searching for the star

The dogs are asleep on the couch and loveseat...that keeps 'em out of my bed until I turn in for the night. Faith is too old to care very much and Sam is injured so they're not in a real mood to mole hunt unless the weather is mild. Today wasn't bad...no jacket necessary nor umbrella. Not that I have those things close at hand when I need them. I never was prepared, even as a girl scout.

It is Christmas season one of the next family chapter...the one where we make amends and agree to stick together 'til death do us part. We all know the history and the coulda shoulda wouldas but that is the past and this is Christmas present. One of my favorite holiday songs is by Adam Sandler about Hannukah and I heard it today on Rock 92.3 while hanging out in the trusty Camry. In the parking lot of the sawmill. Where they love me because I'm such a hard worker and need the insurance. Doesn't that just warm your heart? It certainly does a number on mine. "And smoke your marijuanica". *snort* You go boy.

I haven't seen the news in a week or so which is not a bad thing. I know it's probably snowing like hell somewhere in the US and cold mostly everywhere except Florida, of course. Before I die I'd LOVE to do the Destin in winter thing. Bucket list: added. I think I'd probably enjoy a relaxed conversation with Clyde Edgerton about grandmas and graveyards and his tune "Walking Across Egypt." There's enough Paula Deen on TV to keep me hooked up until the next trip to Tunica. Too much grease just does a number on my middle aged gut, ya know?

Back when I was a kid, I always figured that there would come a time when I just knew when the right time was to make a move or a decision. My parents pretty much let me do my own thinking even though they didn't agree with a lot of it....especially the Vietnam part. Mama took me and several of my idiot hippie friends to see concerts at the Mid South Coliseum when we were pre-teens. Later, I went with others like my college boyfriend John. Linda Ronstandt. Elton John. James Taylor. Allman Brothers. As a semi-grownup with a husband and kid, we went to Mud Island time and time again just to enjoy the music. Most of those venues are gone now, or at least booking people like Brittney Spears or some silly shit. You can bet your ass that's Dubya's fault too.

Not that Obama is all that, by any means. They're a nice family and he has brought some very serious subject matter to the table. My dear and quite hyperactive friend Joe brought to my attention during last year's election that our country seemed to be mesmerized all Hitler like with the vision of something different. Heh. Go figure that one. Healthcare "reform" is major...as a matter of fact the whole damn thing is just broke and if somebody can offer me a plan that fixes it with total respect for human dignity, I'm all for it...sign me up and pick me up to go vote. Historically, in this neck of the woods, Democrats will do that and buy you some whiskey too.

Anyway, back to the star. Sometimes I wonder about the faith of all those folks who wandered around in the night looking to believe in a miracle baby, born out of wedlock PLUS by immaculate conception in some guy's barn on the way to pay taxes to, you guessed it! The government. Same song next verse. As Daddy would say "It has always been thus and so."

I reckon it has Daddy. I reckon it has.

all i want to do

This was a personal day of reckoning at the sawmill. For-profit healthcare is big business here in our country, and Obama pajama mama has nothing to do with that. His plan won't work either...you know the "give everything away to the ones who ass off" version. That is how my employer came to find itself unable to deliver to the stockholders. Translated, that means do more with less and hope for the best with the really sick ones. Cut those hours and slash that inventory until they bleed. Thank you Dr. Bill Frist, for that concept. I hope you get MRSA up your ass and then some. Surely Congress will comp your bill. After all...you earned it, right?

Miss Olive got caught smokin' in the bathroom last week and the house supervisor ripped her a new one for breaking the rules. HS threatened to call the cops on that old lady, I swear. She has a few Old Milwaukees every afternoon at cocktail hour with her hubby who is a whiskey man and when he gets out of hand? She hands it right back to him like the smartass that she is. They met in London during WWII when he was stationed there. How in the hell they ever got to our little 'burg is beyond me, but I try not to question big ernie and his plan. All I know is that she's an angel sent straight to me from heaven as a reminder that life is short and true love is not very hard to find but pretty hard to hang on to. I sincerely hope that before I die, I'll know that feeling.

Once upon a time there were people who cared about the oath of "do no harm." They still exist, even in a market that is driven by profit and abuse of the system. The bottom line? Everyone deserves to be treated with respect and dignity, especially when they're sick. I remember when HIV swept through our town back in the eighties, thanks to a few chosen ones who were careless before they knew better. Me and Denise went to school together at Alice Thurmond Elementary which was just up the hill from my great grandmother Ethel's house and across Pate from Memama's. Mama and Nancy grew up next door to Ethel's where Miss Rosie, with a paper sack on her head, cooked greens and did chores for she and Ockie. As the story goes, he would go marching off to work at the KW Rogers store and she'd be hollering at him from the front porch like a shrew. Ethel answered the old timey dial phone with the greeting "alright!", a throwback to her younger days at the phone exchange a few miles down south in Lauderdale County. She clicked her false teeth when she said it too.

Mr. Bruce was the principal there, a young man from Mississippi who came north with his young bride Peggy, holding their respective degrees in education. At that time, there were three elementary schools in the city system, each of which employed numerous old ladies with blue hair and lots of rulers to spat hands and butts. A few of them even got riled up enough to pitch erasers on occasion. Nannie Jean was one of those who dumped fear upon any young punk who dared to act bored in her math class. How DARE you not love algebra!!

Sometimes I think about what I'd really like to do with the rest of my days here on earth if I didn't have to worry about paying the rent, utility bills and the insurance premiums. What has this world got to anyways??????

the other brother

He's flying south next week to wrap up the loose ends on his daddy's estate, so to speak. I can't say that I'd know the dude if he walked up and tapped me on the shoulder, yet he's in charge of the details that will sometime or another be the future of this farm. Sometimes you're the windshield and sometimes you're just the bug. Way back when, I offered to write a book about the history of the Ferguson Farm but I got lazy and stuck with my day job, hoping that the answer to true happiness was just a smile and a whistle away. There was talk about getting this piece of land on the national historic registry because of that big fat honkin' dairy barn across the road.

Mama and Daddy were both volunteers at the hospital where I work. They were actively involved with the volunteer blood program that supplies our facility with those life saving precious fluids known as leukopoor red cells or single donor platelets and FFP, pheresis style. They pushed wheelchairs and answered phones and generally looked after the sick and dying. We never much discussed the state of things due to HIPPA regulations, but we all knew that Jesus said to do unto others and so we did, without question. Occasionally an imaginary line was crossed, but mostly but we just kept the faith.

road dog blues

i'm not really sure why he calls me when he does except to perhaps have a kind voice to validate his mood swings. in his mind, he's still 30 and smoking hot. last time i looked, he had a gut and looked tired as hell from all that gypsy style traveling. wearing a carhart jacket that wouldn't meet in the front, ya know? dude runs himself ragged all over the state just trying to stay in touch with his four girls and find time for a heinekin at the next exit.

i hadn't seen him in over thirty years, since high school, when i looked up from ladies night at the kudzu bar and there he was with a big grin. didn't remember me, he said. i thought he had aged well and told him so. yaya got his number and kept it until she got tired of listening to war stories. i can totally relate.

a few years later it was reunion time so i called his mama to try to find him. we're all about rounding up the herd for big ten celebrations here in the 'burg. go trojans and all that! she wouldn't give me his cell number but did give up the address so he was invited, just didn't show. he burned up the cell towers during those next few months, eager to reconnect with people he never knew that remembered he forgot. me? i've been here the whole time so i was the perfect happy reunion guide. or is that the ultimate little co-dependent? hmm.

his personality was hard to get used to...sort of overwhelming and abrasive in a "look at me" sort of way. little man syndrome, we call it at hen parties. laughs too loud and too long at stupid shit. he calls it happy and i suppose it is compared to kicked back and chilled out. adrenaline serves the gypsy well when getting from point a to b is the goal du jour. for a relationship? not so much.

dog said he was a real womanizer back in the day with a rigid set of specs for a woman worthy of his attention. it's what makes the hair on the back of neck stand up, he said. can ya'll believe i listen to this crap, ear clamped down over cellphone in the parking lot of the store chasing loose cans? me neither. live and learn, i say.

he starts calling a week or so before he's due to a visit with mom and tells me he misses me. "hotdamn!" i think! maybe he's for real under all of that noisy bravado and bullshit. so far, nothing to report.

time will tell.

Dear Joe.....

You're right about the being scared part, you know? I can't explain it really, except that it's a lifelong habit resulting from having my heart handed squarely back to me whenever I say the magic words "i love you."

"Not that way" they say. You're my buddy and my pal but I never thought of you as anything but a friend. I suppose it's a start and sometimes new chapters are written like that. Truth be told, that was how I got the courage up to end that miserable marriage. I fell in love with Terry Lee and was stupid enough to tell it, even though nothing ever came of my schoolgirl yearnings for a farmboy. Whenever we talked, his parting shot was "later, girl."

He never called me like you do..it was always me punching those numbers into the phone needing to hear his voice so I knew that somebody somewhere was listening to my pain. I reckon he felt obliged since we were friends and had been in the trenches together for so long. I pissed him off one day up at the bar and haven't had a conversation since then. I can't help it..he's worth more than some idiot user chick who gives him a black eye when he hauls her drunk ass out of a ditch in the rain. He always did have a thing for the crazy ass skinny bitches, bless his heart.

I miss you already, but I'm not afraid 'cuz I know you'll be back sooner or later.

for whom the cell phone ringeth

Sometimes I try to remember what it was like before the days of 24/7 communication via cell and internet. My memory doesn't have to stretch very far back because both of these luxuries are things that I couldn't afford until a few years ago. My daddy, the ultimate cattleman and farmer who could never stand to waste daylight is spending his twilight years in a recliner with a cellphone in his pocket so he won't have to get up and disturb his marathon viewing of old cowboy shows. I have to give him this....he tries to help Mama in the kitchen for the first time ever, serving as her eyes as they work together to prepare their meals. When she tells him to cut the bananas in half twice for frozen salad, she never knows that he only made one slice lengthwise because she can't see what he's doing. It's all good, because the taste is the same.

Daddy's current state of mind can best be described as a mellowing and softening that comes with the return of long lost childlike behavior, and I must say that I adore it in the man who struck fear in my heart for many years. Oh, he never hit me or did anything mean like that. I learned much later on in life that his anger and frustration at the world came from growing up poor as a sharecropper's only son with three sisters tormenting him from sun up to sun down in the fields. All I ever wanted was to settle into his lap and fall asleep but he was too tired from working two jobs to support three kids and a wife. By day he was officially an agent of the plant pest control division of the USDA, tracking the evil Japanese beetle with colored pins stuck on a map of the southeast. The bulk of his time away from government work was spent raising cattle and managing the farm on which we lived. Some of us are still here to tell the story.

what goes around.........comes around

As.I.type, presidential election circa 2008 is being tallied for all of posterity to remember as the day that Dubya decided to retire from his war mongerin' ways. It's too early to tell if that colored guy will win, but if I was a betting woman? I'd say we'll be okay if he don't. God promises that to the faithful ones who take care of mother earth.

It's been the damndest thing since 2000. There was a dictator over in Iraq who got caught in a hole by the mighty armed forces of the USA and then we lost a bunch of American citizens at the hands of extremists. Don't ask for the number....I've lost count but it's way too many. Then there was Katrina and the fucked up response to a monster storm that was on everybody's radar for a full week. Don't EVEN get me started on Terri Schiavo and Frist because, frankly? What I have to say might be pretty but it ain't politically correct. That woman will be the one poking him with a pitchfork in hell. I'm just saying that as the truth. Who the heck knows?

If you ask me we should have kicked their asses back in Fallujah when the effigies of contractors went swinging on the bridge. This particular war has been about making more money for the rich folks and diverting attention from our problems at home. I believe that the confidence of the American people at this point in time could be aptly described as at an all time low. Well, since the great depression anyways. My parents grew up during that era so they know of which I write.