Monthly Archives: June 2009

TV

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Kate Gosselin Dear Kate Gosselin,

Listen, girlfriend, I know we cannot get enough of you lately, but, seriously, you are taking up way too prime celebrity space and I would like you to stop it. Please? Like, immediately? I cannot pick up any gossip magazine without you being on it and frankly it’s starting to bug me. I mean, I’m spending good money because I want to read about Jennifer’s attempts to get Brad back or Angelina’s attempts to get Brad back or how Elizabeth Banks really is not very nice or how Sandra Bullock really is. I don’t want to read about you. And let’s be clear: I’m not being critical of you. In fact, I’m sort of envious. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be a famous multi-millionaire with nannies, bodyguards and Emeril  as a personal chef? Sign me up, and I’ll take the hair stylist, personal trainer and free tummy tuck, too. I do not begrudge you fame and fortune. I say good for you. It shows initiative and determination on your part and really, if I’d known having eight children was a key to success I’d have rethought stopping at two. The thing is, however, you are not a celebrity. You are just a regular person who yells at her husband and yells at her kids and makes bad choices. You are, sad to say, just like us. We don’t want our celebrities to be just like us. Oh, it’s true we want our celebrities to pretend they’re just like us. We want to see them buying toliet paper at Costco and slurping down frapps at Starbucks and playing with their kids at the park, but we know and they know and they know we know that they aren’t like us at all. You, however, are just like us but you don’t know it. You are — and I say this with all due respect — sort of boring. We don’t care about your free trips and your free vacations and the TV “stars” who keep popping up in your driveway to install solar panels or take you on motorcycle rides. It’s just … oh, I don’t know … uninteresting. And this whole marriage breakup thing? Please! I can get five women together at a moment’s notice who have marriage-breakup stories that would curl … uh, straighten … your hair. I’m sorry you have problems, but put your big-girl panties on and deal with it. In private, please. I look forward to the day when — just like the rest of us — the only connection you have to gossip magazines is picking one up at the grocery and reading it in the express lane while the person in front of you has 37 items and doesn’t know how to use the debit-card machine. Thank you.

Food

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Zagat Survey bestThe Zagat Survey is here! The Zagat Survey is here! Zagat Fast-Food SurveySorry — couldn’t resist channeling Steve Martin there. But seriously, anybody who eats out needs to take a look at the just-released Zagat Fast-Food Survey at http://www.zagat.com/fastfood. More than 6,000 folks rated their fast-food experiences, including full-service restaurants, and the results are fascinating. But before you go check it out, see if you can identify the eateries pictured above. On the left is the winner of the full-service best salad, best coffee and best value — it also came in second for most popular. On the right is the winner of the fast-food salad and is the most popular large chain. I don’t have any prizes to give out — you’ll just have the satisfaction of knowing your restaurants perhaps better than your kitchen. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Music

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BonnarooThis is what my hometown of Manchester, Tennessee, looks like right now with the more than 75,000 people there for Bonnaroo. Actually, Manchester proper is to the upper left of this photo — and that’s close enough, most locals would agree. Dear Husband and I had contemplated going this year, especially since some of our favorites (Bruce Springsteen, The Decemberists) were going to be there, but in order for us 50-somethings to enjoy the experience we would have had to have chosen the ultra-deluxe-VIP options ticket-wise, which pushed the costs up to $$$$. So we chose instead to spend our wedding anniversary weekend in nearby Murfreesboro trying to guess which performers were staying at our hotel. http://www.bonnaroo.com

Marriage

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Thank you all for the kind fifth-anniversary thoughts. You are so sweet! My husband John Pitts and I had a super weekend of  looking back at our oh-so-wonderful wedding (and all the friends and family who made it so) and looking ahead to what new adventures await — a nice mixture of nostalgia and optimism! We do make a good team. In fact, he helped me with my newspaper column this week.  You can read the whole thing at http://www.timesdaily.com/article/20090612/ARTICLES/906125000,  but the best part is the advice he gave — my husband’s five things he’s learned from five years of marriage:

1. Just like Einstein, you spend a lot of energy grappling with issues of time and space. In our busy lives, of course, we have to make time for each other while also giving each other the space to breathe. But I also have learned not to call home when it’s time for “Survivor” or “So You Think You Can Dance,” and not to complain too much when she takes up “my space” in the closet. Einstein would tell you, if he were here: it’s all relative.

2. In a restaurant with a television, always sit with your back to the TV. This has brought as much harmony to our relationship as anything I can think of. I’m easily distracted, anyway, so this assures much better eye contact. Besides, it’s fun to hear my wife try to describe the action from a baseball game that’s playing behind me (“There’s a guy with the ball, then there’s a guy running and sliding and everyone is jumping up and down.”)

3. Be careful with the smart-alecky remarks when your wife is chopping something in the kitchen with a big knife and you’re standing nearby. I’m just sayin’.

4. It’s good to learn how to navigate in your spouse’s world. Even though I don’t like coffee, for instance, when we visit the coffee shop they can still make me something that I like: Steamed milk. Yum!

5. And the Biggest Lesson of All: Even though I want to, my wife is not always looking for me to make everything all right. Sometimes she just wants to vent, to cry, to have real emotions in the presence of a person who loves her and respects her and understands. Of course, sometimes she does want me to make everything all right. How to tell the difference? I’m working on it. Check back in another five years.

Anniversary

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Fifth anniversaryFriday is our fifth wedding anniversary, which is a pretty amazing thing. My Weddinghusband John Pitts and I first met more than 30 years ago, when we were journalism students at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, his hometown. Our relationship timeline goes something like this: Dating, breakup, dating, breakup, Cathy wants to get married and John doesn’t, Cathy gets married to somebody else (pause here for 16 or so years until Cathy gets divorced), dating, breakup, dating, breakup, John wants to get married and Cathy doesn’t, dating, breakup, dating, breakup and then somehow both of us want to get married at the same time. Success! And the thing is, even Wedding flowersthrough all the breakups (except for the 16-year married-to-somebody-else thing) we’ve been best friends. We argue, we laugh, we edit each other’s copy, he takes out the garbage and I remind him of family birthdays — what a team! Our wedding was so much fun, and I had the best bridesmaids ever in my two daughters. We had started out planning a surprise wedding — inviting folks for a party and then springing a ceremony on them — but the girls wisely talked us out of that idea so we had a wedding sort of squeezed in between two parties: We had a cocktail party first at this wonderful historic home in Bridesmaidsdowntown Murfreesboro and then everybody walked over to the church for the ceremony and then walked back to the home for a reception. Bonus: We stayed in another historic house that was a bed-and-breakfast directly across the street — so convenient. One of my best memories from the wedding was looking out at the congregation and seeing all our dear family and friends gathered there for us. I don’t think younger brides realize how special that is. Or how special it is to marry the person you care about most in the world, the person who makes you laugh and doesn’t mind when you cry at movies and tells you how to make your writing better, even if that person does listen to Rush Limbaugh. Every day.

Grocery Stores

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Fresh bulk spicesHere’s another guess-that-store quiz. Okay, actually it’s just Nolan Thomas Behelanother excuse to squeeze in a photo of grandson Capt. Adorable, but I can’t resist. My husband John Pitts cautions against overwhelming you all with pics of the Captain but we’re all friends here and I know you forgive me and besides everybody I meet in person is tired of me waving my digital keychain in their faces. Anyway, can you identify this upscale grocery? Usually we keep Capt. Adorable in the cart but he couldn’t stand it this time so we allowed some supervised leg-stretching and he immediately headed to the produce section, where he started squeezing the fruit, eating the lettuce and checking out the fresh pistachios. Smart boy.

Manatee Mailbox

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Manatee mailbox

A manatee mailbox is not what you'd expect to find in a Huntsville, Alabama, neighborhood, but it sort of makes me smile -- and want to go to the beach.

Music

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Stop what you’re doing right now, go make a cup of tea and sit down to read this: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-06-07/how-i-found-my-voice/?cid=bs:archive11

And then go listen to “Anticipation” or “No Secrets” again and be so grateful that Carly Simon found her voice after all.

Bridesmaids

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Rehearsal-dinner styleYounger Daughter was in town from her summer-school classes this weekend to Bridesmaid stylebe a bridesmaid in a friend’s wedding. I Bridesmaid hairlove all the hair and makeup and these-shoes-don’t-work chaos of getting ready — reminds me of  the prom and party excitement from the girls’ high-school days. For the wedding-rehearsal dinner, YD went with simple black jazzed up with purple accents, although she switched these fantastic purple heels for black sandals before she left the house because her feet already were hurting. Then Saturday morning she got her hair done in this sweet sort of loose and messy half up-do that she and the stylist came up with based on a couple of photos and magazine pictures. Both of my daughters have great hair and know what to do with it — a skill they didn’t get from me but I wish I could pick up from them. I loved how it all came together — I thought the pink bridesmaid’s dresses and the orange bouquets were stunning together. The bride had picked out some wonderful metallic heels for the bridesmaids to wear, and after the wedding YD passed hers on to another friend who admired them and is getting married next, probably thereby starting the Tradition of the Traveling Wedding Shoes. I wonder where they’ll turn up next!

Funerals

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My husband said this past week, “The two best funerals I’ve been to have been in Oneonta*, Alabama.” I went with him to the second one, and I have to agree with him. His Aunt Sally’s funeral was full of love, laughter and celebratory joy — which is exactly the type of person she was. I wrote about her funeral in my newspaper column this week at the TimesDaily, http://www.timesdaily.com/article/20090605/ARTICLES/906055001, and I’ve already had so many people tell me that’s exactly the send-off they want for themselves.

*Pronounced “On-e-on-tah.” I think.