Good Texas Women

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Many thanks and hugs to my friends Bonnie Cottle and Cindy Roden for their hospitality and kindnesses during the two days I had to spend in Ft. Worth this past week. Getting to spend time around good Texas women, enjoying laughter and conversation – even with a cat sitting on top of my head – eating food I love (but shouldn’t have so much of, really) was a joy, something only other Texas women can understand. Time to thaw out the salmon when I get back to Oregon, for sure, to clean my arteries out again. Still, I say, Thank you, ladies! And, thanks for keeping the reputation of good Texas women alive and well in my home state. JS

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Easter picnic lunches

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Easter celebrations, when I was a kid, always included (after church, of course) a picnic lunch with my mother’s side of the family, usually at Samuell’s Park, in Dallas, although sometimes we opted for Kiest Park.

A baked ham was accompanied by deviled eggs, baked beans, potato salad and coleslaw, sometimes even Aunt Edna’s world-famous pea salad, if we begged sweetly enough and badgered her into submission. How everyone managed to get all that food into their cars with all those kids, too, is mind-boggling.

And, that wasn’t all! Of course, we had to bring a football, baseball gloves, bats, balls, and even the stuff to build kites, hide Easter eggs and the croquet set – plus!

Who could forget dessert?

Certainly not my tribe, so Mama Loyes always made her very special, diabetic-coma-inducing triple layer German Chocolate Cake, which weighed about 40 lbs., but was so huge even our clan couldn’t gobble it all up in one afternoon. One year, Mama Loyes forgot to bring coffee cups (since she always had coffee in that plaid thermos of hers, but had lost the lid/cup years before,) so my mother fashioned coffee cups out of aluminum foil just for that day so the grown-ups could enjoy some coffee with their slab of cake. It’s a nice memory for me.

I hope all of you are busy on this day of gathering and spiritual celebration making memories with the people you love. It’s one of the reasons we are here, I think, trundling along together, creating some sweet memories which make us look back on our lives with a smile. JS

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Hair on my legs ?

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I have no hair on my legs. None. Menopause had rendered me down to 3 on my right leg only and zero on the left and now those 3 have disappeared, too. I’m thinking I must have dripped some of my home-made weed killer onto my pants leg the other day. Or, perhaps my eyesight is going. Or, aliens made off with me in the night, plucked out those 3 remaining hairs for research, looked at each other and said, “Nah, she’s a geezer – she’ll never even notice,” then carted me back home and into my bed before dawn when I awoke. At any rate, that’s the status for today.

Spooky, isn’t it? The thought that you could be double-crossed by your very own body 3 & 4 times in one lifetime is really kind of creepy, don’t you think? I mean, just when I finally get used to it being a particular way – WHAM! – there’s something new that’s arrived or disappeared and, suddenly, I have to spend twice as long to look half as good as I ever did, and even half of that time is spent plucking or tweeking somehow, or clipping or tucking in or cinching up or buffing or smearing with some sort of cream or ointment.

So, I hope you’re having a hey-day, you creepy, weird-O aliens, with my 3 leg hairs, and I hope my schizophrenic DNA sprays all over you when you crack those babies open. You won’t know what’s hit you. I certainly don’t. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it. JS

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Beautiful March

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It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood – lots of sunshine and beautiful flowers. Lots of bees, too, for which I am grateful. Keeping the bee population in a healthy place will help keep our food costs down and everyone is happy.

Hey, anybody know when we’re supposed to plant lettuce up here in the Pacific NW? I’m thinking it might be March, in which case, I’d better do it today since we are about to run out of March. JS

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Jo Seay was born in 1922

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Today, in 1922, my mother, Jo Seay, was born.

She left so long ago, in 1986 at age 64, it’s hard to think of her as 93, but that’s how old she would have been today.

I always get a little melancholy – not a hard thing for me to do – when this time of year rolls around, just thinking of her, since it was both the time of year in which she was born and the time of year in which she died.

My mother was so spectacular. She and I disagreed about almost everything – politics and religion being the big ones – but I loved her fiercely and was proud of her beauty and her brilliance, her wicked sense of humor, and her laugh that could (and did!) clear a movie theater (YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN.) Besides, no mother on our block could smack a baseball like my Mom.

So, Happy Birthday, Mother! I still miss you every day. Every. Single. Day. I’m not expecting that to change. JS

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No Roundup – but what’s the alternative?

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I don’t like using Roundup on weeds and stuff because I don’t like Monsanto. However, weeds and stuff I don’t want grow in great abundance up here in the Pacific NW.

My high school friend, Pam Dent Webb, posted a recipe for a do-it-yersef weed zapping formula which, I must say, works like a charm.

In a half gallon of apple cider vinegar, add 1/2 cup of Epsom salt and 1 tsp. of Dawn dish-washing liquid. Shake it up and pour what you need into a spray bottle.

Squirt it on the offending plants when the sun is shining. By the next morning, they will be saying good-bye.

This works only on plants, though. Squirting it on humans won’t make them go away (I tried); but they’ll be plenty pissed. JS

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Chelsea Handler’s new book, “UGANDA BE KIDDING ME”

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In the Portland airport yesterday morning, I bought Chelsea Handler’s new book, UGANDA BE KIDDING ME, about her trip to Africa. It is SCREAMINGLY funny, and I’d read 2/3 of it by the time I got onto my connecting flight out of Chicago to Tulsa. I was surrounded on this flight with several cancer patients heading back to Tulsa after a particular kind of cancer treatment in Chicago.

The young woman sitting across the aisle from me saw me laughing and asked, “Is that book good?”

It was, indeed, I told her, thinking this is a book that would make Stef Neyhart fall over sideways laughing. (For example: Chelsea Handler says the 3 things any world traveler needs are these essentials – 1.) a compass 2.) skiis and 3.) a shotgun.)

Anyway, as I studied this young woman’s face, I noticed that it seemed swollen and a little gray. Her eyes looked dull, with a fear peeking out back in there somewhere. WAS SHE A CANCER PATIENT, TOO? CAN I JUST ASK HER THAT? I MEAN, WHAT IS PROPER HERE? IS THERE A CANCER PROTOCOL? AND, IF THERE IS, WHY DON’T I KNOW IT? AND, WHAT IF SHE BREAKS DOWN IN TEARS? OR – EVEN WORSE – WHAT IF SHE’S NOT A CANCER PATIENT AND WANTS TO KNOW WHY I THINK THAT, THEN I BUMBLE THROUGH A RAGGEDLY HONEST EXCUSE FOR WHY I EVEN THOUGHT THAT AND THEN SHE’S FOREVER FRETTING OVER HER BLOATED, GRAY FACE AND DULL, FEARFUL EYES? JEEPERS, WHAT A MESS I’VE CREATED – GOOD JOB, JODY! YAY, ME!

“I’ve thought about getting that book for my brother and his boyfriend because they LOVE Chelsea Handler,” she said, “then I could read it before I give it to them.”

I am a pretty fast reader, but I have never read the last third of any book faster than I read that one yesterday. I can’t say I exactly remember what I read in the last third of the book, either, but as the wheels to our plane touched down on the Tulsa runway yesterday, I closed the book and held it across the aisle to this young woman. “For you,” I said, as she smiled and took the treasure from my hand, “today is a good day to laugh.”

And, Stef Neyhart, the most gentle one in the world who keeps me calm, said just what I knew she would say, what is ALWAYS in her heart, as I told her the story on the phone last night, “Always go with the greater need.” She was right, as usual. And, so, I did. JS

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My suitcase just arrived

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Suitcase just arrived. My stuff.

You know how crazy people often button their shirts up to the tippy-top so it doesn’t feel so much like they are about to fly apart? That’s sort of how I feel until all my stuff shows up in the same place. Now I feel better. I guess I can unbutton the top button on my shirt now. Phew.

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Where’s my stuff ??!??

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I am one of those people in the world who has an almost screaming need to know where my stuff is. Today, I am missing a big chunk of some of my most important stuff since it is in a suitcase somewhere (I hope) between here and Dallas.

I am also a MAKE IT HAPPEN kind of person so, of course, I am now presented with the challenge of missing my stuff and knowing there is nothing I can do to speed up its return to me. I must wait. And be patient. And be silent. And be grateful that I even have stuff to fret over.

Lessons, lessons galore for this impatient girl who was born two months early and fretting from the get-go. I hope I don’t crack a tooth over this. JS

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