Country living is for me

Posted on April 23, 2013 by chenson70

I get to see these beautiful fields everyday, twice a day, on my way to and from work.

Fields of Canola

I love living in the country. I grew up living on a (small) mountain/hilltop with no neighbors, so to speak. My aunt and uncle and cousins shared the little mountain top with us, but they weren’t next door neighbors, just in sight neighbors. I had never lived in a neighborhood until I bought a house at the age of 33.

I quickly discovered that “city living” wasn’t for me. And I didn’t even really live in a city, just in a town, but I lived on a street, with sidewalks and houses right next door to me. I felt hemmed in and confined and like too many people were minding my business.

Not long after moving into my house, I adopted two kittens. They were from the same litter and came with the same case of ringworm. I took them to the vet and we first tried to cure them via pills. No such luck. They still had spotty patches of hair. I had an appointment to take them back to the vet when I came home one evening from work and found a note in my mailbox. An anonymous note saying something to the effect that “I know what you are doing to your kittens. You are abusing them. Please treat them nice.”

I guess their case of ringworm and loss of hair on their tails gave someone the impression in my (friendly) neighborhood that, for sport, I liked to take my kittens by the tail and swing them around in the air.

Later, as they were older, I found one of my cats one sunny Saturday on my back deck with a big scratch on his neck. “Uh oh, Simba, looks like you’ve been cat fighting.” About an hour later, one of my (friendly) neighbors came by to tell me that they had seen Pooh (the neighbors had their own names for my cats) and it looked like he had been shot! Please, please, please take him to the vet. “Which one of my cats,” I asked, “do you call Pooh?”

Trying to be a good neighbor, I rushed Simba/Pooh to the vet and $200 later found out he had been in a cat fight. Surprise.

Almost six months later, I came home early from work and was unloading some potting soil and such from my car when a trio of my (friendly) neighbors came over to tell me that the night before, Tigger (whom I called Sarabi) ran out in front of a car and was hit. That morning, while I was at work, they found him under my back deck and retrieved his body and buried him and had a little funeral for him. They just wanted to let me know.

“You buried my cat today while I was at work?”

“Yes. It was no problem. And by the way, my daughter is so upset about Tigger (Sarabi) dying, that I’ve brought Pooh into the house to keep her company.”

I never saw Pooh, I mean Simba, again except for one time when he climbed up on the outside ledge of my kitchen window and I saw that he had a new collar and tag that read “Pooh” with my neighbor’s address and phone number. I thought about leaving a note in their mailbox that said “I know what you are doing. You are stealing people’s cats. Stop it.”

That’s one big reason why I love living in the country. No neighbors.

__________________________________________________

On another note, this is the conversation that I had with my insurance agent today:

me: Tell me about life insurance. I need to think about it while I’m still fairly young.

Agent: I recommend term.

me: What is term?

Agent: It’s good for a set period of time, like ten or twenty or thirty years. Then it expires. It’s the cheapest. Really, why are you interested in life insurance?

me: To make sure that if something happens to me in the next 10 to 20 years, Matt can pay off the house so that the slut he marries next doesn’t have to work.

Agent: You’re a hell of a wife.

me: You’re right.

The things we do for love, uh, I mean for smoking hotness.

Posted on March 24, 2013 by chenson70

Matt is having a birthday soon, so we drove the hour or so to visit my mom and step-father last night for a pre-birthday dinner. My Aunt Baby and Uncle Joe were also there and as always seems to happen, I came away from the evening with a good story or two. Any time that my family gets together, there tends to be at least one good tale that makes an appearance, because as Baby says, “You can’t make this shit up. You have to live it.” Indeed.

Last night, we started talking about how my Uncle Joe was getting back into some of the hobbies and interests that he used to have, like wearing cowboy boots and collecting guns. He had saved a lot of his pairs of cowboy boots that he had bought in the 70s and 80s and is just starting to wear them again (vintage!), so his argument is that this is a cost-effective interest.

Baby said something like “You’ll want to be wearing Sue boots again!” and she and my mom and Joe laughed and laughed.

me: What are Sue boots?

Baby: Back in the early 80s, me and your mom and Joe went to the Mt. Airy Fiddlers Convention with your dad while he set up his booth there to sell his Harley panties. [My dad would go to flea markets and fairs, etc. and sell cowboy hats, t-shirts, leather wallets, etc. and black panties with the Harley-Davidson logo that said “I’m a Harley Honey”. Classy.] Joe walked around to check out the competition and saw this Sioux woman selling boots.

me: Oh, Sioux as in S-I-O-U-X. I thought you were saying S-U-E.

Baby: No, like Indian. Anyway, he thought she was hot, and she talked him into buying these Sioux boots.

Joe: She was smoking hot.

Baby: So he comes walking back wearing these boots with fringe all the way down the front and they cost like $40, back in 1982 that was like $100. I was so mad!

Joe: She was really hot.

Baby: I guess I’m glad she wasn’t selling Sioux chandeliers, or I would have one of those in my house now.

Joe: Yeah, I would have bought one, cause she was hot.

My Dad’s Camper and Displays — A Shopper’s Paradise

Joe’s story made me think about the crazy stuff people do when they are trying to get someone’s attention or they, like Joe, think someone else is hot. We all do it, at some point in our lives. I know we do. And I think that for the most part it is harmless, like buying Sioux boots.

I drank two bottles of wine pretty much by myself at a restaurant in New York City one time because our waiter was hot and the more I drank, the more often he would come back to the table to refill my glass. Worst. Hangover. Ever.

My best friend in college got up in the middle of the night/morning, showered, put on makeup, etc., to meet a guy who called her on the phone, not realizing it was a crank call. When the guy on the phone asked her what she was doing, she asked, “Is this Dominick?” “Yes, it is. Meet me.” Because she thought it was Dominick, she did it because Dominick was hot. Of course, no one showed up because it was a crank call.

This temporary insanity is giddy and fun and makes me smile to remember. I think of the scene from Seinfeld where George Costanza said, “I once told a woman that I coined the phrase “Pardon my French.”” to get a woman. We will do some outlandish things. And some times we end up with boots, some times with hangovers. Maybe sometimes we end up with a new love.

What do hoarders have in common? Why, too many things to list!

Posted on March 10, 2013 by chenson70

I have a close friend that has been dealing with a very ill parent for almost 3 months. As she has been talking with doctors, learning about her parent’s illness, etc., she has also been cleaning her parents’ house. She told me the other day that as she and her aunt and uncle were sorting through the laundry room and kitchen that her uncle said, “We should call American Pickers!” She said that she replied, “As long as you don’t say, “We should call “Hoarders.””

I grew up surrounded by hoarders, or at least by people who were on some part of the hoarding continuum. Usually, they resided toward the “keep everything” end of that continuum. I have noticed a commonality between the people who I know that tend or tended to hoard — they lived during the Great Depression.

Matt said that his mom was a hoarder, but she tended to hoard food more than anything. She used to describe to him how she often went hungry during the Great Depression. And she (like Scarlett O’Hara) vowed not be hungry again. My mamaw and papaw tended to hoard, but I don’t remember it being food as much as just “stuff”. My mama has said that she doesn’t ever remember going hungry growing up, though a meal may have consisted of potatoes cooked two different ways and three different kinds of beans. So, maybe what each person hoarded was based on individual experience.

I also grew up hearing certain phrases over and over from my hoarding friends and family. (Ok, I don’t know that any of them were ever officially diagnosed as hoarders, but if looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.) As things were put onto shelves, or into drawers, or into sheds, they would say, “We could probably fix this.” Or “Someone might be able to use this.” That last statement was a much used one. Because one thing that I did learn about Depression-created hoarding — it was a community-based practice. You kept a lot of stuff because your neighbors and family might need something that you had — it would have been selfish to throw something away.

Matt’s Uncle’s Doorbell — This is how a person from the Depression reuses something

Matt and I were talking about hoarding this morning over breakfast and about whether the Great Recession that we have been in (is it over?) the last several years will jump-start another round of hoarding in people. I think that a certain generation of people born in the 80s and later have definitely grown up in a disposable mentality — everything can be thrown away and replaced, much different from the mentality of my grandparents and aunts and uncles. Will the recent years of job loss and unemployment and falling consumer confidence and global recession create a compulsive need to keep stuff?

Matt and I don’t hoard — instead we just don’t buy. When we married and merged two fully formed households, it took months to donate, sell, recycle and throw away the excess to create just one household. So, now we think about everything that we bring into the house. And we don’t hang on to stuff that doesn’t work, or that we don’t use, or that doesn’t fit, etc. We try to find another home for it.

And maybe that is the new mentality. Limit what comes in to begin with, but don’t hang on to what you don’t need.

I’ll take a smile with that shot.

Posted on March 4, 2013 by chenson70

I had my annual physical today, complete with blood work.

me: (as blood starts to flow into little tube) Is that the right color for blood?

nurse: Yes

me: What would you do if you saw blood come out of someone that was blue or green? Would you call the FBI and tell them that you had an alien?

nurse: (without looking up) No.

I think I would like my nurse to have a little sense of humor. A little ability to smile.

Or maybe not. Maybe your health is one of the areas that you don’t want any joking. I remember a visit to the OB-GYN in my early twenties. It was only the second time that I had ever been to see the OB-GYN and during the previous year’s visit, he had found a small “fibrous” mass in my breast. “Nothing to worry about” he assured me. The next year, when he found it again, he asked me about it — “did we find this last year?” “yes”, I said. “Well,” he said, chuckling, “it must not have been serious, or you’d be dead by now.” That was not a sense of humor. That was bad taste.

Maybe this nurse has an excellent sense of humor and she just didn’t think that I was funny.

Nah, I don’t think it was that.

Tweezing should be a chore, not a punishment

Posted on February 13, 2013 by chenson70

I found this on LaughingSquid.com yesterday:

Baguette Table

A table made from stale baguettes! I thought it was pretty cool looking. I shared it with my roommate from college, who was also my main partner in crime during a semester abroad in Dijon, France, when we were young. I posted it to Facebook and got the following comments:

Betsy’s comment is quite accurate and I thought to myself “When faced with a baguette, who wouldn’t eat it?” Then, I started to think, “When faced with a baguette, who wouldn’t eat it?” What if you did have this piece of furniture and had to look at it daily and couldn’t eat it? Having baguettes in your face all the time with no ability to scarf them!! That, I thought, would be hell.

I use “that would be hell” as a figure of speech, but…I always have to take things to the next level. So, I thought, what if Hell (the place, and yes, I do believe in capital H, e, double l) were made of punishments like this? You know, little things that just frustrate the crap out of you? What ifyYour existence was limited to always being in a perpetual state of pissed off, or uncomfortable, or irked. I’m being very tongue in cheek with this, because I don’t really believe this is what Hell is, but I have developed a list of things that if I had to spend Eternity enduring, it would definitely be punishing.

If I Had to Spend Eternity Doing This, I Would Be in Hell:

Shopping for groceries at Wal-Mart
Driving behind a slow car in the left hand lane on the interstate
Finding a chin hair but not being able to find any tweezers
Having an unlimited supply of Raisin Nut Bran cereal but no milk
Squatting over public toilets
Prepping for a colonoscopy (drinking that nasty shit) (hey, just realized what a pun the use of “shit” was) (hey, just realized that’s two bathroom related hell-tasks in a row)
Meetings
On hold with the Time Warner Customer Representative / Billing Department at the hospital
Wearing a white shirt with a big, wet coffee stain down the front
Having baguettes in front of me but not being able to eat them (and you can add about a gazillion other foods, as well, except for peas)

If this is my Eternity, YUCK.

Have those lips been kissed?

Posted on January 8, 2013 by chenson70

Twice recently, I have received a bag or a box of memorabilia, mostly related to my father. It has been wonderful either seeing pictures that I have never seen before or reliving old memories.

But it has also made me sad. When my mom remarried and sold the house in which my sister and I grew up, I was in the midst of a depression. We were cleaning out our childhood rooms and going through 25 years of accumulated detritus. Since I was depressed, I had no sense of sentimentality, at all. I threw away most of the keepsakes of my youth — pictures, yearbooks, awards. I wish that I had kept all that stuff.

One thing that I DID keep was a poem. It was written by Jim Maloney. We went to school together from elementary school through high school graduation.

Jim may have written this to be satirical (I was often the butt of teasing because of my goody-two-shoes mentality, but my mother had me convinced that anything beyond chaste kissing would result in the total ruin of the rest of my life — no job, no husband, no family, no income — life in the street, living for handouts), but I have hung on to it, choosing instead to think of it as my own personal ode.

Jim–I thank you. This poem brings a smile to my face, 25 years later.

Have Those Lips Been Kissed

Have Those Lips Yet Been Kissed?

Cristy, of extreme beauty and grace,

even more than the goddess of beauty in face,

And the body fair, as a swan in flight.

The subject of many a dream at night.

Upon thinking, one most wonder.

When dreaming, one must ponder.

Have those lips yet been kissed?

Have young men in their velvet prime missed?

One could fight for thee with sword or fist.

For have those lips yet been kissed?

Cristy, of wonderful beauty and charm,

Could any one dare to do thee harm?

The vilest evil, the coldest heart,

Not one could damage, not even start.

When thinking, one most wonder.

Upon dreaming, one must ponder.

Young men would kill for just one kiss.

And when you’re gone the world will miss.

And one would fight with sword or fist.

And kill one another for just one kiss.

–Jim Maloney

2012 — In limerick form

Posted on December 31, 2012 by chenson70

Happy New Year! One year down and another one to come. Just like clockwork. Or the seasons. Or the calendar.

I have reviewed mine and Matt’s year and I have written a limerick about it. And presented it in a pictorial (click on the first picture to start the slide show).

There once was a couple from Statesville
Whose 2012 was a year full of thrills
From Dublin to torn rotator cuffs
And dog bites to camping in the rough
The goal for ’13 is no emergency room bills

There once was a couple from Statesville Whose 2012 was a year full of thrills

From Dublin to

torn rotator cuffs

And dog bites to

camping in the rough

The goal for ’13 is no emergency room bills

Happy New Year to you and yours!

The gift of the love note

Posted on December 30, 2012 by chenson70

Matt and I were invited to a Christmas party at my cousin’s house earlier in the month. We had a great time (a bonus of not having depression). Before we left, my cousin, Beth, gave me bag that her mother had sent to me. It was full of items that had been in my grandmother’s house when she passed away, and my Aunt Linda was sending them to me for division between my sister and me. It was mostly pictures that Grandma had, and the majority of those pictures were of my nieces and nephew, marking their growth and milestones.

But there were also some memorabilia related to my dad. There was a school report about baseball (with a grade of 97), a model car that he had put together as a boy, and some of her favorite pictures of him.

Like most people who have lost a close loved one, I think a lot about my dad during the holidays. I remember the fact that he always put his shopping off until the very last minute. I remember that Christmas Eve that he tried to fix our stuck back door and we ended up with the back door in the back yard–but it wasn’t stuck anymore. And when we get together with the rest of our family, I miss his presence.

Thus, the memorabilia that was in the bag that was specific to him felt like a Christmas present. It was wonderful to pull out the toy car and read the report on baseball.

And I was reminded that my dad was, to his bones, an optimistic person. He was a natural salesman and spent most of his adult life in some sort of sales job. He was always quite successful at sales because he connected so well with people. Maybe because of that optimism I mentioned.

In the bag of items were two love notes that he wrote as a boy. One of them perfectly illustrates that “never give up” attitude. He had it even as a young man.

Love note

Dear Cathy I ham (sic) very fond of you. And I know you love smity. And I know you have some more boy friend. But I still love you. love Tommy.

I love this love letter. He recognizes that Cathy loves someone else (Smity), but it doesn’t matter–Tommy still loves her. It’s that optimistic, glass-half-full outlook that he exhibited until he died.

This little note may have been the best gift I got this year.

Tommy

Grateful that I don’t have to be grateful any more

Posted on November 14, 2012 by chenson70

Today I am grateful that it is not a law that I write a blog about being grateful every day. It was sucking the fun out of writing a blog. I was beginning to approach blogging like a chore, a drudge, a (*gasp*) job. Enough’s enough! This is supposed to be fun. No more self-imposed blogging every day. I’ll write when I have something to say, whether it’s interesting or not.

But I do have a month’s worth of things for which I am grateful. I’ll just list them instead of writing about each:

Family and friends
Sister
Chocolate soy milk
antidepressants
Elastic waist bands
Digital libraries
Harry Potter books
air conditioning
hugs from my husband

Actually, I’m having a hard time coming up with my list. I think that I’m distracted by hunger because I just started to list “Cinnamon Life Cereal”….

I’ve had several bad days recently–no sleep, a cold, work-related stress. I have a picture that perfectly expresses my mood. It’s a picture of my roommate from freshman year in college, Grace* (*not her real name). She was in the middle of what we called an “all-weeker” (instead of an “all-nighter”) during finals week. I’ve never sympathized with Grace more than this past week. I’ve wanted to give the whole world the bird.

Grace, I feel your pain.

Mama Mia — Day 10

Posted on November 10, 2012 by chenson70

Today I am grateful for mothers. Specifically, I am grateful for my mother. She’s a pretty darn good mother. My sister and I turned out well. We’re kind, responsible, competent women. My biggest issue is that I tend to put a lot of people into the category of “Idiots”. Matt might argue that I have more issues than that, but I think that is idiotic.

I am especially grateful that she taught me that I shouldn’t take myself too seriously. She is the kind of mother that won’t be mad at her daughter at all for posting this picture of her in a blog. A picture that she hates. She will laugh and laugh and say, “I’m not going to take myself so seriously!” Cause that’s the kind of mother she is.

I love this picture. She was 17 at the time, competing in a beauty pageant. And I love to think about her that young, that carefree, that bold. Go, Girl! You are as beautiful today as you were at 17.