half-drunk and blind in one eye

you remember my dad, randy joe, right? well, in addition to liking "sweet milk" (which is just another way of saying milk - i suppose it is to be distinguished from buttermilk?), he also likes lord calvert combined with caffeine-free diet coke. actually, on occasion (and by ocassion, i mean every afternoon) he likes several of those, back to back. on one such occasion, we had gotten together with a group of friends from college and one of my friends challenged my dad to a game of pool. my dad, who was beating my friend at this game pretty severely at this point, says "i'm whippin' your ass and i'm half-drunk." my friend responds "oh i guess next your going to tell me your blind in one eye." this story might not seem funny but as it turns out, (and unbeknownst to my friend) my dad is actually blind in one eye as a result of a really high fever as a child. fortunately for my friend, my dad was a little more than half-drunk and really didn't take offense - not that he would have anyway, especially since it clearly has not interfered with drinking or pool-playing skills.

grier's dorm room

i was privy to a conversation the other day - well, perhaps not so much privy to as much as just eavesdropping on, but it doesn't seem fair to me to call it eavesdropping when the woman was talking loud enough for the entire store to hear. in any event, i had just entered this cute, but a little snooty, gift store and i was admiring the cute, but a little snooty, gifts when i heard this conversation, which may have ruined this and all other cute-but-snooty gift stores for me.

loud gift shop customer lady: (to her daughter) well, honey, i just don't know. what is grier's color scheme?

daughter: (says something but because she is speaking in a normal voice, i cannot hear the response)

loud gift shop customer lady: (to gift shop employee) the color scheme of her dorm room is white with black polka dots and fuchsia and orange accents.

after several minutes and a discussion of a variety of items, they seem to find something that compliments the "scheme" and then they enter the monogramming phase of the transaction. initials are discussed but after the daughter peruses grier's facebook page on her cell phone in a brilliant but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to ascertain grier's middle name, they decide to go with the full name, g-r-i-e-r (and not g-r-e-e-r and also not g-r-e-i-r). the purchase is made and loud gift shop customer lady and her daughter seem satisfied with their gift to grier. i, on the other hand, no longer see a store full of fancy knick-knacks. i see only things for grier and her dorm room - the little cups that say "i invited you over for cocktails, not dinner" no longer seem cute to me as they do not compliment black and white polka dots and they don't belong in a dorm room. and the little baby onesie that says "i'm fixin' to cry ya'll" seems somehow not good enough for grier's baby or inappropriate if she does not have one. in fact, nothing in the store seemed good enough for grier anymore. finally, i became disgusted with all of it and i left. plus, i got the text from my husband steve that i had been waiting for that he was ready for me to pick him up for lunch.

tbone and greg

in college i dated a guy who was in law school. i will call him greg, for purposes of my blog. greg was one of those guys who dressed just so (i know it's a cliche, but he took GQ to a whole new level from his suspender-clad shoulders all the way down to his burberry socks), had political aspirations, and generally thought a lot of himself (remember alec (played by judd nelson) in st. elmo's fire? he comes to mind). greg prided himself on having attended a prestigious undergrad and having worked in d.c. and took himself and his law school/career very seriously. at some point, greg decided to get a roommate and he found terry, a fellow law student. terry was just about the opposite of greg - he was country, very personable, and easy-going - all in all, a great roommate - perhaps for anyone except greg. i think what bothered greg the most about terry was that terry took law school very lightly and yet seemed to do really well, while greg took it very seriously, worked hard and did almost as well as terry. well, i say that's what bothered him the most. it also could have been that whenever the phone rang at greg and terry's - terry would always answer (which was good since he was obviously the more popular of the two and it was almost always for him) and the dialogue - or terry's end of it - was always exactly the same. it went like this. and as with quotes from my dad, please imagine a thick southern accent.
(phone rings)
terry: yello
(pause)
terry: this t-bone. (i have to admit, there was another version where instead of this, terry would say "youuu got 'eem")
(pause)
terry: drinkin' a beer, how bout yaself.
but i do think greg must have had at least a little bit of a sense of humor about terry because i remember once greg called me over to listen to a message that had been left on the answering machine for terry. it went like this and imagine the countriest of country accents spoken in an old-lady voice:
"tayr-ree, just called to see what you was up to. call me when you get back. mawma." i loved that she signed off "mawma" as if she were writing a letter. it was the 80s, i guess answering machines were still new to mawma.
but that was all forever ago. i heard recently that greg is still very GQ and i imagine still taking himself and his career very seriously and probably as a result, is successful. and i like to think that t-bone has done pretty well for himself too.

from baseball to field trips

well, little league baseball season is over. my 7-year old son's team won two games. it was a long and painful season, but at the last game, we got our pictures. and the picture of mac in his baseball uniform, bat in hands, is fantastic. and isn't that what it is really all about? the memories of each miserable game, of strike-outs, of crying in the dug-out and bird-watching and circle-spinning in the outfield will fade but this picture, in which mac looks like he not only plays, but actually likes, baseball, will last forever.
and as the end of the school year approaches - so does the field trip - the thought of which has delighted my daughter all year and been a nagging source of dread for me. i am going to new orleans - on a charter bus - with fifth graders. what is more fun than a field-trip to new orleans..... with fifth graders? i don't know about you, but when i think new orleans, i think bring-the-kids-along-for-some-good-wholesome-family-fun. i tried to come up with some plausible way for me to lose the kids and stop off in a bar, just for a drink or two (just to take the edge off), but i'm not so sure it's going to happen. the problem is that i am one of those people that truly functions better with a couple of drinks in me - and it certainly helps in my ability to tolerate children. when you think about it - it's almost medicinal. and no one would ever judge a parent for needing medication. perhaps if i explained this to the teacher.

dog drama

my mother's day started out like any other, so you can imagine my surprise when it developed into one of those faith-in-humanity-restoring kind of days. forget all my previous posts saying how much people get on my nerves. from here on out, it's going to be all praise for the people. or at least to the end of this blog entry.
i slept late (that means until 8am at my house) and then i had my usual cinnamon toast and coffee. steve got the waverunner (the only water craft that we can afford) out and we took turns taking the kids out on it. after lunch, we walked across the busy 4-lane road to the santa rosa sound where our waverunner was parked (unauthorized, at the end of a dock of a vacation rental that is not ours but that is very convenient to our house). our dog sulley, an 8-year old lab with a slow-growing malignant tumor and bad hips who absolutely loves the water, came along with us on the walk over. we had no qualms about bringing her since she has never once wandered. in fact, once she dug out of our fenced back yard only to go to the front door where she cried until we let her inside. but back to the story - so, amelia and i took the wave runner out into the sound and steve took a reluctant sulley back across the street to our house. steve went inside and quickly realized sulley was no longer with him and began looking for her. amelia and i returned about 45 minutes later and got the bad news. we started looking and calling for her. several neighbors came out to help. then some people spotted me from out on their dock and told me that a family had just come by in a boat with a dog asking if anyone was looking for this yellow lab. but the boat had left and was headed towards gulf breeze. the people on the dock offered to take their boat out and stop the boat with our dog. and they did just that. the family that rescued my dog brought her back to the dock and unloaded her. she was wet and tired but looked happy to see me. apparently, sulley had crossed four lanes of traffic and followed us deep into the sound and had been swimming for at least 20 minutes when this family found her. i know that i would have done the same thing had i seen a dog out there - assuming that in this fantasy i had a boat - but that doesn't change how grateful i am that so many people were willing to help us. and this concludes my feel-good story. i will try not to let it happen again.

an r.j. trilogy

i have to share one more profound thing my father said. this one really got me thinking and i am confident it will have the same effect on you. it was a stormy afternoon in nashville, georgia (making it even gloomier than usual there) and a big fat bolt of lightening struck and the power was out. prior to that bolt of lightening, randy joe had been relaxing (as much as his personality allows) in his lazy boy watching the golf channel (or "this here tournament" as it is often called). well now that was all ruined. he got up and kind of paced around the house a bit. then he tried turning the tv on again - to no avail. he paced some more. then attempted to turn on the lamp beside his lazy boy - again, with no success. he left the room and returned and then he stopped. and i knew something big was coming. something that would capture the mood that everyone on our same power grid was feeling at that very moment - and he did not disappoint me. he looked up at no one in particular and said "you know, you ain't got electricity.... you ain't got shit." and almost every time i have been without power since that day, i have thought those very same words - even said them a few times.