Day Four-Seventeen - My Memorial Day Message

It's Memorial Day!  It would seem that Memorial Day means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.  For some, it's simply a long weekend and they have no idea why they got a long weekend, but they are happy to have it.  For some it means a long weekend of working in a retail store so that others can spend the time canvasing the malls for bargains.  For others, it signifies the beginning of summer.  For many it means school's out.  Apparently for some, it's a perfect time to protest any rule, law, injustice or slight that they feel they've been handed while getting themselves 15 minutes in a spotlight.  And then there are those who see it as a time to thank the heroes who have sacrificed in wars, police actions, battles and skirmishes all over the world so that we can all sit back here in our safe homes and enjoy a long weekend with friends and family.

For the one or two people who will read this, I'm not that politically driven when it comes to this stuff.  I think that patriotism has no political motivation (or it shouldn't).  Patriotism is something that comes from your heart regardless of your political affiliation or lack thereof.  Did you wake up this morning in a free society?  Did you do whatever you wanted last night or at least whatever your monetary resources would allow?  Did you go to whatever type of church you wanted yesterday or perhaps none at all if that was your choice?  If your answer to those questions is yes, then have you thanked a veteran or his/her family this weekend?  Or for that matter, ever?

You don't need to be a dork to be patriotic.  You just need to care.  So, fly a flag today.  Wear a little red, white and blue.  As you go through your day, if you catch yourself humming the National Anthem, good for you!  We live in the greatest country in the world and if not for veterans who made sacrifice after sacrifice for our freedoms, we wouldn't be able to say that.  Happy Memorial Day and thanks to all the men and women who have sacrificed for our country.

Day Four-Sixteen - Things That Make Me Mad!

What is up with this weather?  If April showers bring May flowers, what do May showers bring other than aggravation?  I just wanted to spend the weekend out at the pool.  But instead I have spent it all indoors waiting for rain cloud after rain cloud to pass over.

Yesterday as my friend Jenny and I sat at Cedars Woodfire Grill enjoying what I thought at the time was a light lunch, (note to self - in the future review nutritional information BEFORE ordering and eating every bite of a Chophouse Steak Salad.  How in the hell can a salad have 71 grams of fat and 47 grams of carbs??!?!?!?!?  Shouldn't that be illegal?) a rainstorm came up that was almost shocking in it's intensity.  It wasn't a violent storm or anything like that.  It was just raining so hard that I was amazed by it.  I mean it was almost as amazing as a salad with 71 grams of fat and 47 grams of carbs.....

During the storm Jenny and I both pulled our smart phones out and checked the Fox4 WAPP which until today was my favorite app.  Today is when I discovered that those guys at Fox4 just put in a forecast that they think might make you happy.....  At least that's what I now believe.  Yesterday during that storm, the forecast showed thundershowers on Saturday, sunny and 87 degrees today, and sunny and 85 degrees on Monday.  Then today I went out for a walk on the local bike/pedestrian trail for just a few minutes an hour ago and it started raining on me.  Mind you it has been overcast since I woke up this morning.  I didn't even get to walk a 1/4 of a mile before I had to turn around and come home so that my phone wouldn't get wet.  So, I opened up the trusty WAPP again to see what was going on and here's what it says today....

Today:  Thunderstorms and 85 degrees
Monday:  Sunny and 89 degrees
Tuesday:  Windy and 89 degrees

So, I'm thinking that if it rains tomorrow this is what I will see when I look at it during the rainstorm....

Today:  Thunderstorms and 85 degrees
Tuesday:  Sunny and 89 degrees
Wednesday:  Sunny and 89 degrees

So I guess I'm wondering why in the hell Fox4 couldn't have predicted the overcast skies today and the rainstorm that got me wet during my walk.  I mean in this day and age of Doppler radars and being able to slide your finger across a green screen on your newscast and predict where a tornado is going to head next, they can't tell whether or not it might rain in the next 24 hours?????  Here's the deal Fox4....  I don't need for you to tell me what my idea of perfect weather is.....  I need for you to tell me what the weather will actually be like.  THAT would be much more helpful.  You see, I already know what I want the weather to be like.  But based on the information I can get from you, I don't know what it actually will be like.  So, while I appreciate that Fox4 wants to please me, it really doesn't help me.

Okay, with that rant out of the way, let's get back to this salad I had yesterday.  I've been ordering this same salad each time I have gone to Cedars for a year or so.  I love it.  It is delicious and until just a few minutes ago, I thought it was healthy.  When Jenny and I were trying to decide where to go, it is the reason we chose Cedars.  We wanted a healthy lunch.  Ummmm.... not s'much.  That guy who writes the Eat This Not That books needs to make a trip to Cedars because those people try to make you think you are getting healthy food there when in reality they are trying to kill you!  I guess I should be happy that I can at least look up the nutritional information on line and see ingredient by ingredient just what is causing the enormous fat and carb content of my favorite salad so that I can order it next time without any of the good stuff on it.  But I'm not sure that it's enough.

Don't get me wrong.  I don't want to release that idiot NYC mayor on Cedars or anything like that.  But shouldn't there be a surgeon generals warning on any salad that unhealthy?  Maybe on the menu next to the salad there should be a picture of a ginormous pig laying on his back dead from having eaten the salad one too many times.  Perhaps if that is too much, they could just post pictures of all of the 300 plus pound women who like to order this salad wearing nothing but sports bras and spandex bike shorts like they are weighing in on The Biggest Loser next to the picture of the delicious salad.  That might do the trick.  They could post a comment next to the photos that says; these are some of our customers who order this salad on a regular basis..... what do they have in common????  I think something like that might get my attention before I placed my order.  At the very least when you order a salad like that, the cash register should start oinking when the girls presses the button indicating the most unhealthy salad in the world has just been ordered.

Seriously, I feel like Jerry and Elaine discovering that the yogurt they thought was healthy was in fact, not healthy at all!  Can I tell you how upsetting this is to me?  I may be scarred for life by this.  From now on when I go into a restaurant and start to order a salad, I may start twitching and break out in spasms over the stress of ordering a salad that may or may not kill me over time.  Hey....  I know.... maybe a class action lawsuit......

Okay, I'm finished with my rants now.  Have a good Sunday afternoon.  If you have been counting on your Fox4 WAPP for your weather predictions, I hope you'll enjoy the rain as you sit outside under the bright sunny sky that you were promised today.

Day Four-Fifteen - The Holiday Weekend Phenomenon

Okay, I understand that most Americans are out having a great weekend.  I could have been in Alabama right now with a little more planning and a willingness to lay out the money.  But here I am sitting in Dallas on Saturday afternoon of Memorial Day weekend.  I'm going to dust and vacuum today.  I'll probably mop a few floors and do a couple loads of laundry then my housework will be complete.  All of that will take a total of 2 hours.  So how do I spend the balance of my Memorial Day weekend?

It's really overcast so it's a pretty crappy day to be at the pool.  At about 6 last night I discovered that there isn't going to be a thing on TV all weekend that I care about watching.  So that's out.  Last night I actually turned everything off downstairs at 7:35 and headed upstairs to read.  I was bored with my book by 9.  Then I watched the Rangers game....  I can't deal with a weekend like this.  The problem that I'm facing is that when I have an extended period of time with absolutely nothing to do, it generally costs me a LOT of money.  We've talked about the Target Phenomenon before....  You know that's where I go to Target to get a package of trashbags and walk out after spending $150 on everything from electronics to yogurt.  It's impossible for me to walk into Target without spending at least $100.

This is the Holiday Weekend Phenomenon....  I'm not sure how it will go.  Knowing what I am facing could be a good thing.  It could result in me directing my spending and/or energies toward things that I need to spend and/or work on.  Or I could just go nuts and get on line and have UPS trucks lined up at my house in 5-7 business days with everything from Life is Good apparel to live Maine Lobster.

Seriously, yesterday there was a Living Social with fresh fish and crustaceans from various parts of the country that they will deliver to your home..... Greatness!  But they sort of lost me because they were featuring Maryland Blue Crabs.  My Dad has a theory that Maryland orders crabs from the Texas Gulf coast and has them shipped there and then they call them Maryland Blue Crabs.  Now maybe that is just my Dad's 70 - something Texan thinking.  Or maybe he's on to something.  But either way, Dad and I have been talking about going crabbing this summer and with that in mind, I figure I can get fresher blue crabs here.  So, why pay to have them shipped from Maryland.  Even if Dad and I don't go crabbing this summer, I can always jump in the car and head down I-45.  Before I get to Houston I'll start seeing old beat up pick up trucks lined up in parking lots along the interstate selling shrimp and crabs that were probably caught within the last 24 hours.  Plus, I'd get to stop at Buck-ees...  Ummmm... can you say win - win?

So, getting back to directing my energies and spending.....  I still have a lot of work to do around this house. I have re-floored the upstairs but no painting has been done up there.  Additionally, I have painted the kitchen and breakfast room.  But I still need to complete some touch up work in there and then I need to paint the rest of downstairs.  I also need a new storm door for the front door and I'd like to replace my sliding glass door with french doors.  So, with just a little concentration, I could spend a pretty penny in this house.  But every bit of that requires effort on my part.  And THAT'S where I run into a problem.  Of course, it would insure that I don't get bored again all summer.  But the downside is that I won't get bored again all summer.....  know what I mean?

I've been kicking this painting thing around for months.  I have very high ceilings.  Downstairs in spots they are about 20 feet high.  I had this little issue right after I bought my condo where the flue on the gas fireplace was not adjusted properly.  The gas fireplace creates black smoke and that black smoke was coming back into the house for the entire first winter I lived here.  Not all of it, not enough to kill me, just enough to create a black film over everything including the white popcorn ceilings.  So, I've always had ceilings that were in desperate need of painting.  So, what I've been thinking about doing is hiring a handy man to do all of the cutting in on both the ceilings and walls.  Then I can do the rolling using my trusty telescopic pole that I bought  when I moved in here.  I'm thinking handy man as opposed to a painter because I discovered with the painter that I have used in the past that they are loyal to particular brands of paint and they probably won't use the paint that I have already picked out and fallen in love with.

So, that's what I am facing this Memorial Day Weekend.  Either spend a crap load of money on my house and create projects for myself that will last all summer or start doing boredom spending and throw away money on crap I don't need.....  Maybe I'll run to Target for some trashbags......

Day Four-Oh-Nine - More Bike Tales

Shortly after I finished writing yesterday's blog I realized a pretty significant inaccuracy and it has been bothering me since.  So, I thought I would clear that up in today's blog.  I said that Ronnie's concussion that he obtained coming down Deadman's Hill was the only Meyers trip to the emergency room as a result of a bike accident.  While that is technically true, there was one other Meyers bicycle accident that resulted in the need for medical help.  Additionally there was a Meyers bike accident that occurred on a motorcycle rather than a bicycle that actually resulted in an ambulance ride to the emergency room.  So, let's cover those today, shall we?

First we'll cover Robbie's "bike accident".  During college, Robbie got a motorcycle.  This effected me in a couple of ways.  First of all, since it was his only mode of transportation, when the weather was bad he required another way to get to and from work and school.  I had a 1980 Toyota Starlet that looked very much like the one below.  In fact after Robbie had driven it for a while, in front of an automotive center would have been the best place to get a glimpse of it since that is where it spent most of it's time.  Actually, it spent most of it's time in my Dad's garage while he overhauled the engine, but that is a story for another day.

I could tell you about the times that Robbie "borrowed" my car and drove me to work saying that he would pick me up when I got off.  Then he would forget me and I'd end up sitting outside of a closed mall waiting for a ride for an hour or so in the days before cell phones, but I won't.  His incident happened on a drizzly morning in Nacogodoches.  I had an 8 AM class and had gone to school in my own car that I was paying for being the selfish person that I am.  After class I stopped off at the former employer who shall not be named because even then I was a slave to them and we were having a walk through that afternoon and I wanted to make sure my department was prepared.  (It was naturally, because I had worked for about 14 hours the day before and the store hadn't opened yet for the day.)

When I got home, my sister-in-law who was living with us and was Ronnie's girlfriend at the time, met me in the driveway.  She was wearing the uniform that she wore to work at La Hacienda everyday.  I wish that I could show you a picture of that hideous uniform that she had to wear to work.  But I'll just have to describe it to you.  It was a skirt and top.  The top was off white and peasant styled.  I think it may have had some rust colored rick-rack around the collar and sleeves to match the ugly rust colored full knee length skirt that went with it.  It doesn't sound that horrible when I describe it, but I think after seeing it for so many years and smelling it when she walked in the house at night I was a little disgusted by it (I'm pretty sure she was too).  When she came home from work, she always smelled like a big burrito.  Which may be why I think burritos are really gross today.

Anyway, she met me in the driveway and was a little panicked.  She explained that the hospital had called and Robbie was there and one of us needed to go to Medical Center, but she was running late for work.  So, I rushed over to Medical Center Hospital while Christina went to work.  When I got there, they were ready to release Robbie he just needed someone to take him home.  He said that he had been turning off the loop onto University Dr. and apparently on the slick street the wheels had gone out from under the motorcycle.  His head hit the pavement but fortunately he had been wearing a helmet which had cracked.  He had a concussion and didn't remember any of it.  He only knew what the witnesses had told him.  When he got to the hospital he didn't know who he was or what had happened other than what he had been told.  They got his information off his drivers license and he said that when they read it to him, he was really excited because he knew that was him!  But they still needed his phone number so they could call someone.  The phone was in my name and fortunately our childhood doctor was in the emergency room and knew my name, so they found our number and read it out to him.  He said when they read those numbers out he felt like he had won the lottery because he recognized them.  Anyway, he recovered, but he got rid of the motorcycle shortly afterward.

Now the other incident didn't really result in a trip to the emergency room although I suppose in hindsight, it should have.  It happened just a few years ago which is why it didn't occur to me yesterday.  It was a Saturday morning and I had taken my beautiful Trek bike to Arbor Hills in west Plano for a morning ride.  I forgot my helmet and was wearing a baseball cap.  But I was going to stay on the cement trails anyway, so I thought I would be fine without a helmet.  I had been riding for 45 minutes or so when I came down the biggest hill there.  At the base of the hill there is a Y and you have to veer either left or right.  I was going to go left and had started to turn when my cap flew off.  Rather than just letting it go, I tried to grab it with my left hand while braking with the right hand which was my front wheel brake.  I hit the brake too hard and went over the handle bars.  The crazy thing is, I never let go of that right brake so my right side had a lot of road rash where my knee, shoulder, arm and wrist had met with the cement.  But I tried to brace myself with my left hand and broke the bone in the lower part of my arm right at the elbow.  It also dislocated my elbow but it popped right back in and tore the skin off my left thumb.

There were people walking behind me when all of this happened and being a veteran "faller" I knew the first thing I had to do was jump up and assure everyone that I was fine... even though blood was dripping onto the cement from my knee and thumb.  The people helped me get my bike.  I got back on it and road it back to my car.  When I got to my car, I still had to lift the bike up to put it in the back.  This was the difficult part.  I had almost given up when a guy noticed my problem and came over and helped me.  As I drove home, I thought about detouring to Plano Medical Center but decided that I was just being a wimp and would be fine when I got home and cleaned my wounds and put ice on them.  So, that's what I did.  I thought the worst wounds were the ones that were bleeding and concentrated on those when I got home cleaning them all well with soap and water, then peroxide and bandaging them.  But as time passed that day, my left arm continued to swell even with ice on it and the pain was horrible.  I kept ice on it all day Sunday and took tons of Advil.  I went to work on Monday and told my co-workers about it.  By then my left arm was bruised which I didn't realize since the bruising was on the back side of my arm.  Finally, by Wednesday I decided that I should go to the doctor because the pain was getting no better in my left arm and the swelling had still not gone down.  They couldn't get me in until the next day.  So on Thursday, I went to the doctor where they examined and re-bandaged my open wounds and then sent me for x-rays on my left elbow and wrist.

From there I was referred to an orthopedic surgeon who told me about the dislocation which had stretched stuff that shouldn't be stretched and the fracture.  He was hesitant to put a cast on it because of the dislocation part of the injury.  So, they put me in a sling and I had to go back to the doctor every week for about 2 months for new x-rays and for him to check on the healing.   The good news was the it all healed on it's own and no surgery was required.  I remember thinking during my weekly trips to the doctor that if I had just gone to the medical supply store on my own and bought my own $25 sling, I could have by-passed the doctor entirely.  But that too is another story.

Have a happy Sunday.  It's looking like a pool day in Dallas!  :-)

Day Four-Oh-Eight - Kids and Bikes

Things changed.  I'm not sure when it happened or whether or not it is a good change.  But change most definitely occurred.  Let me explain.  When I was a kid, the most expensive possession I had was a blue Huffy bicycle with a banana seat and a basket on the front much like the one pictured below.  This isn't the exact bike I owned, it's one I found on the internet.  But this looks just like my Huffy that I got for my 5th birthday back in 1968.

I'm sorry about the picture quality, but this is undoubtedly a photo from someones EBay account in an attempt to clean a garage that was caught in a 70's time warp.  Back to what I was talking about.  When I was a kid, not only was this my most expensive possession it was also my most prized possession.  Few things gave a kid as much freedom as their very own bike.  Last week I talked about how all the kids in our neighborhood met down near our house after school everyday.  We all played outside until around dinner time.  When our Dad's came home from work, we each made our way inside for dinner.  As we went in for dinner, bicycles were left in our wake in whatever position they ended up when we ejected from the banana seats.  Some were lying on their side with the wheels still spinning, others were leaning against a tree in a front yard and a few were propped on their kickstand neatly on a driveway or sidewalk.

But for that couple of hours in the afternoon between the time we finished our after school snacks and the time our Dad's came home from work, we were road warriors.  The bike was not just a trusted friend, it was our mode of transportation no matter where we were going.  Some kids did tricks on their bikes.  I didn't.  I was as accident prone then as I am now and I didn't like pain anymore then than I do today.  So, my bike was strictly for riding and transporting dolls and things in the basket.  I knew kids who could stand on their seat for a second.... just before the crash.  I also new a lot of boys who could do wheelies on theirs.  My brother, Robbie was pretty good at riding with no hands.

Once Ronnie went down "Deadman's Hill" which was a big mound of dirt that construction guys had piled up at the end of Nottingham Dr.  Kids spent so much time riding bike's up and over it that trails had formed in the weeds that were growing in the big pile of dirt.  As Ronnie came down the front side, something went horribly wrong and he wound up with a concussion.  Just another Meyers weekly trip to the emergency room.  It think it was the only Meyers trip to the emergency room that was a result of a bike accident though which is a little remarkable considering how much time we spent on our bikes.

Our friends, the Bailey's apparently had a thing for going over the handle bars of their bikes and knocking out their front teeth.  I think on the second or third occasion that this happened to one of them, their Dad, Don outlawed bikes at their house.  I know it happened to Donnie once or twice and I think it happened to Deanna once too.  I'm not sure about Davie, bikes might have already gotten outlawed before he ever had the chance to fly over his handlebars.  I remember going to their house and never being able to ride bikes because they just didn't have any.  Apparently, the feeling was that motorcycles were slightly safer.  So when we went there we rode dirt bikes around.  They started out with Honda 50's but graduated to bigger and faster bikes, but not much faster.  I remember the summer we got our first used Honda 70.  It was total greatness but I was a teenager by then and we all had to share it.  So even then I still rode my dependable blue Huffy when necessary which was most of the time with two brothers.

Sometimes, when I was on my bike, it was my trusty steed and I was a cowgirl in the old west.  Other times, the bike became a fancy sports car and I would speed along the highway in my mind.  At other times, it was a station wagon full of kids and I was the mom telling them to sit down in the back and stop hitting each other.  This was obviously back before kids sat in carseats or before we even new what carseats were.  If you are a kid today and you are wondering what a station wagon is, it was a funny looking SUV.  Please refer to The Brady Bunch or National Lampoon's Vacation.

When I was on my bike, I could pretty much outrun anything else on two wheels....  I thought.  We used to ride our bikes to Community Grocery during the summertime to get candy and a Coke.  Mr. Huckabee probably hated to see us coming.  We would all go in and swarm his store for a half hour and walk back out with a bag of Sprees and one Coke to share.  A total of 75 cents was spent between 6 kids and we had wasted a 1/2 hour of Mr. Huckabee's life.  If Mr. Martindale was working we would go back and watch him cut meat.  Because you know, what kid doesn't like to watch a real butcher with missing fingers and everything at work???!??!?  Right?  You never knew when he might cut another one off and you wanted to be there to see it when it happened.

On the way back from Community Grocery you could take a detour on the road where Mr. Shoemaker's shop was.  It was a dirt road right across from Community Grocery that turned and sort of ran along side Highway 21.  If you went up that road, it took a long time and was a good bike ride but there were mean dogs that chased your bike.  They hated kids on bikes and apparently blue Huffy's were the worst in their minds.  I'm not sure what it is about being chased by a dog that makes a kid think that abandoning the bike and sort of shoving it at the dog and running for your life might be a better choice.  But I do remember that happening once.  The problem is that you then have to wait for the vicious dogs to lose interest in your bike so that you can sneak back and get it because coming home without your bike wasn't an option.  I mean seriously, my parents probably spent at least $50 on that bike.  It was going to have to last me at least 10 years!

Yep, things changed.  I don't think any kids go out and ride bikes for hours anymore checking in at home at lunchtime and again in the afternoon for a snack.  Now, in the summertime, kids go to camp and are part of whatever kind of team or class their parents can find to put them in so that they never spend a single minute without adult supervision.  When we were kids the rules were pretty simple, play outside, never take a ride from anyone, if you don't know somebody - don't talk to them, and no fighting.  Your bike was your independence and you loved it like a member of your family.  A flat tire could sideline you until Saturday when your Dad had time to help you fix it.  The worst thing that could happen was to lay your bike on it's side behind a car and allow it to get run over.  Then you were out of the game until your next birthday or Christmas because everybody knew that bikes were too expensive to get a new one in the middle of the year for no reason.  So you took care of that bike like it was the most important thing in the world.

Maybe that's the reason that I loved my little black Honda CR-V so much.  It's the only car I ever had that lasted almost as long as my Huffy.  Of course, it was only a Honda so it could never be quite as dependable as a Huffy.  I wish Huffy made cars!

Day Four-Oh-One - Happy Mother's Day!

I know I tell you all a lot of stories from my childhood.  But I had a pretty good childhood, good friends and family and those stories entertain me, so why shouldn't I?  Right?  After all, it's my blog..... don't like it?  Go read someone else's blog.  Or better yet, write your own.  Since it's Mother's Day I was trying to think of a real good story about my Mom.  You know something really funny that would make you laugh until you wet you pants.  The thing is, it's hard to think of a lot of funny stories where Mom was the star.  She was always a player in the stories but she usually stood off to the side either shaking her head in disbelief or encouraging us as necessary.

When we were kids, Mom didn't work outside the home.  We kept her plenty busy inside the home.  We always had a freakishly clean house.  Until just recently I don't think I fully comprehended how that happened.  I mean, I only saw her clean on Saturday's and then it was an all out assault.  What I didn't realize was that every day of the week, cleaning was taking place.  Saturday was just the day that she got us involved and it was not pretty people.  On Saturday morning she would tell you to clean your room.  So, being the obedient daughter that I was, I made the bed and then asked if I could go out and play.  Heheheheh....  I was so cute in my fresh faced innocence....  So, she would then come into my bedroom like a Nazi officer and  begin pulling dolls and stuffed animals that were shoved in corners or in the closet floor out and throw them in the hall, she would tell me to take the sheets off the bed (that I had just made up) and throw them in the hall.  She basically demolished the room and then strolled to my brother's room leaving me to put it all back together.  In Robbie and Ronnie's room, the same scene played out.  When she was done there was a hallway full of junk that needed to be cleaned before we put it back in our rooms neatly where it belonged.

I don't remember vacuuming or dusting so much during those cleaning Saturday mornings because that was already done.  I guess I thought it just occurred magically or maybe the cleaning fairies came out and did it regularly.  As I got older, I remember vacuuming and dusting... VIVIDLY!  But when we lived on Nottingham that was all taking place behind the scenes while we were in school.  Now from what I described above you might think Saturday morning cleaning was awful.  But I have to say, it wasn't that bad. There were always 4 or 5 albums on the stereo turn table while it took place.  And everybody was participating so it wasn't that bad.  Dad was usually out in the garage while we all cleaned our bedrooms 'cause that was sort of his room to keep clean.  He'd be putting things on his workbench away or working on  something that had broken.  That meant if there was something that you needed to get rid of, like an old broken toy, you couldn't just take it to the garage and dump it off.  That was Dad's domain and you were not allowed to dump stuff out there on Saturday morning.  You had to sneak it out there during the week when he wasn't aware of what was going on.

I said we kept Mom plenty busy inside the home, but I should explain further.  You see, I remember sitting down at breakfast almost every morning when I was in elementary school.  We were like the Cleaver's except that Mom wasn't wearing a shirtwaist dress, full makeup and pearls when we came into the kitchen for breakfast.  Even if we only had Malt-O-Meal we still had to sit down at the table and eat it.  Me and my brothers were fans of the Chocolate Malt-O-Meal.  That, my friends, was some good eating.  I was looking for a picture of a Chocolate Malt-O-Meal box from the 1970's to post, but the one that came up when I Googled it had microwave instructions on the box.  We didn't have no stinking microwaves in 1972!  Anyway, after breakfast, we all walked up the street to the bus stop and I suppose, Mom started cleaning.  When we would get home the house would be spotless just like it was everyday, we'd have some freshly home baked cookies or a bowl of cereal for a snack and then we were told we had to play outside until suppertime because she had spent the entire day trying to get that house clean and we weren't going to tear it up....  Like we were little heathens or something.  Oh, wait, we were!

So we would go outside and tear things up out there.  On Nottingham all the kids met outside just about every afternoon 30 or so minutes after getting off the bus.  We took just enough time to get our snacks and then we were ready to spend the rest of the afternoon playing.  We usually met around our house since it was about midway down the street.  The boys would play football, baseball or something like that.  For a few years, I was the only girl in the neighborhood, so I'd play with them.  When Mary K Sanders moved in while I was in the 3rd grade, I started playing Barbie's with her but we had to play in her house since her Mom worked and didn't care if we made a mess.  So, we'd build huge Barbie mansions in Mary K's bedroom and have a great time.  Sometimes I'd go play with Kara Compton.  Kara and I were pretty good friends but she had a brother that I was kind of afraid of so I didn't go to her house too much if he was home.  He probably turned out to be the greatest guy in the world, but for some reason, I was afraid of him.

Anyway, everybody knew that my Mom was the one Mom in the neighborhood that was home.  So if any problems arose, she was the one that sort of took care of things.  Mrs. Shoemaker and Mrs Worthan were stay at home Mom's too.  But everybody gravitated to our house for some reason.  What's really funny though is that everybody thought our Mom was mean but it didn't keep them all away from our house.  Before we moved away from Nottingham there were more than 20 school aged kids that all hung around together everyday and our house was home base to a lot of them.

While we were all outside playing, giving ourselves concussions and breaking limbs, Mom was in the house planning and cooking dinner.  Around 5:45 Dad would get home and that was usually my cue to head home.  Once I got there, I usually sat the table and made the tea.  Those were my jobs.  Then I had to go call Robbie and Ronnie in.  That generally consisted of me walking out to the driveway and screaming at the top of my lungs ROOOOOOBBBBBIEEEEEE..... ROOOOOONNNNNIEEEEEE..... COME IN AND EEEEAAAAAATTTT.....  It was a very attractive thing I did.  I don't know why I didn't end up married to any of those boys from the old neighborhood.....

When Robbie and Ronnie came in, we all sat down at the dining room table and ate supper.  While we ate, we talked about everything that each of us had done that day.  You said please and thank you when you wanted something.  After supper, Robbie and I carried our dishes to the sink while Ronnie continued to sit at the table trying to figure out ways to get rid of his creamstyle corn without eating it.  It seemed like he would sit there for hours.  But it probably wasn't that long at all.  But it was torture.  I remember on a couple of occasions when Mom told Dad that he wasn't punishing Ronnie as much as he was punishing her by making him sit there until it was gone.  Ronnie would take a bite and make a gagging noise....  Really???!?!!?  Who gags on corn?  He would whine that it smelled like coffee.  (Don't ask, I don't understand it either....)  Most of the time he would eventually eat it.  Sometimes I think he just spread it out on his plate enough that Mom decided she could get by with saying he had eaten enough.  So I think she would hurry up, pick up the plate and scrape it off before Dad came in and looked.  If you scooped it all back up together it was probably the exact amount of corn that was put on his plate to begin with.

During the summer, we all sat down at the table for lunch too.  Usually we just had sandwiches.  But sometimes there were fishsticks or corny dogs.  What I'm saying is that Mom didn't call anything in.  She was a full time Mom 365 days a year.  She was our room mom in school.  She was a Brownie leader, I think she helped in Cub Scouts when we lived in Alvin.  She made most of my clothes which is why I never got to wear bluejeans until 4th grade.  She gave the boys haircuts and gave me perms whether I liked it or not.  She did it all.  So, Happy Mother's Day Mom!  Now I'm heading to Nacogdoches.