A Snippet...

This is one of those ads that make me go, "Hmmmm..."

I wonder how the employees of this company collected the tapeworms...

I wonder about the process involved to 'sanitize' them.

I wonder if you had to ingest the worms while they were wriggling around in your mouth without chewing to get them on their way to their final destination.

I wonder how long this company stayed in business. This was, after all, in the pre-litiginous era. I would have thought that it wasn't a huge monetary settlement that drove them out of business.

But, most of all, I guess I wonder what sort of mind would have thought this up in the first place...

Just one of those things I think about when I run across something like this.

A Little Bit Of This...

A little bit of that...

When all else fails and I can't decide what I want to blog about I figure I can always go to my "junk drawer" of stuff family and friends send to me or photos I take of things that catch my weird eye.

This first one is a motorcycle topiary that I saw when I was walking around Las Vegas. Now how cool is that? Find a few parts around and stick in a shrub, do some artful trimming and don't forget to water.


I love vanity license plates. And this is one of the best I've seen. I had to take a phot0 so I could send it to my baby brother and s.i.l. to give to her
daughter that we teased about being a drama queen.

I don't know if they sent it to her or not, but it tickled my funny bone.








This one I'd like to have to give to one of my nieces. Obviously, she has chi-hua-huas as I call them. I keep telling Carol that if she thinks my schnauzers are barky, she ought to go down to Texas with me when I go visit Launa and meet her babies. She has three or four unless they have had babies or someone in the house has brought another one home.




And here's one of those places that is never there when you need it. Boy, I could have spent some money in there more than once in my life.








When the evening of running around is done you can settle in and have a redneck fish dinner. Someone has been watching the food channel and decided to fancy up their plate.

This is the only way I'd eat 'octopus'. I thought that this was a great presentation, but we all know that I'm a twisted sister...





And if you really want to catch fish for that dinner, you can get most any kind of bait you want at this place... or if you have a bad sub-dermal hematoma from banging your shin tryin' to haul that fish in, you can even have leeches right handy to suck the blood out of the hematoma.


Well, that's all for now folks. Come back and see me again now, ya hear?

T.M.I. - This Will Crack You Up....

Or not...

All of my growing up, from about 5 or 6 years old, I was skinny. I looked anorexic before there was ever a word for it. Both of my sisters were skinny... all three of my brothers were skinny... we all were fortunate to have high metabolism. We were all active kids from the time we got up until we went to bed, unless we were in a good book and then you couldn't hardly peel us away from it to go and do something.

People used to tell me you need to eat. You're too skinny. My middle brother Walter and I went to the gym back in the 80's, when I was living in Ft. Worth the first time, to try and gain weight. Please don't throw rocks at me for talking about having trouble gaining weight. It happens.

Anyhow... I worked hard, I played hard, I ate hardy but I was skinny.



I didn't think anything about it nor did any of my family, because we all knew I ate... pretty much anything and everything. The doctor we went to even had me drink a milkshake with a raw egg in it every night, trying to put some weight on me.

The same doctor that told momma to get some Mogan David wine and have me drink a couple of ounces 45 minutes before a meal to boost my appetite. That's the only time I've ever known my daddy to go to a liquor store for something to drink. My mom would soak rag squares in wine
or Southern Comfort to wrap up her fruitcakes at Christmas-time, but momma never touched liquor with her lips. Daddy would drink a little wine if he had a bad cold with a cough, but never were they drinkers.

But, I digress... I was always pretty much like a board... no boobs, no butt and not much of a waist. Didn't seem to matter what I ate, or drank or anything. That was just because of my metabolism. The very same metabolism that flat-assed abandoned me when I hit menopause. Sorry if any of you fellows are reading this... but it happens and if you don't know about it by now... you will.

In what seems like no time at all I was having to get bigger everything... under wear and outer wear... I got shorter (as we all do), I got squarer... Instead of a 2X4, I progressed to being a 4X4... Then the awfullest thing happened.

My belly got bigger than my butt. I think that this just happened to coincide with my learning about computers... I'd buy my slacks and jeans to where they fit my belly comfortable because I'm all about comfort in how my clothes feel on me. I didn't care if it looked like you could raise a litter of puppies in the bottoms of my jeans, I just don't like them binding around my waist.

Now here's the problem. When I get dressed in the morning, particularly if I'm going to be working outside, which is mostly what I do, everything feels good and snug and comfortable. After I'm working a while, getting hot and sweaty, the waist of my jeans start stretching... and dropping, and stretching and dropping some more. As a result... if I forget to put on a belt when I start out... I fit right in with the country living lifestyle of the southern Bubba. Things are sure what they are cracked up to be in the country. And if you have any sense of propriaty, you may want to stop reading this post now because of in the intrest of keeping it real, a photo without a butterfly is fixing to be on this post...

WARNING.... WARNING....

IF YOU ARE GOING TO BE OFFENDED...

BY THE DRESS STYLE (OR NOT)...

OF THE SOUTHERN BUBBA SPECIES...

GO NO FURTHER!!!
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>
>
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I can't, for the life of me, figure out how this is comfortable to the kids, especially the males of the species, because it makes me crazy.

And this whole post seemed like a good Saturday post, because I once again forgot to put on my dang belt until it was almost too late.


THIS HAS BEEN A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT... IF YOU ARE TAKING A DRIVE IN THE COUNTRY, BE PREPARED TO COVER YOUR EYES A TIME OR TWO DURING YOUR DRIVE.

In A Remembering Mood...

I guess with all that's gone on in the past week, I'm somewhat in a looking back mood. These three woman, these sisters were the major influence of my life.

My mom, Mary Lou, is on the right,who raised me and my five brothers and sisters.

Aunt Mack (Maxine), mom to my cousins Nancy Gale, Ray and Carol, who just lost her husband.

Aunt Pauline, mom of my cousins Michael and Bonnie.

These three were so different in so many ways and yet, so alike in so many ways.

This photo is the only one that I know of that has all of us cousins together. On the back row (l-r)is Nancy Gale, my oldest brother Bill, and my oldest sister Lou Ann. The next row (l-r) is my middle brother Walter, Ray Lynn and Michael. The two taller girls are my middle sister Sue and Carol. Then Bonnie with the gorgeous curls, my baby brother Bennett and yours truly.

I interrupted my story with this photo just because I had been talking to my cousins Carol and Nancy after the funeral and said something about it and since Carol reads my blog, she and Nancy can see the photo and print it off so they will have a copy.

But I digress... or is it regress?? Back to the sisters.


In their growing up, they were raised out in Canadian Texas, along with their brother Tom. It was not, I'm sure, the easiest time, but I never heard any of them tell anything but fun stories about growing up. Any other stories that were told were just like, well, that was life and you dealt with it.

I think all of the sisters, and Uncle Tom, too, really, really to this little girl, enjoyed each others company. Aunt Paul lived in California after she married and every time she was able to come home, to Okla. City, it was all about the girls.


She always brought Bonnie with her and whether she was at our home, or at Aunt Mack's or we were all together at either home, all us girls loved being together. And we all saw the love and the trust between our moms. We never, back then, thought about that part of the relationship, but looking back now that I'm getting older, it is one of those things you carry with you.

They each had their burdens they carried, but they each dealt with them in their quiet steady way. But the one thing I know is how much love they had... for each other and for their children.

The last photo is one that was taken on an Easter Sunday, about sixty years ago. On the left is Aunt Mack is behind Carol, Nancy is behind me, Mom is behind Sue and Lou Ann is next to mom. This one, too, is for my cousins. Because I love them and have so enjoyed the time we had this week to talk and remember...

I love being with my family... they are who makes me feel complete.

Deaths, Funeralizing And Daddy...

If you all have read my blog for any time at all, you know several things about me, among which is the fact that I don't deal well with death and I am somewhat irreverent. That being said... besides Butch passing, when I called my little brother I found out that my sister in law's best friend's brother died suddenly that same morning and then my sister called me a couple of hours after I had talked to her about Carol and Butch to tell me that one of our cousins in Arkansas had passed away on Saturday, also. She had been in a nursing home for several years and had been pretty bad off from what the cousin that called my sis had said.

I told Sue, my sister, that I guess the good Lord had gone green along with so many of us, that he was taking 'em to heaven by the bus load. My sweet Baptist sister got a good laugh out of that and said it sure seemed like it. I asked her if it was the full moon or what... she, being a nurse, knew exactly what I was talking about, because it seems things happen on the full moon and the new moon. I told her that I didn't think I wanted to answer the phone any more that day.

Then we got to talking about when we'd get a call from Tennessee that some of daddy's sisters or some of the other kin had died, our daddy would always go get the oil changed in the car and check the air pressure in the tires. And always before we left on the trip back to bury whichever one had gone to see Jesus, daddy took a bath, whether it was Saturday or not.

Our dad was from the older generation that took a bath on Saturday, whether you needed it or not, unless you had to go on a trip... then you took a bath before you left the house. Fortunately, he worked inside, bookkeeping, rather than being an outside laborer. I don't ever recall him being sweaty smelling. He'd get outside at home and mow the lawn and pull weeds and johnson grass out of the lawn, and when he was younger, he'd trim the hedges, but mostly he spent his time indoors.

I just thought I'd share this little tidbit with you all, because my brothers, my sister and our cousin have all had a good time talking about these idiosyncrisities the last few days, and I don't want to continue with all this funeralizing talk. We just try to talk about all the good memories and give each other lots of hugs and support.

After all, that is what family is all about...

Flowers For My Cousin...

My dear, sweet cousin Carol lost her husband yesterday.

Butch was run over by a momma cow several years ago, knocked into the fence and paralyzed from the chest down.
He had to be tended to 24/7, and most of that time it was Carol who cared for him.

Now she will have to go on to the next chapter of her life.
She knows I'm not much help, other than being here for her. I don't cook, so I won't be taking a casserole to the house, but she has a very good church family and those Baptist ladies can cook up a storm.

I thought and thought about what I could do that was special, just for her to let her know I was with her, lifting her up, and I decided on this... Flowers for Carol.



If she's having a bad night, she can come here and know that she is special.

If it's a gloomy day, she can click on the flowers and see the raindrops that the good Lord sends to help them grow and know sometimes it's our tears that help us to grow.














Day by day, the sunlight will start to play on the petals, almost like a dance, and she will once again be able to smile with the appreciation of an unknown tune that the flowers are dancing to...











Then the colors and textures will all be coming together again, blending the fabrics of her life back into the streams of the rest of her life and that of her family and friends.















Carol, this is for you. In the memory of Butch, and the things you had and did together over the years. He is at peace now. No pain, he can feed himself and he can walk the fields, and maybe even smile.

Carol, this is for you... I love you, Cuz.

Simple Saturday...

I guess that back in the day they thought lard kept things moving...

Don't you know that the Surgeon General would have a conniption fit if there was an ad like this in today's magazines.

Or maybe they were just happier back then because they didn't have a clue to what things like lard did to their arteries.

They ate what they liked, had a good time and then keeled over.

Simpler times...