Stick Horse Cowgirls

I had to work yesterday (Saturday, Labor Day weekend, no less!).  I had to travel an hour's drive north to interview some kids in need.  As I often do, I wrangled V to go with me and "meander." We knew of flea markets and home-cookin' cafes up that way to try out.  And, that's just what we did.  I don't often have that kind of meandering time so that, alone, was an indulgence.  We turned my work day into a fun day.   Ummmm, fish eggs...not for me! But the real indulgence came that evening when I nosed around for supper.  First, let me ask you: What do you think of when you think of an "indulgence?"  Is it caviar with champagne?  Is it fine chocolates?   Well, my friends, if that's the case with you, you may be missing out, for as I poked through my pantry, I found a true indulgence: a box of cheeseburger macaroni Hamburger Helper !      Why this processed, full-of-artificials was in my pantry, I have no clue....

Someone close to me once gathered her two precious children around for a morning devotional and Bible study.  Such a beautiful perfect-family picture.  Her seven-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter were interested, earnest, and in good humor as they started. The lesson was about turning to God for assistance in cleaning up our lives.  Mom spoke to the kids about bad habits and how prayer can enlist the help of God and focus us on our efforts to break them.  “ Think about something you’d like help with this morning.  If you want to share it, fine.  If you are not comfortable with sharing, that’s fine, too.  We all have things in our lives we’d like to change and we need help to do it.  I’ll start .” Mom shared with her kids that she had gained a little weight and that she knew the reason was poor eating habits.  “ I need help from you and from God so I can remember to make good choices in my diet.  I need to learn to eat heal...

My last post about domestic violence was a report—passing on information I learned in a recent class and some of my observations from my law practice.  But in the course of discussing that post with V, she jolted me into a realization that this subject had touched my life and is, perhaps, touching it still. As most of you know, V and I have been friends for 57 years (oh, Lordy!), and we lived right next door to each other as children.  I moved away when I was about 8, although our parents had the great, good foresight to be certain we saw each other frequently (this friendship has been a life-saver for me in these later years).  As some of you also know, I grew up with a brilliant but alcoholic and womanizing lawyer father.  I loved him very much and miss him even now, but he was a mess, and he brought that mess down on his wife and children.  He would often come home very late at night, reeking of alcohol, women would call our home…you get the picture....

I am born and raised in the South.  So why is it that the hot summers always seem to take me by surprise?  “ Can you believe it is so hot?!” I’ll say to someone…well, yes, it gets hot here like this each and every year, Dodo.  In my defense I must say that others make the same comments to me.  It’s just a way of making conversation, I guess, and the heat is main topic right now.  My little car registered 106 coming home yesterday, and it’s not going to let up through the rest of the week.  As I write this at 4 am, it is 86 degrees, and my computer forecast says 106 again today… V and I were talking about growing up in Arkansas in the 50’s when no one had air conditioning, not even in the car. Ooooooh , I remembe r my bare sweaty legs sticking to the car seats and driving with the windows rolled  down, glad for the warm air moving through the car.  We would fight for a “window seat” so we could lean into the air (kind of like this dog in ...

  Summers in the late fifties and early sixties were slow paced and hot.  We played outside all day long, coming in only to eat and then back outdoors again to play games and catch lightening bugs til bedtime.  Running barefoot through the sprinkler to cool off, moms made Kool-Aid for us to drink, and we ate watermelon on the backyard picnic table.  Great memories of growing up in the 50’s and 60’s--  except the nights when it was too hot to sleep before air conditioning!     This was the last generation to see door to door peddlers, as most mothers were working at home instead of the office.  I barely remember the Standard Coffee salesman, and am a little too young to remember the Jewel Tea man, who sold loose tea in vintage tins like this, but this was the day before the large grocery stores.     How well I  remember the milkman (yes, milk tasted SO much better in the glass gallon jugs from Prickett Dairy), who...

I’ve used this picture before.  It is a favorite of mine, V and me at age four.  I am using it again because it has a picture in the background of my birthday cake.   This is the only picture I can recall of any of my numerous birthday parties (Mother where were you and the camera?): V and I are to the right of the photo, V forward in the darker dress, me over to the right edge of the photo in white.  My little brother (now the big-time lawyer) is to the left edge, at age two. You will notice that we were all dressed up.  That’s the way birthday parties were “back in the day.”  They aren’t pictured, but you can bet that my mother and the other mothers who were there were not in jeans, either.  Everyone dressed for special days back then. Back to the cake: It was a Circus Cake, complete with carousel top and plastic circus animals on it.  I know without asking that my mother purchased this cake from Kohler’s Bakery.  It, really, w...

I remember when I first heard the Kardashian name.  It was when OJ was big in the news. Remember the White Bronco chase? Robert Kardashian was an attorney and a friend to OJ.  The Simpson trial was in 1995.  Fast forward now to 2011.  It’s Robert’s daughters, Kourtney, Kim & Khloe, who are all the news now, apparently. I must admit that I am somewhat interested how someone becomes famous and extremely well-paid in our society for doing…well, for doing….well, for being….Okay, I give up.  What are they famous for?  Here’s the family portrait.  That’s Olympian Bruce Jenner on the right (stepdad to Kim, Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian and father to the two younger girls to the front) : Missing from the photo is the Kardashian son (the focus is on the girls) and Bruce Jenner’s multiple children from his two past marriages. I don’t mean to be critical, here, of the Kardashians, er , or the Jenners, er, or whomever they are.  They ju...

Here’s the way my rabbit-trail brain works:  Yesterday I finished up a divorce case that closely paralleled my own life.  It started me thinking this morning of the strange twists that life takes, totally out of our control.  Then, I started thinking back to things that I have witnessed over the years, instances where life just took off on its own; and one childhood memory came to the forefront of my thoughts.  I talked about it with Son over breakfast this morning and, surprisingly, he said, “ Write about that, Mom .” In 1962 I was ten years old.  John Kennedy was president, we were terrified of communism, gasoline was $0.28 per ga llon and Marilyn Monroe died.  (Confession: I had to look some of this up—my memory is  not that good!). Notwithstanding a fair amount of adult turmoil in my home, I was living a pretty good childhood.  An integral part of that was my friend down the road, whom I will call “Jeannie.” Jeannie was another budding ...

Once again our blogging friend from Add Humor and Faith…Mix Well came through our town last Thursday.  V, MIL and I picked her up at the motel and spent the evening over dinner, laughing and sharing stories—just four bloggers out on the town. The restaurant we visited has a replica of something V and I both vi vidly remember from our childhood half a century ( egads! ) ago…Laughing Sally.   Sally was a mechanical doll (a bit larger than life-sized) who shook and laughed over and over and over.  She was displayed behind glass at the amusement park attached to our Zoo.  V and I shared the same childhood mixture of horror and attraction when it came to Sally.  Whenever we were fortunate enough to con our parents into going to “the rides,” (2 ride limits, for they were a quarter apiece), a visit to stand staring at Sally  in nervous fascination was required.  But, b ack to our dinner:  Sandra is exactly as V and I have grown to know her t...

On the heels of my canned corned beef post and in the spirit of continuing  to share food-related memories, I offer the following: When my son was about fourteen, I made an unusually-rich dessert; a peachy/whipped cream sort of thing.  Best I recall, we split  round cake layers (yellow), poured a little peach nectar over them, layered fresh peaches and whipped cream, then repeated.  It was a huge hit. It looked something like this picture on the left. After dinner and our dessert, my husband and I ran out for an hour or so on an errand.  When we returned, Son was laid out on the sofa holding his tummy, moaning.  “ Mom,”   he said.  “ Do not ever make that dessert again.  I ate so much of it, I never want to see it again.” Sure enough, when I went into the kitchen I found that a huge wedge of the leftover cake was missing, and Son was very sick later that night. Since that time our family has  used the term “ Peach Caked ” as...

This week I made a foray into the beautiful, new, expansive, gourmet Kroger that has just grand-opened in our area.  This gorgeous store with its wide selection of everything from the exotic to the mundane, is entertainment, not grocery shopping.  I mean, how much more thrilling can you get than choosing your own loaf of  “artisan” bread from the bin and dropping it into the slicer? Why, it just makes you want to buy, buy, buy (imagine that).  But I digress… This post is not about gourmet food.  It is about childhood memories and the things I recall eating waaaaaaaaay back then.  And asking: why? We ingested many unhealthy things back then (notably gallons of Kool-Aid), although I believe our diet was likely much healthier than it is today.  We certainly did not eat fast food as a way of life, and Mom cooked from scratch mostly. Still, there are those big questions—mostly centering around “meat products.” What has brought this on is that as ...