Dead Men Don't Dust

          Have you ever looked around at your home and in your closets and wondered if an investigatory team like CSI or NCIS could parse out your life based on your furnishings and clothes?  What do you mean, no?  Having recently binge-watched X-Files, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and NCIS, I've been hyper-aware of how my life might look to others.  

          Before Ben and I started dating, he was hesitant to respond to my initial message as he thought I was too fancy, or high maintenance.  When we started dating, and he saw my closets for the first time, he even jokingly began to call me Imelda, as in Imelda Marcos (of the three thousand pairs of shoes).  He wasn't referring to my shoe collection, as the possessor of 'old man feet' I only have 14 pairs of shoes.  I do, however, have 37 pairs of colored chinos, in a variety of colors for all seasons.

Of course, over the past 15 months of our dating, he has witnessed and half-heartedly participated in my shopping sprees, so he has seen evidence that I am a lover of all things clearance-priced, a patron of high-end outlet malls and a skilled thrift store shopper.

          You could look at my new favorite cashmere sweater, which retails for $300, and think I either have lots of cash or lots of debt.  You wouldn't know, unless I spilled the beans, that I got it for $30 at an upscale thrift store in my little neighborhood in Long Beach.  And that's what I'm talking about.  Misinformation such as this might lead those who have been assigned to investigate my disappearance or murder down the wrong path and I couldn't share the truth as I would be dead or missing or both.  And you know I love to inadvertently solve crimes, if you've read my first book, A Gone Pecan.  

          Beyond the clearance sale luxury goods, other appearances can be deceiving.  My home appears unlived in most of the time, because I straighten as I go.  My landlord uses my apartment as the model she shows to prospective tenants as my décor is stylish and my home always tidy.  Everything is in its place and decorated to the Nth degree.  Sister Parish (famed interior designer) once said, "Behind every attractive room has to be a very good reason."  My reason is an unending need to be surrounded by bold, tasteful, erudite awesomeness.  

          However, as Ben (now my fiancé) will tell you, as he does each and every weekend, "BooBoo (my nom de amor), your house is so fancy, why is it that you do not dust?"

          Yes, it's true  I don't dust as much as I should.  If you were to glance about you might notice layers of me, covered in layers of me as everyone knows dust is but the remnants of your own dead skin.  It's science, y'all, it's supposed to be gross.

          I will share with you a mélange of house-cleaning conversations 'twixt my Benjy and me:
          Ben: BooBoo, why is it dusty in your living room?
          Me:  I stopped the cleaning lady from coming over.
          B:  Why?
          M:  I should be able to clean my own apartment.
          B:  Yes, you should.
          M:  But I don't want to.
          B:  But you can afford it.
          M:  I'm trying not to waste money.  We have a wedding to plan.
          B:  It's not a waste of money, it's a service.
          M: I just wish I could save money and have my apartment cleaned by someone else.
          B:  You could drink less Starbucks Iced Tea, to save money.
          M:  That's crazy talk!
          B:  So, clean your apartment.
          M:  You make it sound so simple.
          B:  It is, really.
          M:  I know.  That's what so annoying.
          B:  When I move in, I will help clean.
          M:  You'll dust?
          B:  No, I will mop the kitchen and clean the bathroom.  They need attention as well.
          M:  In my defense, my bed is made every morning, like clockwork.
          B:  It should be.
          M:  Don't I get credit for that?
          B:  You want me to praise you for doing something you're supposed to do?
          M:  Yes.  Yes, I do.
          B:  I will not.
          M: I guess I'll get to dusting.

Epidurals and saving grace

                I know, dear readers, it has been a few weeks since I’ve posted anything.  And for that I am truly apologetic.  Not apologetic enough to have posted anything; mind you, but apologetic nonetheless.  I have been working very hard serving Veterans and could use that as my excuse, but I believe we are close enough for me to admit, I’ve just been tired, y’all; as tired as parachute pants.  As tired as a double-shift ending quickie mart manager who suddenly remembers that they have to go to the 24 hour Wal-Mart to buy Huggies for their grandbaby whose trifling mama can’t be bothered to stop partying to go get.  Not that I’m specifying anyone I know; it’s just a general description.

                Work has been tiring. Some people have likened manaing people to herding cats.  I describe it as more akin to herding birthday balloons; the ones that have been haphazardly and unwillingly inflated by Daddy and Uncle Herschel as opposed to, say, Scary Freaky Clown Guy with his efficient tank of helium and death.  They float lazily along, skittering hither and yon from some ever-present breeze that stems from the slow exhale of apathy.  Of course, you understand, this is absolutely not descriptive of my staff.  No, sir.  Those in my office are the very picture of efficiency and zeal.  Some even read this blog.  Hi Katherine.

                The tiredness has been compounded by the hourly briefing s from my father about his post-surgery condition.  As I may have shared, he recently underwent minor outpatient surgery.  He had a cyst on his…well, let’s just say lower back and leave it at that.  Anyhoo, his lower back “sprung a leak” from the description he gave and he had to return to the hospital for a follow-up procedure where he informed all and sundry in the operating room that their parents were in fact never married.  I really can’t blame him for his outburst although I denied any knowledge of the name of his caretaker or his connection to me when asked.

 It seems that they were forced to give him 4, count them, 4 epidurals before he “felt no pain”.  Of course, he couldn’t walk for about 6 hours after the procedure.  Too bad they couldn’t have given him an epidural in his mouth.  I can assure you if it was (1) medically possible and (2) remotely legal, they would have.  Taking your doctor a hand-crocheted afghan doesn’t really remove the sting of a large red-head questioning the moral fiber of one’s mother whilst you are waiting to remove a growth from the nether regions of said red-head who comes complete with anger issues, questionable hygiene and the inability to be knocked out without using rhinoceros tranquilizers from the zoo, y’all.  Those poor clinicians.

Well, at least they’re all getting a matching scarves to go with their afghans because that’s a typical gift pairing according to my father.  He tried to blame his behavior on the epidural, but he might as well have blamed it on the bossa nova for all the good it did him when I found out about the incident.  Never in the history of man has an eyebrow arched in such a judgmental fashion.  I may have sprained something.      

He has been living with me, as you know, for right at 10 months and we are still trying to get used to each other’s peculiarities.  He is supposed to be trying to lose weight and understand that I am not his maid or even a home health aide, although from the activities that take up most of my free time, it seems that I am something akin to a nanny who cooks.  Like Mary Poppins without the magic umbrella or the wherewithal to sing while cleaning. 

 I am trying to get used to having someone in my house for all 24 of the blessed hours in a given day.  He is never not here.  He does not leave the yard on his own.  I guess I should be happy he goes to the bathroom unattended.  If ever he requires assistance in that realm, we are either calling in an agency or getting some adult diapers.  I love my Daddy and will honor him like the Bible says, but unless you can show me a verse that specifically states “Thou shalt assist your parents in their daily ablutions” you can count me out.

This morning, as every Sunday morning, we have coffee and share the newspaper prior to me going to church.  He only attends when the pain of sitting on a pew in the Presbyterian Church is outweighed by the need for pancakes and sausage.  The pain is a mixture of physical and liturgical; him being a semi-devout Southern Baptist.  His devotion is directly related to the amount of casseroles and frequency of dinners on the ground.  I’m kidding, of course.  He attended church on a semi-regular basis throughout my childhood.  He was one of those Christmas/Easter/my Mother needed to prove he actually existed kind of church-goers.  Oh, and weddings, too. 

I myself was a faithful church attendee from birth through my junior year in college.  Then I fled from the constraints of religion as I was an art major and trying to find myself; an excuse more convenient than true.  I stayed away from church throughout graduate school and it’s no coincidence that the most, dumbest and life-altering mistakes I made were during this time.  I won’t bore, or titillate, you with the details.  Suffice it to say my testimony is a bit spicier than I would have liked, believe me.  I used to wish I had a more exciting life story.  Now that my autobiography reads like an Afterschool Special with parental warnings and includes certain experiences that would necessitate a revival of Oprah's talk show and a heated discussion/prayer intervention by Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin, I would much rather have had the mundane “saved in 4^th grade, taught Vacation Bible School, trying not to feel/appear holier than thou” backstory.  Be careful what you wish for, indeed.

The great thing about being a Christian later in life is that I can truly see the redemption God granted me.  I have a career that I love; that gives me the success I enjoy despite my lack of planning and ridiculous paths I chose.  God can take even the crookedest path and find you a new route if you let Him.  Rand McNally has nothing on Jesus when it comes to navigation.  Looks like I’m trying to have church before church this morning.  Can I get an Amen?

I’m not sure how I started talking about my Daddy’s surgery and ended up talking about salvation but that’s just how it goes sometimes.  You know a conversation with me is all about the digressions more than the topic, unless the topic is music trivia, leadership, interview skills, Miss America or people who get on my nerves.  I never said I was fully evolved.

One reason I haven’t finished the sequel to A Gone Pecan is that I am also working on my memoirs (is it called memoirs even if you’re not famous and may not even be interesting?).  I will publish excerpts as I complete them or as soon as I am comfortable sharing them.  All of the statute of limitations have expired, I think and I only share to help whomever it can help and at this point I don’t know how or even who that would be, but I feel…no, make that believe that all the things that have happened in my life have to have been for a reason other than to teach me a lesson.  Sometimes the lesson was learned quickly and sometimes it’s taken a while, but a lesson has always been learned.  Maybe. 

I don’t know about you, but I’m just glad that God doesn’t have a last nerve.  If He did I would have been on it, do you hear me?  Now I know that deserves an Amen.  You Baptists sitting on the back row need to give one up.  That’s all I’m saying.

Fat Rednecks and Gangstas: Style Cousins?

               It has happened.  I have crowned myself America’s Next Diet Guru without the need for an exhausting reality program hosted by someone of questionable British heritage.  The evidence, you ask?  I present, for discussion, my Daddy and his 40 pound weight loss (since September 2011).  I have dragged him kicking and screaming toward physical health.  Well, his version of kicking and screaming which is more pouting and angry looks as he is often tired and willfully quasi-ambulatory. 

                I discovered the exact degree of weight loss (39 pounds 11 ounces) when he entered the dining room this morning and asked, “How is it that I’ve lost 40 pounds and I’m wearing the same dad-blasted pair of pants?”  He did not like my answer of, “Those pants have been, and remain, too small.  Belt buckles should sit at your waist, not the middle of your thigh.”

                Men of his generation, the offspring of those called “The Greatest” by Tom Brokaw, are an interesting group, I will say.  Now I’m not sure if this is a Southern thing or not, but all I know is that most of the men I knew growing up in the South begin in high school a lifelong relationship with the same waist size of pant, regardless of issues of proper fit.  Baby Boomer is the name for their generation and although it probably wasn’t a term created to correspond with the alarming rate of waist expansion, the moniker is more than apt, wouldn’t you agree.  I was going to say ample, but there’s no need to be rude.

                It strikes me as humorous that my father’s pants have slowly slid ever toward his knees like a child who has been instructed to clean the yard; a slow, meandering walk, gradually easing toward the intended destination, which I can only assume, is around the ankles and these people spend an inordinate amount of time in bathroom.  I have never known him to be a fashion pioneer but he and his meaty brethren have been (grammatically more accurate) bursting a sag since, at the very least, October 1970 AD, translated ‘After Dustin’.  I know there are those who will say it’s actually Anno Domini or something else Latin, but my interpretation makes more sense, n’est-ce pas?

                Due to the reduction in the protuberance subjecting the upper portion of his lower torso to extreme shade, his pants are now somewhere in the, medically inaccurate, upper-middle-thigh area.  This is just low enough to cause concern but high enough to lessen the likelihood of a glimpse of ‘welder crack’, as he has never plumbed to any degree.  The citizenry of the South San Francisco Bay Area are appreciative, whether they know it or not.  I am accustomed to working behind the scenes, trying to make the world a more pleasant place one person at a time.  Your silence reeks of gratitude dear readers.  You are most welcome.

                If you know anything about me you know that once my father proclaimed his weight loss, I immediately began to deconstruct each section of his person to see if anything else had changed.  Other than the wearing of the new shirts I bought him to replace the ones that were somehow misplaced in an incident in the laundry room that, as it was un-witnessed by anyone except myself and Lulu, shall remain a mystery, he has maintained his “look” as it were.  Throughout my life I have noticed that his stomach had increased at a rate equal to the disappearance of his buttocks.  I did not notice any change in his lack of posterior.  Full disclosure, I try to avoid eye contact with that particular part of anyone’s anatomy prior to my morning coffee.  I prefer my wake-up to include only caffeinated beverages. 

Now, I am no physician, but having worked in the healthcare field more than a decade and as I am hyper-observant to the point of criticality, I can say that most men of this generation are equally disproportionate.  As it is in all real estate transactions, location is king.  And it seems that their buttocks, tired of the view, have migrated en masse, to a better spot.  I suppose the betterness of the spot is an opinion to be validated by someone else interested in the anatomy and physiology of “old men parts”.  I would have said this would include their female counterparts, but I have been assured on more than one occasion by the alumnae of my alma mater, Mississippi University for Women, that this is simply not true.  As I am a student of criticism, not anthropology, I will leave this academic discourse to others.  I do know that I have seen much more old man crack, plumber or otherwise, than I have ever wanted or imagined; mostly within what I used to consider the relative safety of my own home.

                On a positive note, the weight loss has afforded an improvement in his diabetes, or The Sugar as it is known is the countrier of circles.  His blood sugar is relatively under control.  I say relatively as his scores are better than his siblings, for whom gravy is still a beverage.  He has said on a number of occasions, usually in the throes of some dramatic invitation to one of his patented pity parties, RSVP not required, “You know tha sugah is gonna take my feet.”  I typically do not engage when this is presented as a topic of conversation because I, and he, have grown tired of my constant refrain of “carbohydrates are as harmful to your body as sugar.”  His practiced inability to retain this information causes me much frustration.  Each time we discuss the fact that crackers, bread, potatoes, rice, etc. are all carbohydrates he feigns confusion as if he expects to go to bargain market and find a box emblazoned with the word ‘CARBS’.  His avoidance of this particularly labeled box should allow him carte blanche when it comes to eating a meal containing pasta, potatoes, bread with crackers as a vegetable.

                By simply creating pre-portioned meals that give him what he wants in moderation and forbidding the purchase of items such as soda, ice cream and chips, he has unwillingly lost the afore-mentioned “near ‘bout 40” pounds.  Helping him choose cottage cheese and fruit over Peanut Butter Snickers is also a way to remind myself to consume a more healthy diet, as I must eat by example.  He has not cottoned to sharing my love of salmon and Mediterranean food, but he has agreed to mashed cauliflower as a substitute, sometimes, for mashed potatoes and he will infrequently allow “hippie hamburger” in his meatloaf or breakfast omelets.  The rest of society refers to it as ground turkey.

                I predict that he will be able to reasonably fit into his current clothes once he loses about 25 more pounds.  Only at that point might he be at the appropriate weight to for a 44x27 carpenter jean; his pant of choice.  Yes, you read that correctly.  With my measurements of 36x29, I am the Heidi Klum to his Melissa McCarthy.   

                As Dr. Phil is unequivocally larger than I and has several weight loss products on the market, I feel that it would be acceptable for me to launch a second career.  I could call my guidebook; the “Shrinking Redneck Population” to trick unsuspecting Yankees into buying what they are hoping is a sociology treatise.  Of course, I would expect each of you, dear readers, to purchase a copy yourselves, along with the first in my Southern mystery series, A Gone Pecan.  Get thee to Amazon.com or Authorhouse.com post haste as my last quarterly royalty statement would not have allowed a foray onto the McDonald’s Dollar Menu, a phrase that has just caused grievous injury to my psyche as it escaped my fingers to land on this figurative page.

                If I have an existential crisis, you have no one to blame but yourselves.  Other than my father, of course. 

English as a Second Language?

                I was reminded again just the other day how my family has a folksy vernacular; an odd combination of country, redneck and Southern that is peppered with words that I believe we may have invented.  I was sitting at the dining table talking to my friend Adam and The Dad was looking at my magazine.  It was the latest edition of Vanity Fair and it was, unfortunately, turned to the page which features photos of some of the contributors.  As a rule, writers are not an overly attractive subset of humanity.  There are exceptions, of course.  John Grisham and I are among those who are considered attractive.  Well, more attractive than, say, J.R.R. Tolkien (I imagine) or Truman Capote (I am certain).

                When he saw the photo of one particularly unfortunate-looking individual he said, “Woo, she’s so ugly, she’d make a haint take a thorn thicket!”  Now, I’m not sure if he has regressed since my Mother’s passing or if he always talked this way and I chose to ignore it.

                Adam, who is a graduate of Northwestern (in Chicago) seemed confused and very quietly asked if The Dad were having a stroke.  I laughed and explained the definitions of both haint (ghost) and thorn thicket (something akin to a flowerless rose garden, all thorns).  While I am not certain of the accuracy of his statement (why would it concern a ghost to run into the brambles seeing as how they really aren’t wearing sheets?) I found it interesting I knew exactly what he was talking about.

                Once The Dad retired to his room to sleep, Adam asked me why he used such odd phrases but I didn’t.  Well, I could fill up a book about the inherent differences between my father and me but I’ll leave this task to the actual book I’m hoping to create from these blogs.  Prepare your wallets people; I have expectations of support (buy my first book A Gone Pecan at Authorhouse.com or Amazon.com right now!) from my readers/friends/family/well-wishers/those easily manipulated by guilt, etc.  This question caused me to review words and phrases my family uses fairly regularly, some of which may be familiar.

                Jouvous – Nervous.

                Tooky – Persnickety.

                Rernt – Ruined.  Could be in reference to a person, place or thing.

                I swonny – An exclamation like “My goodness!” or "I swear!".

                Wompy-jawed – Askew.  See also catty-wampus.

                Chicken Doody – Any spot on your dress, car, shoe, sidewalk, etc.  Typically does not refer to actual poultry excrement.

                “Fine as frog hair” – Said in response to “How are you?”  The joke being frog hair is so fine you can’t even see it.  It’s not as funny as The Dad thinks it is.

                “Ain’t fit to shoot” – Not even good enough to bother with wasting good bullets.  See also triflin’, low-down, no-good. 

                “In a toot” – In a bad mood.

                “Going to town” – leaving your home, regardless of whether you reside within the city limits or not.  Stemming from a youth spent in the boonies.

                Boonies – Living so far outside of the city limits, even wild animals question your presence.

                Coke – any flavor of carbonated beverage.  Yankees refer to it as soda or pop.  We mock those Yankees, sometimes to their faces.

                Beautimous – Very attractive.  See also Linda Evangelista, Jaclyn Smith or my niece Payton.

                Hooty-tooty – Extra fancy.  See also hoity-toity or foo-foo.

                Uppity – Extra fancy but in a condescending manner.

                Nassy – Nasty.  This one seems to stem from sheer laziness.

                Feel free to use these words and phrases in casual conversation to confuse or intimidate frenemies, future in-laws or people eavesdropping at Starbucks.  I would caution against using in the workplace as you may demoted.  I’m not ashamed of my upbringing, but I know enough not to say “I reckon” beyond the comfort of a Tractor Supply store or a conversation with someone named Herschel or Oda Lee.  How else do you think I got to be so hooty-tooty?

As much as I put on, I am glad I grew up in the South and I am, in the deepest recesses of my heart, a good ol’ boy.  I just prefer to show my Southern pride through the wearing of seersucker. 
And that's all I'm saying for now.