Phenergan’s Wake
Filed under: Deep South, faith, family, food, health, humor
I’ve had an ill-behaving stomach, as of late. Which has kept me up at nights, uneasy and nauseous. I couldn’t eat much of anything yesterday; I had to practically force myself to eat the leftover cheese sticks, a bowl of soup, and half a chocolate bar (with hazelnuts). So, I did. But, I couldn’t bear to go another night with fitful sleep; so last night, to combat this, I took a Phenergan. It’s a pill prescribed for upset stomachs, etc. We fear I might have IBS. (That’s quite a conversation-starter, there, is it not?) It took a couple of hours, but it did the...
I’m not sure if you know this or not, but it’s never wrong to steal a pen.
Filed under: Deep South, Everyday, education, faith, family, humor, life
I can count on one hand the number of things I’ve stolen in my entire life: four. I’m holding up four fingers, at this very moment, even though you can’t see them. But, that’s it: four items. Four, random though purposeful, inconsequential items. One of those items was a candy bar. A Kit-Kat, actually, and it was easily stolen because I used to run the “candy store” between class periods, at my high school. The smart kids got to do everything fun, especially when it involved cash handling. I only stole one candy bar and only the one time because I had convinced myself that...
That one time I rode on Amtrak.
Filed under: Everyday, family, food, humor, life
I never really bought into the sentiment of those Lionel train commercials. Have you ever seen those? Their propaganda touts this concrete belief that Americans have some highly wrought love affair with trains. They're usually spread all over the airwaves around this time, each year. Because nothing says Christmas quite like the stumble-trap of a miniature railroad system circling hour after hour around the base of your tree. My grandmother, she’s 93 as of yesterday, and she had this train set that she would year-in-year-out place around the Christmas tree, letting it silently circle on its tracks, beneath the Douglas Fir. Inevitably, she’d forget...
You can’t kill a Honda, unless you’re an 18-Wheeler.
Mornings make me nervous. I wish that they didn’t. But they do. I wake up with such issue with the Day, every single day. It doesn’t matter if I’ve had three hours of sleep or a hundred. And I don’t settle down until after 2:00, usually…on bad days 4:00. I think it’s because I’ve lost my mornings. That's what it feels like. I mean, I wake up knowing I have a drive ahead of me just to get to my office, a drive I’m beginning to hate with the heated passion of a thousand burning suns, and it’s caused me to reevaluate what I do...
That’s how we bring up all children in our family: by ear.
Filed under: Deep South, Everyday, family, health, life
I like to think I'm a good uncle. Even though, I don't really know my "real" nieces and nephews. I've seen Millie, once; I've seen Auden, once; I've never meet Vinnie. So, to make up for this: I give all my grand uncle-ness to a series of young cousins, whose mothers I grew up with, as my nieces, being the baby of the adopted family I claimed with their grandmother, who I took as my--- You know what, let me scratch that. It's too confusing. My family tree, you know, is really just an assortment of random branches that were blown down during a storm, and happend to fall around...
But, wait, let me back up and come at this like a drill.
Filed under: Deep South, Everyday, family, food, health, life, writing
If you don't mind, I'd like to tell you about my weekend. And what I learned. I have to say, I'm very glad that there are a wealth of good people in the State of Mississippi. It never ceases to amaze me, as long as I've lived here, how innately good so many of them are. And get this: I'm talking about the younger generation. Not just my Aunt Zora's quilting bee. The human spirit is alive, well, and brilliantly resilient in this state. Key word here: resilient. That's important to note because I'm fairly sure I was the Sword of Damocles from Friday, around...
How on earth do you wash a Fedora? [and other random thoughts]…
I have been intensely busy, lately. Not just by hand, either. My mind...it often goes into Mach 7 when I attempt to procrastinate (by the way, the word "procrastinate," itself, is ironic - I mean, by the time you write the word out, you could have done something already - it's not a word for the lazy), and the only thing I can physically do to make it stop is to sleep (even though my dreams are usually full of anger when I do that - last night, for instance...ouch!), but if I don't stop it, from time to time, it just runs all...
"I hope you're not wadding," she said.
Here is a list, far from exclusive, of things that aggravate me: people on cell phones behind the wheels of cars; vomit; I cannot stand pudding, at all, and other things that fall in that category include meringues and Cool Whip; individuals who misuse (or use at all) the conveyor belts in line at the grocery store, except when absolutely necessary; and cheap toilet paper. Again, this is far from an exclusive list. Of the things listed above, several have affected me in the last 24 hours. Last night I dreamed I couldn't quite get up this rather large hill. It was exhausting,...



