It's Not Enough That You Love Blow and I Love Puff

I really wanted to just sit down and write last night. This is nothing new, of course, but the evening slipped away. I was much more interested in goofing off, chatting with friends and family and working out. Okay, that last one is a lie. MathMan had to drag me kicking and screaming to the gym, but after I got there, I was fine. Fine. I was fine.

Last night, I was unfocused. I was the puppy chasing bubbles. The kitten going after the elusive moth. The ping pong ball turned loose. On the internets. First, I had to check out all my usual places. Then I opened the story I've been working on in Word and stared at it for two and a half minutes. Then I checked Facebook.

I swear, Facebook is like the Dairy Queen parking lot when I was a kid. You circle enough times and you just know you're going to see the people you want to see.

At one point, I was led astray, in a good way, by That Cracker Queen Lauretta Hannon who wanted me to tell her whom I prefer - Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn or George Jones and Tammy Wynette. Which meant, of course, that I had to go looking at youtube duets so that I could give a measured response. Because I'm all about calm, cool, controlled, well-thought out answers. You'll have to friend Lauretta to see my answer. Sillies.

Then my good friend David Sirota, yes that David Sirota, wanted me to tell him who I thought was a perfect example of a true narcissist - someone who is actually famous for being a narcissist. Oh, famous. Sure, make it hard. Well, heck fire, David. You mean besides me? I suppose I could give you the names of a couple of old boyfriends, but why should I draw any attention to those narcissists? I'm no enabler! Let them get their own damn press.

Wait - I have to tell you this story about Facebook. It can be used for good and not just evil. Allow me to demonstrate:

I went searching for the woman in the picture above. Her name is or was Bonnie Flowers. I worked with her at AARP. She is one of the wittiest, funniest people I've ever had the pleasure to know. I regret that I did not stay in touch with her. So I tried Facebook. I found a Bonnie Flowers, looked at her picture and was OMG! There she is!!!!! I sent a friend request, she accepted and then I was all wow! it's Bonnie!!!! Except it wasn't that Bonnie Flowers. The resemblance is striking.

But here's the thing. And I use the phrase bless her heart in the sincere way, not the other, passive-aggressive mean way. Bless her heart, Bonnie Flowers sent me a Facebook message that essentially said "Who are you and how do I know you?" I was struck by her honest approach. Struck in a good way. Perhaps I should have used the term impressed. Anyway, I'd already figured out by her profile that I didn't have the correct Bonnie Flowers, but I was too embarrassed to say anything.

A few days go by and after reading some of Bonnie's status updates, I think "I really like this woman." She's full of heart. She loves animals. In fact, she'd fit in well with some of my dog-loving blogger friends. I'm looking at you, Suzi Riot. My new friend is interesting and funny and sweet and kind. I like her. Now I know two Bonnie Flowers. I just need to find the one from Chicago now.

Okay - here's a story about the other Bonnie Flowers. She and I were "hired" to do some morale building at AARP during a time of stress and change. We decided to do a video chronicle of the build out of new offices. It was a time of physical and mental upheaval.

One day, I was running the video and Bonnie was interviewing people. She was definitely the on camera talent. She's interviewing the woman who was our Big Boss. She asks this woman, who once ran the Department for Senior Citizens Concerns or some other BIG thing for the State of Illinois. Now she was our boss. Bonnie asks, "So, Jan, is it true that you intend to make the motto for the new Midwest Regional Office I want to rock and roll all night and party every day?" and then, thrust the microphone into the Big Boss's face.

I nearly peed my pants, but I was pretty big pregnant with Nate, so that was my excuse.

After years of working in offices, I now know that every office needs a Bonnie.

See how cool this social networking is? If you're willing to let people in just a little, you can find that there's a whole lot of good out there. Good and smart and funny and interesting. We're inundated with bad news. It's nice to know that there's a whole lot more of the good stuff than we're led to believe.

So now I've got a new friend. And we're on a quest to find the woman who shares her name. I love when life presents you with stuff like this.

Sermon over.

Sometimes, it's good to take a step back, a breather, a moment to visit with friends who tell you that Sherman marched right through your house. I mean, his army didn't march through the house - it wasn't here - but they went tromping and burning right through where this house stands.

Turns out, there is all kinds of Civil War (or the War of Northern Aggression, dependin') history right here in our little slice of Georgia. I've been very slow to learn about it. Maybe because I was a transplant and didn't want to seem like I was gloating? Or maybe because I've been much too busy living inside my own head. Either way, it's nice to have a minute to find out something new. Thanks to Kim for taking us over to Tilly's farm to see the old iron bridge and grist mill tonight.

Well, folks, this post is like walking in on a conversation, isn't it? I apologize. This is what happens when the mind races and the track goes all cattywampus.

I mean, just now, I'm hanging out at Rev Coffee, waiting to go to a luncheon meeting. I've got itunes open and my headbuds in, but have I clicked play? Duh. Toooooo decisive. The cinammon bun coffee is good, though.

You know what's fun? Watching men watch women.

Tune in next week for my version of What in the Heck Is That? Could be meat, could be cake*.....

Until next Wednesday,

Lisa

*Man, I miss George Carlin. Can you imagine the fun he'd have with the Teabaggers?

Commute Chat 8 - Season Two Begins

Dear You:

Hello, again.

Today (Monday) marked day one of Season Two of Commute Chat. I can't believe that summer is essentially over for the Goldens. This past weekend was a perfect ending to the season of fun, a term which I use lightly here. On Friday night, we attended a book signing and reading and recording of the Georgia Public Broadcasting program Cover to Cover at our local library. While there, I met author Lauretta Hannon aka The Cracker Queen.

Garbo also pushed her way to the front and had her picture taken with Lauretta. Garbo is a CQ in training.

Later, she tried to read The Cracker Queen while Georgia author Terry Kay spoke about his writing career and his various novels.

But Mr. Kay proved just a bit too interesting for her. She gave up trying to read during the event and listened instead. At the end of the taping, Lauretta drew the name for the winner of the Georgia Public Broadcasting raffle. And what do you know? She drew my name. I responded with a very clever "No Way!"

But it was true and I have the swag to prove it. See?


After the event, we hung around for a while because Lauretta had a special goody bag for me. It was full of some really cool things. (See top picture.) I was especially grateful for the nerve pills. I can use them these days! (Thank you, Lauretta! You are too kind!)

While we milled around, nibbling on cookies and sucking the cream out of petit fours, I spied John Sepulvado. I sidled up next to him and purred "I take a shower with you every day."

What a smoothie. He simply smiled indulgently at me. I realize that this wasn't the first time he'd heard this line. "Well, my girlfriend is in there so don't let her hear that."

John later introduced us to Suzanne Capelouto, another GPB staffer. They wanted to talk to to MathMan about his connection to Torey Malatia, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Chicago Public Radio. It's an interesting story about how MathMan knows the Man Who is the Model Public Radio CEO, but let's just say that the conversation included a moment where we actually got MathMan to sing a song once crooned by Mr. Malatia in the dark days before he got on the staff of WBEZ in Chicago.

One of the evening's highlights was having Lauretta brag on my writing. I knew she read the blog some, but when she met my husband and said in her perfect Southern drawl, "You must be MathMan," it was clear that she had, in fact, read it and remembered some of it. That was a very cool moment for me. And for MathMan, too.

And as if that weren't enough, MathMan, The Dancer and I finished off the weekend by having dinner? breakfast? hot fudge sundaes? with some complete strangers we found sitting in some rocking chairs along I20.

But you know all this already, don't you?
Because the first thing you did was click on the video, that's why.

With fond fondles of fondling,

Lisa

Cracker? I Don't Even Know Her! (But I'm Going to Email Her Anyway)

Last week, MathMan and I popped in to our local library to borrow some dvds to watch as we drift off to sleep. Nothing soothes the savage beast of my inner voices like a good British murder mystery. I'm trying to learn to go to sleep to the calming sounds of babbling brooks and panflutes via the Spa Channel on Sirius/XM, but I'm like an addict. I need my Brits bonking one another over the head with random objects or pushing each other down ancient wells.

MathMan and I are currently working our way through the Rosemary and Thyme series, having viewed all the available Poirot, Hetty Wainthrop, Mrs. Bradley Mysteries and Midsomer Murder collections available in the library. And although PBS has been kind enough to provide us with a couple of new Poirots and Miss Marples (delights each), they are not enough to chase away the nightly parade of hobgoblins and worries so that I can finally escape into my dreamworld.

So there we were, whispering our way through the stacks when a book title struck me and I just had to pick it up. I'm very predictable in how I select books to read. I read the first page first, then I flip around for some dialogue. Bad dialogue will chase me away in no time flat. To me, bad dialogue is like watching a bad performance. I'm embarrassed for the writer.

Never mind that I'd just told MathMan that I wasn't going to check out another book. I had a stack of them already waiting to be read and I was finishing up the Wolitzer book I told you about last week that irritated me for reasons hard to explain.

None of that mattered after I read the title of the first chapter and started laughing. "Everything You Need to Know, I Learned in a Single Wide." A few paragraphs in and I was hooked. Now I didn't grow up in a trailer, nor did I grow up in the south, but a three bedroom brick ranch on the edge of a southeastern Indiana river town is pretty dang close. There's a reason why I've found it easy to blend in here in Georgia.

In her book, The Cracker Queen, Lauretta Hannon, describes her roots, her life, and the lessons she learned along the way to becoming what she calls a Cracker Queen. I'd never considered the idea of being a Cracker, much less a Cracker Queen, but by Hannon's description, it's quite possible that I have the makings of being one.

Hannon writes in a way that made me just gobble the book up like a grilled cheese sandwich. I do not nibble grilled cheese sandwiches at the edges. I take big bites and enjoy the heck out of them because they are a rare, simple treat that remind me of my own childhood. Although Hannon's story isn't reflective of my own, I grew up in the same timeframe, in a place not unlike where Lauretta came up. Through her writing, it's easy to feel like you know her.

When I picked up the book that day at the library, I expected to be entertained and perhaps touched, but I didn't expect to be inspired. But let me tell you, as I've been dinking around with this blog and it's earlier incarnations for a few years now, kept journals and started doing some memoir-writing exercises, I never really thought that the stories I tell here could make a book. I just thought of them as my stories.

But reading Hannon's wonderful work has made me look again at the things I write. Last week, I wrote this lament and my friend Utah Savage left a comment that sent a shiver up my spine:

Here's what I think. I think you're writing the book right now. THIS IS THE BOOK! Yes, it's that good.

Now, I'm not one to take compliments well, but this compliment from Utah was just what I needed to hear. I connected that with the stirrings of inspiration I was feeling from Hannon's book. Then last Sunday I was lolling about on the deck with MathMan and The Dancer, having breakfast and reading the last chapters of The Cracker Queen. When I came to the section where Hannon listed the reasons why she'd never let herself quit her day job to be a full-time writer, I read the list aloud. There was much fingerpointing and guffawing. It was all too familiar.

In the book, Hannon quotes Eleanor Roosevelt. "Do one thing every day that scares you." I read this aloud, too, because this is something that The Dancer needs to hear and often. Like her mother, she's a bit of recluse in her own comfort zone.

So I did something that scared me. Something I have never before done. I emailed Lauretta Hannon and told her how much I enjoyed her book. To share your happiness and gratitude with someone who has given their art and story to the world seems like such a simple gesture, but I have never been one to be a screaming fangirl. Now, all bets are off.

I've embraced, as Lauretta says, my inner Cracker Queen. To continue to laugh with my mouth wide open, to go for what I want and to do what scares me, at least once a day. No one but me could tell Lauretta how her book touched and inspired me and so I wrote. And she wrote me back and I was the screaming fangirl all over again. Okay, so I didn't scream, but I whooped and called MathMan in from the other room so he could read the message and validate that I wasn't seeing things.

You're laughing at me right now, aren't you? That's okay. I don't blame you. What a simple thing to do and what results I got in Hannon's lovely, encouraging message back to me. And how silly the me of a week ago would have been to hold back from emailing an author of a book I enjoyed because I felt inadequate or inconsequential or .......heaven forbid....like a fan? How many times did I not get an autograph or share my pleasure about something becase doing so, scared me?

So now I'm going to go buy this book because (1) I have to have it and (2) I want to see if Lauretta will sign it for me when she comes to an event at our local library next Friday. I'll try to not act too goofy, but I make no promises.

Read the book, y'all. Be entertained, touched, inspired. And whatever you do, be sure to do something that scares you. And then come back and tell us about it.