Judy Headlines
So when you ask your mother what she wants for Mother’s Day and she responds, “grass,” it’s enough to stop you in your tracks. Especially when your mom is an 86-year-old bridge-playing, card-carrying Methodist whose claim to fame is a mean peach cobbler.
She’s just not much on change and trying new things.
It’s been a while since I saw “the boat.” The Hubster has this sailboat that he’s renovating at a dock down in Mount Pleasant. Selkie is her name-o. (Selkie: Something about a seal and a beautiful woman, a water legend. Anyway, it’s a broke boat with a weird name.)
At first the boat was anchored out in the creek and every now and again, we’d get in his little dinghy and motor out to it, spend the night, cook a little dinner, wake up to birds and breakfast and enjoy the heck out of it. Beautiful surroundings, fresh air, interesting folks down on the docks.
For a couple of months now, we have been collecting school supplies for Bob Dunleavy, a Lowcountry resident deployed to Iraq. He wrote to Publisher Ellen Priest about the children and schools that had no supplies.
We offered to help, to get the word out to our readers.
A few weeks ago, Manchild #2 called and requested refuge.
“It’ll be for just a few weeks until I get my own place,” he said.
I’ve not had the fun of shopping for prom dresses since I bought my own – we’ll just say it was a long while back.
Our all-boy offspring contingent didn’t exactly go nuts over getting together an ensemble for prom. So I missed out on the full prom experience – not that I don’t love being mom to my guys. But girls they aren’t. So when my sister asked if she and her daughter could come down from Rock Hill to shop, I said yes. Sounded like a prissy, girlie weekend.
Heee’s baaaaacck. In my house. Again. Manchild #2 has been gone for exactly six months. All the way to North Chuck in the Up Chuck region near Trident Tech.
While he was gone I repainted his room, I installed real nice bronze switch plates on the outlets, I bought stacks of hardwood to install after the removal of the aging carpet. The wood now sits forlornly in the garage, ready for me to put it in its proper place. Instead of new flooring the room is now filled with a bed, chair, a couple of tables, suitcases, clothes bags and our youngest, the aforementioned Manchild #2.
My sister bought a house (yes, she’s the one person who bought a house this year ) and is having some repairs and renovations done. Last week the work turned to the master bathroom that is upstairs and located directly over the family room.
The need for repair became evident the week she moved in. She’d been about to take a shower, turned the water on and stepped into the stall. She was happily showering away in her wonderful new house when she heard a banging on the door and the screams of her 13-year-old son Alex.
It seems I struck a cord with dog owners last week when I wrote about my veggie-wiener dog, Charlotte. (You can find photos of Charlotte on our website at Spotted. She’s the pretty redhead.)
Anyway, I wrote about Charlotte’s love of romaine lettuce and her new interest in bananas.
We have these two dogs. Wiener dogs. Dachshunds. They actually own us.
We are their pets. We fight it pretty hard, but as it turns out Sally and Charlotte are way cuter than we are, and so we let them rule our lives. Our payment for letting them do this to us is their sheer entertainment value.
A couple of months ago, Manchild #2 came home to request that I “give him one of my dogs.” At the time, I was so dumfounded by the request, that I said “yes” without thinking very much about. (It’s part of that trying to do what you can do to help out the kids.)
Later, after I did give it a good think, I decided I would’ve said “yes” anyway.
A few months ago I wrote about the Hubster and the limb hanging like the Sword of Damocles from a really tall pine tree in our backyard. He spent an entire weekend trying to get this gigantic, pendulous limb down with an odd combination of sports equipment. His quest was unsuccessful and I was regretting bringing the limb to his attention in the first place.
Since that weekend, every time a storm has passed by, he has run outside afterwards to assess whether the wind blew down “the limb.” No amount of wind has brought it down.
It’s been about 15 years since my guy and I decided to join the Western dance craze. It was fun. We ran into folks we knew, everybody was dancing and having a good time and feeling good about the sheer exercise benefit of the whole scene.
We went so far as to buy really good cowboy boots. The real ones, with steel shanks, high arches, good leather. And we danced our way through the early to mid-90s. But the craze began to wane a little as some of the clubs closed. (We used to joke that the clubs couldn’t really continue to stay in business because nobody could drink and do the intricate little dances. We, and most of the people we knew, were drinking mostly water, or occasionally going nuts with a ginger ale.)
Back in November, I signed myself and my guy up at the YMCA. I knew I might not make great use of the facility until after Christmas, but I did so as a jumpstart on getting a little exercise in the coming year.
I was right. I went to one yoga class once before Christmas and figured out pretty quick that I needed to get in better shape before I could do yoga. It takes a certain amount of balance, of which I am sorely lacking.
There are certain things about my manchildren that I admire. Each is blessed with an endearing trait (or two) that seem singular to them.
For instance, our firstborn, Surfer Dude works hard, but loves to play.
We get a day off for our birthday here at the newspaper. My original plan was to take the day and just have a little fun. That day was Friday. I didn't take it off.
Having it