A Speckled Trout

I have one photo from the Prairie Girls sale this weekend and it doesn’t show much of what we had, but take my word for it…………….it was a doozy.

From the minute I pulled the garage door up at 7:30 it was crazy.  The first few people were dealers.  Jerks of great magnitude.  One guy told me I was charging retail prices.  Oh, so let me get this straight………….you want everything dirt cheap so you can charge retail prices. 

It never slowed down the whole day.  Someone even wanted to buy a hanging basket of impatiens that I had bought the day before at a nursery.  I answered dozens and dozens of questions about my hydrangeas.  I have no secret.  I do nothing to them.  Now how ’bout some handsome vintage picnic baskets?   I bartered and got the better end on some deals and the losing end of others.  Every piece of furniture was gone by the end of the day.

Just when we girls thought we lost our picker’s eye………….our mojo was restored.  So was our bank account.  And our creative juices.  And we’ll do it again and it will be just as grand.

Oh, and the best part?  Nancy introduced me to an old friend of hers who just so happens to be the sister of Claire McCaskill.  Senator Claire McCaskill from Missouri.   

I told you everybody came.

I am one of those people that strangers talk to.  Pour out their heart.  Lay it all down.  I have no idea why but it happens all the time.

I went to the Macy’s counter to find out about something called Beauty Balm.  Cuz I’m such a girl and love skin products.  In the midst of helping me, my salesperson got a phone call of the personal nature.

When she hung up, I learned that it was her brother who was on the phone and he was having a bad day.  He’s an alcoholic with some drug abuse sprinkled on top.  He hurt himself on the job – a cut on the forearm that went clear to the bone.   He has not been taking his antibiotics.  His daughter won’t speak to him until he stops drinking and didn’t invite him to her graduation.  He didn’t have to sit with the family but she should have invited him don’t you think?  It has made him more depressed.  If he doesn’t take his antibiotics he will get an infection and might never work again.  Her parents died in the last year.  Five months apart.  The house they were living in got foreclosed because the brother didn’t make the payments.  They had nine days to clear the house.  Her sister came to live with her and then her car got repossessed.  She often walks to work if her sister needs to borrow her car.  Her puppy died unexpectedly. 

The Beauty Balm in my shade was not in stock but I got a free sample from the tester.

Sort of.

This may or may not have happened to me in the last 24 hours…………………..

Had three adult children, two dogs and two cats in the house all afternoon after an awful night’s sleep.  Locked myself in the bedroom just so they would leave me alone.  They did not.

Have run a one-person shuttle service with multiple trips here and there every day.

Nearly lost it at the local hardware store because they don’t give a shit about shit.

Painted half the staircase.  Left the other half unpainted for traffic.  Had a cat run up the painted side AS I WAS PAINTING IT and chased him under the bed.  Dropped the ef bomb about twenty times then laughed hysterically on the floor of the living room for twenty minutes.  Crazy, scary, irrational laughing.

Have no recollection of brushing my teeth today.  Did I?

Went to pay some bills.  Checking account is a complete cluster and hemorrhaging money.

Ate the entire day, including frosting out of the can every time I opened the fridge and a couple more spoonfuls before bed.

Am hoping this is the cure but skipping the candles due to mildew.

The Big Daddy and I were invited to a going-away party this weekend for one of the guys in his bike group that is moving.  He loves these guys, but I don’t know them very well and let’s face it……………..I crack on bikers rather often.  Add to that, I am not a good mingler, and oh how I wished I could stay home.

When we got there, The BD immediately made his way to his posse and other than saying “hi” I didn’t converse with them very much.  They inevitably start talking the bike lingo………….hills, sustained m.p.h., bonking……..and it is a subject which I am not interested in.  I ended up eating at a table on the screened porch and had a lovely conversation with my table mates.

Two of the other wives that I have recently gotten to know in this group we’re in the family room and I walked into their conversation about mother-in-laws (MIL).  That’s when I heard the story of Classic Peg (name changed for reasons you’ll know soon).

Classic Peg had no filter when it came to talking about personal matters and while they were in the car one day with two young girls in the backseat, Classic Peg started discussing her vaginal dryness.  Oh, you can’t believe it.  I’m so dry up there it’s like it’s cracking.  Don’t even talk to me about sex.  Hurts like hell.  Daughter-In-Law tried numerous times to divert the conversation to something else, but Classic Peg wouldn’t hear of it.  I got some of that Prempro from the doctor.  You put it in the applicator, and squirt it way up into your vagina and let me tell you it does the trick.  Sex is much better once you get a few doses of Prempro up there because it’s not so dry anymore.  You’ve got to keep up with it, though.  If you miss a few doses you’re back to Crustyville in no time, and the sex starts hurting again.

She wasn’t done.

I never moved from the couch the rest of the night.  I had found my peeps.

We are less than a month away from our big wedding and there is much to do.  I am not a list maker, but this is one big party that requires a whole lot of coordination, taking care of the deets and oh those logistics.  That is the part that is seriously messing up my brain.

I am feeling overwhelmed so…………..

The Boy Child, Mallie Bee and I tore the carpet off the stairs.  I have hated it forever and so a couple of weeks ago I pulled it up off one stair and The Boy Child said, “Oh geez, no Mom, this is NOT a good idea.”  I let that percolate awhile then showed The Big Daddy.  He told me to go for it.  When he was out of town.  And the day came when that carpet bug crawled up my butt and it had to go.  Now.  It was some kind of job and The Boy Child yanked and yanked that carpet and Mallie Bee and I pulled staples until the cows came home.  It was a group effort and at times the group couldn’t stand each other, but we got the job done.

The risers have been stained and I need to decide what color to paint the stairs.  My original idea of black won’t work because the stain is so dark it looks black.  I thought about white but that is so uninteresting.  When I went to the paint shop I found out I could get floor paint in any color I wanted and I am thinking turquoise………..an aged-up, weathered turquoise. 

It’s either crazy of brilliant……….a place I often find myself.

Many years ago, I sat with some friends in the bleachers of the gymnasium of the elementary school and watched the Christmas concert.  First the choir would perform and then the whole school would have a sing-along.  It was great fun and the ending meant the official start of the winter break.

When the last song was sung and the kids started filing back to their classrooms to get their things, nobody moved.  Finally, one mom spoke up and said, “Well, girls…….our party’s over.  Kids are home for the next two weeks.  Merry Christmas.  I’m stopping at the liquor store.”

I remember it like it was yesterday.

Our summer break began much sooner than usual this year.  The Boy Child was done the first week of May and Mallie Bee got out early since she was a senior.  My quiet days alone are now about dirty dishes, food disappearing, a constant messy house, youtube videos played over and over, and the t.v blathering on.

I will miss this all come September, but for now I wonder if it is possible for kids to get bedsores.

I believe it is. 

The Boy Child is home for the summer and a thrifter like his mama, so we made a trip to Savers the other day.  As is our routine, we separated to look at different things as soon as we walked in the door.

He was looking for shorts, I was in the home goods.  As I was making my way to the back of the store, a woman stopped me and said, “Will you look at these?  Can you believe how cute they are?”  I looked around to see if she was talking to me as I had never seen her before and she sure seemed familiar with me.  “This is my first time here.  It’s amazing.”  Yes, but it’s a secret.  Don’t tell anyone.

I made my way to the pillows and there she popped up again.  “I mean it’s just crazy how much great stuff is here.”   I know.  I come here all the time.  Once, I found a pair of Donald Pliner shoes…………..$200.00 shoes………..for $7.99.  Never. Been. Worn.

“Donald?  Donald who?  What are you talking about?”

Donald Duck, and now you need to move along.  I’ve no time to chat with strangers.  This business takes concentration.

These are my hydrangeas.  I have five of them.  They are all this big.  I think they take steroids at night.

These are my roses.  I have eight of these.  I think they’re buying steroids from the hydrangeas.

When all of this was planted ten years ago, we also put in two blue hydrangea bushes.  I would get maybe 2-3 blooms combined from those two.  One day, I was talking to a gardener and she said to yank them.  They don’t do well in this zone, they’ll probably never bloom, get rid of them.  I was going to, but they were healthy-looking and so I left them alone, content to live with their measly output.

This is what my blue hydrangeas look like now.  I look at them a couple of times each day.  I do the happy dance.  If you stop by my house I have to show them off.  I can’t believe they’re so gorgeous, and all those cold, spring days over all those years when I’d whisper, “Come to Mama”……finally paid off. 

I was driving The Big Daddy to an airport shuttle at 4:30 a.m……….why does he keep leaving me……….and we got on the subject of gambling.  I know plenty of people who do it and like it, but I have never been inside a casino let alone dropped quarters into a slot machine.  Not once.

It is not because I’m tight-fisted and don’t want to part with money, but because I am afraid I would be one of those people who got instantly hooked.  Intoxicated by the next big “win” and before you know it the savings account is gone, the checking account is gone, the car’s been repossessed, the house is in foreclosure, and we’re sitting on the stage of the Dr. Phil show.

I would be crying.  The Big Daddy would be saying he loved me, I complete him, something about wind and wings and together, baby, we’ll make this right.  Dr. Phil would give me a righteous stink-eye.

That’s the t.v. version.

The real version would be him tossing me out on my risky ass for losing everything we earned.  So instead, I end up at Target.  With milk on sale at forty cents less than the grocery store, times two gallons, why, that’s an eighty cent savings……………and $76.00 later I’m thinking I should kick my own ass and head to the boats.