Just One Dish

MyFella's family hosts two separate family reunions a.k.a. potluck lunches a year, one around Christmas time, and the other in early Summer. 

You see, for a couple of years now, MyFella has asked me to attend the meals with him. He said he wanted me to go.  The first go around, I recall being slighly uneasy about it - not that I didn't know enough people there to be comfortable, just that, well, it's not my family.  And it's a family reunion. And exactly why would anyone think I would be going?

But since a good half of the people there I know, and half of them I probably eat with at least once a month anyway, it just sort of didn't matter.  And besides, there was always good food there.

I have finally figured out which two of his aunt's make the great fried okra dish.  His mother usually makes a very good cornbread dressing. And there's always a great assortment of dishes from which to choose.

Which brings me to MyFella.

Last night he said, very clearly, "I'm only taking one dish tomorrow."  Just one.  I heard him.

We had already planned the one - a chicken spaghetti dish that most Southerners will recognize as being a version of Rotel tomatoes and Velveeta.  That's the one.  Super good.  We had already decided that MyFella would boil a chicken and debone it, as we've learned the hard way that a chicken dish is so much better when you take this extra step.  We had already decided that it would be ok to use the penne pasta on-hand and not spaghetti noodles.  The chicken was put in the crockpot before we went to bed - a healthy batch of chopped onion thrown in for flavor.  I awoke to a house that was smelling quite nice with the chicken that was slow cooked on low all night.

So since all was just as we had planned, how was it we walked out of the door with chicken spaghetti, a buttery peppered corn dish, a dessert made with graham cracker crusts and lemon pudding, and an igloo container full of unsweet tea?

Try as I might to recount what we took, I just keep coming up with a whole lot more than "just one dish."

Brown Hair

His brown hair was perfect.  It fell in a smooth, pretty to look at part on one side and lightly feathered back.  If people with curly hair want straight hair, and vice versa, et cetera, his is the type of hair I want. It nicely framed a man's handsome face one table over on the patio of the restaurant.  The four seats were taken by what appeared to be his family of a wife and two pretty daughters.

He wore a polo style shirt and plaid shorts that showed off his hairy legs.  Legs that were a bit skinny for my taste, but proportioned right for his tall body. The wrought iron table and the distance from us gave me a nice view of the legs slightly open. I couldn't stop myself from looking at him.  I don't think I was attracted to him, I just found him to be pretty to look at.  I probably looked at him once too often.  And once is being understated.

Their meal finished, he and his wife continued a conversation while the daughters sat in laps and played around the table before the wife departed with the children in one direction.  He went another with the ticket and smiled at me.

Yea, I think he caught me looking.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three, Mississippi, "He looked back" my dinner companion said.  I looked forward.  There's no looking back.

White Truck, Open Field

It was a white farm truck, maybe a 70's model, standard in the floor. My uncle had been teaching me to drive. It was the summer between 8th and 9th grades and I had gone to spend the season with my grandmother.

Her home was in the same large yard as my uncle and aunt's home. It had a lot of grandmotherly touches. The front porch was filled with flowers, and once a week the Schwan's man came by and filled the freezer out front with delicious processed foods.

My uncle and aunt, the parents of 5, almost had no more children living in the house. The youngest had left us all too early, all too young, and the next youngest was a senior. Her prom dress was jade green, and the man she wore it for is still her husband today.

The family story is he taught my mom to drive, and he would teach me and later my younger brother. It would turn out that my weak arms didn't have the strength to pull that old truck out of gear, so he'd reach over with his left hand and place it on top of mine when it was time to shift gears. My aunt tells a story that my grandmother laughed to see me driving over the hay field, engine grinding in too low a gear for my speed.

And that's how I learned to drive.

"The Rockford Files"

"They don't even allow tombstones. Just brass plaques flush with the ground so they don't interfere with the lawn mower. I think graves should be a little untidy, like our lives."
Katie Brannon

Ladies of the Church

This is sad reason for a funny story about Southern ladies of the church.

My cousin died a few weeks ago. He had been a career policeman and retired for health reasons. He was a member of the same church my parents attend, and at which my mom is employed as the church secretary.

The reverend was insistent on the ladies of the church providing a meal at the church social hall after, which is customary. Though some families opt for food to be delivered home after the service and just entertain a family meal there.

But the reverend knew that the police department was going up en mass, as well as many family members have traveled for the service. So he gave directions for food so that all family and police were welcome.

I made arrangements to be late to work to attend the funeral, but simply did not have the option of staying for the graveside service and the meal, as I work about an hour away from my hometown, and needed to come back to work.

Before the service, Mom asked one of the ladies in the kitchen if they would make for me a to-go box and I would walk over and get it after the service. Of course, it's my hometown and I visit with them regularly, so I know several of the ladies. As I ran through trying to make it to the bathroom, one lady said, "What do you want to drink?" and I was momentarily confused before she said, "Your mother asked us to get you a to go plate. What do you want to drink with it?" I delightedly said, "tea."

You know the clam shell style styrofoam to-go boxes from restaurants? The kind with 3 separated compartments inside?

Post bathroom visit, another lady walked up to me with a grocery store plastic sack that had two of the big boxes and 1 small box inside. "I've got all the hot food in one, the cold food in one, and dessert in the small one."

For the drive to work, my car smelled like a buffet restaurant. I got to work and had chicken, pulled pork with sauce and a bun, an assortment of side dishes like potato salad and cole slaw and topped off with a yellow cake.

That's one time it really paid off to have my mother working as the church secretary. And to be in the South.

Friend

I saw you the other day. Just for a moment. You came around the corner with that silly grin on your face. The smile all the way in to your cheeks. Your boyish appearance.

But I knew it wasn't you. You weren't that young when you died. I was at your funeral. I carried you.

Just for the briefest of moments, I didn't miss you, and missed you, at the same time.

Worming Horses

Yesterday I wormed a few horses. It's really rather anticlimactic, not near as fancy as it sounds, and really doesn't involve any worms. It's just a matter of a plastic syringe feeding a paste to the horse.

But still, who would have thought I would ever . . . . .

The Messengers of Death

"It was at the time when Emile Pencenat was digging his own burial plot, Sunday after Sunday. He had obtained permission, although there was no precedent for this kind of thing. The town council was not impressed by this whim, but could find nothing that formally forbade it. Moreover, there was a lack of men willing to do the low-paid work of looking after the field of the dead. Finally, to clinch the decision, Emile Pencenat had declared:
'I'll sweep your cemetery myself; I'll throw out the dead boquets; I'll weed the grass around the graves, and I'll even pick up the pots of chrysanthemums blown over by the wind.'
How could they resist the offer of so much free work? They didn't even ask him why he insisted on a separate burial place, when there was a spacious and resoundingly empty family vault, because everyone was only too aware of the reply to that question: it was to avoid sharing eternity with his wife Prudence, with whom he did not get on.
Besides, he didn't like that plot. It looked like a Protestant mausoleum in the middle of the Catholic cemetery. It was sharp-edged, forbidding, and to make matters worse, it had a mean and parsimonious view of eternity that made the afterlife seem quite unattractive. As it happened, Emile Pencenat was fortunate enough to imagine the realm of the departed in a happier light - when one has gloomy thoughts, all the more reason for them to be flowery: if it were possible, his tomb would be a small-scale copy of an eastern potentate's ceremonial tester bed swathed in gold-fringed theatre drapes. The whole thing would be dominated by an opulent canopy and surrounded by a festooned balustrade with columns. . . .
. . . On rainy days he spent his time in his shed sculpting cherubs' heads, with which he hoped to enliven the pink marble columns around his masterpiece. Not that he had reached that point. He didn't know yet where he could get pink marble, nor how he was going to pay for it. But he'd only been thinking about digging his tomb for a few months; in fact it was since his retirement, when he was wondering anxiously what he could do to lessen his boredom. And so he had plenty of time to make enquiries, he thought.
Pierre Magnan

It's not promiscious if it's travel

There have been times during my previous career in the gaming industry when I traveled a fair bit for work to different conventions that catered to people in my specific field. And occasionally on those trips, I might be prone to . . . entertain, or perhaps be entertained by, a gentleman. And by gentleman, I mean someone I might have just met a few hours prior who was attending the same convention.

I never thought of them, the evenings or the gentleman, or even myself for that matter, as promiscuous. After all, we were usually in NICE hotels, and I could always track the guy down within hours should I need an affidavit of my whereabouts. He was someone that I would most likely see again in a few months at another convention. He was a professional person, much like myself. And besides, we were generally in the same age bracket and so might think of these evenings in a like way - pleasant and enjoyable, with a modicum of respect. There would be no promises of future dates at upcoming conventions, ala Alan Alda's "Same Time Next Summer." But there was also no reason to be anything less than polite the next time we saw each other.

One such gentleman, let's call him . . . well, let's just call him Gentleman. Handsome, tall, and with a belly. A belly doesn't turn me off. A grin can turn me on.

Our first evening happened together in an odd location. I kept wondering what in the world there was to do in that town, and how we ended up in that hotel. But alas, I ended up in his bed one evening. An enjoyable time was had by all. But I somehow left the room thinking that I had not had a stellar performance. I felt like I had let him down. And that thought would occur to me any time I would think of him later.

A couple of years passed and we ran into each other again in some other town, this time in a much nicer hotel. (The kind with glass elevators - always a sign of a nice hotel.) Several "boys who like boys" were in attendance at this function, and after checking in I called his room to see where all the boys were going that night.

I admit that I might have harbored the slightest hope that over the next few days we might have an encounter. But I would in no way begrudge him if his circumstances had changed and no such occured. But I was pleased when we did find ourselves in the same room.

And approximately 2 hours later, I was woken from a serious nap by the ringing of the cell phone I had been recently assigned by the employer. One of my employees asked me, "What are you doing?" and I answered honestly something like, "Well, I was sleeping after having sex." She laughed, asked her question and let me go back to sleep.

During that convention, we had the most enjoyable time together, but no more private time. I remember confiding in him that I felt like I had let him down the last time, and that I really tried to be better this time. He laughed and said he didn't recall it that way at all.

And that's exactly what he should have said.

Bad Guy

So I recently called the hometown florist to order some flowers for a birthday present. The gal answered the phone and I said something like, "Hi, this is SoandSo. I used to have an account there, and I need to order some flowers."

The lady on the line said, "I don't see you listed" and I said, "Well, I haven't ordered anything in a while" and she said, "You're probably a bad guy."

Pause

"This is Felecia."

And I was in love all over again and missed her so much!