I just wanted to let y’all know that Sissie passed away last night. She was 101.
We are so grateful for her life and her legacy.
And more than anything else, we’re so happy that she’s Home.
Fool With A Fancy Guitar
11 May 2011 by
This morning I was busy getting some work done when I heard this song by Andrew Peterson playing on my iPod. And the lyrics stopped me in my tracks – just like they always do.
Because every single time I hear these words, I think, “That’s my testimony.”
I mean, not the part about being a fool with a fancy guitar. Since I don’t really play the guitar. I’m more of a fool with an unfancy computer.
And not the part about being a prince. Since I’m a girl and all.
But everything else?
Yep.
I can relate.
It’s so easy to cash in these chips on my shoulder
So easy to loose this old tongue like a tiger
It’s easy to let all this bitterness smolder
Just to hide it away like a cigarette lighter
It’s easy to curse and to hurt and to hinder
It’s easy to not have the heart to remember
That I am a priest and a prince in the Kingdom of God
I’ve got voices that scream in my head like a siren
Fears that I feel in the night when I sleep
Stupid choices I made when I played in the mire
Like a kid in the mud on some dirty blind street
I’ve got sorrow to spare, I’ve got loneliness too
I’ve got blood on these hands that hold on to the truth
That I am a priest and a prince in the Kingdom of God
I swore on the Bible to not tell a lie
But I’ve lied and lied
And I crossed my heart and I hoped to die
And I’ve died and died
But if it’s true that you gathered my sin in your hand
And you cast it as far as the east from the west
If it’s true that you put on the flesh of a man
And you walked in my shoes through the shadow of death
If it’s true that you dwell in the halls of my heart
Then I’m not just a fool with a fancy guitar
No, I am a priest and a prince in the Kingdom of God
This Takes The, Well, You Know
10 May 2011 by
A few weeks ago I spent the better part of three days cooking a whole bunch of food. It’s sort of weird, but I love to plan and shop and cook for a crowd. It’s strange, I know, but I’d rather cook for 40 than 2, and while I realize that this pretty much makes me THE FREAK OF ALL NATURE, it’s one of those quirky little things I enjoy.
And for this particular round of brunch-y offerings, I made some of our family’s favorite treats.
I made sausage balls.
(Those sausage balls hadn’t been baked yet, by the way, but they were on their way into the oven when I snapped a picture with my phone.)
(I just wanted to clarify so that no one worries if I enjoy serving up a delightful side of salmonella as a compliment to the brunch-y offerings.)
I made homemade granola – which is probably one of my all-time favorite foods.
One reason I like making granola so much is because my friend Merritt’s recipe is so good and so easy. I don’t know where I’d be in life without it. Except that I’d probably be at a place in life where I wished for a really delicious granola recipe.
This would probably be a good time to confess that I double the amount of butter in Merritt’s recipe, though.
Doubling the amount of butter is my inalienable right as an American, after all. I believe it’s covered in the Constitution or some other government-y type document. It’s all very official.
And I also made pound cakes. So many pound cakes. So many, many pound cakes.
I made so many pound cakes, in fact, that I had to get sort of inventive with where I put them after they cooled. I needed my countertop space so that I could keep cooking, so I wedged in my pound cakes on the breakfast room table between pans of granola and Ziploc bags filled with sausage balls. And when I ran out of space on the breakfast room table, I decided that my next best option was to set one of the pound cakes in a breakfast room chair.
What can I say? I was tired and it was the fourth pound cake of the day and I was fresh out of food storage ideas.
About that time D walked through the kitchen, and I said, “You know what? I’m going to fix myself a Diet Coke, make a plate of cheese and crackers – and I’m going to play catch-up with the DVR for a while. I think I need to take a break.”
So that is exactly what I did.
Once I was back in the kitchen a little bit later, I started gathering ingredients so that I could mix up some hash brown potato casseroles. I walked to the refrigerator to grab the cheddar cheese, and I couldn’t help but notice something sort of peculiar out of the corner of my eye.
I walked over to the chair to get a better look.
It was the strangest sight, y’all. I couldn’t figure out what in the world had happened. I mean, I know my people enjoy sweet treats and all, but they typically make good use of utensils when they eat. Thankfully it is not the norm for them to just bend down and start gnawing the sides off of a pound cake.
I was oh-so-puzzled.
But then I heard the pitter-patter of little feet behind me.
And when I turned around, I realized that somebody had come back for seconds.
Apparently Ally finds pound cake to be TASTY.
I take issue, though, with the fact that she didn’t clean up after herself afterwards.
She didn’t even have the courtesy to throw the SaranWrap in the trash. She just slung it over to the side of the chair all devil-may-care-like. LEFT IT ON THE FLOOR, EVEN. I guess her dessert-related enthusiasm caused her to take temporary leave of her good manners.
Clearly we’ll have to work on that.
I think it’s only fair.
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Last week I posted a new giveaway from Sprite; there’s a $100 Shutterfly.com gift card up for grabs!
Feelings. Whoa Whoa Whoa. Feelings.
8 May 2011 by
As a general rule I do pretty okay-ish with stress and deadlines and etc. I can kind of compartmentalize each thing as it comes, not looking too far in the future at whatever the next thing might be, and being able to do that helps to keep me (fairly) even-keeled and, for the most part, not too worry-ish about what’s waiting in the wings.
But somewhere around last Thursday, the various and sundry stresses and concerns and whathaveyous of the last three weeks caught up with me. And emotionally, at least, I hit the wall. Slammed right into it. And I stayed right up against that wall until Friday night around 9 o’clock in the PM when I finished talking to my husband and Explaining My Feelings in great detail.
He was mighty sweet to listen.
I think the bottom line is that when you take the day-to-day pressures of commitments and obligations and work and family and whatnot, then mix up that stuff with what has been a profoundly sad time in this part of the country and top it all off when some SWEET MERCY THEY’VE GONE COMPLETELY CUCKOO hormones – well, the emotional junk is bound to rise to the surface.
But the good news is that based on how emotional I was last week, I should be EVEN AND STEADY until approximately 2014. NARY A RIPPLE in the emotional sea. SMOOTH SAILING AHEAD.
ANYWAY – I reckon I just had some stuff that I needed to process and think through and talk about with my people. And with that being said, I will now bore you to tears by catching you up on all the excitement that’s been going on around here.
First of all, we ate supper at Zaxby’s Friday night. D and I each ordered a chicken finger platter. Alex ate a Nibbler and some fries. I got a Diet Coke refill before we left.
I understand if you need a moment to take in all of these exciting developments. It’s hard to wrap your brain around this level of sophistication and excitement, I’m sure.
And really, I can’t help but think that my 24 year-old self would be horrified by the developments in my 41 year-old life. Because, I mean, my 24 year-old self had high hopes that I would enjoy going to Fancy Gatherings and that I would care about wine and that I would only patronize the finest restaurants.
But clearly the 24 year-old me way underestimated my disdain for small talk, my complete ineptitude where wine is concerned, and last but not least my unconditional love for fried chicken in all its forms.
And really, I can’t fault her, because my 24 year-old self had no way of knowing that Zaxby’s chicken tenders, THEY ARE SO TASTY.
So pretty much Friday night boiled down to Zaxby’s + a long talk with my husband + A LOT of sleeping.
Saturday morning we drove over to Mississippi to see our mamas and D’s grandmother. And let me tell you what: I was as happy as I could be about having some uninterrupted time with my fellas. It’s been a few months since the three of us went on a little road trip together, and I loved it. We had lunch with Mama, Daddy and Martha, then spent some time at the nursing home with Sissie.
(And yes, I’m leaving out a big huge hunk of very funny details. But those very funny details deserve a post or essay or short novella of their own. I might even write a poem if I were any good at, you know, rhyming.)
Sissie recently celebrated her 101st birthday, by the way. She wasn’t able to leave the nursing home like she did last year, but we were so grateful to be able to spend some time with her yesterday and feel beyond fortunate that Alex has been able to know his great-grandmother. She is something else.
(Listen – y’all are as sweet as you can be to hang with this post as long as you have. It’s certainly not anything that could be considered even remotely interesting. But I’m just trying to get back on the bloggy horse, so to speak.)
(And look at me making a horse reference on the weekend of the Kentucky Derby!)
(Maybe I should go put on a sassy hat.)
(And speaking of hats – did we ever discuss the hat that Princess Beatrice wore to the Royal Wedding? Because I just. Well. I don’t know. I have never. Mercy. Never seen anything. Um. Can’t remember seeing. My goodness. Have to say it was a first. That hat. Would make a lovely design for a mirror. Or perhaps some decorative moulding.)
Okay. I’ve totally lost my way. But at least all this rambling sort of resembles a post. And I really did have a great weekend. And thanks to an episode of Curb Appeal that Sister saw, I’ve decided to paint my front door. And I bought some new Bermuda shorts. And Alex drew a portrait of me for Mother’s Day.
My first reaction when I saw it was to cry – because I’d had a rough week and it was just the sweetest thing for the little man to give me such a thoughtful gift. After I recovered from the tears and studied A’s handiwork a little bit more, all I could think of was what Shelby says about M’Lynn’s hair in Steel Magnolias: “You can’t mess up her hair…you just tease it and make it look like a football helmet.”
If the portrait is any indication, I have learned that lesson well.
Just tickles me to pieces, it does.
Sprite Tabs for Humanity
5 May 2011 by
American Idol – Top 5
4 May 2011 by
So I’m admittedly a little bit off of my American Idol game. I didn’t see last week’s show because of the tornado coverage / news, and it was only yesterday that I spent about fifteen minutes on the YouTube watching everyone’s Top 6 performances (my favorite, surprisingly, was Haley’s version of “Beautiful”). I went back and forth about whether I should just let the rest of the season pass by without posting about it – after all, with Casey gone, I’m not nearly as invested in who wins – but I decided a few minutes ago that, for better or worse, I was gonna jump back on the AI train.
All aboard.
James Durbin – “Closer to the Edge” – Sometimes I feel like James has that Adam Lambert-ish tendency to fade away in the parts of a song where he’s not screaming. That was definitely true this time around. The beginning was a little rough, and I thought even the loud parts were pretty shrill and pitch-y. Not my favorite.
“Without You” – Listen. I have liked James all the way through this competition; it’s nearly impossible not to root for him. But I didn’t think he sounded so great on this song – it was sort of all over the place pitch-wise. Granted, he was emotional, and that was moving, but I think it would’ve been way better if he had been more consistent with the notes. Just sayin’.
Jacob Lusk – “No Air” – For some reason this sounded like it was in the wrong key to me. It was so high that I winced a little bit while he was singing. He was super sharp, and my ears did not enjoy it. The end.
“Love Hurts” – I didn’t expect to like it at all. But I actually thought the arrangement was pretty great (even though I still don’t like all that super-high business – those super-high notes get Jacob into trouble). The beginning and the end were nice, but the middle got away from him. All in all, though, it was leaps and bounds better than his first song. Just don’t know if it’ll be enough to keep him around another week.
Lauren Alaina – “Flat on the Floor” – I think this was Lauren’s best performance yet. She picked a difficult song, and she sang the FIRE out of it. It was also the first time I’ve seen her really take command of the stage; she was animated, but she wasn’t silly or manic. Fantastic.
“Unchained Melody” – Parts of this were really pretty. Parts were sort of weird (all the runs and stuff seemed odd, almost like she was compensating for not being able to hold notes). I don’t think she put herself in any danger, though.
Scotty McCreery – “Gone” – Oh my word I loved it. It was fun just to hear him sing something more current, you know? I’m all for country classics – for George Jones and Glen Campbell and George Strait – but it’s great that Scotty can pull off a modern song that doesn’t start off with “BABYLOCKTHEMDOORS.” Well played.
“Always On My Mind” – It was fine. There’s nothing really negative I can say about it – but I was just a little bit bored.
Haley Reinhart – “You & I” – Haley has really started to grow on me in the last month or so (ever since that whole “Moanin'” duet with Casey). And while I thought she sounded great, I didn’t like this song at all. I just think that half the AI battle is picking a song that really engages the audience, and this one didn’t do that. Hopefully the second round will go better for her.
“The House of the Rising Sun” – I was totally surprised by how much I liked it. And I think it was probably her best solo performance so far. Definitely the best performance of the night. Very well done.
Best of the night – Lauren, Haley
Might need to be worried – Jacob
Biggest surprise of the night – Jennifer Lopez was dressed like someone who was going to the 1980 Golden Globe Awards in an offering from the Gunne Sax Collection. I think I actually had that same dress in light blue when I was in 4th grade. Bold choice, Mrs. JLo. Bold choice.
What did y’all think?
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