Author: Kathleen Fisher

Every friend I have that has had a son or daughter get married has told me I would be knocked flat when it was over.  They were right.  I’m exhausted, my house is trashed, I’m not sure if I paid all the bills, and today wandered down the street looking for room in my neighbor’s recycling bins as mine runneth over.

This wedding was beyond our expectations.  Maggie and Nathan know how to throw one awesome party.  I will write when I can gather my many, many thoughts.  While our BELOVED hairdresser came to our house to do the girls hair, Nate arranged for the groomsmen to come one by one to deliver roses to his soon-to-be bride.  He’s a keeper.  For sure.

Until I can sit down and process all my thoughts, this will have to do.  It was perfect.

There’s nothing like having a WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE AT YOUR HOUSE to light a fire under you to accomplish something instead of just yakking about it.  For instance……………………..

Ripping the gross carpet off the stairs and painting them.   Cream w/a faux runner up the middle.  The green paint is called Granny Smith.  It is my favorite apple which is why I picked it. 

When those were finished, I came across this turquoise tin ceiling panel for $22.00.  Yep.

I finally got around to repainting the front door.  The red wasn’t doing it any more.  Or ever.

I have had plans for this project for years and it was in Martha Stewart’s magazine this month.  Why does she keep copying me?  I have/or have had friends collect sand for me wherever they’ve been.  This is my collection, bottled and labeled.  Even though there’s no beach in the forecast for us this summer (or for many more years until the last tuition payment is made), I get to look at sand every single day.

The clock is fixed and not near the couch so Turd One and Turd Two can’t get close and bat at the hands with their naughty paws.

Ready or not, here comes a wedding, and Mallie Bee knows what one of her cats is going to wear.

When The Big Daddy and I bought this house, there were thirty kids that lived on this street.  Thirty.  My kids were lucky enough to get included in the pack and their memories of growing up here include kick the can, forts, haunted houses, block parties, a remake of the Blair Witch Project, freeze pops, ghost, sprinklers, slip-n-slide, cicadas and lightning bugs.

In time, most families moved out to bigger homes in other neighborhoods and it became a lonesome, little street with no signs of kids.  It was a sad thing to watch, especially knowing how it used to be.

A few years ago, a family with four kids moved in, and now all of a sudden there are probably fifteen kids living on this street.  When the weather is nice and the windows are open, I can hear them outside and it makes me happy……..this sound of play.

At the top of the street is a widow who has been a lovely neighbor all these years.  She can also be a pill.  As in why do all these houses have all this crap in front of them?  She stopped me the other day to ask me if I thought these things being left out were going to attract burglars.  Well, tike bikes and plastic pools don’t usually bring much at the pawn shop.  It doesn’t stop her from walking up and down the street in plastic gloves picking up trash and giving the stinkeye to young parents who are doing their best and likely too exhausted by day’s end to care about what’s been left out.

This was left in my yard last week.  I’m sure the necktie snake will find his way home one of these days, but for now he is the mascot for the young at heart.

The Big Daddy has never been what you’d call “handy.”  He says handy words like torque, stud, and molly bolt, or screams for A PHILLIPS…….I NEED A PHILLIPS, but he pretty much is faking any repair he attempts.  In his efforts, he often uses too much force causing something that was slightly screwed up to becoming permanently screwed up.  That results in me yelling at him and him yelling back about goddamn plastic Chinese parts.

We have a storm door with a retractable screen.  The screen wasn’t locking into place so every time somebody would go in or out, the screen would start to slide down.  I asked him to take a look at it since it wasn’t doing the AC bill any good.

Aw geez, I don’t know, he said.  I’m thinking the house has settled and that door has shifted.  I don’t know,  I mean if it’s that…………geez it could be the foundation.  Always the dark side when it comes to repairs.  Let’s give it a try, I said and while he pushed up, I tried locking it into place.  Let me just jimmy this door he said and oh dear God, here he goes, I thought.  Pretty soon The Boy Child came along and together they got it up and locked into place.

An hour later, Mallie Bee decided to call her kittens home, unlocked the screen and pulled it down to which The Big Daddy bellowed…………WHAT ARE YOU DOING????  I WORKED ON THAT ALL DAY!!!!!!  Or thirty minutes.

Well, she wasn’t aware that Mr. Fix-It had made a fix, so she went into the kitchen and got a fork out of the drawer and jammed up on the track with it while she locked the screen into place.  It took her about thirty seconds start to finish………….

……………..and the children shall lead us.  Especially around this cluster.

I am not a crier.  This has a lot to do with The Queen Mum being as strong as they come and having three older brothers.  If you were to cry in front of them growing up it would have been like wading into a school of sharks when your period started.   

That’s not to say that I’m not emotional because I am.  I just don’t cry like a girl very often.

This weekend when we were at church, I let my mind wander to this wedding that is days away.  I saw Maggie and her dad walking down the aisle.  I saw Nathan waiting at the altar for her.  I saw my mom and Mark’s mom next to us, and Nate’s parents on the other side of the aisle.  I saw my kids and Joe and Lynn’s kids standing beside their sibling.  I saw my sisters who have helped me enormously and my brothers who ended up being my biggest cheerleaders.  I saw friends who listened to my worries and my dreams about this girl of ours, and neighbors who ran from every direction when ambulances were screaming down the road because she had been knocked unconscious in the creek.

I also saw this church that welcomed me many years ago when I had one foot out the door of this faith, with the second close behind..

It was worth a good cry.

Last week, I returned to the Clinky counter at my local Macy’s for a pre-wedding makeover.  I have not done one of those in twenty years.  That time I charged about $200.00 worth of products even though I was flat broke, and all these years later, it still gives me an anxiety attack.  Or maybe it’s a payment due attack.

However, I needed an update and if I’m going to spend time on anything for myself that morning, I decided it would be make-up.  For the hair is forever and always a crap shoot.  You may remember that my consultant had some family issues when last we spoke, but she was all business when it came to making me over. 

After awhile, Anthony from Lancome wandered over.  I love him.  Everyone loves him.  He is The Makeup Whisperer.  If he tells you something will look good on you, you can take it to the bank.  If Lancome weren’t so Cha-Cha-Ching, and I didn’t have issues (like losing all effing sense at the makeup counter) I would have had him do my makeup.

Anthony told me he was going back to the small town he grew up in for a wedding.  He had not seen either of his two brothers in more than twenty years.  His older brother started drinking when he was eleven and was as mean as they come.  In an effort to man up his younger brother, he beat him.  Daily.  Anthony was scared of him then and all these years later, he was still scared.

I sat on my big chair and listened to his story and then said, “Anthony, you are great at your job and everybody loves you.  You go to that wedding with your head up because you are a successful person in every sense and I doubt your brother even comes close.”

When I finished doling out my wisdom, The Clinky Lady, who was carefully lining my lips said, “I’m his date.  I’ll kick his brother’s ass if he so much as looks at him.”

That could work.

In the spirit of the summer vacation, this is something I wrote a few years ago, and probably Mark’s favorite piece.

There is nothing The Big Daddy likes better than a summer road trip with the Fam.    He plots our course and gathers ’round men folk at cocktail parties to discuss our expedition, and all his fellow pioneers weigh in with options so as to make “good time”.  The wives of the men folk ask me why we don’t fly.   The answer to that would be that we are a particularly close family that loves to cram into the car for hours on end and eat fallen Skittles off dirty car mats.  Thus began our journey to Florida.

An avid road man only requires the Rand McNally Atlas of the United States of America and The Big Daddy handed it over to me with as much care as the family heirloom Bible.  With a wink and a nod he said, “Here you go, Honey.  You’re my copilot.”  The problem is, Honey couldn’t read a map if her family’s life depended on it, was required to break up regularly scheduled back seat fights, and had a really good book she wanted to finish.  Also, Honey didn’t like to be disturbed during her afternoon nap.  Nevertheless, this man looked at Honey year after year and said the exact same thing, “What do you mean you can’t read the map?”  I think what I mean is that I can’t read a map, didn’t enroll in map school since the last road trip, don’t understand someone who can look at a map for hours, and believe that my not learning to read a map may be the only perk of marriage.

We left Kansas City at six a.m. sharp, and somewhere in southern Missouri reached our first “panic point” as The Big Daddy referred to it.  This, he said, is a technical term experienced drivers use when things on the road get a little confusing.  Technically, he started yelling at me.  I quickly grabbed the atlas and tried to find our exit.  Looking, looking, looking, still looking, looking up, and looking down.  “You aren’t even on the right state,” he hissed.  “GIVE ME THE ATLAS!”   Missouri and Arkansas look almost exactly the same what with the backwoods and meth and such.  I refused to hand it over as I have witnessed this man on many occasions hurtling down the highway at eighty miles per hour while balancing the atlas on the steering wheel and muttering under his breath.  I was not about to let go of Rand McNally, and he was not about to let go of what looked to me like some very high blood pressure.  From the back seat, The Teacher Girl said, “Why don’t you guys use the GPS?”  Before I had a chance to say, “Why, yes, let’s do that,” The Big Daddy dismissed the idea.  The GPS disc was outdated by two years, to which Mallie Bee announced that the atlas we were using was eight years old.  Not to be deterred by common sense, Big Daddy replied, “Listen here, Missy, Rand McNally has gotten me everywhere I’ve ever wanted to go. and some orbiting satellite isn’t going to tell me where I’m supposed to turn.”  Actually, it does tell you exactly where to turn.  Without screaming at you.

Twenty hours later we arrived at our beach rental.  You could probably say that we didn’t make “good time.”  There are many reasons why this is so.  Mainly, it is because it takes about twenty hours to get from Kansas City to the Florida Gulf Coast.  When we finally reached the sunny shores of Florida, it was pitch black and we hobbled out of the car like we’d been given a butt epidural. 

After a lovely week at the ocean, it was decided that the trip home would have to be done over two days, and so we loaded the car, turned in our key and sadly ended our beach vacation.  The driving plan for day one was to take Interstate 10 to Mobile, pick up Highway 98 and then Highway 49 into Hattiesburg, Mississippi.  The drive was uneventful until Highway 49 abruptly ended and we weren’t in Hattiesburg.  The road came to a halt with a large yellow sign with black slashes on it that was probably Braille for, “Hey, Stupid, didn’t you read the map?”  Big Daddy looked at the sign and yelled, “You HAVE got to be kidding me!”  The Boy Child made the fatal error of asking if we were lost.  No, we weren’t lost at all.  We were headed south on Interstate 55 to New Orleans.  New Orleans?  Psssst……you’re driving the Chevy to the levee.  With clenched teeth and hands gripping the steering wheel, The BD looked straight ahead and said, “Atlas.”  I passed it over without saying a single word.   Sure enough, the map showed Highway 49 and its demise and the only choice was an interchange onto I-55.

How could this be?  This serious map reader and good and faithful servant of Rand and McNally had gotten it very wrong.  Well, well, well…the nut hadn’t rolled far from the squirrel, so to speak.  When it became apparent that this was a navigation error, he laughed and said I had such bad map reading juju that it was affecting him, but we both knew that at that moment, the tide had turned.  I had what every long and loving marriage needs.  I was the proud owner of leverage.  Years from now I could drive anywhere with him and say, “Snookums, you pay attention to these signs so we don’t end up in New Orleans.  Again.”  A diamond lasts forever?  No sirree, leverage is the gift that keeps on giving.       

When we finally arrived in Hattiesburg, we dined at a delightful international restaurant that specializes in pancakes.  The Big Daddy barely spoke and it’s a shame they don’t serve alcohol as a couple of vodka and tonics would have done a world of good for his surly mood.  The waiter made the mistake of asking us if we’d been driving long and I pulled him aside and told him it was probably in his best interest to stay away from the subject since The Big Daddy was on the verge of killing someone.  He understood immediately, and in an effort to lighten the mood relayed stories of Hurricane Katrina refugees coming into town and shooting the cook. 

The details of the rest of our drive home remain foggy as I may have been self-medicating.  A few weeks later, The Teacher Girl got her dad a new atlas for his birthday.  When he opened it he ran his hand over the cover and said, “It’s beautiful, just beautiful.”  And how could it not be?  This edition proclaimed itself “America’s #1 Road Atlas” and promised more fun, more peace of mind and more city maps.  The Big Daddy Explorer took a deep breath, smelled those virgin maps and flipped to Mississippi to see if Highway 49 really did come to an abrupt end.  When he closed the page and said nothing, I knew that until death do us part, I would be enjoying a nice, long nap whenever we took a road trip.  

I swiped this from one of my favorite blogs.  Things?  Who needs ’em?  Enjoy………….