Ben and Jerry Flavor of the Month

I have been thinking why as of late I have so little to write about. I think that my life has perhaps become boring and nothing out of the ordinary every happens anymore! I think that I work way too much and that the small amount of time that I have left over is spoken for, prearranged and well thought out. I think about all the books I do not read anymore because I have no time and anyway, I have become obsessed with magazines.

And if I am not reading Time magazine and scaring myself silly about the condition of the world and where we are headed I am watching amusing TV shows and laughing, chuckling and snorting over Jimmy Fallon. And if I am not sleeping I am loosing myself in yet another fantasy of some way I am going to get rich quick in the near future - this time by opening up some type of Vintage jewelry business. I see myself with my tiny booth covered by some smart and fancy yet stylish tent selling my wares on the longest yard sale, be it the Route 66 or the 127 or most recently discovered, Lincoln Highway, which incidentally I once lived off of!

And so it goes, my mind jumping from one thought to another all the while worried about not taking care of my skin, thinking about saving money for Christmas next year and praying for my Mom, missing my Dad and missing my brother-in-law. Missing the jaunts to the "farm",not a working farm, but a farm all the same.

Missing a lot of things and looking forward to a new adventure, a new shake up, a new direction. One never knows from day to day what unexpected happiness or tragedy will greet us if we are lucky enough to step out our front door.

I think the announcement can finally be made. I have informed all the people who will be impacted by the news and I believe that Joe has done that same - and on that note let it be known that we are Back To Memphis. Joe is to begin running things on April 1st and I am excited and concerned all at the same time. Mixed together like some weird Ben and Jerry concoction, Memphis Beat Blue-berry.

I know that in time, maybe not too soon, but in time I will miss the landmarks of this military town and the friends that I have made here and the characters that have endeared themselves to me. And all the people I meet daily and make a brief connection and learn a little bit about them and it stays with me. It becomes a tiny little bit of my being. Today it was an 88 year old lady who told me about her quilting club. Twice a week, depending on the weather (Missouri) they get together and quilt. The leader, a woman of 92 years, get the ideas. "I can only sew little stitches" she demonstrated to me in the air. And when they finish their creation they give it to the church to sell or auction off. They produce about three a year. I inquired at how much they sell for. "We are happy if they get $100." I was shocked. I wish I lived in that Missouri town, I would give $200 for it! I would make their year! I would have them talking for a long time about how much money they made from that one quilt on that crazy Kentucky woman.

I'm going to miss all those people just passing thru. And I am going to miss all those people who I see over and over through out the several years (can you believe I have been here almost two years??). Who talk to me for awhile as they wait for their name to be called to eat dinner or breakfast at the Bucket. The mortician who lives in a house with his ex-wife (his third) because he does not have the heart to throw her out because she has no where to go and is pretty disabled. She will not cook or do anything for the privilege of staying - so he buys dinner to take home with him on a very regular basis. And I will miss the Mayor, who did not run for reelection but moved on to much greener pastures much to the public outcry - hardy har har - he comes in I always say "Howdy Mayor!" and he always gives me that two handed hand grasp thing that gifted politicians do. And the other Mayor from a little old town in KY who stops in for breakfast on their way to Nashville when he is escaping his own town. And the "Fair to Middling" guy who came in every night, I mean every night since his wife died. He has to sit at the same table every evening and if is occupied he waits. He orders the same thing every evening, clear soup. Then he heads home, which is another little town in KY about seven miles over the TN border. Until one night he did not make it home, but pulled off the road and died of a massive heart attack. I was stunned, I had just spoken to him asked how he was doing and he said, as he always says, "Fair to Middling". And the little short guy who was trying on the Alan Jackson cowboy hat and I told him how handsome he looked in it and he confided in me that he had a cowboy hat at home, a good one a Stetson and then several days later he wore it in, all dressed in black and wearing that hat, fitting him like he was born in it. Smiling at me and then he tipped his hat.

I'm going to miss all that.

What is waiting ahead for me, that is what I am looking forward to.

I'm All Jacked Up on Mt. Dew

Thurday 13

Thirteen things I did Yesterday

1) Got my sorry sick butt out of bed and dragged myself to work even though I felt like I was going to lay down and cry once I got there. With this sinus thing I am so sick for about two to three hours each morning before I feel normal. Note to self "CALL IN TOMORROW!!" for heavens sake.

2) Kicked myself in the butt for the one millionth time for not taking that flu shot. Next year I will be first in line.

3) Went into Border Books and found a lovely jewelry book that I read for about 15 minutes and decided that I must have it! Need Border coupon (33% off) and break open my penny jar. Then tell myself to go to library and check similar book out. The fit passed.

4) Better to go into candy store and buy two Slo Pokes for .99 cents and thank God my taste buds have not affected by this very horrendous cold.

5) Sat at desk and bid on E-Bay for a lot of 53 pairs of "vintage" earrings ( 70's and 80's) for 99 cents. Won!!

6) Sent out job applications for eminent move (more about this later when final destination is determined, could be Memphis could be Canton - not certain yet).

7) Wrote (yet another) killer cover letter but understand the futility of my endeavors because it is apparent that desirable jobs are a game of who knows who.
Luck is everything.

8) Talk on phone to five family members! Keep thinking about radiation on my brain from battery in cell phone!

9) Send out belated Birthday card to my cousin and a Love you thinking of you get well soon card to my Sis, who had a hysterectomy yesterday (why so much time on cell phone with family members).

10) Go to the Bucket for my part time job and realize how absolutely crazy I am and the extremes I will go to avoid housework.

11) Come home remembered I had recorded my favorite reality TV show - my guilty pleasure, Survivor and get all hyped up. Too much to fall asleep no matter how tired and ill I am. Its like I'm all Jacked up on Mt. Dew!!

12) Watch Jimmy Fallon, my new boyfriend and King of late night. I simply live for his "Tweets" segment weekly called Hashtags. I love his games, and I love when he pulled people out of the audience and had them agree to perm their hair. I just love him. He is so funny. I simply adore his "Thank You Notes" segment. I may steal it for a Thursday 13.

13) Finally realize sleep is coming over me and decide to call in sick tomorrow! And I did. Another Thursday 13 possibility, 13 things I did when I was suppose to be home sick....

Another Tardy Thursday Thirteen

For the life of me I can not complete a Thursday 13! I have two of them in my "save now" file uncompleted. But they are interesting, just lengthy. How do people make such short 13's?

So, here is a list of Thursday 13's I would like to finish and post.....

1) 13 Rap artists I like!

2) 13 reasons why Lady Gaga is not Madonna and should stop trying.

3) 13 of the best jobs I ever had!

4) 13 of my favorite movies

5) 13 places I would like to visit

6) 13 things I would like to do before I kick the bucket. A bucket list.

7) 13 of the best trips I've ever taken!

8) 13 of the best times I've ever had.

9) 13 places/houses/homes/apartments I have lived

10) 13 people I have had crushes on.

11) 13 of my favorite places

12) 13 places I love to eat lunch

13) 13 reasons why the theory of Singularity scares the beejesus out of me!

A Thousand Years

Sunday Scribbling post for this week is A thousand years. And it took a thousand years to write something so here goes.

Time is a funny thing, isn't it? When I have one hour and fifteen minutes to get out the door in the morning those minutes go by so fast that I can't believe it. Yet, when I am working some over stimulating shift at the Bucket where I feel all out of sorts with the hoards of hungry travelers who want only to get into the restaurant and not look at all our "stuff". One hour and fifteen minutes goes by like molasses in January. I can hear every second tick by. Tick Tock Tick Tock.

Time has a habit of catching up with you. As I write this I am thinking about my parents generation passing on into the great beyond and My generation therefore becoming the Older Generation. It's just not possible!

Remember how you endured all those stories about how rough your Grandparents had it? Having to walk to school in bare feet to save their shoes? How they would have to sleep three and four in a bed to keep warm at night because the pot belly stove would be banked and put to bed for the night? Or how they had to go out and milk the cows, feed the chickens and chop wood every morning before having to walk to school,in the snow, with bare feet?

It's quickly becoming our turn! I was laughing with (maybe at) my husband at how we must sound to our children and grand children. "Why I rode to my bike to school! If I missed the school bus there was no chauffeur to take me to school!" Or this, "No one every gave me a car! No sir! No sir! I had to work for my first car and it was a $500 junker that the floor was worn through! I could see the road! And it had no heat!" And this classic, "I was out of the house at 17! 17!! Never asked my parents for a dime! They would have laughed at me! I was on my own and maybe I did cry but it made me a MAN!"

Never in a thousand years would I have thought that the Coolest Generation on Earth (that would be the Baby Boomers) would so quickly be turning into the Older Generation! But it's happening. And it's happening fast.

Thursday Thirteen

What's on my mind today? But I think I will write 13 things I love about my Hometown when I was kid.

1) It's a small town in central Kentucky, the heart of the Bluegrass. The town is so lovely that when Cameron Crowe was filming his semi- autobiographical movie Elizabethtown in Kentucky did he go to E-town and film? Hell no, he came to my Hometown and called it Elizabethtown. That's how beautiful it is.

2) I went to school in an old convent! I swear. It was torn down in the mid 1960's when the new school's construction was finished. It was three school rooms. Two in the old house and one in an adjacent building that only the 7th and 8th graders occupied. I have so many great memories about that old school and the school ground....

3) The Merry-go-round on the old school ground. It was a monster! Shaped like a bell on a steel post it rose up at least eight feet into the air! It not only went around and around, it also went up and down much like a tilt-a-whirl. Our favorite game was to load it up with bodies, three to a plank seat, and go around and around and up and down and try to throw off as many people as possible! Another game was "smash". You would put one person in the middle they would have to dodge the oncoming "tilt". Man, how did we ever survive!

4) I love that I could miss the bus and hustle to school in less than 10 minutes.

5) Downtown use to have three drugstores and two five and dimes. I went to Ben Franklin's on the cornor to buy the new Beatle 45's when they were released. Cost 99 cents I believe.

6) At the Wilson drug store they had a cigarette machine almost at the front door and we would sneak in undetected and buy cigs for twenty five cents a pack! We preferred Larks back then.

7) The swimming pool! It was a pool that required a membership and everyone had one. My summers were spent waiting for Dad to come home from work and take us to the pool for an hour! When we go older we lived at the pool those summers, first on the swimming teams then as teenagers hanging out all summer long.

8) Riding around. In a small town there is literally nothing to do! So, we would climb in cars and "ride around". We would call each other and say, "Wanna ride around?" You would pick people up and drive through Main Street downtown and head out Frankfort St to the Dairy Queen, pull into the parking lot and circle behind the building and then head back down Frankfort, through down town and turn around at the convenient store and head back up through Main street. Cruising. You'd honk at those you knew. Honk honk honk. You'd pull over and talk to boys and sometimes switch cars to ride around town with someone else.

9) While riding around town Friday and Saturday night you would put a twist on it. You would look for someone older to go through one of the three liquor stores and buy beer. Sometimes you would risk it and drive through yourself. If you scored you'd head out and drive around "in the country" and drink your PBR or your Little Kings! I know most all the back roads in "Wufford" Co.

10) There are many beautiful horse farms in the county. When we were kids my Dad would pack us in the car and we would drive around the back country roads and look at the horses.

11) Everybody knew everybody in the town. So if you were doing something wrong on one side of town it did not take long to get back to your Mom. One of my favorite stories is when my kid bother Pat decided to follow us to school one day. Mom got a phone call from one of her friends who lived one door down from the school, "Hello Theresa, how are you? Well, that good, where is Patrick?" "Outside in the back playing." "No he is out front of my house heading to the school on his tricycle!" Pat was always a roamer and without fear.

12) There was always adventure about when I was a kid. Either playing on the Rail Road tracks or in the tunnel, or riding bikes over the rock pile there was adventure at every street corner.

13) I love the fact that my husband grew up in the same small town and share all the same memories of Times gone By.

I stumble around the Blogesphere seeking out interesting blogs and intriguing personalities I occasionally run across one or two every so often. This is one right here, the Kitchen Bitch Ponders. With a name like that who can resist?

Her and her friends are having this swap thingie that is fascinating and fun all at the same time and I quickly jumped in on the action and got myself on the receiving end with this extraordinary person The Pollinatrix.

So this is what I have to do...Pass it on. I promise to send something I make myself to the first 5 people who leave a comment on this post and who, in turn, promise to make the same offer on their blog. The rules are that you need to make the items personally and send them to your 5 folks within 2011.

So, leave a comment and I will send you a one of a kind set of Alphawoman earrings that I make with my own little hands!

It'll be fun.

Join in.

Just do it.

You know you want to.

Thursday Thirteen for January 27th

For my Thursday Thirteen I am going to head down memory lane and then skip back up remembering and reminiscing some of my favorite items of clothing from over the past several decades!

1) My Frye boots circa 1978. I could not believe I talked my Mom into getting them as my major Christmas present that year! I believe they were about $100 way back then! I loved those boots and wore them over jeans or under jeans. I wore them to death and had them resoled and then a hole popped out in one of the creases. Guess I was too hard on them! I ended up putting them in a Goodwill bin around 1990.

2) My reddish suede coat with the big fur collar also circa 1975. It was fabulous and warm! I wore that coat well into the 1980's when some ass made a remark about how 1970ish it looked! I stored it at my parents and the fur yellowed and then it was gone. I imagine Mom put it in some Goodwill bin for me. I certainly wish I had it now.

3) A friend of my parents gave Mom a cashmere coat that her husband had worn in the Navy. It was black and felt like butter. It was over sized but it did not matter. When you slipped that coat on it made you feel like a million dollars. My sister Omega stole it from my parents closet and claimed it as her own. I could have killed her. I imagine it is still in her closet. At least I hope so, that was the best coat ever.

4) In high school I found this polyester mini skirt with a matching top that had little seashell buttons all the way down the front. I ore this sexy outfit with a pair of ....

5).....Aigner white sandals with flat heels! I was working as a lifeguard and was so tan that summer. The sandals with the red flared mini was just too cute. Then, while riding around town, which was the only entertainment us kids had way back when, smoking cigarettes and trying to find someone to buy us beer a cigarette ash fell into my lap and OH NO! polyester! A major melt hole happened.

6) I was asked to a Valentine dance by one of the hottest guys in the Frat House! (no he did not come to the reunion last summer) so I had to get a killer dress. I found this maroon color midi wth long sleeves and an empire waste and terrific lines. I loved that dress and my good friend C.F. borrowed the dress to go to another Frat dance and I worried all night that she might elope and then I'd never get the dress back. I think it hung in my Mom's house until she gave it to charity.

7) The red velvet jacket! Lord have mercy. I wore that garment with everything. The elbows wore out and we patched them. The lining ripped in sections and hung by threads. It did not bother me one bit. But it did my mother. She made a lining for the jacket and "fixed it". It never hung quite right after that. Boo-hoo.

8) Sometime in the 90's baby doll dresses became in style. I had one that I wore with black tights and cowboy boots. I thought I looked real gooooooooood. lol.

9) When Omega got engaged all her bridesmaids were to wear black. I was in charge of the guest book and required to wear black also. I found this beautiful short black cocktail dress at Shillito's that had a gossamer black mesh finish over the skit and a black net top over a plunging neckline and short selves. It was beautiful and all night long I was complimented on the dress. I still have it, and I need to loose 20 pounds to fit back into it. But it is a classic and gorgeous.

10) I found a black linen wrap around skirt in the mid 1990's that I have worn to death! It went with everything and was kind of on the short side. People took to calling me "Legs" as the Beverage Company. With a pair of heels and black stockings - man, I could turn heads!

11) I am the Queen of recycling and spend a lot of time going through all the consigned clothing in this great little shop in Lex called Sassy Fox. I have scored mucho lotso good things there including a long black overcoat with a removable lining. It was sized a petite and since I am about 5-5 it fit very well all except for the arms. But as luck would have it the cuffs would roll down. I wore that coat during the fall and spring seasons while living in Ft. Wayne and once while visiting a new account I brushed up against a wall they were painting! Horrors! The bottom hem was totally compromised. That was several years ago and I found I could not part with the fabulous coat. Once again a classic design and flowing lines. One feels like the heroine in a vintage 1940's black and white movie while crossing a street with the coat fluttering in the breeze. I took a black marker to see if I could color over the white paint! It worked! I am back in business.

12) There is this little old Flea Market in Bowling Green that I frequent several times a year. I go for the honey that is sold there and for the handbag man in the back area of the last section before the antiques. Why should one pay several hundred dollars (and more!) for a name brand handbag when you can get a perfectly good knock off for $35? And they are excellent knock offs. Makes one wonder if they might just be rejected Real Deal or stolen Real Deal. I found this rosy pink JimmyChoo knock off that I will use this spring - again. This will be the third spring I have used this jumbo size fit everything but the kitchen sink bag. I love it!

13) Last is the pair of skinny pants I found at TJ Maxx that fits like a glove but is so comfortable that I can wear them everyday if I am not careful! With my Walmart Ugg knock offs I am the epitome of fashion!