Frankly, my Dear, I don't care for SPAM:

This occurred to me when I got up this morning and checked my e-mail box. There was 1 actual note from a friend along with a couple of on-line catalogues, offers for Canadian Drugs, coupons, great give-aways, dating services, pharmaceutical solutions to problems I don’t have, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera……

And I thought, “Frankly, my Dear, I don’t care for SPAM.”

It’s amazing to me how often a line from a movie (or a variation of one) will spring to mind in day to day situations. Maybe this is because we send way too much of our time watching films. Goodness knows we love them.

Our teenagers were especially good at this. Not only did they watch more movies than you can really believe, but they had an amazing ability to remember what they’d seen and to play it back - verbatim. {One summer Manchild memorized “The Princess Bride” from beginning to end – including all of the sound effects. I am still amazed by that!}

Sometimes I thought our entire dinner conversation was made up of a string of quotes from favorite shows. Here are a few that spring to mind.

“We’ll see. We’ll try it and we’ll see.” --- Joe vs. the Volcano





“Get it? Got it. Good.” --- The Court Jester

“Will she like us? Of course she will like us. We are nice.” --- Sarah Plain & Tall

“Whadda ya mean? Spots?” --- Support Your Local Sherriff

“That’s the most tragical thing that’s ever happened.” --- Anne of Green Gables




“Because of our traditions, every one of us knows who he is and what God expects him to do.” --- Fiddler on the Roof

“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
--- the Princess Bride

“I just had the most scathingly brilliant idea.” --- The Trouble With Angels

“These mashed potatoes are soooo creamy.” --- While You Were Sleeping

“Yeah, Dad!” --- Robin Hood (Disney)

“Something vexes thee?” --- Robin Hood Prince of Theives

“Tomorrow is another day.” --- Gone With the Wind

“There’s a big difference between dead and mostly dead.” --- The Princess Bride

“Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.” --- Finding Nemo

“And I can’t stand him.” (in a whiny nasal voice) --- Singing in the Rain

“THAT’s a chick movie.” (said in a disgusted man voice) --- Sleepless in Seattle

“Remember when……… That was AWESOME!” --- Tommy Boy

“In a minute. In a minute.” (bit of a sing song tone) --- Cinderella (Disney)

“There’s no place like home.” --- The Wizard of Oz

“The pellet with the poison’s in the flagon with the dragon. The chalice from the palace has the brew that is true.” --- The Court Jester

“I’m not crazy. I’ve just been in a very bad mood for forty years.”
--- Steel Magnolias


I’m sure you’ve got plenty of your own. Let’s hear your favorites. I’ll bet they bring back some memories for us all.

Big, Fat, HAIRY Deal:

I got a perm yesterday. Now I recognize that perms are passé. But when you have baby-fine, poker straight hair (like mine) that won’t hold a set if you pay it cash {or in this case, very expensive styling products}; you’ll pretty much do whatever it takes.

It seems like I have been struggling with my hair for as long as I can remember. When I was a very little girl, I used to spend part of every Saturday night sitting on the living room floor watching Lawrence Welk while my mother rolled my hair up on flannel rag strips to get me ready for Sunday school the next day.

From those, I graduated to “Spoolies”. Are any of you old enough to remember those? Spoolies were pink rubber rollers. When they were wound up and snapped together, the resembled a hundred little Martian space craft orbiting my head. Rags were softer to sleep on…………….. but "SPOOLIES" were COOL!



When I was about 4, Mom suggested that it was probably time to get my first hair cut. I was pretty excited about it, too. But my older brothers were against the whole thing. One of them (who shall remain nameless here to protect the guilty) tried as hard as he could to talk me out of it, but I was determined. Mom said that I sat there looking more like I was occupying the electric chair, than the seat of honor in a beauty salon. As they made the initial cut, I broke into a huge smile and said, “Why that doesn’t hurt a bit!” Apparently, big brother had told me “Honey, you don’t want to get your hair cut. You know how much it hurts when you cut your finger? Well there is so much hair, it’ll be even worse than that.” And I believed him and still wanted to be beautiful badly enough to face the pain.

Maybe it was my determination to look pretty that swayed her, but Mom went all out that day and shelled out a hard-earned $8 to have it styled as well. On the way home we stopped to show Aunt Roberta – not home, Aunt Greta – not home, and Aunt Louise – also not home. So Mom sat me on the top step to look pretty for Daddy when he got back from work. Unfortunately, before he could arrive and see me in all my glory, big brother had turned the hose on me. So much for glamour!

By 1st grade my hair was long again and worn in braids, which I apparently had a hard time keeping out of my mouth. Momma told me if I didn’t stop chewing on my pigtails, she would cut them off. My Momma was not big on idle threats. By 2nd grade I was back to a short cut.

Recently I told a couple of my brothers that I distinctly remember Mom telling me that she was sorry that I looked so ugly, but that she only knew how to do “boy hair”. They disputed this, saying Mother would NEVER, EVER have said I looked ugly. They are probably right. (Mom was an encourager, never one to put anyone down.) She probably said that my hair style looked “unfortunate” or that she was sorry it turned out “like that”. But what my heart heard was “ugly”.

This is the tip of the hair style night mare, iceberg. There was the “trim” Mom gave my very long hair while I was practicing the piano. “No, I didn’t need to stop. Keep playing.” I must have been a high energy piano player, because the hair kept getting shorter and shorter and crooked-er and crooked-er, until she had to take me to someone to “fix the damage”. That ended up as a pixie cut.

Or the 1st haircut of my teenage years, where my sister-in-law misjudged the distance and gave me ½ way up the forehead bangs.

There was the time I got a perm the day before I was a bride’s maid at my cousin’s wedding and they forgot to put on the neutralizer – effectively giving me a “permanent straight” instead of a “permanent wave”.

All things considered, my hair and I have not ever been best friends, but it’s a relationship I’m willing to keep working on. After all, the alternative is not a pertty picture. And the perm is actually not bad at all…..

It Was a Dark & Stormy Night...

Ok, technically it was a dark and stormy afternoon. I had gone to a quilting class on the other side of town. “And the rain was POURING down.” It was as gloomy as possible – an ideal day to stay home with a good book and a cup of something warm to go with those Girl Scout cookies.

This is apparently what most of the people who signed up for the class did last Saturday, because we were very few in number; just 4 grandma type people in the whole shop. (The 60+, fragile woman who owns the shop was in the sales center out front. The side workroom was inhabited by 1 teacher and 2 students all in our 50s and clearly the kind who would go in for quilting classes.)

About a ½ hour before closing a young man came in and began wandering aimlessly around the store. Now, it’s not unusual for a man to come in looking for a sewing machine for his wife or sweetheart, but this one didn’t fit the mold. He was in his 20s and a mountain of a man. He spoke to no one and seemed more interested in watching us, than in looking at the sewing machines. It was like he was casing the joint. I SWEAR! He wandered into the work areas and when asked if he was interested in a sewing machine, mumbled something non-committal. And he stayed a LONG time.

Once again, my friends, my spider sense was tingling. We all felt it. Something didn’t seem right about the whole thing. Now maybe, the poor guy had just come in to get out of the rain; but we were feeling none too secure.

At this point, the other woman in my class whispered to us, “Don’t worry. I’m going to get my best friend.” I thought, “Don’t tell me her husband has been sitting out in the car this whole time. What can she be talking about?” She went quietly over to the other side of the room and got her purse, slipped her hand inside and released the safety on her HAND GUN. I am not joking! Grandma lady was preparing to take on the scary man.

Now if you think I was nervous with a frightening man invading our little sewing circle, you must believe it was nothing compared to how I felt thinking of an armed confrontation: Granny vs. Shaft.

Luckily for us all, he abruptly turned and walked out of the shop. The store keeper slipped the deadbolt on the front door. The safety went back on “old Betsy” and log cabin squares were successfully completed.

Only in TEXAS, I tell you. Only in TEXAS!!!