Cats in the Barn

Another Saturday night...another party.

It's just what we do between the end of SEC football in January's National Championship game and the start of another season at the end of August. Carwfish Boils begin in March, graduations...then the weddings start. We were at three cookouts last weekend. The Boy's been to five birthday parties in the last three weeks.

Last night was a wedding.



Mmmm...mmmm...mmmmmmm.

Obviously very different surroundings than last week's bonfire. There weren't enough go-carts for The Boy...



...I wouldn't say there were no fireworks though.



Any time you have a room full of women prancing around, and no woman ever pranced like a Southern woman, well....heeheehee.

We had the pleasure of spending the evening with these lovely ladies.

Listen...the best thing about being a man, hands down, is the company of women. I have a few of male friends...and I cherish them but, without a different perspective existence would be dreadful.I'm sure I'm guilty of "othering"...and while all this sounds cute, it's really a latent expression of sexism. Whatever...real or precieved, I love the difference. Not only is it one of life's great pleasures...it has practical benefits too.

I'll give you an example from this morning. We're having an open house today. That means I have to clean roof off and the yard up...which meant I had to deal with this...



I had already broken the limbs of when the next door neighbor sticks his head over the fence and offers the use of his chainsaw.

"Excuse me? I may not be the most fastidious yard keeper but this is my yard...guess you're hoping you'll have to tell me how to use it? What's next? You wanna come throw the football with my son...maybe take my wife dancin'? Keep your tools in your yard."

That's what I was thinking anyway as I told him thanks, but..."I'm just gonna break it. It's pretty dry."

After three attempts at trying to break it, I got fed up and went for a square. As I returned to the back yard and still not able to reconcile myself to borrowing another man's chainsaw...I see Martha with it in her hand.

"Look honey...the neighbor's letting us use his chainsaw."

Thirty seconds later the limb was cut into managable peices and the chore was finished.


Y'all can laugh...but you ladies have got some peculiarly feminine quirks. None of which tickle me more than this business of being catty.

Let's return to the ladies above. What do you reckon they're talkin' about? It couldn't possibly be another lady at the party...certainly not the tiny dress she's wearing...or, as J.Q. described it "a tunic."

"I think I just saw her butt cheeks."

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHA...perfect.

Rotten Egg and Freckles - Part 2

Anyway...we had a great meal Saturday night and, for the first time in a very long time, we were able to enjoy just being the two of us. We didn't have to get the boy until noon the next day so we made plans for a leisurely breakfast at a place called Another Broken Egg.

It's a new restaurant in town. Its focus is breakfast, but not like Waffle House though...it's a restaurant with table cloths and all that. It's also a breakfast joint without any grits unless...and Allan will luuuv this....you want Grits and Blackberries as a breakfast appetizer. WT...?

They started on the Gulf Coast in North Florida but it was obviously designed for vacationing yankees. Corn Beef Hash??? If I've had it in an MRE...I'm not gonna pay for it.

Anyway, Martha got some Mexican eggs and I got three rubbery pancakes with enough butter to cover a postage stamp...barely.

That'll be forty dollars. FORTY DOLLARS!!! At today's exchange rate that's 24 pound 40 for our readers in the UK. Forty Bucks...24 quid...for a breakfasts withOUT GRITS!

Get &&*&*^%*^*&d!

Despite all that ( and despite the fact that we sat outside. I'm afraid I wasn't able to conceal my disappointment over that decision very well. It's not natural...sun glaring in your eyes, people sitting on top of you, not wanting to talk above a whisper, patio furniture...unless it's at the beach I'd rather be in the natural setting for a human being while eating...booth, dark, climate control, walled off from other eating humans...) we did manage to carry on the kinda meandering conversations we used to have over meals...before we were hired on as help for a two year old.

That's when the freckles came up. Martha's from good Scottish stock...lots of freckles and they reproduce like rabbits in April if you get a little sun on her. I love those freckles...who doesn't?

I wake up in a lot of hotel rooms always with the tv on and almost always with an infomercial playing...often for a cream that will hide a woman's freckles. Why on EARTH would a woman want to do something like that...same reason she wants to have the body of a 15 year old boy...because she doesn't care about attracting straight men...she just wants to make her female friends furious with envy. The best way to do that??? Become the ideal woman in form and skin tone as determined by gay fashion designers.

It would be a much different world if straight men ran the fashion and beauty industries. Yeah you might have to wear some blue eye-shadow, you'd probably be spending a lot more time in hot-pants, even your pajamas would be low cut but, the second that little pot belly started flattenin' out..."Better stock up on Twinkies"...."My bottom has lost that slight jiggle it had last summer. Better cut down on the exercise...have a honeybun."

I'm just sayin....