I won’t bother to lie. That was me you saw on the side of that country road or on that old home place in the country digging up plants..and that little, bitty old lady you saw with me; that was my mama. She’s my look out and spotter. When arrested, I won’t even be able to claim the act was spontaneous, since I keep a nice little camping shovel and plastic bags under my truck seat especially for my thieving excursions. I’ll probably try to explain that Mother has Alzheimer’s and escaped from me, but that might not fly, since I’ll be the one out wading in the muck while she’s standing by the truck, but I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. Just so you know, I’m not the only thief she raised. My sister, Connie makes raids just like I do. We both make sure to get enough to share, since it’s inevitable one of us will eventually get caught. Bud swears he won’t bail me out, but I suspect he’ll come get me when he gets hungry. Mother is on her own. She should have raised us better.
Bud,
Hairdo
Bud just hates it when he hears I am going to get my hair done. He claims, “I love your hair just the way it is.” Then he looks real quick just in case I ask him how “it is.” We both know it’s the money hairdos cost. I asked him today what kind of hairdo he didn’t like. He could only think of one, mentioning a woman who shaves her head. I guess I won’t try that one.
Picasso’s Sneakers
My son got me again. He slipped his new school shoes out, getting them mud-caked the afternoon before the first day of fifth-grade classes. I didn’t’the notice it until late in the afternoon. As we were indulging ourselves in poverty at the time, they were the only decent pair he had To wear to school. Hurriedly, I threw them in the washer, then got ready to toss them in the dryer, thinking the day was saved. The damned dryer died. No matter. I’ve always felt appliances should be multifunctional.n I put the wet shoes on the middle rack of the oven, intending to turn it to two hundred degrees, set the timer for ten minutes, then turned it off.
Out of habit, I set it to three fifty. Everything could still have worked out if the phone hadn’t rung just as I was about to set the timer.
I am a busy woman. I went about my business until I simultaneously smelled rubber burning and heard the smoke detector go off. Though the shoes didn’t actually catch fire, the soles were dripping between the wires of the oven rack as plastic burned on the oven bottom. They looked like high-heels by Picasso. I tried to snatch the melting sneakers out of the oven, burning my hand. Thinking I might get away just cutting off the drips, I got my butcher knife, prepared to do the deed, when I noticed the shoes had curled up like horseshoes.
There was nothing for it, but to make a flying trip to the shoe store for a second pair. I vainly hoped I might make it back home before Bud got in from working late. We did procure another pair of replacement shoes, in the exact style. I still cherished the hope Bud would never have to know. He can be unreasonable when I explain about why I tried to dry shoes in the oven. Fortunately, for the sake of my soul, I didn’t have to lie. Bud had gotten home, smelled burning shoe soles, and tracked the smell to the melted sneakers hidden in the trash. I do hate a suspicious man! He complained even more than when I put my rolls in the dishwasher to rise, since it was so warm and moist in there. I’d always done that without problems till I forgot and turned it on before taking them out. Like I said, appliances really should be multifunctional.
Doo Doo Bossier
In college, I suppose I was just a bit slow to catch on when Bud and his cousin Freddie kept talking about a guy in one of their classes named “Doo Doo Bossier.” I was always hearing, “Doo Doo did so and so.” or “Wait till you hear what Doo Doo did now!” Continue reading
I Can’t Find Anything for Lunch!
Bud came in about noon announcing he and Buzzy were going to look for some lunch. About three minutes later, he came back to where I was writing, announcing they’d given up. That’s what he always does when nothing jumps out of the refrigerator onto his plate. Sure enough, I went in the kitchen, finding he’d done a late night raid. The fridge was empty. There wasn’t a slice of meat or cheese, a teaspoon of mayonnaise, a leaf of lettuce. There were the sad remains of a bowl of potato salad, but it didn’t look too tempting since he hadn’t wrapped it back up after last night’s raid
. Alas, no cookies, no chips, nor bread. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t innocent of this information when he announced he couldn’t find anything for lunch. I did find six potatoes and a bag of baby carrots unmolested in the crisper.
There were no quick foods in the pantry, except for those I’d canned, which Bud doesn’t recognize as real food. I pulled out two jars of homemade Italian Vegetable Sausage Soup I made from fresh vegetables from my garden last summer, added the fresh carrots and potatoes, and fresh thyme, parsley, oregano, garlic, and onions from my herb bed. I found frozen hot dog buns and toasted them with fresh garlic butter. It was absolutely wonderful.
Bungarendeen
When warning the children not to eat potato salad that had been sitting on the counter for a week, or the need to clean and dress a cut, generally instructing them in infection avoidance instead of going into the specifics Bud would say, for example, “Don’t eat that. You’ll get bungarendeen.” He was a nurse, after all, and didn’t know better.
My daughter was in high school; her teacher was discussing various dread bacteria. Never hearing the one she’d been waiting for, she raised her hand. “What about bungarendeen?”
She was rewarded was generalized hysteria. When the teacher quit laughing, she said. “You must be John’s sister. He asked that same question three years ago.”
Cookies for Peace
Bud went on a diet. This means he’s polished off everything easy to grab in the pantry so never plans to eat again. After forty-five years, I know his habits. Trying to forestall a late-day panic, I asked early in the day if he’d like me to make something light. I was thinking, fruit salad, jello with fruit, something like that. “No, I am on a diet.”
He went all day till he caved about five, Dinner was pinto beans with lean pork over brown rice, a nice salad, and cornbread. Dinner again at seven with pinto beans, pork, rice, cornbread, but to cut calories, no salad. About eight, he jumped like he’d been poked with a hot-shot, exclaiming proudly “I know what I want! Tea cakes!” You’d have thought he was an astrophysicist with a new theory,
Deep in WordPress, I’d already settled for the evening. “I asked you earlier today if you wanted me to make something and you said ‘No.’.”
“But you didn’t say anything about teacakes.” This could end peacefully only one way. He said he’d help.
He got all the stuff out. I measured and put them in the bowl as he told me about a dozen things I was doing wrong. I ignored him. I’m the best cook I know. In about ten minutes the cookies were done. There are four of them left. He will probably be on a diet till about three. If you hurry, you can get here while the coffee’s still hot.
More Baloney,Please!
My temperature was 103. Bud had been working out of town for three days when he came home to find the kids sticking baloney and cheese on the wall. They’d stick it it up to make patterns, lick it when it turned loose and fell to the floor, then reuse it. They were happily occupied, letting me lie on the sofa.
“What the hell is going on? Don’t you see these kids plastering the walls with baloney and cheese?”
“Yeah. I’m so glad you’re home. I was afraid it was about to quit sticking before you got here!”
Pitchin’ Pine Knots
My husband is the only person I know who looks forward to having religious visitors drop by in hopes of illuminating and converting him. We used to have fairly regular concerned visitors from various denominations come to call, but I fear his reputation has spread and our house bears a hidden mark of some type, warning the pious to avoid us like the plague. Continue reading
Nutsrok 