I'm Just One Big Freaking Ray of Sunshine Aren't I?

It has been a long day. A long week. I have been waiting since the 14th, when Jenny was here for a new washer and dryer to be delivered today. Wednesday, I had the bright (and I mean REALLY bright) idea to paint the laundry room.

Monty nearly died Thursday when he came in and said, "That looks like mustard."

I informed him it was a canary.

Whatever. Last night I painted all the area where the washer and dryer would be. It really is bright.

I sent Monty on his merry way to Bob Wills Day in Turkey, Texas. Woo---weee!!! Now I wished I'd gone. I never dreamed how hard it was to buy small cans of primary color paints to accent the big canary in the room.

I went several places and ended up at a Home Depot.

This young man asked me if I needed help. I almost started crying, I didn't know where to start!

I asked him what happened that small cans of primary paint can't be bought ready-to-go. The man standing next to me (who is painting the outside of his house so shut up alisa your laundry room is a piece of cake) told me everything changed while we weren't paying attention.

I thought if I were a painter I'd be paying attention! Probably not because paying attention is tiresome.

So, back to young man helping me. I had three color sheets. He asked if I decided what I wanted. I told him what I really wanted was a drink, but I couldn't drink and paint. He had the nerve to laugh, which is okay because it is pretty funny.

An older couple came up to get another gallon of paint. The husband was complaining he was old and one gallon of paint should have been enough and his wife was smiling like my canary wall and nodding her head. I was too tired to say anything.

However, he started laughing....at me...and I mean belly laughs.

I said, "What? There is SOME paint on my walls." I thought it was because I have yellow paint on my arms, pants, glasses, and ankles. I don't know how I got paint on my ankles, but it is possible. Trust me.

He said, "I thought my day was shot and you just made it."

I said thank you and looked the other way. I heard him telling his wife to read my shirt.

I'd forgotten I had on a t-shirt that Jenny got me when she was here a couple of weeks ago. It says: I'm just one big freaking ray of sunshine aren't I?

I guess my day was made too since I entertained (for free) at Home Depot.

Now I'm waiting for the rest of the canary to dry to I can paint my primary squares and triangles and then hang some really neat wild colorful things I bought.

Hopefully I will have it all done by the time Monty gets home.

I only want him to have one attack of the vapors.

He can't handle any more than that.

Last year's Easter piece.....

A Dollar’s Worth

By Alisa Dollar

Easter is nearly here and I know I should be thinking about things that go with my beliefs and all I can think about is new shoes and spring clothes!

Seriously, this is the time of year that brings in the new and stores the old. I suppose in a warped way that could apply to a spiritual beginning.

I’m aware speaking of Easter has somehow gotten to be less than accepted in some arenas. Like at Christmas, Nativity scenes being ruled a no-no and other religions could show their stuff. 

In schools, children can learn about all other religions of the world, but mine is a no-no.

I find myself growing impatient with being nice about patience and tolerance with everyone and their particular religious practices and mine are not shown the same respect.

The sad thing is everyone I know of different beliefs are very respectful, curious and tolerant of my practices at certain times of the year as I am of theirs.

One-on-one our world is a much happier and peaceful place to be.

It’s when we allow other people to do our thinking and speaking and it’s nowhere near what all the different religions feel about the other.

With that said, I’m reminded of how my beliefs were formed and solidified over the years with the birth of the Christ child, His journey while on this earth and at Easter His death and resurrection.

I and those who practice the Christian faith are not no-no’s.

It’s a time of year all the symbolism, which varies throughout the many denominations, is re-talked, re-thought, and re-taught.

I like to think of this next week as a divine booster shot in the spiritual pew dweller.

The way I see it, life is too short to fight over who is right and who can practice where, and what can be visible in a court house lawn and what can’t be.

Life is so short that we best all be paying attention to what is right and just amongst the many differences and pray that somehow the Master planner is not gonna let this big world sink!

Next Sunday I’ll be in a pew, with new shoes, next to husband listening to the preacher read the story I’ve heard since I was a little girl.

Isn’t that how all religions work?

Happy Easter!

Why me?

Jenny and I went to Big Lots then Walmart. At Big Lots, Jen found a book of....well an erotica book. So I put it in the basket along with the other stuff we bought....while I was checking out, the checker picked it up and I immediately said, "that's for my daughter!" (Darah I'm going to let her borrow yours :-) too)


The she started talking about a book she was reading that made her blush and I immediately knew the author from the title....and I said "Oh I love her and I've gotten a friend hooked on her." She said, well, she makes me blush and I'm sitting and reading by myself.


When we got out, I had to call Kay (she's the friend) for 1) to let Jenny hear her and 2) what the checkout lady said. Now she and Jenny are friends on FB and I might regret that, but I doubt it.


So...we go to Walmart to buy material (I think I am a quilt queen now) and stuff for the kids and for Jenny and a few baby things for the new baby in the family. Okay a lot of stuff.


A young man checking us out said some little girl is lucky and Jenny told him she'd waited forever to be an aunt!


Then out of the blue he starts saying the military should get paid and went off into this sort of tangent about congress and the president. I said they are getting paid. He said no they're not. He said he blamed the president and I was about to say who doesn't when he said I like him. That's when I got really quiet. I did really. You can ask Jenny.


He went on and on and on and I finally remembered that I had on a very faded Sarah Palin 2008 shirt. Ilooked at him and said, "Are you telling me all this because of my shirt?"


He said, "Well, I know who you voted for."


Jenny butted in then and said, "You are wasting your time, my mom is a die-hard Republican."  Jenny said she was just trying to give the boy an "easy out" but he didn't take it.


When we got to the car, Jenny laughed and said apparently he didn't know who he was messing with and you were sure biting your tongue.


Fun day.

Joan of Arc....NOT!

A Dollar’s Worth

By Alisa Dollar

I got my hair cut with a picture of Jamie Lee Curtis going in and came out looking like Joan of Arc.

If I were Joan I’d be happy because she wasn’t old and lardy. She was young and lordy.

A woman of passion, belief, ready to die for all.

I was only dying to mimic Jamie Lee Curtis’ look.

This guy had cut my hair once.

He really likes to chat. The first time I had on my “Be careful what you say or you’ll end up in my novel” t-shirt. He asked if I was a writer.

I’m sure all of Frankston’s ears were burning as I told him I had a weekly column in your paper. He asked me if it was hard to think of things to write since it is a slice-of-life column.

I told him no because a slice of my life is a genuinely klutzy, curious person. I’d gotten myself into many things in my lifetime and seem to still manage a few in my golden years.

I told him I had a lot of stories I couldn’t write because the owner of the paper said they weren’t for human consumption. Okay, maybe he said they were a little more than he wanted printed in a local newspaper owned by him.

He did say they were funny though.

Whatever.

This time I had on a Texas Tech t-shirt representing the student chapter of the American Society for Civil Engineers.

He asked if I was an engineer. This was before whipping out Jamie Lee Curtis’ picture and told him I wanted to look like her.

After snorting laughter, I asked if I looked like an engineer, to which he replied, I’m not sure what an engineer is supposed to look like.

“An engineer doesn’t look like me. I do their money.” After thinking about that, I added, “Which might of greater concern.”

While he clipped, we talked about Facebook people posting minute by minute happenings.

I put on my glasses, gasped, and remarked how short my hair had become.

“I thought you wanted to look like Jamie Lee Curtis.”

I so wanted to run home and put this on Facebook.

Instead, I wrote an article.

Apparently he didn’t remember the first t-shirt I’d worn.

He will when I take the paper in to him.

Moral?

Hair grows back.

Dog Collar Colors ARE Important......

A Dollar’s Worth

By Alisa Dollar

Husband, Max the mini-doxie and I went to Ruidoso. We realized we’d forgotten Max’s walking leash. Rather than return to the house, husband decided to stop at Gebo’s to buy Wranglers and the leash. Before we got to Gebo’s I found a rubbed place on Max’s neck and decided to get a new collar as well. 

For those that may not have experienced a Gebo’s it’s a lot like Sam’s only it has tall shelves. In other words, you can’t find anything even if you knew what you were looking for.

Max wanted his morning pit stop of the “need a poop bag” type and they were locked in the pickup. I went in to ask husband if he had one.

“How about this one?” Unfortunately, I had an 11-pound squirmy dog in my arms and was perhaps a little harsh in my reply. Or at least the man and woman behind the counter did a double take when I replied to husband’s choice of leash.

“He can’t have that leash, it’s green and yellow and that’s Baylor colors!”

The man and woman look at each other while husband pointed out it had tractors on it, not bears.

“That’s even worse!” Tractors? Good grief, I’d rather it’d been bears! “Why in the world would Max want tractors?”

“Alisa, if Max KNEW do you think he’d care?” Man and woman are looking back and forth as this conversation continues. Their gaze returned to me.

“Of course he would care! He knows he’s a Red Raider and besides, those colors don’t go with black and tan, they go with a more reddish blonde color.”

Exasperated he told me to go pick one.

Max has a new red leash and collar.

I remembered the bag. The man said he had one, but to forget about the pit stop. I informed him if I was buying a “whatever those things were out there” and stepped in something, I’d be upset. I got the bag.

Remembering Max’s boo-boo, I asked if they had anything medicinal like. Husband went with the man and they came back with a salve called Corona saying it could also be used on humans’ chapped skin as well.

“Was it made in Mexico too?”

If a pin dropped it would’ve sounded like a crash. Three sets of eyes stared.

“You know, like that beer?”

I still don’t get why they (including husband) didn’t get it.

That’s my last stop at Gebo’s.

Fill er' up!

A Dollar’s Worth

By Alisa Dollar

I have a gas problem. Not that kind. Gasoline. I’ve run out so many times it’s not funny.

I worked for an oil company which also had a full service gas station.

I knew I was low, but decided I’d fill up later. It happened five feet from the pumps. I didn’t know what to do. I figured Daddy Boss was shaking his head “I can’t believe that woman!”

Baby Boy, exasperated saying “I told you we shouldn’t have hired her for accounting, she’s nuts!”

Daddy Boss understood my lack of attentiveness to gas gauges had nothing to do with my outstanding accounting abilities with his oil company.

He came out as I rolled down the window. On the verge of an interesting, yet unconnected reasoning for my problem, he speaks.

“Put the car in neutral.”

“Why?”

It occurred to me when he cringed I should do what people tell me when I’m in a precarious and stranded place. I try. I really do. The curiosity overwhelms me to immediately question rather than comply.

Some would say it’s called “blonde.”  I call it brain food.

He pushed me to the pump and filled my car all the while talking to himself how this looked for business. Standing beside him I tried to ease the situation by telling him to look on the glass half full side and people would see that he’d do anything to sell gas.

He gave me a “be quiet” look. I obeyed.

Recently, after filling up, I waited to turn left on a busy street. The car behind me honked and I waved (it might’ve been someone I knew). I heard the honk again.

I don’t do road rage, but thought to myself how impatient can one be turning left on a busy street?

The next day, a co-worker came in and said my gas cap was hanging down.

“That’s why they honked.” escaped before I could stop.

Bree looked at me with one of those you’ve got to be kidding looks.

“Doesn’t your dash have a light when you’re gas cap is off?”

“It might. I don’t know. I didn’t look.”

Amazing, right? Everyone laughed and I thought that was the end.

Later in the month, Bree came in laughing saying she’d seen a hanging gas cap and had the urge to honk.

One thing I’ve learned is you just can’t run from your past.

Or drive.

Canning Elvis

(Kay says I'm "scatty" and this will help that along. :-)  Poor Elvis.....Kathy, you'll appreciate this. BTW this wasn't in the paper either)

Canning Elvis

by alisa dollar

Wouldn’t you know-the day I decide to learn to can, Elvis fell off the can and dies?

I have never lived outside the city limits and thought Del Monte™ was the national canner of America.  Not naive enough to think milk just happened into plastic or carton containers, I will, however, readily admit I have never known a cow up close and surely not personal enough to invade her privacy. Therefore, when I found myself thrust into a foreign-like country-that being farmers who grew vegetables seemingly enough to feed a third world and had wives who put said veggies in jars and called it canning to feed their family for a year—let’s just say I was totally out of my element.

Now Elvis.   Elvis is another story altogether.  I learned at a very young age to defy the mothers-of-the-50s outcry this man would surely doom morality in America.  Now, excuse me?  Gyrating a pelvis, fully clothed, mind you and in baggy pants to boot, would doom morality?   In America?   Get real.   My mother’s strict instructions at the tender age of nine to never listen to or watch Elvis and his pelvis may have been instrumental in my lifelong love affair with The King.  I took it upon myself to collect every bit of information, recording, button and miscellaneous memorabilia on this newfound destruction of America.  Ebay would love me.

I grew up feasting on Del Monte™ veggies and Elvis’ crooning never once giving a thought my life might alter drastically in both areas when I married and moved to Never Never Land-West Texas.  West Texas is a vast and friendly place.  Although, I will admit for a long time, I thought God had gone to sleep in my beloved Central Texas and woke somewhere in the mountains of New Mexico while he was dishing out trees, water, lawns and such.  I was a displaced homemaker as it were.   Most thought I was some hippie who’d somehow hypnotized my straight-as-an-arrow West Texas cowboy-like husband into ‘marryin’ up’ with him.  And of course in the Bible Belt, they prayed for him daily.  

Along the way we struck a bargain, this West Texas and I.  I learned to love seeing the sky touch the ground rather than a tree.   I loved it so much, I decided I wanted to be a farmette, my loving term for my new found friends-these women who put veggies in a jar and called it canning.

I knew of course that canning preserves and keeps vegetables edible and as fresh as possible through time.  I just didn’t know it was so complicated.   I chose for my first time, pinto beans and new potatoes.    No one told me that not only were pinto beans the hardest to pick out in the blistering sun with nice bits of dusty air blowing for effect, but they were also the hardest to shell.   The potatoes were a piece of cake compared to the beans-and they were so cute and tiny.   

My friend Francene was also a transplant from Central Texas-only she was from canning stock.   I truly believe she would can anything.  She breathed that kind of stuff.   If it grew and it was anywhere near edible-she’d can it.  I finally gave in to her pleas to teach me and allow her be my mentor.  The canning lady and the hippie lady.   What a pair.

We chose my house because I had a gas stove.  Looking back, I suspect it was because she was worried about her ceiling.  She brought over two huge metal bucket looking things with intricate gadgets to lock.  She called them canners.  There were little clock-like timers on top of each and my job was to watch the timers.  I am still not sure what I was watching for but she scared the wrath into me that if I didn’t, those locks would come unhinged and blow up all over the place.  I assured her nothing would happen on that timer that I didn’t know.

I don’t even remember what we had to do to get the jars ready.  Mine were really pretty though.  I had bought some bi-centennial ones the year before because I thought they’d be collector’s items.   I never dreamed a year later I’d have them in lock-down full of pintos and potatoes.

Satisfied all was well, Francene left me.  She left me alone with two steaming canners and two sleeping toddlers to go get our two older children from school.   Francene assured me nothing would happen while she was gone.  She told me-no she threatened me-to leave the settings as they were.   After all-what could happen in twenty minutes?

In twenty minutes, let me tell you, my whole world fell apart!  Francene had been gone approximately three minutes when my phone rang.  It was my neighbor across the street-her voice anxious, “Have you been watching television?” 

 “No, and I can’t talk, I’ve got to watch the thingies on top of the canners, Francene said.”  

“Oh, then you don’t know.”

Curious, though I knew I had to get back in front of my brewing canners, I asked, “Don’t know what?”

“Elvis is dead.”

“WHAT?   This isn’t funny!  I told you I was canning and I don’t know what the devil I’m doing and I have to go know and watch the timers.”

I hung up the phone and sat on the floor in front of my stove angry at my neighbor for playing such a nasty joke.  Everyone and their dog knew I was an Elvis freak.

The phone rang again.   It was HER.

“I’m serious.  They broke in.  Elvis is dead.  He had a heart attack.  In his bathroom.  He’s dead.”

“In his bathroom?”

“Yeah, he was reading on the toilet and he fell off and died.”

“You really are kidding.   Fell off the can?   No way.”

“Yes.  Turn on your television.”

Needless to say, I turned on my set only to realize my neighbor rather than make fun or joke with me had been softening the blow.  I went back to the floor in front of the gas stove topped with two canners steaming heartily-and cried.

That is how Francene and the boys found me.  Francene immediately checked the canners and the timers.  Seeing everything was in order, she got eye level with me and demanded to know what happened.

“Oh Francene,” I sobbed.  “Elvis is dead!”

She was stunned.   “You are sitting here in the middle of your kitchen, on the floor while canning and you are crying your eyes out because Elvis is dead?”

She did the unthinkable.  She laughed.

I sobbed harder.  “You d-d-d-d-on’t und-d-d-d-derstand.”

My son, bless his seven year old heart, did know his mom’s fetish for Elvis and tried to explain.   “Yeah, Francene, mom has Elvis balls on our Christmas tree every year.”

Francene hooted....”Well no wonder he’s.......”

The timer!   The pintos and potatoes were canned!

The next few minutes were filled with unlocking the canners and carefully setting the jars on my cabinet to cool.   In the following flurry of Ms. Canner of America’s orders and feeding all the children snacks, Elvis slipped my mind.

I cried many tears over Elvis-forever thankful I was able to see him twice before he died.  Guess where?  Good ol’ West Texas.  I left my jars on my cabinet and wouldn’t let my family open them.  It was a pride thing.  Plus in those jars of pintos and potatoes I understood what I’d done in preserving life spans for future use.  They also reminded me of Elvis and his untimely death.  I was busily preserving my memories.  Canning.  He was dead, but-alive and preserved within my heart and mind.

My pintos and potatoes didn’t last for long once I let them be opened and eaten.  I have never canned again.   Del Monte™ is my personal canner.  But you know what?  Every time I open a can, I remember the day I did can.  The same day Elvis fell off the can.  I figure Francene did indeed teach me to preserve. 

That 'canning timer' is still working.  I have my memories.