Gary makes me hungry.
I had a long, fun conversation with my friend Gary the other day, Sunday actually, over the telephone, and we quickly started talking about food, as our conversations tend to do. Gary, now a famous playwright/critic, who spends most of his days on a plane, as opposed to by a plate, always wants to hear about what Nana has cooked, created, invented, resurrected from her kitchen shelves. Nana’s kind of magical that way. And she has become something of folklore in my social circles, and many of my friends eagerly await for my Sunday dinner details. (I can think of one person who...
After that, I ate my chocolate cobbler in silence.
This past Sunday, my youngest nephew, Wynn, who by the way is a few months shy of three and has already rightfully earned the nickname of “Chunk,” turned to me and asked for coffee. “What…did you…say?” I implored of him. “Coffee,” he responded, and then with a nod of the head as if recognizing that he’d forgotten the magic word, added, “pease?” It’s always precious when the little ones remember that fading concept known as “manners.” But, precious aside, I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly. I went in search of his mother. She wasn’t a bit thrown off by what I felt had...
Phenergan’s Wake
Filed under: Deep South, faith, family, food, health, humor
I’ve had an ill-behaving stomach, as of late. Which has kept me up at nights, uneasy and nauseous. I couldn’t eat much of anything yesterday; I had to practically force myself to eat the leftover cheese sticks, a bowl of soup, and half a chocolate bar (with hazelnuts). So, I did. But, I couldn’t bear to go another night with fitful sleep; so last night, to combat this, I took a Phenergan. It’s a pill prescribed for upset stomachs, etc. We fear I might have IBS. (That’s quite a conversation-starter, there, is it not?) It took a couple of hours, but it did the...
Five foods that made me who I am.
Filed under: Deep South, Everyday, family, food, health, humor
I’m still stuck on the potato log. Meaning, since confessing to you about my lust and love for the said potato log, yesterday afternoon, I’ve not been able to think about anything else except food. And so, at the risk of offending some of you, I feel I’ve no choice to move myself past this obsessive food-thinking other than to write about it. So, I’m going to spend the next few moments with you, making one confession after another about a few dishes, recipes, snacks, and various other, sundry foods that I not only grew up with, but that, I feel, have defined who...
Yes, Virginia, I am a vegetarian.
Filed under: Deep South, Everyday, education, faith, family, food, health, humor, life
You know what’s hard? Yoga. You know what’s harder than that? Trying to explain yoga to your precious family of aging Southern Baptists. Because if it’s not explicitly typed in the King James version of the Holy Bible then it’s most likely of the devil, who probably created yoga to trick Christians into performing exercises that would get them into positions they couldn’t get out of, thus holding them in place so he could catch them. But, yoga is a later issue. First, we have to address a more pressing item, though there are several items overall, not the least of which is the fact...
“We’ll just draw names again. Except for the babies.”
Filed under: Deep South, faith, family, food, humor, life
I’ve never really cared about the gift exchange element to Christmas. Time and time again, as a child, I’d be asked what I wanted and time and time again, I’d say I didn’t care. I’d be pressed until I crumbled and rattled off some random item. A typewriter (which I ended up loving), board games (which I’ve since donated to high school theatre departments), books (I still have every one of these), a video recorder (I used it once six years ago to document a living will). I’ve never really put that much focus on material things. Not to say that I...
I’ve never had a mullet, and other Things I Can Brag About [...]*
Filed under: Deep South, Everyday, education, faith, family, food, humor, life, writing
* The full, real title is I've never had a mullet, and other Things I Feel I Have the Right to Brag About and also Things I Cannot Stand. Just, you know, FYI. You should know that what follows is a) a partial list only, and b) they’re not in any particular order of Cannot Stand vs. Brag. I would say to put your Big Boy Panties on and read carefully, but it’s odd how similar the things I can’t stand and the things I want to brag about actually are. I’m not sure what that says about me, but anyway – to be safe –...
Suffice it to say, I was spanked, a second time, OR The 100th Blog.
Filed under: Deep South, Everyday, faith, family, life, writing
I didn’t get spanked, as a child…much.
U.L. didn’t really believe in that, unless you’d done some really horrendous thing, which I never truly did because God, you know, also rented a room at U.L.’s house, and so it was really hard to get away with much of anything between the two of them. And then there was Jesus. He was always like, Hey, we'll fix it later. I liked him the most. I hated that he moved out.
I’m not saying I never got spanked, kids being kids, but I tried really hard to be a good boy. And, for the most...
The very idea of texting your mother…
Filed under: Deep South, Everyday, education, language, life, writing
You tell me if you get this: a student gets up to leave at the end of this morning's class, and casually turns back to me and says, “Well teetle, I guess! Have a good weekend!” Teetle? Do you know what that means? I didn’t either. I asked her to repeat it. “I said ‘teetle.’” “Do you mean like toodle-loo? Is that what you’re trying to say? As in, See you later, toodle-loo?” “I would never say that. That sounds dumb.” There was a lull as we tried to figure out how to communicate what, at first glance, appeared to be nothing but a simple, closing remark as she...
That’s how we bring up all children in our family: by ear.
Filed under: Deep South, Everyday, family, health, life
I like to think I'm a good uncle. Even though, I don't really know my "real" nieces and nephews. I've seen Millie, once; I've seen Auden, once; I've never meet Vinnie. So, to make up for this: I give all my grand uncle-ness to a series of young cousins, whose mothers I grew up with, as my nieces, being the baby of the adopted family I claimed with their grandmother, who I took as my--- You know what, let me scratch that. It's too confusing. My family tree, you know, is really just an assortment of random branches that were blown down during a storm, and happend to fall around...
Advertise With Us
