My son Phil

I have to tell ya'll, I am so proud of my youngest son. He is doing so good, despite losing his father when he was nine. I did take him to a therapist for a few months after his father's death, and that may be one reason he is doing so good now.

He and I have had our disagreements, but Phil never did anything to seriously worry me. I remember worrying about that one night, till a friend of mine told me how silly I was being. The only thing he does now is smoke. I want him to stop and I am praying he will.

Phil is twenty now and in his second year of college. He gets good grades. He could do better, and I think he is this year. Last year was his first time to really be away from home and he did get a little silly. He won fifty dollars by drinking a gallon of milk at one sitting, something I am told can't be done without the person throwing up. Phil didn't throw up.

This year, between our finances and Katrina he has had to stay home and attend the local community college. He applied to Ole Miss last week, so he will be heading up there next year. He is leaning towards the law, but he is such a good writer that I suspect he may be a journalist. Maybe he will do both.

Today, a woman called me looking for Phil. She is a lawyer and Phil had applied to be a runner for the law firm she works for. I told her that he was at school right then, but I would have her call him. She then told me how impressed she had been with his resume. She said that I must really be proud, which I am and which led me to write this tonight.

Dennis would be proud of Phil.

Red state blue state.....ONE country...

I just got done watching a video slide show of pictures that a local EMT took of Katrina. Mostly the damage, but some of the actual storm. I can never watch something like this without getting all teary. Mainly from looking at the faces of the people who stayed through the storm and stayed on duty for days afterwards, but also, from seeing the people who left their homes and jobs and families and came to help. All the political, red state blue state mess forgotten. Thank you is just not enough.

I am going to see if I can post this on one of the online picture slide shows, so others can see it.

Grinches abound

The PC Grinches have been working overtime the past few years to rid the world of a horrible, nasty and racist expression that has been in use in the United States (if not the world) for hundreds of years. The phrase? Merry Christmas. They are watching and keeping their lists and checking them twice.....(ok, ok) They want us to say Happy Holidays instead. They want people to stop saying "Merry Christmas" or putting a sign in a shop window with "Merry Christmas" on it. And, of course, they want to stop schools from having "Christmas" anything.

Let's take this a step further. What about the Christmas songs?

" White Christmas" would be....

I'm dreaming of a white Holiday
With every Holiday card I write
May your days be merry and bright
And may all you Holidays be bright

Or....

"We wish you a Happy Holiday"

And, how's this?

"Have yourself a happy little holiday
Let your heart be light
From now on,
Our troubles will be out of sight"

Or....

"rocking around the holiday tree"..

Or..

The Twelve Days of Holiday????

Or..

"Silver Bells" 'there's a feeling of HOLIDAY in the air'?

Or...

"O' HOLIDAY Tree"?

What about Feliz Navidad? Which means Merry Christmas in Spanish, will we have to just trash that song?

And, what about 'yuletide'? Or 'yule'? Will we have to throw out "The Christmas Song'? I mean, we can change it to 'The Holiday Song', but what about the lyrics...'yuletide carols being sung by a choir'? Yuletide means Christmas Season. If we cannot make that fit the new Happy Holidays theme, will we have to just stop singing it?

And, for goodness sake, what will we do with 'Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer'? Singing, 'Grandma got run over by a reindeer, walking home from our house Holiday Eve', just does not sound right.

And, 'then one foggy HOLIDAY eve, Santa came to say'.....please people, get some sense.

There are so many songs and traditions that will have to be changed or stopped completely, if the PC grinches continue. I have never been offended by seeing Hanukkah candles or seeing Hanukkah greeting cards. Nor, has it ever bothered me when Muslim oo-workers celebrated or observed Rahmadan. Why is it just Christmas that is being targeted by the PC grinches?

Come on, get real and take on the real issues. Like starving children all over the world, even here in the US. If you want to make a difference in someone's life, buy clothes and food for a family. Is it that you don't actually want to make a difference? Is it that you want your name on the news and maybe a hundred years from now, someone might come across it doing a history report? I hope the report is about the 100 Fools of the 2005. And, I hope that YOUR name will be right on there on top.

Falls and........

I am one of those people who laugh like crazy when they see someone fall. You know the falls I mean. The ones where a person does more damage trying to stop the fall than if they had just gone with it. I don't like to see people hurt, and I will do whatever I can to help them, all the while laughing hysterically. This is the only reason I watch AFV.

Last night, while watching AFV with my friend Leslie, she decided to tell me about a fall she had recently in Branson, Mo. (Leslie is a wonderful,sweet friend who is a large woman,and who insists on wearing dainty shoes, especially sandals.) She said she was walking on an even paved surface when she stumbled over her own feet (read, silly sandals). This fall was one of the running two or three steps to try to save yourself from falling variety, which only makes you look sillier and you fall anyway. Let me add here that Leslie has a wonderful discriptive way of telling her experiences, so by the time she told me about sitting in her car surveying the damage, I was choking with laughter. I could just see her dance-running across the parking lot. I tried to be sympathetic as she described her injuries, skinned knees, skinned elbow, and a skinned nose. The nose is what did it. I lost it. She then told me that she still wonders why she puts up with me as a friend.Thing is,she does the same to me. I once almost stepped on a snake and she still tells people how high I jumped.

My mother went through abou three years of falling. She fell in downtown Moss Point, Ms once, during the worst of the 'shipyard' traffic. (Shift change, in other words.) We were walking to a taxi stand to order a taxi to take one of my brother's to work. She saw a cute little puppy and just as she pointed to it and said,'Oh look at that puppy.' She stepped off the sidewalk and went down. I helped her up, but I could not help laughing. She then said something that just hearing it now makes me laugh...'You would laugh if I killed myself'...Another time, she was rocking one of my neices when the rocker just kept going backwards. There she was, laying on her back, holding my neice, looking like she was still sitting up. Same position. I managed to hold my laughter and went to help her up. I looked at Wayne just as Mama said it...I nearly peed myself that time. Another time, we lived across the street from a laundromat. I was working nights and when I woke up, I heard her in the kitchen. I went in and there she was, standing by the sink with the whole of the rear of her pants wet and muddy. I never did find out why she would rather try to jump the ditch instead of going down the driveway. It was not any closer. Anyway, I walked into the kitchen, she was standing there looking out the window, drinking water. I did not make a sound. Then, she said it. I was always able to not laugh, well, at least not until I was away from her, unless she said it.

I have fallen. And, I laugh just as hard when it is me. Once, when I was about seven months pregnant with my youngest son, I was walking in the mall with Michael (youngest daughter). She grabbed my arm to show me something and down I went. She was afraid that I was hurt, so she did not laugh, at first. Then, the both of us were laughing so hard, I was almost unable to get up.

So, if you fall in front of me, and I laugh, please understand that it is the falling, the rediculous way you look trying not to fall, that is so funny. And, know too that I will help you as much as I can while I am laughing.

Christmas Magic

Christmas, or rather, the Christmas Season, is usually a time of gloom and doom for me. As much as I try to be different, I usually don't get into the 'Christmas Spirit' until a day or two before Christmas day.

Part of the reason for this is being raised a Jehovah's Witness. JWs don't celebrate holidays. But, I think the real reason I am the way I am is my weird family. My father was an alcoholic who rarely supported us and my mother was slowly going mental, probably starting when she lost her entire family.

Anyway, as JWs we could not celebrate, but, sometimes my parents would get me and Wayne gifts. Nothing spectacular, usually dolls for me and cap pistols for Wayne. But, they would not let us take them around any of our friends until after Christmas. That way the JWs would not know that we had gotten Christmas presents and our friends would think we had. Kids remember dishonesty.

The year I was eight was the first Christmas after my parents had divorced. Times were even harder for us financially and we did not even pretend to think we would have anything for Christmas.
About two weeks before Christmas, our older brother told us not to go into his room because he had painted the floor. Wayne and I tried to think of ways to get in there, but knew we would leave footprints. A few days later we pushed our fingers under the door as far as we could to see if the floor was still wet, but James came home just then and scared us off. Neither Wayne or I thought that there was anything in there for us. However, James was so cool. He loved magic and had all sorts of neat tricks in his room. And, he was a ventriloquist and had two dummies. (Remind me to tell you how he made the face of the first one.) James also had been thinking up and building tricks on his own, and we thought that he had finally gotten his duck trick finished. (That's another story.) But, what with school being out and our mean middle brother watching us, we had no other chances to sneak into James' room.

I had made something for my best friend, who lived next door. I can't remember what it was, but I remember putting it into a matchbox and using tin foil to wrap it in. Christmas Eve, I whined until Wayne walked next door with me to give it to Ronnie. He (Wayne) tried to run ahead so he could hide and scare me, but I was a faster runner then. So, we walked back home arguing about something silly. As we got closer to the house, he ran ahead through the back door and into the kitchen. Then he stopped. I came in and pushed him, fussing again because he was in the way. Then, I saw it. Standing against the living room wall was a brand new bicycle. Brand new. So new it was shiney. My mother was sitting at the kitchen table and said something about weren't we going to go look at what was in the living room. Until then I had no idea that there was anything other than that beautiful bike. Wayne went directly to it and I walked around the corner into the living room and found a record player with a stack of records, a Jerry Mahoney dummy and instruction book. I was afraid to touch anything. Finally, my mother told us that James had decided that Christmas was going to be special for us. He had been saving money for and buying these things for the past month. And, hiding them in his room of course.

I will never forget the look on his face as he sat on the couch watching me and Wayne that Christmas. That was magical. A truly magical Christmas. I keep trying to get that feeling that I felt all those Christmases ago back again and give a taste of it to my children. I don't know that I ever have.

Grabbos avisiting

The old OCD grabbo has decided to come visit for awhile. That is why I have not been posting here or anywhere else. I am dealing with him right now.