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.

Head Lightin'

"I know right w'ere they was. Back when we was teenagers J., my husband," here she clasped her hands together, lowered her head and opened her eyes to emphasize the clarification, then she cocked her head back up, splayed her fingers back out and continued... "and them used to go head lightin' down there."

Mrs. C runs a country store and diner in the Pine Belt...and tells stories. This particular story had been set off by some very dark news but, we've had enough of that for a minute or two.

Mrs. C's in her early 50's probably and has an exquisite Southern accent...Mississippi accent. It's not deep but it's round and has developed a fine vibrating patina that's priceless. She's not a big woman but she's got a wide frame that gives her an erect appearance. When she speaks, she cocks her head back slightly. Her eyes are half closed above high flatish cheek bones...split by a slight, smooth flowing, Roman nose.

Even in a pink t-shirt and jeans it's hard to deny the regal air of it...but the warmth of her voice and regular bursts of laughter keep the stuffiness cleared out. When she lowers her head...her eyes come on like high beams.

"I tried to tell 'im they'us gone get in trouble down there but, he couldn't resist it. You know they used to be hundreds of deer down there at night."

At this point she must have sensed that there were a few people who hadn't cottoned on to what they were doin (which seems impossible to me considering the crowd but*...I think she was right) and so she explained...

"B. drove while J. would hang out the passenger window and shoot to the left. The Kendall boy would ride in the back, leanin on the roof and cover the right. They just couldn't stay away from it."

"Anyway, one night me and J. was supposed to go on a date. I waited and waited but, he never showed,"...she cleared the air with a wave of her fingers, lowered her head and lit up..."donch you know I got my little panties in a wad over that."

"Weeeell...they shot 'em a deer that evenin'. Got him loaded up and jess before they's about to get on the highway...Game Warden cut on his lights. They made some sorry attempt to explain but he stopped 'em cold and told 'em he knew exactly which one of 'em shot 'im, where they shot 'im, and how they shot 'im."

"Kendall, he come from money, he thought he'd jess write a check and that'd be the end of but, no...they didn't like them boys. They confiscated the truck...it was B's Daddy's truck...the guns and fined them boys Fifuh-Teeeen Hundred dollas a piece...Fifuh-Teen Hundred dolla's."

Well satisfied that she had once again gotten to tell her old man "I told you so"...she sucked on her teeth and gave a little rumble of a laugh. She told me to come on back to the kitchen. I nestled in, I've seen bigger kitchens on fishing boats, next to her daughter and started cookin'. The daughter was haggard but cheerful enough...she's probably a few years older than me.

"Now don't you pay all the attention to her...jess 'cause she's young."

Laugh's probably still bouncing off the yellowed walls in the place.

I love my job.

*There may or may not have been a time when my Daddy may or may not have hunted coons in the woods, at night, with somebody who may or may not have been carrying a flashlight.

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....