A Rodent and a potluck

Ya'll I hate squirrels. I mean it, I really truly do. I can't hardly stand to see them in my yard running around, stealing my bird seed and waving their furry little tails. They're just big rats with bushy tails, ya'll. That's all they are. Well, if I hated them before what happened last week just clenched my opinion of them.

We've all been sick as dogs here, ya'll. Sick, I mean. With whatever crud is going around town. I know my boys brought it home from school and spread it around the family. There is nothing dirtier than a boy, ya'll. My boys won't hardly scrape their shoes when they come in the door and just leave a trail of stuff behind them wherever they go. Oh, they're as sweet as you please. You won't hear my boys addressing you without tacking a "Yes ma'am" on the end. And they'd do just about near anything to help you out. They get that from their daddy. But, by and large, they are filthy and disgusting. I don't think they can help it. John David went for four days one week last summer without taking a shower. He kept trying to justify it by telling me he was going swimming every day and the chlorine was getting him just as clean as could be. I let it go just as far as I could thinking eventually he'd give in and tuck his tail and hit the wash. But, I tell you the boy held out! I had to threaten him with hog-tieing him and scrubbing him off in the backyard before he succumbed. Anyway, whatever they brought with them, it was crud. We all dropped like flies so I've been taking care of sick kids and a big sick husband for what seems like forever, but has really been about two weeks.

Well, wouldn't you know it, but I finally got down with it too. I could feel it creepin' on and knew I had gone about as far as I could go and one afternoon I just lay down on the couch and give out. Mel ran the house for four days and darned if he didn't shake a stick at it. He gave his 100 percent. Of course, all you ladies out there know that a man's 100 percent in the house, ain't but about 35 percent of our standard. But I was proud of him and told him so.

I hobbled around for about two days weak as a kitten and huffing and puffing to do my housework. When I finally got out the house to go to the Piggly Wiggly before we run clean out of everything to eat and have to gnaw the kitchen table I had a disaster waiting on me when I came back.

I was beat when I hit the door, ya'll. I dragged in my grocery sacks from the car with baby Shelby trailing along behind me. When I opened the back door and stepped into the kitchen, I was met with quite a sight. Ya'll I thought we'd been burglared. Our house was torn to smithereens. There was stuff everywhere and it wasn't until I realized that nothing was missing, just torn up that the hairs on the back of my neck started to stand up. You know what it was?

Ya'll.

A SQUIRREL had come in through Walter the Cat's Kitty door and got in MY HOUSE! My house, ya'll!!!!

I about died. Right there. If Shelby hadn't been standing there with her little thumb in her mouth, I woulda let out a stream of obscenities that woulda pushed me further down on St. Peter's list.

I tell you. My curtains had been clawed. My couch cushions had been clawed. Stuff was knocked off shelves, cereal had been clawed into. He musta thought he was trapped for good and was fighting his way outta hell to leave the mess he did. Well. I stood there and just looked around and then I heard some scratching.

YES I DID, he was still in the house ya'll. Lordamercy! Mel was at work. The boys were at school and here I was with the baby and a car full of groceries and a damned squirrel in the house. 'Scuse my language, but we are talking about squirrels here, ya'll. I sent Shelby out to sit in the front porch swing and got me a broom and started hunting for that rat. Do you know where I found him? He was in the BABY'S room just a chewing away on her pink princess pig pillow that she dearly loves. Well, I got s'mad that I just started hollering and thumping my broom down every which a way. He musta seen I meant business because he puffed up his tail and hissed at me and then took off out the room and down the hall and right back out the pet door where he came in at.

I just sagged against the wall and looked around. I felt like a puff of wind coulda blown me away. I just put the cold stuff away and got the baby and we went to bed. When Mel came home that afternoon he hollered "Fannie, what the hell happened in this place?" and didn't even believe me when I told him. Can you believe that?

On another note, ya'll, we are going to a potluck tonight with the church. They have them once a month and I am making this squash casserole that you won't believe. I do hate to share recipes, being a southern woman and all, but since we're pals I'll let ya have this one.

Fannie's Fabulous Squash Casserole

3 T butter
8 squash, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
2 large eggs, with the fire beat outta them
2 T minced fresh parsley
1 cup grated cheddar cheese (although Mel insists I use more, so I go about two cups.)
1 t salt
1/2 t pepper
1 cup crushed potato chips

Heat your oven to 350. Grease your casserole about a 9x13 with butter. Put your onions and squash in a big old pot with a little bit of water. Simmer and cook til they're tender. Drain them. Mash them. Add the butter and stir til they're melted. In another bowl take your eggs, parsley, cheese, salt and pepper and mix them and add them to the squash mix. Pour into your dish and bake for 20 minutes. Top with the potato chips and then bake 10 minutes more.

Ya'll you'll thank me.

Absent

Law, ya'll! Didja think I'd run off? I know I just started this dadblame blog and here I go near three weeks without a lick or a promise. I'm about worn completely out! It's late here at the farm so I can't go into it because if Mel doesn't lay his head down at 10:30 sharp there's heck to pay in the morning, and of course you know he's a big old baby and needs a warm body next to him. So stay tuned, cause tomorrow I'm back online!

Stepped in it

Ya'll the saga continues.

Yesterday I carried Mel's Momma over to the Senior Citizen Center for their buffet lunch that they have on Tuesdays. She dearly loves to go visit with all her friends who are all older than God on Tuesdays while they eat the awfullest array of old people food you ever did see. I try to go with her once in a while if I can. So I dressed my little Shelby up in her little yellow gingham and off we went to town. Mel's Momma is meaner than a snake and she hates me. She had Mel when she was closer to forty than she was to being a blushing bride and he is her pet. You woulda thought the earth had opened up and swallowed her whole they way she cried and carried on when we told her we were getting hitched. Mel's Daddy died about ten years ago so she has made a whole social network of friends and is just rarin' to go nearly all the time. But I think she's slipping a little bit, if you know what I mean. Mel won't hear a word of it, but for one thing she calls me Martha about half the time and has taken a fondness to me. You know if Mel's Momma calls me anything but "that wife of yours" then something is wrong. Plus yesterday when I dropped her off at her house and walked her up the front steps I heard something rattling around in her purse and damned if she didn't take home her set of silverware from the Senior Citizens Center. Something is going to have to be done.

But that's neither here nor there because the saga of Vi and Danny continues, ya'll. As I was driving home from dropping Mel's Momma off an ambulance passed me and that always gets my heart to pumpin'. As I passed Danny and Vi's place I see her strapped to a stretcher just a hollerin' and waving her arms. I immediately pulled in and Lawdy if she don't beat all I've ever seen. Here's what happened.

You'll remember my story this weekend about her digging for her keys in the backyard? Well, her story says she was outside hanging out her wash when my old tom, Walter, scutted by her chasing a squirrel. She whirled around with her laundry basket and stepped right in one of them holes she had dug lookin' for her keys and broke her ankle. She limped in the house and had her boy call 911 and then took the phone from him to call his Daddy to tell him that his blaspheming the Lord by preventing her the right to worship had caused this thing to happen. I guess Danny musta drove like a bat outta hell because he beat the ambulance there and when I pulled in he was standing by her side clutching her purse looking real somber and ashamed and like he'd rather be anywhere but there right then. Vi was carrying on so, I thought she'd have a heart attack hollerin' about turning off her stove and shutting the back door and having Silas (their boy) finish his science project before he even thought about going outside that evening. The ambulance people looked at me like was there anything I could do to shut her up and I just shook my head at them.

I swear if it's not one thing its another.

Junkyard Garden

Sunday mornings before church is a heck of a time for Mel and me. By the time we get around to headin' out the door, they ain't much holy thoughts rumblin' around in our old Ford. But this morning there was a saving grace.

I was standing at the kitchen sink doing the breakfast dishes when I looked out the little window above the sink and saw my neighbor, Vi, out in the yard with her hands in her pockets looking at the ground. I dried my hands and opened up the back door and shouted, "Whadya lose, Vi?". Well! The string of obscenities that followed left my ears burning and my need for church just a little more pronounced.

I hurried over to the fence line. "I declare, Vi, if your kids heard you they'd think you was the devil incarnate. What is going on?"

What followed was the funniest story I ever heard and to listen to it with a straight face about beat all I'd ever seen.

Her husband, Danny, is the biggest junk collector in the county. Mel and I mutter under our breaths every time we drive by their place. It's just a wreck. He's got old cars parked out front of Vi's tidy little house and old empty oil drums littering the yard. He's got big wooden spools and huge rusty fenders and car parts all over the place. He saves them up for his "projects" as he tells Vi. She's a good little southern wife and just purses her lips and says nothing, but Lordamercy, the spirit must a took hold of her this week while he was on his annual fishing trip because when he came home all hell broke loose.

She musta got plumb sick and tired of looking out her pretty floral curtains at that pile of something outside because she called in an old boy that works down at the service station on Elm. He drives around an old rusty tow truck and does light work on the side. Well Vi hired that boy and had him drag every one of them old pieces of crap to the center of her yard. Me and Mel saw it when we came back from Vespers other night and just thought Danny was conglomerating and taking inventory of what he had. By Friday morning, when the boys got on the school bus, Vi had planted a beautiful garden with mulch and some nice bushes and buckets of flowering spruce and nice winter plants in tubs all around the old cars and trucks and she even had a big dormant cherry tree planted right in the hood of an old 1957 Chevy truck that had no hood. That tree just stuck right out of that truck's hood.

From what Vi said when Danny got home he was fit to be tied! When he asked her what in the *%$#@! had come over her she just said "Well, Danny, the Lord spoke to me and told me when I received lemons to make lemonade." and Danny told her that she was spending way to much time listening to the Lord and not near enough time listening to him so he took her car keys and buried them in the backyard. That was what Vi was doing that morning. Hunting for her car keys.

Well, I offered my sympathies and then headed back to the house to get the kids ready. Then in the car when all the kids were squirming and Mel's face started turning red, I told him the story. Let's just say that when we pulled into the parking lot, we were all feeling the spirit this Sunday morning.

Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!

A big welcome and hi-yo to all ya'll out there on the Internet reading this. I am just tickled pink to be here visiting with ya'll and can't hardly believe that a girl like me is reaching out into the big shiny world to make a bunch of shiny new friends!

Mel turned me on to the Internet about a year ago. Fannie, says he, you've got to pick yourself up out of this funk you are in and reach out and touch someone. He knows the winter gets me down, see, and he knows not anything will do but for me to have some friendly idle gossip and chat with some friends. So I found that I just dearly love the Internet and I'm so excited to meet new friends on this blog.

Look at me getting carried away talking before I even know what's what. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Fannie and I live way out in the great big middle of nowhere with my husband Mel, our two nasty rascal boys, Bobby and John David, and my princess Pea, Shelby who's that baby and just about as spoiled as a three year old can get. We have two cats a gray tom named Walter and a tabby named Duchess and we have eleven chickens, four goats, a mess of cattle and some random possums and raccoons.

I'm a small town girl that has never known life in the big city apart from whatever I watch on Bravo T.V. and read about in my People magazine which comes in the mail every two weeks on the dot. I love when that People magazine comes in. I tell Mel that's my private time and I will not be disturbed for naught so he best leave me be and I lock myself in the bathroom with a bubble bath and longneck and take to the runways, baby.

I don't think I would like city living much, although I dearly love to travel up to the big city that's about an hour away and let Mel take me out on the town. The closest I get to luxury in our neck of the woods is a ten ounce sirloin and baked potato and The Bottletop Diner. And it closes at eight each evening so it's not much of a night on the prowl when you frequent that place.

Small town life can't be bled out of ya, though. I don't think I could go fifteen minutes without knowing my Momma was up the road if I needed a recipe or some advice on planting potatoes or if I want to throw Mel out on his ear. Plus I just can't stand to not be able to see grass. There's something wrong with having more grass than concrete in a place.

I am a domestic engineer although I will thank you to know that I have my associates degree from our local community college and I use my education to rear my three fine children. I dearly love to be at home with my kids and my Mel, if I can get him to scrape his boots when he comes in the door. There is nothing more Fung Shui to me than having my hands deep in some bread dough or potting soil or paper mache project with the kids.

We are an old fashioned family and when Mel gets home from the plant where he works and after all his evening business with the animals gets done, we are spending some quality time together as a family.

Well, I can see by that mean old clock on the wall that its about time for me to say goodnight.

I am so looking forward to meeting all ya'll out there and I'm hoping that you'll stop by and say "Hey" and leave me a comment.

Until next time.