Category: Commentary

What I’m Reading

I went in search of something to refresh my memory of, and to increase my understanding of, documents of importance to our country. It seems more important now than ever for citizens to be informed; otherwise, how can we hold our elected officials accountable?

I found this slim volume at Barnes and Nobel:

I like the way the book has side by side explanations of the documents. For example, pictured below is the first page of the Bill of Rights:

On the left are the unedited amendments, and on the right are simplified explanations. I think our current president might benefit from reading this book. Maybe I’ll buy him a copy. He might have to give up one round of golf to read it, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take.

Peace, people.

The Perfect Burger

Our current political scene is so depressing that all I want to do is eat. If I’m not careful I’ll regain the 20 or so pounds I’ve lost in these last ten months. Studly Doright suggested that I write instead of eating. If I can’t enjoy a burger, I’ll contemplate the perfect one.

Studly grills a good burger on occasion. When he buys good ground sirloin and doesn’t cook it until it resembles dried shoe leather his burgers are among the best. He melts cheese on top, then we add lettuce, fresh tomato, a sweet Vidalia onion, mustard or mayonnaise, and our choice of pickle on top of a grilled buttered bun. I add a splash of ketchup to mine and it’s oh so good.

When we eat hamburgers at a restaurant we’re fairly adventurous. I’ll often order one with guacamole and jalapeños. Of course I suffer mightily for that indulgence, but oh my goodness it’s so good.

Studly’s favorite is a burger dubbed “The Lip Smacker” at our local Well’s Brothers eatery. The Lip Smacker features half a pound of meat grilled to perfection and topped with cheese, bacon, peanut butter, and strawberry jam.

Would you eat The Lip Smacker? I won’t, but then Studly won’t even contemplate my guacamole and jalapeño burger. What’s your favorite burger? Are you a plain Jane kind of burger lover, or do you go for the exotic?

Battle of the Sexes

Every now and then it’s good to remember that even though women are still fighting battles to control our own bodies we have come a very long way on the road to equality. The film Battle of the Sexes starring Emma Stone and Steve Carell as tennis stars, Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, provides viewers with some pointed reminders of just how far we’ve progressed, and who we should thank for that progress.

I remember watching the hype leading up to the big match between King and Riggs, as well as sitting glued to the tv to view their epic match from start to finish. I was 16 when Riggs and King faced off on the court. My family made a big deal of the match and my dad said from the beginning he thought Billie Jean would beat Bobby Riggs. Is it any wonder why Daddy was my hero?

The movie recreates the vibe of the 70’s perfectly: The hair, the clothing, the music, the misogyny. Carell and Stone are wonderful in their roles. I give this film 10 thumbs up. Yes. Ten. I’m not much of a movie reviewer, but I know what I like.

Peace, people!

A Certainty

One thing I know for sure: Doright Manor won’t win the “Curb Appeal” award this week.

Debris from our recent water heater failure along with branches that littered the yard after Hurricane Irma have rendered the front of our property an unsightly mess. I’ve called the trash removal service three times now. The neighbors are beginning to circle the house with pitchforks. I’m beginning to wonder if we can hang black crepe paper on the mess and pretend we’ve decorated for Halloween.

Meanwhile, across the street, all is well.

I hope you all have a wonderful, debris-free weekend.

Peace, people.

Birthday Debriefing

As my faithful followers know, yesterday I celebrated my 61st birthday. It was a good day, but it got off to a rocky start. Rather than go into the painful details, I’ll just give you the bullet points.

  1. Due to the possibility of a hurricane hitting our area we cancelled plans for a weekend visit to Amelia Island.
  2. We’ll still have to pay for half the price of the room we cancelled because the hurricane didn’t enter into the picture until past the cancellation deadline. Thanks booking.com. Grrrr.
  3. My favorite convenience store was out of diet Dr. Pepper, so I had to do without my must have caffeinated beverage. To coffee drinkers, that would be like starting your day without coffee.
  4. Whole Foods couldn’t make me an iced chai latte because their chai delivery was late.
  5. The damned hurricane changed direction. I don’t want it to impact anyone, but since we cancelled our reservation and still have to pay for one night, how dare it not hit here?
  6. I had lunch at a table by myself while watching various groups of women engaged in pleasant social discourse. Dammit! It was my birthday.
  7. All became right with the world when I enjoyed a spa treatment at Aveda.
  8. Studly Doright lost his golf match, but played well.
  9. I received tons of birthday greetings.
  10. I don’t know how to make the bullets stop.
  11. Please help.
  12. Guess I’ll just say, Thank You for Reading. If you made it this far, you might need to get a life.
  13. Peace, people.

The big kid is me way back in the day. The cute kiddo is my adorable cousin on her first birthday. The man is my beloved Grandaddy.

Shipping Label Humor

Today, October 5, 2017, is my 61st birthday. Yay me! According to my youngest grandchild who is five, I am an old lady. Funny, I don’t feel old. In fact, I feel fairly wonderful.

Yesterday I received a beautiful basket of gourmet delicacies from my son and daughter-in-law. I mean this is the mother of all baskets:

Apples, pears, cheeses and crackers, cookies, and a bottle of wine. It’s gorgeous and I’m going to try to be a good girl and share with Studly Doright.

One of the best things about the basket, though, was the label on the box it arrived in. I laughed for ten minutes:

“Do not deliver to an intoxicated person,” it says. I told the FedEx lady it was a darned good thing she’d come before 5 p.m.

Happy birthday to me!

Two Wrongs; One Write

I generally have a blog post in the queue and ready to publish at 7:05 a.m. This morning, Wednesday, October 4, 2017, I had nothing. Oh, there were a few words typed into a draft: “milk, cat litter,” but only because I’d accidentally written my shopping list on a blank page in WordPress.

For a moment I wondered what I could do with those words. A poem combining the two concepts of homogenized liquids and cat hygiene, perhaps? Hmmm. Not today, but the topic has possibilities.

As I pondered what to write I heard one of my cats in the throes of dislodging a hairball, so I rolled out of bed to clean up the mess. With a box of baby wipes in one hand and a paper towel in the other I went in search of cat puke. Scout was sitting like a lady in the dining room admiring her artwork which she’d deposited on the carpeting literally two inches from the tiled hallway.

“Dammit, Scout, couldn’t you have turned your head to the right just a fraction and avoided the rug?” I asked, knowing that was a rhetorical question. She never pukes on the tile.

As I bent over to attend to the mushy hair ball mess my nose began to run. I swiped one of the baby wipes under my nose and continued cleaning. Not to be outdone, my nose continued leaking like a faulty faucet. I swiped at it again, only then noticing that my nose wasn’t dripping snot, but blood. So now I was dealing with two icky bodily emissions. Two wrongs, if you will, giving me something to write.

As I finish typing this the time is 6:55 a.m. Looks like I’ll make my self-imposed deadline after all.

Fun Times at Doright Manor

Thanks to a corroded hot water heater this is what my house looks like at the moment. Enjoy.

We pulled out the carpet and padding and rented a couple of fans to dry out the walls.

But we had to move all of the furniture out first.

The marble tops weigh a ton and have to be moved separately. They’re somewhere in my dining room at present.

Ah! Home sweet home.

I’m going to the carpet store today to find new floor coverings for the bedroom, and we’ve got a painter coming sometime this week. In the meantime we’re dodging bedroom furniture in almost every room of the house.

I insisted on pizza at Momo’s in Tallahassee for dinner last night.

A Resourceful Man

Studly Doright is a resourceful man. In fact, if I hadn’t been inspired to call him Studly Doright I’d have dubbed him “Macgyver” or “Mr. Fixit.”

There were many lean years during which his ingenuity and ability to solve problems of a mechanical nature kept us out of the proverbial poorhouse.

Nowadays we don’t have to rely on Studly’s resourcefulness to keep life flowing smoothly. If something breaks and needs fixing we can call a repairman. If that something cannot be fixed we can replace it. Being poor was exhausting. Those who’ve never been there can’t even fathom the energy it takes just to keep afloat.

However, just because we can afford to hire a repairman doesn’t necessarily mean we will. Yesterday I posted about a water leak that manifested itself as soggy carpet and moldy baseboards in one of our guest bedrooms at Doright Manor. Knowing there was a leak was easy. Finding the source of the leak was a bit trickier, but we finally traced it to the water heater in our garage. We were relieved. A water heater is easy to replace.

When Studly was able to get away from work yesterday afternoon he turned off the water to the house, shut off the electricity to the water heater, and began the process of draining it. The folks who’d built our home had installed a massive 80 gallon water heater, so while we waited for it to drain Studly drove into Tallahassee to purchase a new one.

He’d done his research and learned all about high efficiency water heaters. The only thing he hadn’t foreseen was that the existing water heater was wider than the door of the closet in which it had been installed.

So, here we were on a Friday night with no hot water and no energy remaining to take apart the framing of the door. Did Studly give up? No way.

Of course it’s a temporary fix, but allowed for the taking of showers and a good night’s rest so he can tackle the door frame after golf today. I insisted on the golf–better he hit a ball than a wall.

Could Studly have called a repairman to tackle this whole job? Could he have saved himself a lot of aggravation and labor? Yes and yes. But that’s not how men like Studly get things done.

When it comes to replacing the carpeting and repainting the guest bedroom, though, I’m going to insist on a professional.

Peace, people.

Just for the Record

I was searching for something; although, I can no longer remember what that was. I’d looked in my closet, and I’d searched the master bedroom. I looked in the Texas bedroom (so called because I’ve got lots of kitschy Texas stuff displayed there). I searched the office with its multitude of drawers and cabinets.

Having failed to find whatever the heck it was I was searching for in any of the places mentioned above, I opened the door to the antique bedroom. It’s a rather small room and crowded with antique furnishings, so I don’t have much room to store things in there. Surely whatever the heck I’d been searching for wasn’t in there, but I should at least check before ruling it out.

As soon as I entered the room a horrible smell akin to that of a bundle of athletic socks that had been worn through eighteen consecutive sweaty workouts and then stuffed into a green duffel bag and stored in a musty locker greeted me.

I found the problem immediately. Just for the record the carpet in the antique bedroom is not supposed to look like this.

Mold shouldn’t be growing on the baseboard, and the carpet really shouldn’t make “squish, squish” sounds when one walks from point A to point B. I’m not a plumber, but I know a problem when I step in it.

Studly Doright arrived home soon after my discovery. With little fanfare I led him to the room where he immediately did what guys like Studly do:

After much cutting and cursing, grunting and grumbling, Studly determined absolutely nothing beyond the need to call a plumber.

Now there are two boxes of family keepsakes that had been stored on the floor in the closet of the antique bedroom drying on various surfaces in the kitchen.

Fortunately I don’t think anything important was ruined, but it was a near thing. So even though I never found whatever the hell it was I’d been searching for, my search did prevent a catastrophe. As my friend Hunny says, “I’m a lucky, lucky girl.”

Peace, people.