Thanksgiving Memories

Well another Thanksgiving has come and gone. We feasted on the usual, baked turkey with dressing, homemade egg noodles, mac and cheese, mashed taters, green beans and a multitude of desserts and snacks. All in all everyone left very satisfied and content with their meal.

As usual I watched the Macy’s parade with Mom; I still love seeing those balloons come’n down the street. One day I hope to go see it live! Wouldn’t that just be super exciting? But then again that would mean spending the holiday away from the family.

Before everyone started rolling in me and Mom reminisced about holidays gone by. She laughed about one Thanksgiving when my aunt’s husband and father in law were here. You see Thanksgiving morning used to consist of a rabbit hunt. The “men folk” would all get up early and go out rabbit hunting together. But one year, we’re not really clear on how it happened but my Uncle Allard’s dad shot him full of buckshot in the backside. No real damage done, but it is a rather amusing memory for Mom to think back on them digging buck shot out of Allard’s behind. It doesn’t take much to amuse country folks as you can tell.

Then my sister was here remembering a time when we were all down at my Grandma Riddlebarger’s house for Thanksgiving. We all loved going to Grandma’s too. She made the very best chocolate pie! The kind where the pudding formed that thick layer of chocolate on the top, boy howdy do I miss those pies, and of course I miss my Grandma, haha everyone says I was always her favorite! Grandma didn’t make egg noodles though; she made the most delicious dumpling! Then Uncle June he always made the mashed potatoes, nothing like good lumpy fresh made mashed potatoes! Oh well, enough drooling over food memories, back to the story! We were at the dinner table and my Dad was eating rolls and he scooped up a big spoon of cranberry sauce and lathered up his bread and took a big bite only to find out someone left the jello on the table instead of the cranberry sauce. Of course Dad in all his grace is like I’ve always liked my jello on bread, he was just too cool to let anything bother him, so he just ate his jello covered roll like he’d been doing it forever.

Grandma and Dad are no longer with us, but the wonderful times they shared with us will always be passed along on the holidays. So the new members of the family will always get to hear the tales of the good old days gone by while creating their own memories.

This year was a difficult one for me, putting on a smile and facing everyone like everything was wonderful in the world. My Thanksgiving memories aren’t all the best, two years ago my husband and I were flat broke, he was taking chemo for his colon cancer and nothing was going very well. But a dear friend went to the food line and brought us dinners so that we too had something for the holiday. Even though it was difficult we realized we still were thankful we had each other. Then last year, well this is when he suffered his breakdown and we weren’t even able to be together at all. And this year is my first holiday season since his passing. Not easy to handle everything that’s happened but I am very thankful that I have my daughter and grandson to keep my mind busy and they give me so much love and comfort it’s just hard to put to words what it means to me. But still I do miss Bobby Gene, more than anyone realizes.

So another November is behind us, and two more holidays to survive. I still have two more holidays to get through and with the help of my daughter, grandson and a multitude of online friends I’m sure things will go ok. Seasons change, just as life so for now I just have to await those changes and say lots of prayers for the future and keep the good memories in the forefront of my mind.

My Vocabulary and Grammar

Well I guess it’s time to explain some of my vocabulary. When I first started chatting back in the late 90’s when AOL chat was so hot, I found Excite chat, aka Virtual Places or VP chat, I was totally thrilled at the chance to meet and talk to so many people from all around the world! And there was no voice chat at that time so you kinda had to just wonder what people sounded like. Well I had figured out this way to type like I talk. Basically giving phonetics a chance to show through in my text, so if you are reading through my blogs and find words you don’t quite get, just sound it out it’s not all that hard to do.

For example, if you hear me say the word your, it sounds more like yer and then forget often comes out ferget. See very simple right? I thought so too cause well I am after all just a simple holler gal. And believe it or not I actually got an A in college English courses. I just prefer to type it so it at least sounds like something I would say. 

Now where this was all actually brought to my attention was when voice chat began. My online friends were all using it and just die’n to hear me talk. I had friends from all over the world and half dozen different states in the USA too.  Being from Ohio they were all totally shocked the first time they heard me talk, even had one call me on the phone just to double check I really did talk that way lol. You see even though I was born and raised in a so called “yankee” state, I sound like I should have grown up on a plantation down south somewhere.  I don’t know why I have such a heavy southern accent, it’s just one of those things that happened. The rest of the family isn’t like mine, granted they have a country twang, but not that southern drawl.

So when I’m type’n and explain’n things yea I type just like I talk. Don’t think I’m some backwoods redneck that doesn’t know what the dictionary or spell check is for, because trust me I may be almost a redneck, but I can carry on a conversation with even the snooty folks around town.  I’m not here to teach grammer (and yea I do know its spelled grammar), just here to be myself so like it or leave it, it’s that simple. I hope ya like it and find some humor along the way cause that’s all its intended for. To entertain and let people get to know me a little bit more.

So with that being said, I hope y’all keep come’n back and pull ya up a seat sit back and enjoy and drop me a line from time to time.  Face it even Miriam-Webster now lists the word “ain’t” in it so who knows some of my werds might make it there too one day!

Humor and Rhoid Rage

I’ve always been told my sense of humor is one of my best qualities. Even growing up my Dad told me I didn’t have sense enough to not smile, that’s just how I am I guess. Is laughter the best medicine? Well I guess that depends on several factors, mainly if you have stitches laughter is NOT the best medicine for you.  But laughter can lift your spirits even at the worst of times. Strange how that works, but none the less, it is true.

Just last night me and an old friend, that has known me since I was 5 years old, opinion was that the smile makes people wonder what I’m up to. I have to agree, over the years I’ve had quite a few people just look at me and ask “what are you up to?” I find it rather amusing, even my husband would ask me that same question or he would say “what do you want?” and if I would ask why he was asking his response would always be the same, “then what are you smiling about?”

My husband passed away April 11, 2009, I miss him dearly and that is definitely nothing to smile about. He had a wonderful sense of humor and was always making me laugh. One of our funniest memories was our third date. He invited me to go watch his son’s little league baseball game as a way to introduce me publicly as his girlfriend. Old fashioned you may think, but actually it was because his ex-wife would be there with her family and he wanted to “show me off” to them (and no I’m not claiming to be a raving beauty, but in his eyes I was). Anyways to get back to the story, it was a hot day, but he had ask that I leave my hair down (my hair is very long). We sat down at a picnic table to watch the game and it was rather windy that day, well I noticed him moving out of the corner of my eye and noticed he was just rubbing his nose (yes rubbing not picking).  The next thing I knew my head was jerked towards him rather quickly! The wind had blown a single strand of my hair across his face, and Bobby Gene thought it was one really long nose hair and grabbed it trying his best to not be noticed and, yes you guessed it, yanked quickly as hard as he could pulling my hair and tugging my head over towards him.  When I looked at him and ask him what the crap was that for he literally burst out laughing and he thought it was his nose hair! God love his heart I had to laugh with him, it was just so funny. Needless to say the people there watching the ballgame were all looking to see why we were sitting there laughing till we were both crying, including his ex and her family.  I only wish now that I had written down all of his humorous activities during the 7 years we were together, because he was the funniest person that I have ever known.

Even the first time he was slightly upset with me and he called me a bitch, he was so shocked that I simply looked at him and smiled and said “thanks for noticing” then I called him a brat. He had to laugh and tell me I was one of a kind.  Well I believe I’ve drifted off my original intentions in this blog. But that’s a good thing about blogs; you can rattle on and not worry about it.

Back to my humorous side, I’ve had a lot of health problems over the years. I have to say that pain really isn’t something to laugh about, but it does help with your recovery, at least that’s my opinion. And the past couple of weeks, laughter really is what has helped me the most (excluding the pain pills). One subject very few people will laugh about is hemorrhoids. And I can’t say that I blame them, they truly are very painful and strike you down without warning! If you’re lucky simple medicine treatments will clear them up for you, but if you’re luck is like mine they will grow and grow and grow till you honestly cannot take it no more. Then you have internal and external both at the same time and both bleeding and making you miserable.  So you call up your doctor and tell them you need seen and go for a doctor’s visit.

Well let me say this is really one of the most embarrassing situations to need a doctor for especially that examination. I mean you’re bent over an elevated table while your doctor stands behind you with a light on his head so he can see under the sheet and the next thing you hear is “Oh my Lord”. Well once again I had to laugh, he instantly apologized and I told him it was ok, I had said that multiple times myself when the flare up hit. So next he tells me I have to surgery as soon as possible that it was an emergency situation.

So Friday, I literally had a pain in my ass removed, thus leaving another type of pain in my ass, one that was worse than the original but supposedly will help out in the long run. So now I have to humor myself while at the same time I cannot stand to even sit on the couch. The nurses had all advised me that I want to steer away from any type of foods that would “constipate” me considering the part that was getting cut on. Then they tell you take a laxative nightly and stool softeners to help.  The nurses also warned me that because of the pain pills and often hidden fears of what it would be like to have that first bowel movement (which I will now refer to as a BM) after surgery I still have to go “potty”.

Well let me say this, there was no way on earth any words could prepare me for that first BM. I can’t even begin to put to words what that first BM was like. I’ve considered many different descriptions, such as giving birth through the wrong hole, crapping a baseball, but so far my best way of describing it is having a blow torch fired up and shoved up your own behind flame and all. I know most people have eaten something with hot peppers in it and thought their behind was on fire, but even that doesn’t come close to how bad that first and following BM’s have hurt. It is an entirely new type of pain and one that I pray I don’t have to go through ever again.  And since I’ve been staying with my elderly mother during the recovery time, I was not able to scream out obscenities to help sooth my own mind, I’ve simply had to grin and bear it so to speak.  And because I’m on pain medicine I can’t even use my Jose Cuervo to lighten the mood either, I’ve given it thought to trying that instead of the pain pills also.  And if you’re wondering what type of pain meds its Toradol every 6 hours for 5 days and Vicodin every 4 hours as needed, and boy howdy is it needed!

In closing I have to say that I now have to come up with a new term for people and things that I consider a pain in the ass, because I know now exactly what a pain in the ass is like and there is no one or nothing that so far in my 47 years comes close to this past week and have’n the rhoids removed. But I do believe I’ve found a completely new “rhoid rage” that would cause people to get violent! Never upset anyone recovering from a hemorrhoidectomy, cause trust in me, after that surgery no one has the patience to put up with anything remotely belligerent.

So as a great musical group, The Monkeys, once sang “Every face that I see is all wrapped up in frowns and unfortunately, it kind of gets me down. Laugh, at the things that are wrong. Then laugh.”