A Speckled Trout

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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In researching whether or not I had leprosy, I had an afternoon consult with Dr. Google, who happens to be my favorite medical professional.  While determining the severity of my condition, an advertisement for a Vagina Tightening Cream popped up.  Ladies, do you fear a loose vagina?  In a click of the mouse, I veered from skin disease to vaginas and found a variety of creams on the market for this condition with names like Lady Secret Serum, Tighten Up, Like a Virgin and Oh So Tight.  Isn’t it time you recaptured your vagina’s youth?

I don’t like to keep a good thing to myself so I called my sister who had never heard of this either.  They say it feels like the first time, I told her.  “You mean to tell me that someone has actually invented a cream that can make you feel terrified?”  she asked.  Yes, apparently this is so.  In fact, a very satisfied customer named Judy wrote a glowing review that said, “Thank you for thinking of this.  I even told my mother.”  Judy told her mother?  We decided that Judy must have a slut for a mother because I can guarantee you that if we sat at the Olive Garden with our mom eating breadsticks and salad and then asked her if she was loosey-goosey in Ladyland, it would flat out kill her.  Then we’d have to call the rest of our siblings to tell them how dear old Mom met her maker and that could have serious repercussions in the inheritance department.

Charlie from Florida wrote, “OMG!  This has done amazing things for my sex life.”  Hey Charlie, didn’t anyone ever tell you that women don’t have sex with men that say OMG?   It took some investigating to find any bad reviews, but I did come across this……….”This product tended to have a fishy smell.”

For only $24.00 plus shipping and handling, you can feel eighteen again and smell like the Deadliest Catch.  Now who could pass that up?

Throughout the jobs I’ve had over the years, I’ve worked with many single moms and gotten a taste of how difficult life is for many of them.  A kid that needs dental work, a car in disrepair, a cut in hours or a dad late with child support means scrambling to make ends meet .  It’s regular life and it piles up all the time, but single moms don’t have the luxury of a partner to lean on, so they juggle and sweat and pray their way through it.

I was watching news coverage of  the floods in North Dakota, and a single mom with two kids has a house that is now part of the river, and she couldn’t begin to speak of all she’s lost.  And flood insurance?  She didn’t have it.  She played roulette and lost it all and we’ve all done that with far less dramatic results.

At church this past weekend, the refrain of the last song was…..and He will raise you up, and He will raise you up, and He will raise you up on the last day.

All I could thing about was that mom on the news and I hoped that God wouldn’t wait to raise her up.

A few months ago, Oprah interviewed Barbara Streisand and asked her what was the hardest part of being married.  She replied, “I find that I have to watch my tone.”

I came home from the grocery store and told Big Daddy that food prices have gone thru the roof,  Well, he wanted to know, how much would you say you spent when we first moved her.  Like nineteen years ago?  Yeah, what would you say our food bill was per week.  I have no idea.  What would you guess it to be?  I don’t know what I spent on anything back then.  But if you could guesstimate it, what would it total?   Still don’t know.  Just a ballpark?  I  have no friggin’ idea what our food cost in 1992 and you can ask me ten more times, but I still won’t know it. 

Sheesh, he can make me nuts in a heartbeat and Babs needs to scoot on down the Oprah couch and make some room.  She’s singing my song.

The beauty of having the kids home for the summer is having somebody around to unload the dishwasher.  Because I haaaaaaaaate to do it.  The other part of having the kids home for the summer is signs like this………..

This child had to get up and at ’em for a mid-morning appointment at 10:00, had a friend stop by for a visit, cleaned her room for twelve minutes and then needed a rest.  I love the touch of Spanish there in the corner along with the different fonts.  Creative, very creative.  And the hair bands and bobby pins securing it all?  Inventive use of common objects, saving an unnecessary trip downstairs to get tape.  Makes me appreciate my hard-working tax dollars being used to educate this kid, since any thought of home-schooling is squashed faster than the skeeters.