MY MIND WANDERED — and never came back!

On the first day of hunting season Hubby gave to me, one more rea-son for me to wor-ry. (sung to the tune of The 12 Days of Christmas).

Yep. It’s hunting season and the men in my family have gone postal. This year they’ve  included Youngest Grandson. I didn’t realize how much our little boy had grown up until I saw him all decked out in his camouflage and hunting cap with his knife strapped to his belt and a crossbow on his shoulder.

Where did our baby boy go? The one who used to ask for cucumbers before breakfast, was scared of zombies and who couldn’t pronounce the word hippopotamus. The boy who could not ride his bike without training wheels and who thought that camping out in our living room under a tent made from a blanket was an adventure.  Wasn’t that just yesterday…

“Mamaw, will you help me tighten up my belt? My knife keeps pulling it down.” Two big brown eyes look up at me from beneath the bill of the hunting cap. I see that familiar  twinkle and I know our little boy is still in there – somewhere – buried underneath all that big-man hunting gear and buck fever.

Hubby has been looking forward to hunting season ever since it ended last year. He’s especially excited about taking Youngest Grandson on his first hunting trip. He has everything all lined up and ready to go including a two-man tree stand that the kids got him for Father’s Day this year. Actually, the thing is as big as a love seat. In fact he’s kept it outside next to the kitchen door all summer and we’ve used it for lawn furniture. It works quite well too except I learned the hard way that if only one person is sitting in it they need to be in the middle to provide balance.

This little lesson came home to roost during the Fourth of July Weekend. Hubby and I  were sitting in the tree stand, or as Hubby refers to it our “redneck patio furniture” watching the fireworks display coming from the trailer park down the road from our house. Suddenly the phone rang and Hubby jumped up and ran inside to answer it and I found myself capsized like a canoe in the rapids, with coffee dripping from my shirt, my feet in the air and the concrete steps in my ribcage.

I finally rolled out from under the offending contraption and made my way into the kitchen, coffee dripping from my soggy shirt and hair. Hubby took one look at me and started to laugh.

“You tipped it over, didn’t you?”  His question was more of a statement and it came out kind of choked by held-back laughter. He tried to look stern as he scolded me for not being more careful. “That’s the third time you’ve hurt your ribs in the past two months. You’re going to hurt yourself really bad if you don’t watch what you’re doing,” he said.

I just looked at him and seethed. All this lecturing coming from the man who put the tree stand beside the door in the first place, the man who just the day before forgot that he’d moved my car and left the engine running for almost an hour, the man who backed his truck into a tree and later into his other truck causing major damage to both vehicles. The man who is taking our little grandson hunting! Have mercy!

As if I don’t worry enough when he goes into the woods which are filled with hungry black bears, fifty-foot trees to fall out of, and dangerous weapons with which he could accidently shoot his legs off.  Now I’ll have to worry about our grandson too.

I finish with Youngest Grandson’s belt and he tells me it’s fine now and starts to walk away. I put my arm around his shoulders and pull him back for a second. “Take care of Papaw today and make sure he is careful,” I say giving him a little wink.

“I will,” he whispers, winking back.

I relax a little. The two have been best buddies for over eight years now. I’m sure they’ll take good care of one another. Having your grandson grow up can be a good thing I suppose…but I’m sure going to miss that little fellow.

**Humor-Blogs.com**

Gentlemen I know your lives aren’t easy. I know we women are a pain to live with sometimes. Okay, most of the time. But life can be made a little easier for you if you follow a few simple rules. I’ve heard several of you grumbling about how you will never understand women, that you sometimes don’t know how to answer us when we ask you a question, and even that you have no way of knowing if the question we ask you is a trick question. Well, I would like to give you a few pointers that might help you understand how our minds work and how to avoid confrontation with the woman in your life.

I will break this down into sections so there will be no confusion. Feel free to take notes.

Actually women like to be told what to do; we just don’t like to be told what to do. So if there are things you “do” or “do not” want us to do you should always let us know by phrasing it in the form of a suggestion and not a command.

Here’s another thing. We like it when you’re stronger, smarter, louder, funnier, and better paid than we are. But we also want to be equal to you. We do not want to be treated any differently, unless of course it’s to open a door for us, move heavy objects or remove the lid from a jar of olives.

You also must realize that there are some things women go through which you may never understand – like PMS and menopause. However, you can become more enlightened about it if you take the time. In order to truly understand this strange phenomenon, you must first do the following experiment. Report back to this column when you have completed the following task:

 (a) Drink at least six gallons of water. You must drink until you feel completely bloated and are unable to fasten the top button of your jeans.

 (b) Do not eat anything for a period of three days during the experiment. However it is suggested that you drink lots of coffee so you will get that jittery feeling, like maybe if  your nerve endings were hanging outside your body and being rattled by a strong breeze. You must feel very weak and dizzy as well. (this is the reason that no food is allowed.)  After you have completed these tasks, answer the following question: “Do I still feel like dancing?”  Perhaps the next time she tells you she doesn’t want to go out because she feels cranky, tired and bloated, you’ll understand and sympathize with her.

For your next experiment follow these instructions:
(a) You must first preheat your oven to about 400 degrees.

(b) Place your head and upper body inside the oven.

(c) After about one minute remove yourself from the oven and put your head and torso into the freezer. 

(d) Do this at least every 30 minutes for the duration of the night.

Congratulations. You have just had your first “hot flash”.  See? Wasn’t that fun? Now remember, you must do this at least once or twice each week for at least a year, maybe longer. By understanding the concept, you will be able to comment intelligently the next time she complains of a hot flash. Maybe with something like, “Girl, I know exactly what you mean. I didn’t sleep a wink the other night.”

Always tell her she’s beautiful, even if you have to lay your tongue on the alter on Sunday and repent for being a little less than truthful…. Okay, for lying through your teeth. Women need to hear this. We know you don’t really mean it, but hey, why would we argue with you if you tell us we’re beautiful?

Pretend to like our cooking, even though you may have to grind your teeth to keep from gagging up a hairball. And never ever under any circumstance tell us how your mother made it. Because, well frankly we don’t care.

And finally, for the love of God, please remember to replace the gas in our car if you run the tank dry. We’re always in a hurry when we leave the house and we have a habit of not checking the gas gage. You don’t want us to run out of gas and get angry with you. Chances are we could be feeling cranky, tired, bloated and having a hot flash when that happens and you would not be pleased when we finally get home.

**Please leave me a comment if you visit. I love to hear your thoughts on the subjects too**

Visit Humor-Blogs.com for more “hot flashes”

My brain has gone on Spring Break. (I know it’s late summer. I had to postpone my vacation until  everybody else came back).

Here’s some good advice for the day: If you have a lot of nervous tension and you get a headache, follow the directions on the aspirin bottle:”Take two aspirin” and “Keep away from children.”

Lately I have been waking up with a severe headache every morning. You know the kind. That one that you get when a two-by-four falls on your head? Oh, you’ve never dropped a board on your head? Well, it isn’t a pleasant feeling. I used to help Hubby with his construction business when we were first married. We were a lot like Alf and Ralph, those two carpenters on the classic TV series Green Acres, only they were brother and sister and Hubby and I are only cousins, (very distant cousins – twenty times removed of course) but mildly related none the less in that we both fell off the same “Kan Foster Family Tree”.

Actually when it comes to a small place like Unicoi County, it’s often difficult to find someone you’re not related to in a round about way. We are all from the same settlers who came to this area nearly two centuries ago and carved out the beauty that we now call home. And let’s face it, who in their right mind would ever want to leave “The Valley Beautiful” and live someplace else. Of course I had a couple of uncles who moved up north and made their homes there, but like I said who in their right mind…

I remember when my sister and I were young children, our northern, city-bred cousins came to visit us during the summer. We thought they were the dumbest kids alive. They didn’t know how to fish, they didn’t know the first thing about animals like cows, chickens and pigs, and they couldn’t even speak our language. They called dinner “lunch” and supper “dinner”. They thought milk was made at the store and that eggs grew on trees. They had never tasted banana pudding and they thought cow-tipping meant giving a fat waitress a few extra dollars after your meal. We spent the whole summer watching out for them, making sure they didn’t step on a rusty nail, fall into the Nolichucky and drown, or get lost trying to find their way to the outhouse in the dark.

Despite all this we had loads of fun and they cried when they had to go home. We all counted the days until the following summer when they could come back again.

But let’s get back to my original point which I think was about my headaches. I finally went to see my doctor about them. She sent me to the hospital for a brain scan. I had the scan done and was telling my son Brandon about it.

“Well, what did it show?” he asked, and I thought for a fleeting moment that he was  concerned, but his next comment killed that idea.

“I bet you got that one done at no cost, didn’t you?”

“Why would you say that? Because my brain is so creative they’ll probably make a movie out of the ex-rays?”  I smiled at him quite smugly.

“No. Because they’ll be able to use the same ex-ray film again since there wasn’t anything showing on it.” 

“You’ve always been such a wonderful son,” I said. “I thought I had my house child-proofed but I see you got in anyway.”

“I bet it’ll be out on video soon,” he said. “They’ll call it Space -The Final Frontier.”

My son, the comedian. The nut doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Anyway, the tests came back negative. Not “negative” in the sense that Brandon was right…it did show a brain, but it didn’t show any abnormalities. So I feel that I should allow it to take a little break. I think I’ll head up north and visit my cousins. I bet they  haven’t been cow-tipping in years.

**HUMOR-BLOGS**

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The price of eating a pig...or eating like one?

 

The waist is a terrible thing to mind. However, it’s hard to ignore it when it starts to hang out over the top of your jeans. Unfortunately, if you live in the South where the four main food groups are flour, salt, sugar and lard, (pronounced shortening for you Northern folk) then you have a good chance of expansion…and a good chance of developing one of those terribly expensive diseases you can’t afford, nor spell, nor pronounce.

I wasn’t always round. I was a very skinny child, all hair and eyeballs. I have naturally curly hair and my mama refused to let me cut it until I was thirty or thereabouts. You could have drawn two big round eyes on a rag mop, stood us up side by side, and we would have been twins.
 
I ate what everyone else ate, but I stayed skinny, all the way through school and up until my mid-forties. Then I became very content with my life, and happy as a pig in a mud hole. And just as plump. I kept packing on the pounds like a groundhog getting ready for Winter.

The bathroom scales screamed and ran away, each time I attempted to weigh myself. I was offered the sturdiest chair in the room when I went to visit my friends. The one-size-fits-all clothing no longer fit my bovine frame, so I resorted to wearing bed sheets, along with a Big Agnes camping  tent on the colder days. I asked Hubby if the sheets made me look fat and he said,  “Sweetie, it doesn’t matter what you wear, so long as you are comfortable.” Loosely translated, that means, “You look like a hippopotamus, and the fact that you’re wearing a purple satin bed sheet is NOT the reason.”

Even my hair felt heavy, and instead of breathing, I huffed and puffed like the Big Bad Wolf if I did anything to over exert myself, like standing up or rolling over in bed. In order to see anything up close, I needed three pairs of glasses and a microscope, and I was about as full of energy as a dead house cat with mange. I decided it might be a good idea to seek medical advice.

Now, my hubby calls me Sweetie, my mama calls me Honey, and the grandkids call me Mamaw, so I’m  used to being called by different names,  but when I finally went to see my doctor, he called me a really ugly name…  He called me a diabetic!  As if the sharp needle that his nurse jabbed into my arm (ten times) wasn’t bad enough. Lord have mercy, is that any way for a doctor to treat someone who is paying him twenty dollars a minute?

According to the doctor, the normal range for the hemoglobin A1c (a simple lab test that measures the average amount of sugar (also called glucose) that has been in a person’s blood over a period of three months) should be around 7 or below. Mine was 14.3. My blood sugar had been at a constant level of 400 or above for many moons. I had won the World Heavyweight Championship title for Type II Diabetes.
 
I was immediately handcuffed, taken into custody, and sentenced to a life of eating nothing but weeds and twigs, green vegetables, raw fruit and no bread! Gone were the days of freedom where I could eat fried pork chops, biscuits and gravy, mashed potatoes, wash it all down with a huge glass of sweet tea (with real sugar) and finish it all off with an entire chocolate cake topped with a half gallon of vanilla ice cream.

They made me eat smaller portions and reduced the size of my dinner plate. So I was served my weeds and fruit on a small plate about the size of a silver dollar. Gone was the overflowing platter of macaroni and cheese, the cornbread and beans, the fried potatoes, and the sweet, sweet tea (with real sugar).

 If I really had to have sweets, I ate jello sweetened with Splenda. The first time I tried it I was amazed. My stomach began  making  noises that sounded like Mt. Vesuvius. I think Splenda must be the active ingredient in Ex-lax.

However, since I was feeling a lot better after the medication started working and my glucose levels were beginning to return to normal, I have stayed with the diet of weeds and roots. It hasn’t been easy. Sometimes I get so hungry I could eat a pile of dirt…if it was mixed with lard and sugar and shaped like a biscuit.

I am once again using the bed sheets to cover the mattress, and I put the tent away. But, now when I put on my clothes, they still look the same as they did when they were on the hanger. I am nothing more than a bone with hair and eyeballs, and I look exactly like my rag mop.
 
I think I’ll get us both dressed up, draw her a pair of big round eyes and go have our picture taken.  I’ll be the one on the left with the short hair.

Humor-Blogs has pigs…and they’re very funny.

Call me crazy but I dont understand fruit.  Every time I eat a peach, I become more and more confused. Have you ever thought about the vast differences between one fruit and another? 

Take the banana and the apple. The apple is red, shiny and shaped like…well it’s shaped like an apple. And the banana isn’t. Don’t you find that kind of strange?

Apple

Several days ago I happened upon the blog called Nanny Goats In panties where  I read the funniest post titled “We Pass The Gas Onto You“. I laughed so hard I broke some veins in my forehead.

However, that’s not what I want to talk about today. Instead I want to talk about her suggestion that we find a solution to the high price of gasoline instead of posting about it on our blogs, because quite frankly she is sick of hearing about it. In her words:

“When are all you whiners going to stop complaining and DO something about it?”

Below are two solutions that I discovered just this week.

This little jewel gets 5 miles per windup on the highway and 2 in the city!

 

However if this is too much car for you, here is another source of bio fuel.  I think it may run on coffee…or some other type of stimulant…depending on one’s need for speed.

 

 

This is a fine runnin' car!

By the way, this is a CARtoon. Bwahahaha. Get it? CARtoo…oh, never mind!  Visit Humor-Blogs  if you want real humor.

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