtown. That is where the "bums" hung out. Bums were bad and to be avoided at all costs. Naturally we always flocked to the park when ever we could on the look out for the these deviant bums. I never saw one. I never met another kid who did either. I have to think that maybe once upon a time some kid got flashed or something similar.

But, the worst of the worst, never to go, always FORBIDDEN and off limits, and you got your butt spanked but good if you got caught at this mother of all evil places in my home town........

THE TUNNEL! (as viewed from the church!!!!)



The tunnel was an abandoned train track that went under main street. The tracks were removed and the jungle had taken over.

The temptation was so powerful that resistance was impossible. The tunnel was next to the small Catholic school I attended. An entrance to the top of the tunnel was directly accessible across the street, next to the church, on the corner where we waited for the afternoon buses to take us home.

How many times and how many hundreds of kids climbed on top of the forbidden curved dome of the top, lay down and dangle their heads over and look into the black dank smelly cavern of doom and destruction. The darkness promised adventure and hidden treasure. No kids ever fell over that I ever heard of, and I would have heard.

To access the tunnel you had to enter the abandoned track by the old depot located a block from Main Street. The homes on Broadway backed up to the overgrown train track. Many eyes followed you if you attempted to approach the opening from that angle. The only way to make an unobserved approach was to slide down the back (because the bank to the track bed became steeper as you drew closer) was at Flea's house. (His parents worked).

There were bugs, albino crayfish, spiders and poison ivy, and a drainage hole that dripped and spewed chilly clear water at all times.

If it were not forbidden, it would have been ignored. But the forbidden part....Oh how sweet.

Round Robin

Yeah!! I made it on time to participate in the The Round Robin Challenge!

The subject mater is end os summer. I always try and make it to the Lexington Cemetery around this time of year to see the wonderful colors of one of the most magnificent landscaped botonical cemeteries in the area.

Check it out here to see the other particpants!

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping

Moving into a new neighborhood takes some adjusting to as I should well know, since this is my second adjustment in as many years. When we first arrived I lamented, in my newly realized fuddy duddy way, that the neighborhood kids were running wild in my back yard and touching my stuff!. My good friend G. commented that good fences make good neighbors, but I felt I had insulted them enough by moving in and removing their playground, suddenly putting up a fence did not feel like the neighborly thing to do.

The houses in the new neighborhood are larger and the yards are larger. There are very few back yard fences and lots of open garage doors and people sitting in the shade of their suburban caves watching the coming and goings of street.

My door gets knocked on a lot. The usual sullen kids from out of town selling magazine subscriptions, the ATT guy trying to woo me away from Insight, the tree service people trying to get me to let them take down my damaged tree, the insurance sales person who wanted to cut up my fallen tree, the Girl Scouts, the UPS guy, Joe who has locked himself out and then once the Mayor assuring me that they were going to stop everyone from running the stop sign in front of my house (yea right!!).

The best was yet to come last week when I heard that familiar Tap Tap Tapping on the front door (no one uses the door bell...can't figure that out) and I throw it open to find a blond haired large eyeglass adorned kid wearing shorts and a dirty white t-shirt, to match his scraped up legs, balanced on his bicycle (for a quick get-a-way?) kind of looking like the kid from Jerry MaGuire, only 10 years old. He blinked at me several times as I opened the glass storm door and smiled at him in what I hoped was a non-threatening manner (after my encounter with the next door kids and the resulting cold shoulder I received from their mother, I am very cautious).

"Hey, you wanna buy a candle?" he asked.

"A candle?" I repeated. Like I said, he was sitting on a bike, had no mother standing on the sidewalk guarding him from danger, no selection book with the usual ungodly marked up crap for you to choose from. No, I was only offered a candle.

"Yea, we have....." and he bit his lip trying to remember the selection and smiled when it came to him, ".....Hawaiian Tropical Breeze."

"What about vanilla?"

"No, just Hawaiian Tropical Breeze."

"How much?"

"Seven dollars."

"Can I write you a check?"

"No, just seven dollars."

"Well, come back tomorrow then, okay."

"Okay".

"Is this for your school? Do you live around here?"

"Yea, down there", he waved his arm to the east,and then he began to ride off my porch waving over his shoulder, "see ya tomorrow".

"What's your name", I cried after him, like some left behind sweetheart.

"Joseph T. XXXXXXXXXXXX". And he turned his bike and was tearing off down the road.

My lord, he was cute.

I remember the next day only after I got home and rushed to my purse to see if I had any money for him. Saints be praised, seven dollars exactly.

A half hour later I heard a knock at the door and there he was, perched on his bike, craning his head to peer into the front room to watch my advance.

I opened the door and handed him the money, which he took, licked one finger and began to count, one...two...three...four...five...six...seven, and nodded at me in confirmation of a sealed deal.

"Don't I have to sign something, like my address."

"Nope, I'll remember." He pocketed the money and pushed off on his bike. I felt like I had just been scammed by a the cutest little grifter I have ever seen.

"What's your name?" he called to me from the street. "Mary" I shouted back at him, he turned his bike towards the East and gave me a wave, but no backward glance.

I think I am in love.

Man! I Feel Like A Woman!

Tonight I look forward to watching the Vice President debate. I wait in spiteful anticipation to pick out the sound bites that Tina Fey will mimic on SNL come this week-end.

At first, when Sarah Palin was paraded out at the RNC for the country to fall in love with, (and we fell hard) I had an immediate and intense dislike of her. First of all, she looked like every sorority girl who ever black balled me from their stinking secret society and laughed behind my back about my large fake gold hoop earrings (bitches) (I know this because one of my dear friends told me .....??). Her voice made me want to put my hands over my ears! She sounded like Roseanne Barr in a slightly less nasal tone, but Roseanne all the way (sorry Roseanne).

So, my dislike was all irrational and unsubstantiated. Then my good fiend (oddly enough, the one who told me about the gold earring dislike all those years ago) asked me what I thought about Sarah and it was as if a dam erupted.

"Am I suppose to admire her or get behind her because she is a woman? I feel insulted if the Republican Party thinks woman are that shallow. If its only about being a woman, why didn't we get behind Hilliary? Because she was not pretty enough, young enough? We can't relate to her because she is smart and a lawyer and forgave her husband for his indiscretions and publicly humiliating her? If I had my choice, I'm a Hillary supporter."

I read with glee all the bad press and laughed along when she was stumped by Charlie regarding The Bush Doctrine. The Bush Doctrine! Ha!! Everyone knows the Bush Doctrine...(It's "Fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me, you can't get fooled again".....isn't it?)

I read everything the Courier Journal, a well know liberal paper, (in a state that has always historically voted conservative)has written about her. They truly tried to balance it with the Op-Ed page and Letters to the Editor but it was hopeless. Sara was being branded as a gun toting baby making bimbo.

The other night I watched Katie Couric once again gently grill Sarah. I was cringing when Sarah answered, when asked what newspapers magazines she read, "All of them" and when pressed to name even one, she once again replied (with some exasperation) "All of them."....

Oh, Sarah I began to feel sorry for you. Couldn't you wing it? Couldn't you just say your staff hands you the Wall Street Journal among others?

When asked about Roe vrs. Wade I wonder if she has even read it, which (natch) I did while completing a business law class during the 1980's. It's all hinged on viability outside the womb. Pro-Lifers believe that a soul enters upon conception. And when questioned about the morning after pill, did any once else get the idea that she had never heard of it? Maybe it's because she does not read any publications or magazines or newspapers.

At least none that she can name.

Oh, well.....let's hope that when a woman is finally elected to the White House, it is someone who deserves to be there.

NightMare on AOL Street

I woke up a little while ago almost worn out from the dream I was having. It was one of my three reoccurring nightmares. The theme to this one is I am back at school because I have failed to complete all the credits required to graduate. It is usually college where I wander around some unfamiliar campus looking for some obscure building that I have never seen before!

This time I was a rotten teenager. Or rather I was 20 years old. I know this because as I slipped on my ten ton back pack, my half ton purse loaded with all my essentials, my lunch which was a sandwich crammed into a tiny plastic Tupperware thing and the top didn't fit and my sandwich got wet because it was raining I calculated how I was too old for this....at 20. I decided to skip school and was farting around looking for the text books thinking that "Dad" would leave to go to work and I would be home free. Only Dad was Gabriel Byrne (wow!) and was on to my tricks, reluctantly I struggled into that damn back pack when this witch arrives on the scene and says she is Gabriel's fiance and that erupts into a shouting match of some magnitude. Then I wake up and go "Wow!" and I was exhausted.

This is one of those many times when I really miss Joe (who is on assignment). He always listens patiently to my rambles about the dream and inevitably the questions, "What do you think it means?" or "What do you think about that?" and the usual one, "What brought that on?"

I suppose I was just unsettled because of the forced evacuation of AOL Journals. Yesterday I began to back up my journal by engaging in the laborious task of copying and pasting into Microsoft Word. In a way it was soothing to revisit many of those entries. Some I had sought out, like the one about the Jesuit who told about the possessions of people and places, but most were tiny gems of the necklace of my AOL Journal. I was prolific at the beginning and I breath a sigh of relief knowing that I slowed down in time!

I am lucky because I have been blogging on both AOL and Blogger since the beginning, so the majority of my entries are also parked in this journal, which has assumed many names, the beauty of Blogger, you can change your name!!

And as many of my AOL friends will find out, Blogger is a safe haven. And as they become more comfortable they will marvel at the tools available to them to continue the community outside the confines of AOL.

Number one, your counters will always work!! You can manipulate your pictures to insert them into different areas of your text. You can write an entry and save it rather than publish it right away. You can link up to Flickr and Slideshow and a multitude of other fun stuff that was unavailable on AOL. You can take on advertising yourself and reap the benefits rather than AOL using us and our journals for gain.

The list goes on and on, but I have not had my coffee yet.

Who Moved My Velveeta?

As of late I do not go into a grocery store very often. Since finding ALDI, I run in and grab a gallon of milk and a bag of chicken and that's it. I wanted to join one of those farm community things earlier this spring, but the cost was prohibitive considering it was only me (with the Memphis situation looming large). So I realized that I could shun the Walmart and Kroger produce aisle and with a conscience free of guilt shop with abandon at the Farmers market and Paul's Fruit Market.

Yet, I still must go to Walmart and grab the essentials. Usually I'll keep a running list of things I need and I always fail to grab it on the way out the door. What that means is as I run through the store I am trying to recreate that absent list! Bottled water, laundry detergent, Crystal light etc. etc. etc.

Heading towards the check out counter, after three (three!!!) return trips down the aisles I realized I had forgotten cheese! Damn!! I must have cheese.

And there it was in the, piled high in "action alley" calling to my inner child with a yellow comforting beacon.

Velveeta!

I tossed the two pound brick into the jumble of items in my basket and felt a surge of pleasure at the sheer recklessness of my decision! I remembered those oozing cheesy margarine soaked artery clogging grilled sandwiches my Mom use to make for us kids on those days when school was called off due to snow. I love my Mother dearly, but that woman can not cook! And her grill cheese sandwiches, usually burnt on one side and undercooked on the flip were delicious.

Ah, Velveeta! How I've missed you.

Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen

Well, I did take a new job and it is scaring me. Mainly because it is a commission only position. I am still searching for something else, something more dependable, but you never ever know, do you?

I am really and truly a marketer. I see this as a huge opportunity to make a lot of money and I see a ton of avenues to do it! I just wish I had been hired in that capacity...you know telling every body else what to do.

Instead of walking up and down the streets cold calling and what I consider panning for gold in the ocean, I am going to put together a presentation and book myself at local "chapter" meetings.

When I worked for the Beverage Monster people were always asking me if I could give a talk to their clubs or bring along a big truck, stuff like that. People love to hear about subjects that are not the usual run of the mill rubber chicken lunch fodder.

No Crying in Baseball

Around these parts you would have to be living in a cave (as some of us just may be due to the wind storm event Mother Nature and Hurricane Ike presented to us) to not know that the Ryder Cup was held in Louisville this past weekend.

300,000 homes may have been knocked out of electricity when the remnants of Hurricane Ike blew through here but the Valhalla Golf Course was put back on line within moments. The Show must go on.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against golf. I just had to be educated that the Ryder Cup is Super Bowl to their fans. I know lots of people who worship at the alter of the Golf Links. I even tried it once, was horrible at it and quite frankly, did not like it much.

I have endured the golf metaphor for years. My boss once developed a "score card" complete with a boogie and a birdie and all that jazz that had to be explained to me. "Now a boogie means its good?"

It has even spread to the sermon I sat through at church this week end. First a video was show of the pastor participating in the Ryder Cup (this church has remarkable editing staff!) that was hokey and too long....but I got it, I am in the minority when it comes to my boredom with golf. Then we were delivered the sermon which was good, but still the golf metaphor began to get on my nerves.

I did like the part about a Mulligan. I did not know those existed in golf! Every body deserves a Mulligan now and then (which is a do-over) and I certainly agree with that.

Yesterday I was in conversation with two guys. Two golfers, don't you know.

"Golf is like life, a metaphor for life." one said the the other.

I interjected, "I though Baseball was a metaphor for life."

They turned to me and shook their heads, "No, it's golf." Like I was really asking a question!! I was making a statement.

I prefer baseball. You keep swinging until you get it right. If it's a foul you keep swinging until you get it in the ball park. Sometimes you strike out, sometimes you hit a home run. You work as a team and everyone plays their part. You run really really fast to be safe! You get your manager to go nose to nose with the authority if they think you have been done wrong. Then at the seventh inning everyone gets to stand up and stretch and sing! You get to eat hot dogs and throw back beer!

Yup, baseball sure seems more like real life than that golf game.

What's a Little Wind?

I was listening to the weather report yesterday morning before making a drive to Cincinnati. Or maybe I just overheard the report. But I did hear that we were going to have some high winds from around 10am until 8pm that night. Courtesy of Hurricane Ike.

I was on the way back from the trip and about 20 miles into I-71 I realized the wind was blowing kind of hard. The gusts were pretty strong. Another few miles and the leaves and debris began swirling all about and the gusts were becoming stronger.

About 10 miles outside of Louisville I was very concerned and driving as fast as I could to beat it home. I didn't know what I was beating, or if I just wanted to get home.

But first, I had to go to a birthday party. In the Highlands, which is a very mature neighborhood in the Loo. Beautiful trees line the roads, beautiful big old trees. And as I exited off the interstate and headed into the city I realized it was very bad.

Was this a hurricane or what? Wait, I have lived through a category 4 hurricane...this is just some high wind, I reassured myself, keeping a sharp eye for flying foreign objects.

It was slow going and it required many detours to arrive at my destination because of this...



....and this

.........And oh yea, this!

Taking care, I pulled my car in a parking lot without a lot of trees about. It was very windy!

Very windy. I flew into my brothers house. Literally!

Crunch Time and Movie Reviews

Oh yes, its time. Time to go out and find a job. Almost down to the wire in terms of the well has run dry. So much for "retirement". It was fun taking a year off, (actually a lot more than a year)and I must admit, I liked it. But, something inside of me has shifted. Maybe its a loneliness, or boredom, or just that life has become a little empty.

That signals that it is time.

And just like when it was time to settle down and do my homework (while attending college at night school) I would begin to find every little thing outstanding that needed to be finished and put to bed before I would finally begin studying!

So, I find I am blogging a lot and spending inordinate amounts of time picking fallen leaves and rose petals from the mulch under the rose bushes.

Being home alone all summer has entitled me to watch a lot of Netflix movies. Unlike the years before, I am in charge of the queue and it has been less men style movies and has emerged as kinder and softer.

Take the movie "we" watched this week-end. SON OF RAMBOW. Now at first you may think, man movie. But wait, Rambo is spelled incorrectly! I have waited several months for this foreign film and put into the queue the moment I became aware of its existence and impatiently awaited its availability and immediately moved it to the number one spot the week it was released.

And I was not disappointed. It was sweet and a slight tear jerker. Very entertaining and you never lost interest in the characters. Which, mainly, were all children.

As my buddy in grammar school would conclude his book reports, "Read (rent) the book (movie) and find out what happens!"

A very welcome surprise because it is not uncommon for me to rip open a movie sleeve and think "WTH?", is a movie called "Under the Same Moon". Foreign (there is a pattern here) and in sub-titles I loved this movie. It was full of sentimental b.s. and as the film progressed you could feel the conclusion building, but I just loved it.

Rent the movie and find out what I'm talking about.

Oh crap, guess it's time to go to Walmart and buy some hair dye.

Once Upon A Time

I worked for the J. Peterman Company.

Actually it was part time, on week ends and some evenings during the week around Christmas. It was short lived and in the height of the J. Peterman popularity. Before Seinfield, yes, there really was a J. Peterman. It is not that guy that pranced around on Dancing With the Stars. But, we all know that, don't we?

J. Peterman somehow ended up in Lexington, Ky. Not sure why or how, but he did. His empire blossomed on the North side of town, pre-Internet. It's funny to think that anything was before the Internet! It has become so much a part of our lives and infiltrated every aspect of it! I know that I have altered how I spend my hard earned bucks.

Back in the day, there was a large building that housed the J Peterman warehouse. UPS loved the J.P. company. The US Post Office loved J.P. No telling how many catalogues he mailed out all over the world. For years. All over the world!

Before having a part time job for J.P. (call me Elaine Jr.) I ran across him in the back pages of a magazine I was reading in the mid to late 80's. It was an advertisement for the Duster. It was how he got started, selling the Duster because whereever and when ever he wore it he was stopped and questioned. The question always was the same.... "Where can I get one?".

And the J. Peterman Company was born.


I rummaged around in my closet for a hat to shield my head from the death inducing rays thrown down from the relentless heavens that was frying my brain. I found this...

My Panama hat, or as I like to think of it, my Miss Blue Hat. (it was called several names depending). And when I placed it on my head and was into the mind numbing process of picking out yellow black spot leaves I remembered the Peterman Empire and my little part in it.

First of all, I was young! And everyone working there was young. We were all so young I guess that would answer the question of why we would work for such low wages and have such high standards demanded of us! The J. Peterman company was noted and praised for being the BEST in the business, which was mail order. Any given night, 100 customer service reps manned the telephones and were placed in the cue. There was no telling who might call on any given evening/night as the phones remained open till 1am. Celebrities called all the time. I never caught a celebrity call, but when it happened THAT person always stood up attracting the attention of everyone in the room and would gesture wildly towards the phone and mouth the name of the caller.

Standing up was common, as it hurt the ass to sit all the time through out an eight hour shift. I would love to ask the customer on the line, "Would you like me to get the garment so I can describe it better for you?" and with that, would un-plug and trudge around the "show room" and pick out the item. J.P. was great about having all the merchandise available for the CSR's to have at their disposal. And it was quite an affair, for he had thousands of items. I would gather the garment and go sit in my chair and begin to describe it to the person on the other end of the phone. Description was essential and we were coached and thoroughly refreshed through out our tenure with the company. He was not the BEST for nothing.

It was fun. But it did not last for long, just that one Christmas season and into the spring of the next year. I remember this vividly because it was 1996 and UK won the NCAA Title that year. We listened to the games much to the despair of the customers calling in! The final four...that Saturday night I'm certain J.P. got more complaints than ever before. I remember it as if it were yesterday (doesn't every Cat fan?)


"Okay, do you have a tape measure, now bend over to the right .... that's your waist, measure it. (a pause) Okay, what does it say?" The customer replies with his/her waist measurement and UK hits a 3 pointer against U-Mass in the final four game and you forget you have not muted the mouth piece and you yell out loud, "THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!!!"

Truly, it was fun and I was shocked when he went bankrupt and exhilarated when he got his company back!!

The Bus Stops Here

The school bus for this side of the neighborhood stops right across the street from our house, at the stop sign. Around 730am the High School kids are picked up and then about a half hour later the younger kids. There is screaming from the younger kids and much running around and playing while waiting for the bus to arrive. The High School crowd is silent and sullen.

Which reminds me of my school bus days. We had to walk to the end of the street, also by the stop sign, to catch the big yellow machine driven by Shorty.

Did I say walk? Oh no, I do not remember too many walks towards the stop. It usually was making a mad dash across five yards to hop on the crowed sweaty screaming mass of Baby Boomers.

The bus had a route that entered our subdivision on the street that ran behind our house. One of us kids would be stationed at the end of the kitchen table as the look out. When he (as it was always one of my brothers, never me) spotted it making its first stop he would stand, grab his book bag, his lunch and yell out to the rest of us.......

BUSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

And then the mad dash would begin.

If you missed the bus? If you were dragging your heels and could not participate in the running of the procrastinators, well you just had to walk to school! (No worries, it only took 10 minutes if you went as slow as possible).

Which reminds me of another story.

My Brother-in-Law's family owns a piece of property on a TVA lake. In February about 10 to 15 men (no women) make the pilgrimage to participate in their version of an Iron Man competition. It is a long week-end of drinking beer and a horse shoe competition where only the winners do not have to jump into the frigid gray water of a late winter lake.

It is about a three hour drive to reach the Lake House. As they approached their destination this past winter, they saw a bar open along the way. It was around 3pm and the place was packed!

"Wow", they thought as they ordered their beers, "this place is really hopping for so early in the afternoon". Just about this time someone jumped up yelled.........

"BUSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS"

And the entire place cleared out as the bus unloaded its cargo and they clamored into the waiting pick-ups for the ride home.

Somethings never change.

Alphawoman's Garden of Grass

Sometimes I just have to fill up an entry with help from a visual narrative. Yesterday I was working in my garden aka the back yard.



Usually I am out there in the mornings as the heat of the day has not yet hit. Anyone living in this area knows we have had a very hot summer and little rain. At least little rain as of late. My roses have suffered from a multitude of circumstances including but not limited to the heat, the Jap beetles, and the dreaded yellow spot. I have inherited approximately 21 rose bushes/plants and have not, to date, killed any of them! As a matter of fact, since the heat has broken, and the Jap beetles have died off for the season, the roses are looking very spiffy!



Please do not point out the black spot disease! Only this year (because I am a slow study) I have learned how it happens and how to treat it. The other day I spent hours picking out the dropped leaves from the mulch. Mindless work that allows deep cracks in the brain to appear.

My back patio area is nothing short of a Sahara-like heat bowl. The southern sun beats down all day long! Nothing survives on the patio of white concrete and sand colored wall. Since I have been traveling back and forth from Memphis all summer and relied on the daughter to water .... well, there were horrible deaths of many hardy plants.

As I said, I am a slow study. It took a while to realize succulents were the answer! They come from the desert, right? So, I was spending yesterday afternoon replanting the resilient remarkable succulents when my back neighbor comes across the yard.



He was so nice! He had brought along a bucket of planting soil as a gift. We chatted a bit about the things neighbors chat about when he suddenly changed the subject and waved his arm towards a corner of my yard and bluntly asked, "Is that a marijuana plant you're growing up there?"

WTH?



As if!!! How funny! It does sort of look like one if you never have seen it before! So I assured him it was a bamboo plant that a very nice person in west Tennessee had given me and I was trying to get it to thrive in southern Indiana. And behold! It is throwing off a baby shoot.

A little later my next door neighbor came over and we chatted about my tomatoes.



And my roses.



And I assured him I was not growing marijuana and he laughed. He was more in the know because he told me I would have been busted long ago if that was the case.

It was only when I went inside I realized I was not wearing a bra under my t-shirt.

No wonder I had so many male visitors!