A Book You Love & One You Didn’t
There are so many things wrong with this subject. First of all the words “One” & “A”. Like I could seriously pick just one of each. But I will try.
It’s fairly easy to pick one I love because I just finished it. It kept my attention like few have in the past few years. It was my Book Club’s selection for this month: Fever by Mary Beth Keane.
It’s the story of Typhoid Mary, set in the early years of the 20th century. New York City’s lower east side tenements were teeming with disease and filth & Mary was a cook for some of the richest families of Manhattan. She is an unmarried Irish immigrant with strong opinions & an even stronger work ethic.
Yeah, I know it sounds boring, but I am telling you it is gripping & engrossing enthralling & all the words. She makes it so interesting & causes you to speculate on your own life. Are you where you’d thought you’d be as an adult? Do you think it will always be as it is now? What if you are old & lose your job & no one wants you? What if the thing you love & that you are best at is punishable by law if you practice it? What if the man you love is an alcoholic but you don’t know how to love another? He’s all you know in this country…you’ve been with him for 17 years. What if you are perfectly healthy but accused of killing people by being around them? You are sick in a way you can’t understand & they can’t explain. You are forced into exile & have no contact with your former life, not even to tell them that you’re being help captive of the state? It’s unimaginable.
But it’s not all dark & dismal. Mary rises again & again & overcomes everything that is thrown her way. It’s interesting to me that she remained resilient. I would have jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge. And yet…it only mentions her crying once. I cried more than that reading it!
Even though this book is fiction, a mere possibility of the life she may have lived, it seems so real. It is easy to sympathize with Mary. I was captivated from early on.
One I Didn’t:
Priscilla Balleu Presley: The Untold Story.
I wouldn’t say I’m obsessed with Elvis, but I am intrigued by him, & I do like his music. I occasionally like biographies so I thought this would be interesting.
I could not have been more wrong.
I’m not sure what Priscilla ever did to this author, but it must have been really bad. Additionally, the author repeats herself relentlessly & it is clear she didn’t have enough information for a book. It is also evident that Priscilla is a liar, as the author sites sources with every quote. Slow going, a dark pall against every page. I hated it & quit at 40% (it was on my Kindle, thankfully I paid less than three dollars).
So there you go.
Honorable mentions include Gone With the Wind (of course), Lonesome Dove, Peter Pan, Islands by Anne Rivers Siddons, The Paris Wife by Paula McClain, anything by Wendy Webb, Gillian Flynn, Jodi Picoult, Kristin Hannah, & Karen White.
While I will always reach for my southern set favorites, occasionally I branch out & in rare instances am wow’ed. So it’s a marvelous thing I’ve found two in the last month.
I know I can be a bit much if you’ve ever asked me for a book recommendation, & for that I will apologize. But there’s so many good ones to read! Time’s a-wastin’!
Alternately, I hated these that everyone seems to love: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the Bell Jar, 50 Shades (don’t judge, I had to see what all the hoopla was about), Twilight (same reason. Hey, I liked Harry Potter!) & the Confederacy of Dunces.
Happy reading!
Day 7: What Tattoos You Have & If They Have Meaning
My first was a heart. I wanted something simple, something small, something that said I wasn’t what everyone thought I was.
My second is a horseshoe with a red “Vegas” style 7. My lucky charms.
My third is a four leaf clover. Another lucky charm. A tip to my Irish roots.
Who’s surprised? I bet very few have ever laid eyes on any of them, & if you have, probably just the clover. I was with friends I loved every time, & it was an event & a ton of fun.
I would be absolutely covered up if I thought I wouldn’t get tired of them & it would be hard to procure a job. Or keep the one I have. They frown on pink hair & visible art. I still want some wings on my back. Shug wants us to get cards (Jack & Ace) & guns. And I want a mermaid for sure. And my hometown postage stamp. Have y’all seen those? They are super cool. And a sparrow. And a stack of books with a thought provoking quote. And maybe a honeybee….you can see where I would run out of room fast.
Update 11-7-17 Well, looks like I got my swallow ❤ Still waiting on a bunch more. I never thought I’d put one in such an exposed place, but I love it. I wish I had gotten the paisley right away…but I’d probably have chickened out on any more of them.
Day 6: Someone Who Fascinates You & Why
Oh, my gosh. I don’t know why I labored over this for so long.
Of COURSE I am fascinated by Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton! She is FABULOUS. And I’m not one to be awed by celebrities. But she seems so genuine! And she’s always so poised & beautiful & her clothes are gorgeous. Of course, if I had an army of people working on making me look perfect every day, enough precious jewels to sink a ship, & an unending supply of cash, I could probably look that good, too. But I still probably wouldn’t be that NICE. Elegance can’t be bought. I think Diana would approve.
Chick-fil-A is really something. I went by the one on Chapman this morning & the girl at the window went to fold down the top of my bag & it was barely torn so it wouldn’t make a nice crease.
She frowned.
“Oh, let me get you another bag, this one’s ripped.”
As soon as I got my eyeballs back in my head that she was actually SERIOUS I waved my arm. “No, it’s alright! Really!”
“Are you sure?” her brow was all furrowed, not understanding why I would accept an inferior bag.
“Absolutely.”
I accepted my barely damaged bag with glee.
I just wanted its contents.
Day 4: 10 Interesting Facts About Myself
Oh good grief. Tuletta said, “Well, it is called a challenge…”
1.) I’ve had two vehicles in my entire life. To paraphrase Lonesome Dove, I’m not one to give up on a vehicle just because it’s got a little wear on it…
2.) I’ve done a bit of traveling. My favorite place in the US is Bear Lake, Idaho, closely rivaled by the Oregon coast.
3.) I think strawberry ice cream is disgusting, and I don’t like macaroni and cheese much better.
4.) I would love to write for a living. Or read books. I read about 50 a year, anyway, but I would like to read a few hundred. But I would still have to write, it eats at me. Sometimes, I’ll be trying to figure out what’s wrong with me, why I can’t concentrate, and it occurs to me that I haven’t spilled my guts out about anything. As soon as I spin a tale, I feel more settled.
5.) I am perfectly happy staying in and never going out. I would like to pay someone to do my shopping for me. I would make a great hermit. I hate to talk on the phone, too. Please don’t ask me to call you. It makes me sweat and I spend a lot of time thinking up excuses why I didn’t answer or didn’t call you.
6.) I used to vacation alone. And I still would. Johnny likes to lay on the beach, I like to sightsee.
7.) I know a lot of dead people’s phone numbers. I know a lot of phone numbers, period. They don’t call me “Google of the Co-op” for nothin’.
8.) I own about 30 Coach purses.
9.) I order dessert first at Olive Garden. They have the most phenomenal lemon cake in the whole entire world, and I don’t want to eat so much dinner I can’t eat it.
10.) I worked as a 911 dispatcher for about a year & a half. It was, at turns, exhilarating and monotonous.
ChiA colleague of mine recently lost his mother. I don’t mean that she cannot be found, of course. This evening was the first time I’ve seen him & of course I expressed my condolences. I simply said, “I’m sorry about your mother.” He thanked me, & since we were still standing there awkwardly, I additionally offered, “That sucks.”
A smile.
“Yes, it does. And I appreciate your saying so.” He paused. “I had wondered what you were supposed to say to someone who lost their mother? I didn’t know, I still don’t. What CAN you say? But that sums it up sufficiently. It DOES suck.” He went on to say no one had said this to him yet (leave it to me) but it was an accurate assessment.
So, let this be a lesson to y’all. It may not be the most eloquent phrase that ever comes out of your mouth, but if it is heartfelt & sincere, it will be appreciated, perhaps more than you know.
Just speak the truth. Always & for any situation. The truth is always the right thing to say.
The Day 3: First Kiss & First Love
Ugh.
First kiss that COUNTED was in the loft of a beautiful old white barn. The barn was much better than the guy it came with.
First love. My first true love was horses. I knew I loved them early on, even though I’d never had one. I loved carousels, and had to always have a pony ride at the fair and wherever else we went that offered them. Plus, ya know, I had all the hundreds of My Little Ponies to keep me entertained. But we eventually sold all the cattle off & my Mamaw leased the property to some horse owners. Oh, happy days! They came over each night to feed them and I was allowed to hold the bucket. Sometimes they let me ride when they had their saddles with them…and sometimes I snuck off and rode bareback, with only a halter and some makeshift reins from baler twine. I was a bit of a daredevil. I also took every opportunity to go over to Uncle Roy’s and ride any of his knothead ponies & horses. I would pore over horse magazines and catalogs, dreaming of all the things I wished I had the money to buy. Any horse program came on TV, and I would be glued to it. I would watch for horses out in pastures any time I went out, & loved visiting Churchill Downs and Kentucky Horse Park whenever I could. I dreamed of all the breeds I would someday own, and drew out plans for barns, arenas, and paddocks.
Eventually, I started showing some halter horses for 4-H and then showed some gaited horses. While I was in high school my uncle kept some horses at the house and I started green breaking them. I preferred to ride bareback instead of fooling with all the riggin’s and dragging a saddle out, so I had excellent balance. This made me a bit of a nerd with my classmates, nobody else was still horse crazy like me, and it was rare to see any other females in cowboy boots. The Vo-Ag classes back then were a bit of a dumping ground for unruly students, and I never felt that I fit in…but when I started attending Walters State at the Morristown campus I discovered a whole world of people like me! It was awesome. I couldn’t believe my good fortune. But, alas, I was still an odd duck, because I preferred my English duds for riding. One of my classes was horsemanship, where we rode a variety of horses at a Saddlebred show barn, and also had the option of bringing our own horses. I had my own, but no way to haul it. It was like a dream come true, riding horses with friends and getting credit for it. One day, the owners of the stable broke out some “Back 40” horses. You know, the ones who hadn’t been touched in a year or two. They recruit one of the “cowboys” to ride this especially rank Arab cross aptly named Diablo. He rode the buck out of him and dismounted. He was a man of few words, so one of them asked him, “What’d you think?”
I don’t remember his response, but I do remember the next question: “Alright to put somebody else on him?”
Greg spat in the dust, and nodded at me. “She can ride ‘im.”
That was about the most he’d ever said to me, and definitely the biggest compliment I ever got out of him. So away I went. The horse was a powder keg, and if I was trying to sell him, I would say he “moves out”, which is code for “hold on” lol.
But I used to love to ride those crazy ones, hated chugging along. My Saddlebred wasn’t much for trail pleasure, we took him over to Big Creek one time and he worked himself into such a dither coming back we went the whole way back down the mountain backwards. True story. I still prefer a big horse, the little ones can turn and spin out from under you way too easy. And I still love to ride…in optimum conditions, like 70 degrees, on a well-kept path, with a sensible, steady mount. I just don’t like the rest of the stuff that goes with it…like cleaning stalls, or getting stuck in the mud when you go out to feed hay, or hoping you don’t get frostbit when the wind is cutting through you while you valiantly try to bust ice. But oh, to some, it is worth it….to feel invincible, to feel like you’re flying as you ride across rolling hills, the scenery whipping by and the ground solid beneath the pounding hooves. I remember. And sometimes, I miss my first true love.
Day 2: Earliest Memory
Hmmm.
While I do have a vague recollection of going to the circus as a toddler & bringing home some sort of inflatable creature…Bugs Bunny? Whatever it was, I remember racing across the basement & straddling it across the sides of my playpen.
However, I realize this doesn’t make for very entertaining reading for my evening armchair readers (I recently learned I have a following that logs in just to read my stuff!), so I will share a little more.
I remember going out once a week with my mom and great-grandmother, “Mamaw”. She couldn’t drive, & depended on someone to cart her here, there, and yon. We would go to Howard’s, which was kind of like a Kmart. It was across the road from Kmart, as a matter of fact. (Where Nova or Avalon or whatever it is is now). They had My Little Ponies priced at $4.99. My weekly allowance was $5; I could generally coerce someone to contribute the tax. In this way, I accumulated a pony a week. More if I lost a tooth or made straight A’s on my report card. I also scored an extra one for having a tee-tiny mole removed off the tip of my ear. Mom promised me if I didn’t cry I could have the one I’d been coveting, a “baby pony” complete with playpen and bottle. I didn’t cry, but the way she tells it, I had a single alligator tear roll pitifully down my cheek. I’m sure my bottom lip was protruding something fierce, too. On these excursions, we would also frequently visit the Revco next door to pick up prescriptions. Mamaw had this mustard yellow leather change purse with a pieced leather duck stitched on it. I loved that change purse, and she would let me count out the change for the clerk. Everyone was always so patient with me. Probably because I was so darned cute with my curly hair and freckles 😉 We would wind up our outing with a trip to Burger King, which was virtually the only restaurant in South Knoxville at that time.
I remember times with my great grandfather as well, time spent in the garden, following him down the row every step of the way as he stretched the string to make sure he planted in a perfect line, or picking beans, or checking cows in his old equally rust and red pickup. I remember turning the handle on the old grinding wheel to sharpen hoes, & him making us a big glass of ice water & a fried bologna sandwich. And when the microwave came along…he thought that was the coolest invention ever. I remember catching night crawlers underneath the apple tree and fishing with them the next day. And I used to ride with him in “Ol’ Blue” to the gap of the mountain to meet Mamaw’s carpool as the Union Valley crew returned from work at Bike Athletic. He had a compass on the dash that mesmerized me.
I remember when he got cancer and came back from radiation treatments with black lines under his eyes. They told me he was like a football player so I wouldn’t be scared. He died one sunny day while I swam in my pool with my cousin Tammy. She cried, I didn’t. I don’t know why.
She also cried when we got our ears pierced at Stewart’s drug store in Sevierville, but I didn’t. I was too excited to be scared.
I remember my grandmother going to get her pitch black hair set every Tuesday morning. I remember her catching me a toad in the well house one night during a gully washer. She would take me to get an ice cream on Saturdays, and she loved to eat buttermilk & cornbread from a big glass at night while watching her recorded “stories”.
I recall that I was loved, cherished, adored, and doted on every day of my life, because I was the first great-grandchild. It didn’t last forever, but it lasted a long time. I had a happy childhood and I feel quite fortunate.
Purple.
The color of the day was purple.
Where I was, anyway.
So, even though everybody else in the greater Knoxville area was wearing their best Vol orange, emblazoned with giant power T’s, drinking orange flavored beer, eating cheese dip on Doritos, & singing Rocky Top till they were hoarse, I was wearing heels & politely sipping wine. Even the mountains had turned orange in preparation of one of the oldest rivalries in SEC country.
Who gets married on a football Saturday in Tennessee? Who gets married on Tennessee versus Alabama Saturday, no less?
Crystal Allen, that’s who. A GRADUATE of the University of Tennessee, so you’d think she knew better!
But the wedding has been in the works for almost two years, and the romance since high school, so I couldn’t miss it.
Crystal is a sweet soul; nothing is more important to her than family. Her quirky demeanor makes you giggle, & she’s so plainly beautiful you can’t help but stare. So, as a few raindrops fell yesterday on her simple ceremony underneath the maple trees, I couldn’t help that a few of my few tears joined them.
I was expecting a princess gown, full tulle skirt & fitted bodice, but I was wrong. She was elegant in a lace gown with a short train adorned with sparkles. I was expecting a long veil, but she had flowers twisted into her hair. I was expecting a short reception, but there was a DJ & cupcakes weren’t till eight.
Her groom was a twitchy, jittery mess, while Crystal seemed to constantly be on the verge of nervous laughter. The ceremony was short, I guess they were ready to get it over with after all this time. It was all smiles all around, under the umbrellas & trees shedding their golden leaves. The unity candle stayed lit, always a good sign.
So even though the bridesmaids wore purple, the flowers were purple, the fairy lights were purple, and the napkins were purple, my heart was bleeding orange. Luckily, Shug was keeping me updated on missed field goal attempts & the score while Robin & I watched our former coworker get married to the only guy she’s ever loved. And after we got our hugs, we came home, forgoing barbeque & a night of dancing.
I had to watch the painful last quarter where we led for too short a time, and the disappointment of another loss due to careless mistakes. Then we were off to Seymour Grill with my favorite aunt & uncle to partake in good ole southern food. (I had chicken & waffles, which is wonderful, if you’ve never tried it).
Today I lay on the couch, licking my wounds, thinking about putting potato soup in the crock pot for this rainy Sunday. I hope the newlyweds are enjoying their first day of marriage, still riding high from the excitement of their wedding day. It’s funny: this is married life: being united, idly tapping out a story of all that makes a marriage, & hoping the day doesn’t get away too quickly.
Y’all know how I feel about kids. I don’t want any, & most of the time, I don’t care for other peoples. But I have recently learned something.
We need to be praying for mothers. Mothers everywhere. Whether they’re raising their own children or someone else’s. Whether they have one or two or ten or none and just want to be blessed with one. Or, in the case of this month’s “Awareness of the Month”, if they’ve lost a child through miscarriage or death. All these women are mother…s.
Mothers are constantly fretting that they aren’t adequate. If they spend all day nurturing their child, they feel that they are neglecting housework or their husbands. If they miss a “Mom watch this” they fear that their child will have development issues & be in therapy for abandonment when they turn 21. They feel that they can never do enough & will never be able to protect them throughout their life. Mothers have a hard time. Most of my closest friends are mothers. Some of them, it’s all they ever wanted, & they are totally immersed in the motherhood thing. But they can’t protect their children from heartbreak. They’ll do anything to avoid problems. Other mothers are living the dream too, but the kids don’t cooperate. You hear these stories of kids that NEVER sleep….apparently that’s true. So that mother definitely needs prayers, as she loses her mind a little more every day. And makes her doubt her dreams of raising one, let alone a house full.
Pray for the mothers that became mothers too young & are now re-living the part of life they feel they missed out on. Pray for the mothers who had their babies but turned them over & regret it. Pray for the ones who didn’t see it in their heart to give birth & made an irrevocable choice. Pray for the mothers that are raising a child alone, after the man who did his part is no longer around, for whatever reason. Pray for the mothers who are leaving this Earth, & question how their children will cope, if they’re ready. Pray for mothers. They don’t have it easy, no matter how big their smile.
