I am pondering a sign I saw in a front yard today. A front yard in a booming metropolis in Hillmomba, one commercial building away from a 7-11, across the street from a library, catty-corner from a post office, at a four-way stop. This sign said:
"We (heart) our children. Please drive carefully."
Hows about y'all HEART your children a little bitty bit more, and KEEP THEM OUT OF THE FREAKIN' ROAD? Hows about that, huh? That house sets about 10 feet from a public sidewalk, which is next to a strip of pavement that can be used as off-road parking. There is a fenced back yard behind the house. Duh. It's a BACK yard.
What's the deal? Have the kids been jaywalking to the library? Playing stickball in the street? Setting up lawn chairs in the parking space and watching traffic like a parade? Did a semi plow into the front porch? Are drivers losing control at .o1 miles per hour at the stop sign? Concussor and his little brothers lived in that house last summer. There was no carnage. All of them still have all their appendages, and nary a concussion in the bunch. A sign like that is just begging people to rev their engines and drive up onto the porch.
In other puzzling matters, a woman and teenager at The Dollar Tree accosted the checker in an effort to find where she had hidden the lubricating jelly. I kid you not.
"Where is the lubricating jelly?"
"Lubricating jelly?"
"Yes, lubricating jelly. My daughter and I have looked all over for it."
"Well..."
"And I don't mean Vaseline. That won't work. My husband has to have lubricating jelly."
I left before they reached a resolution. But I can't help to wonder if it was that kind of lubricating jelly. Or if the woman even knew what she was asking for. Or if the man had some kind of medical condition that requires generic lubricating jelly. Or else, wouldn't that woman have asked for some K-Y? Maybe her husband didn't tell her why he needed it. Maybe he has a thing going on the side. Maybe it's with some kind of animal and that's why he requires lubricating jelly, as in, the animal just isn't that into him.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Would A Possum, By Any Other Name, Still Play So Dead?
Some time back, a couple of years, perhaps, I created a fictional TV series for myself. Why not? Don't cost nothin'. I think it may have been entitled The Sitcom of My Life, but I couldn't find the pilot episode, so I'll link Season 2. Now I have smaller fish to fry. Since I can think of nothing interesting to write about lately, I am going the way of 25-year-old men who come in to scrimmage against 10th grade boys at basketball open gym, and attempting to relive my glory days. So I am writing a book in my head that I tentatively refer to as Hillbilly Mom's Greatest Hits.
Hillbilly Mom's Greatest Hits is not the best of titles. For instance, I wouldn't want somebody to think Hillbilly Mom's Greatest Hits is a musical venture, like a collection of cover songs from Mommy's Got A Headache, my imaginary garage band. So I'm in the market for a clever title for my imaginary book.
This is what I've got so far:
Sh*t HM Says
The Curious Incident of the Headless Apparition in the Night-Time
The Gal Who Kicked the Rat's Nest
HM Shrugged
New Moon (the Schoolbus Saga, pt. 2)
The Wood Mansion: A Memoir
The 7 Habits of a Highly Ineffective Teacher
The Deep End of Hillmomba
House of Sand and Dirt
Of Goats and Men
The Teacher Diaries
The Catcher of the Lie
The Whining
More on this imaginary venture as it develops. I am open to your title suggestions.
Hillbilly Mom's Greatest Hits is not the best of titles. For instance, I wouldn't want somebody to think Hillbilly Mom's Greatest Hits is a musical venture, like a collection of cover songs from Mommy's Got A Headache, my imaginary garage band. So I'm in the market for a clever title for my imaginary book.
This is what I've got so far:
Sh*t HM Says
The Curious Incident of the Headless Apparition in the Night-Time
The Gal Who Kicked the Rat's Nest
HM Shrugged
New Moon (the Schoolbus Saga, pt. 2)
The Wood Mansion: A Memoir
The 7 Habits of a Highly Ineffective Teacher
The Deep End of Hillmomba
House of Sand and Dirt
Of Goats and Men
The Teacher Diaries
The Catcher of the Lie
The Whining
More on this imaginary venture as it develops. I am open to your title suggestions.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Procrastination, Thy Name Is Hillbilly Mom
Well, well, well. It seems that one Mrs. Hillbilly Mom has put off writing on her blog once again. Now it is late, and I am not in the mood. Shame on me. I've had all day, and nothing to show you for it.
Don't hate the blogger, hate the blog. How can I be expected to keep up with it when I'm on summer vacation? It seems like only yesterday that the lion's share of my thyroid was ripped out, then there was the Missifreakinsippi Heat Wave Vacation, then all that driving of the #1 son to and fro with his basketball open gym and our Sprint phone adventure, and now The Pony has become a 20-hour project for my niece to experiment on, hopefully with reading, and not a staph infection.
This morning, I had to shoo Farmer H out of the Mansion, because even though he ran off early as usual, he returned at 10:00 and plopped himself on the couch while I was trying to hear Hot Topics on The View. I'm not really a fan, seeing as how Whoopi hurts my eyes because she is without a doubt the ugliest woman on TV, unless you count Shelley Duvall when The Shining is on, and Joy is an annoying, self-righteous blowhard, and poor Sherri is just box-o'-rocks dumb, and Elisabeth was never on my favorite list, even on Survivor 2: Australian Outback, when I simply wished she would starve to death and spare the world her fashion shoe line. Thank the Gummi Mary, crypt-keeper Barbara is off to still her beating heart for a while, because somebody (cough-Bill Geddes-cough) forgot to tell her it is 2010 and not 1940, for cryin' out loud. But I DO like a good catfight every now and then, and these gals do not disappoint.
After booting Farmer H, found an Intervention marathon, which of course needed watching, and I had to take a break to drive the boys to town for The Pony's reading project with the niece. By the time I got back, it was 3:30, which meant time to pat out some hamburgers and shuck some roastin' ears to boil later and carve up some strawberries so things would be ready when Farmer H decided to come out of his air-conditioned BARn, where I found him after leaving him mowing the front 20 when I left for town, in order to fire up the Weber to grill supper.
Of course, while I was in the kitchen, I noticed that a Silent Library marathon was going on MTV. You can't pass up spending the afternoon in the Silent Library. By the time supper was over, it was 7:00, and then I had to go back and read some of Hillbilly Mom's Greatest Hits, if by Greatest Hits you can imagine past posts on my older incarnations that I cleverly call Hillbilly Mansion One thru Hillbilly Mansion Four. Not that I had time to read all of them, by cracky, because ol' Hillbilly Mom is quite prolific in her prose and time does not permit a complete reading in one sitting.
And that's how it came to be so late in the evening. But rest assured, I did not step outside to smoke myself a J.
Don't hate the blogger, hate the blog. How can I be expected to keep up with it when I'm on summer vacation? It seems like only yesterday that the lion's share of my thyroid was ripped out, then there was the Missifreakinsippi Heat Wave Vacation, then all that driving of the #1 son to and fro with his basketball open gym and our Sprint phone adventure, and now The Pony has become a 20-hour project for my niece to experiment on, hopefully with reading, and not a staph infection.
This morning, I had to shoo Farmer H out of the Mansion, because even though he ran off early as usual, he returned at 10:00 and plopped himself on the couch while I was trying to hear Hot Topics on The View. I'm not really a fan, seeing as how Whoopi hurts my eyes because she is without a doubt the ugliest woman on TV, unless you count Shelley Duvall when The Shining is on, and Joy is an annoying, self-righteous blowhard, and poor Sherri is just box-o'-rocks dumb, and Elisabeth was never on my favorite list, even on Survivor 2: Australian Outback, when I simply wished she would starve to death and spare the world her fashion shoe line. Thank the Gummi Mary, crypt-keeper Barbara is off to still her beating heart for a while, because somebody (cough-Bill Geddes-cough) forgot to tell her it is 2010 and not 1940, for cryin' out loud. But I DO like a good catfight every now and then, and these gals do not disappoint.
After booting Farmer H, found an Intervention marathon, which of course needed watching, and I had to take a break to drive the boys to town for The Pony's reading project with the niece. By the time I got back, it was 3:30, which meant time to pat out some hamburgers and shuck some roastin' ears to boil later and carve up some strawberries so things would be ready when Farmer H decided to come out of his air-conditioned BARn, where I found him after leaving him mowing the front 20 when I left for town, in order to fire up the Weber to grill supper.
Of course, while I was in the kitchen, I noticed that a Silent Library marathon was going on MTV. You can't pass up spending the afternoon in the Silent Library. By the time supper was over, it was 7:00, and then I had to go back and read some of Hillbilly Mom's Greatest Hits, if by Greatest Hits you can imagine past posts on my older incarnations that I cleverly call Hillbilly Mansion One thru Hillbilly Mansion Four. Not that I had time to read all of them, by cracky, because ol' Hillbilly Mom is quite prolific in her prose and time does not permit a complete reading in one sitting.
And that's how it came to be so late in the evening. But rest assured, I did not step outside to smoke myself a J.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Day 2 Of The Takeover
We are only on Day 2 of the Interminable Farmer H Takeover of the Mansion. Things do not run smoothly when he is underfoot. He seems to think we are all under his foot. We must ask HOW HIGH SIR when he tells us to jump. It's immediate. No dawdling, no ruminating, no explanations. That's his style. Not ours.
Never mind that he disappears at the crack of 8:00 a.m. and is not seen again until 2:00. We'd better be lined up waiting, with the proper shirt, like the soldiers of Gunny Highway, as depicted by Clint Eastwood, in Heartbreak Ridge. Our mission might be to find and purchase and hold out to his hot, heavy hand within 10 minutes a roll of Egyptian-themed wallpaper for The Pony's room. Or to find his soft-sided fanny-pack cooler so he can take it to the Cardinals' game in two hours (and not complain when he asks each one of us what we did with it, and especially not complain when the #1 son finds it in the back of Farmer H's everyday automobile). Or to gather eggs NOW like they are filled with nitroglycerin, and the New Madrid Fault is set to reverse the flow of the Mississippi River in the next 10 seconds. After our missions are completed or commenced to his satisfaction, Farmer H settles himself into Poolio for a two-hour soak while the rest of the Hillbilly household breathes a collective sigh of relief.
Farmer H: all the bluster of a gunnery sergeant, but without the military training.
Never mind that he disappears at the crack of 8:00 a.m. and is not seen again until 2:00. We'd better be lined up waiting, with the proper shirt, like the soldiers of Gunny Highway, as depicted by Clint Eastwood, in Heartbreak Ridge. Our mission might be to find and purchase and hold out to his hot, heavy hand within 10 minutes a roll of Egyptian-themed wallpaper for The Pony's room. Or to find his soft-sided fanny-pack cooler so he can take it to the Cardinals' game in two hours (and not complain when he asks each one of us what we did with it, and especially not complain when the #1 son finds it in the back of Farmer H's everyday automobile). Or to gather eggs NOW like they are filled with nitroglycerin, and the New Madrid Fault is set to reverse the flow of the Mississippi River in the next 10 seconds. After our missions are completed or commenced to his satisfaction, Farmer H settles himself into Poolio for a two-hour soak while the rest of the Hillbilly household breathes a collective sigh of relief.
Farmer H: all the bluster of a gunnery sergeant, but without the military training.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Saturday Smattering
Farmer H and the #1 son have gone to the Cardinals game tonight. The Pony and I are going to watch Flicka 2, which is some kind of movie pushed by The Devil's Playground. We got another one a couple months ago about some family mystery in a mountain that was pretty good, even though the glaring inclusion of Great Value products all over their kitchen table kind of took me out of the plot every now and then.
The holiday people have converged on Hillmomba, flying up and down the gravel road, flinging precious stones willy-nilly. Precious stones, as in the gravel that we bought three loads of last week at $100 a pop. And that was a discount, because Buddy, Farmer H's childhood pal, hauled them for just the cost of gravel and his gas. Of course, he was using his dump truck that Farmer H and a few cronies made by cutting the trailer off a big MACK truck and rigging up hydraulics for a dumper and such. Never underestimate the good ol' boy redneck network. Frat brothers, they ain't. But it works the same way. Just in case you're interested, a regular load of gravel is $160 around these parts.
Well, I'm off to the movie.
The holiday people have converged on Hillmomba, flying up and down the gravel road, flinging precious stones willy-nilly. Precious stones, as in the gravel that we bought three loads of last week at $100 a pop. And that was a discount, because Buddy, Farmer H's childhood pal, hauled them for just the cost of gravel and his gas. Of course, he was using his dump truck that Farmer H and a few cronies made by cutting the trailer off a big MACK truck and rigging up hydraulics for a dumper and such. Never underestimate the good ol' boy redneck network. Frat brothers, they ain't. But it works the same way. Just in case you're interested, a regular load of gravel is $160 around these parts.
Well, I'm off to the movie.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Beans And Franks And Staph, Oh My!
Yesterday, I demonstrated how no good deed goes unpunished, even if the good deed involves reuniting a dog owner with his two lost puppies. But there's more to the story. A tale of horror. A virtual Hillbilly Mom's Treehouse of Terror, if Mrs. HM was a yellow cartoon character with her own long-running TV show. Humor me, people.
My niece, the puppy-saver, had stopped by my mom's house to work with The Pony on a college reading project. She came up to the kitchen to tell me her puppy tale. In her gesturing, I noticed two oozing sores on the back of her left hand. They were side-by-side, not quite touching. The left one was the size of a dime, the right one the size of a quarter, and both were chartreuse in color. Not being one to mince words, I squealed, "Eewww! What's wrong with your hand?"
Niece: "I don't know. I went camping and floating, and when I came back, it was like this. I think it is from a sunburn. It kind of bubbled up, and then the skin came off the top. Or maybe it was from before I went camping, because I got a new bed, and I was putting on the sheets, and I skinned the back of my hand on the headboard, and a little bit of skin pulled off. I'm grossing out, because the SUN did that."
Mrs. HM: "You need to go to the doctor. That's an infection."
Niece: "You think so? My dad is so mad that he won't even speak to me. He says I have some kind of skin cancer and my hand is going to fall off because I won't go to the doctor. I'm too busy to go to the doctor and sit around in the waiting room."
Mrs. HM: "Go to the doctor. You need an antibiotic."
Niece: "Maybe I'll go tomorrow. I wonder if a dermatologist would have as long a wait?"
Mrs. HM: "Probably not. It's a $40 copay instead of a $20 copay."
HM's mother, playing the part of Grandma: "There's always the emergency room."
Mrs. HM: "Uh, yeah, for a $100 copay IF they allow it, or she'll have to pay for the whole visit, because it's a weekday during normal doctors' hours, and it's just an infection."
What is wrong with these people? Surely we are not really related. Let's not forget that my mom had a doctor recommend amputation for her FAT RED PINKY FINGER when she poked it with a needle and some 40-year-old Bactine to drain an infection, leading to surgery to clean up the bone. Or that my sister, Niece's mother, had a huge abscess on her index finger a couple years ago, and the doctor had to slice it open with a scalpel, at which time a lot of foul-smelling goo shot out. No way that Niece got that infection from the sun. She must have had an insect bite or a skinned spot and dragged it through the river water on her float trip, or dipped it down a Port-A-Potty after a rowdy evening around the campfire.
But that's not the horrible part of this horror story. Niece said that she might go to the doctor tomorrow, then proceeded to tell me the puppy-saver story. I sat raptly at the kitchen table while she stood next to it, gesturing like Helen Keller on meth. She reached the part about finding the poodle puppies, wet with dew, and picking them up while they squirmed and licked at her face. I smart-a$edly asked, "Did the puppies lick your hand?" And then IT happened.
Her sore-riddled hand swatted the plastic straw of my large mug of ice water!
I inhaled sharply. The look on my face would compare to that of Mary's step-father, when he asked Ben Stiller's character, "How'd you get the beans above the frank?" I know that Niece had to see the revulsion in my eyes. But as a young woman of 21 absorbed in her story, the real reason for my discomfort did not register.
Niece: "Yeah. Don't worry. It's no big deal. I washed my hand since the puppy licked it."
My niece, the puppy-saver, had stopped by my mom's house to work with The Pony on a college reading project. She came up to the kitchen to tell me her puppy tale. In her gesturing, I noticed two oozing sores on the back of her left hand. They were side-by-side, not quite touching. The left one was the size of a dime, the right one the size of a quarter, and both were chartreuse in color. Not being one to mince words, I squealed, "Eewww! What's wrong with your hand?"
Niece: "I don't know. I went camping and floating, and when I came back, it was like this. I think it is from a sunburn. It kind of bubbled up, and then the skin came off the top. Or maybe it was from before I went camping, because I got a new bed, and I was putting on the sheets, and I skinned the back of my hand on the headboard, and a little bit of skin pulled off. I'm grossing out, because the SUN did that."
Mrs. HM: "You need to go to the doctor. That's an infection."
Niece: "You think so? My dad is so mad that he won't even speak to me. He says I have some kind of skin cancer and my hand is going to fall off because I won't go to the doctor. I'm too busy to go to the doctor and sit around in the waiting room."
Mrs. HM: "Go to the doctor. You need an antibiotic."
Niece: "Maybe I'll go tomorrow. I wonder if a dermatologist would have as long a wait?"
Mrs. HM: "Probably not. It's a $40 copay instead of a $20 copay."
HM's mother, playing the part of Grandma: "There's always the emergency room."
Mrs. HM: "Uh, yeah, for a $100 copay IF they allow it, or she'll have to pay for the whole visit, because it's a weekday during normal doctors' hours, and it's just an infection."
What is wrong with these people? Surely we are not really related. Let's not forget that my mom had a doctor recommend amputation for her FAT RED PINKY FINGER when she poked it with a needle and some 40-year-old Bactine to drain an infection, leading to surgery to clean up the bone. Or that my sister, Niece's mother, had a huge abscess on her index finger a couple years ago, and the doctor had to slice it open with a scalpel, at which time a lot of foul-smelling goo shot out. No way that Niece got that infection from the sun. She must have had an insect bite or a skinned spot and dragged it through the river water on her float trip, or dipped it down a Port-A-Potty after a rowdy evening around the campfire.
But that's not the horrible part of this horror story. Niece said that she might go to the doctor tomorrow, then proceeded to tell me the puppy-saver story. I sat raptly at the kitchen table while she stood next to it, gesturing like Helen Keller on meth. She reached the part about finding the poodle puppies, wet with dew, and picking them up while they squirmed and licked at her face. I smart-a$edly asked, "Did the puppies lick your hand?" And then IT happened.
Her sore-riddled hand swatted the plastic straw of my large mug of ice water!
I inhaled sharply. The look on my face would compare to that of Mary's step-father, when he asked Ben Stiller's character, "How'd you get the beans above the frank?" I know that Niece had to see the revulsion in my eyes. But as a young woman of 21 absorbed in her story, the real reason for my discomfort did not register.
Niece: "Yeah. Don't worry. It's no big deal. I washed my hand since the puppy licked it."
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