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Mallie Bee is in a crossroad with her dance classes.  Her long-time instructors are moving on and if she wants to pursue this as a career, we need to get her in another place.  We made a visit to a new studio with tougher requirements and expectations.  I was impressed.  However, I dance like this……….

That leaves me to be of little help.  I also am not the one who will be taking the lessons.

I was discussing all of this with Teacher Girl, telling her I needed to keep my advice to a minimum because if I push too hard in any direction it will backfire.  Teacher Girl said, “That’s crazy.  I ask you for advice all the time.  You always give me good advice.”

This is how moms lose their minds.  They go through middle school, high school and beyond suppressing every reaction to every hare-brained idea their kid comes up with.  You want to date him?  You do know that working at Forever 21 requires you to hang up clothes?  Your friend is selling what car?   Just when you think you’ve mastered that, your kid grows up and acknowledges that maybe you aren’t a moron after all, and sometimes when you come across a kettle of crazy, it’s best not to stir it.

The Big Daddy is in full squirrel mode, setting the trap every morning before he goes to work.  He just loves him some squirrel in a cage to transport to the Beverly Hills part of town where they can eat someone else’s tomatoes.  The other day he came home to a trap with no bait and no squirrel.  Sonafabitch, he says, how did they get in there to eat my food and not get trapped?  I do not know.  Was it like this all day?  I do not know.  Weren’t you paying attention to it?  No, I wasn’t.  Well, ya gotta keep an eye on this thing.  No, I don’t.  

We were having this conversation in the driveway with The Big Daddy pacing around in his biking spandex and clickety clacking in his biking tap shoes, and then a squirrel, as if to mock him, runs right in front of us. Ya better run ya bastard, cuz I’m coming to get ya, he shouts.  And when it ran up a tree and turned around, he yelled after it, “Oh, you’re gonna look at me, huh?  Go ahead and it’ll be the last day ya ever look at me.”

A cute, young couple out for a nice, evening walk and pushing a stroller with a cute, little baby inside slowed down to hear what was going on.  I hate these goddamn squirrels, he tells them and they nod and smile like o.k., buddy, why don’t you go in the house now and take your meds.  I wanted to tell them that it wasn’t always like this, that at one time we were just like them pushing our babies and being normal.  I don’t know when the train jumped the track and our new normal was standing in the front yard bullying squirrels, but I knew it was pointless to explain because even I didn’t believe me. 

My neighbor, like me, is a scavenger.  She doesn’t go to the lengths that I do to get a good piece of curbside love, but she occasionally brings home the goods.  If she can’t use it and thinks I’d like it, she’ll leave it on my driveway.  Some are hits, others are misses and become my problem to get rid of.  A few months ago, she picked up this on the curb.  She mulled it over a few hours and decided she wasn’t going to keep it and told me it was on her driveway if I was interested.

When I pulled up in front of her house, I couldn’t get out fast enough and then by myself hauled this baby to my car before she changed her mind.  I sanded the peeling paint and put on a coat of wax and thanked the Junk Gods for this green beauty.  It’s been moved about five different times since then, but I think I’ve settled on this place and oh me, oh my, it makes me wonder what life was like in some dark garage until it could come to a home that appreciated all of its beat-up glory.

Last March I called Nancy up and said let’s talk.  I hated my job, I hated having my creative spirit shot down and I desperately needed to get to a better place.  I’ve known Nancy for years and loved her style, and when she was over to my house for a dinner party for a mutual friend, the wheels of change started turning.  She was looking for the same thing and that’s when our Prairie Girls Market got off the ground.

Nancy and I work well together.  There’s no drama, no bitchiness, no hurt feelings.  Two creative souls who love digging for old stuff with a good story.  The best of this partnership, though, is that spiritually we are of like minds.  We want to make enough to give back and make our circle bigger and while it’s been in frustratingly small baby steps, there isn’t another person I’d rather do this with.

In January when I started writing this blog, Nancy was its biggest cheerleader.  She understood who my audience was and has told more people to read this than anyone else.  On those many days that I wobbled and waffled, when over the course of a day nine people had read my blog and I said maybe this was a dumb idea after all, she propped me up and said DO NO STOP WRITING.

I’m not sure where this will lead, but I do know that ever since I decided to chuck it all and go broke, it’s been o.k.  That’s not to say I don’t lay awake at nite and worry about money because I do, but I am much happier than I was.  I do not take for granted that I hit the jackpot at that first meeting Nancy and I had, because while planning a future, I found a friend and a partner who manages to cheer long and loud during those times when my inner cheer is adrift.

Teacher Girl and I went up to Macy’s to try on swimsuits.  She’s going to a friend’s lake house for the weekend and my suit is a thousand years old.  I pride myself on knowing how to shop for everything, but a bathing suit?  Is your clothes size your swimsuit size?  I thought so until I held it up and knew for sure that thing wasn’t going to fit so I went up a size.  Maybe two.  O.k.,  I’m not gonna lie.  It was three.

Teacher Girl is a size 0.  That was me thirty years ago.  These days, not so much.  She went in ahead of me so by the time I got in the dressing room, she already had a suit on.  Oh my, she looked cute in her little bikini.  I tried on a tankini and the first one was too big.  Yeah!!!  This bathing suit trying on is so much fun.  The 2nd suit seemed a little tight going on but I persevered thinking it was the swimsuit version of Spanx, which would really be slimming, but I had a problem.  Fat girl in a little suit.  Uh huh, I was stuck in the thing.  I couldn’t pull it up and I sure couldn’t pull it down.  Oh, I was in a real tizzy and then a hottie hits.  Just like that I’m sweating like crazy and now the stuck suit is plastered to my sweaty skin with me yanking and tugging and my face is beet red.  I tried to calm my frantic, sweaty ass down and figure out what to do so I looked in the mirror, and seeing your fifty year old body stuck in a too small suit in a full-length mirror under fluorescent lights in Macy’s is…..hmmm, what’s the word?   The word would be shocking.

Teacher Girl got her suit and was as happy as could be to have something cute to wear for her weekend getaway.  I went home empty handed and I will go to the beach next month in my suit from the Dark Ages.  I did, however, manage to leave Macy’s in my own clothes and that was one biggety accomplishment.

I am a loyal person.  Same bank, same hairdresser, same house, same Big Daddy and a vintage pair of Jockey French Cut underwear in a jolly red and white strip.   If they went any higher, I could skip the bra.  I hang on to things that are important to me.   I have no explanation for the undies.

Awhile back, a friend of mine told me about someone at our church who made an insulting remark to her in front of some other people.  I did not know this woman and she never offended me, but in a fit of loyalty to my friend, I gave her the stinkeye whenever I saw her.  Like, hey, I know what you said to my friend and if you piss her off, you piss me off.  It took some work on my part because sometimes I’d forget and then have to backtrack to look at her to deliver the stinkeye.

Recently, I was at a church meeting and she rose to speak.  I delivered the stinkeye and she proceeded to be funny and smart and charming.  Not only that, I agreed with everything she said and it occurred to me that I’d been delivering the stinkeye to an older version of myself.  This put me in a predicament and called for some prayer.  Um, yeah, Jesus, I’ve kind of made an ass of myself here lately and a little guidance would be extremely helpful and I sure appreciate the fact that you’re the forgiving type.

Did Jesus answer?   He didn’t need to.  I already know that when my day of reckoning comes, I’m gonna have some ‘esplainin to do.

When I was growing up, my dad fixed everything.  He did plumbing, electrical and auto repair.  When he and my mom needed more space in our small house, he added on a family room, kitchen and bedroom.  It was my impression that all men could fix things, until I married the Big Daddy.  He’s never embraced the home repair part of owning a home.

Recently, the toilet tank wasn’t filling completely with water, so I passed that info on to him.  Many times.  The Fam was due in for a visit and just before D-Day, he got to work on it.  “I’m going in,” he says, like he’s on the SWAT team going after a guy who’s barricaded himself in the house with his grandma and a shitload of explosives.  When I offer to help, he says hell no, I don’t want you anywhere near me.  That, kids, is what makes a happy marriage.

On that lazy Sunday afternoon, I got engrossed in Marley and Me.  Oh, how that movie makes me cry especially since my own Marley is getting old.  In the family move from Florida, the kids growing up and Marley slowing down, I forgot about the drama unfolding in the next room with the plumbing repairs.  Fifteen minutes later, THE BIG DADDY HERO comes out of the bathroom with one repaired toilet, one cuss-free plumbing job and confidence out the wazzoo, like he’s just taken down the perp and saved the hostages. 

It is done, he says.  And that, kids, is what ya call a turning point.

Don’t let it slip away without some of these………………

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