One of my husband's favorite signs -- "'Maybe to maybe'?" he says. "Now, that's the way I'd run my business!" This is from a comic-book store in Florence, Alabama.
The Perfect Business Day
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Drinking Outside the Box
When we were in Target the other day and I lost my husband for a few minutes (I was busy contemplating the pretty new blue-and-white dishes because you never can have enough coffee cups), I found him standing in the wine aisle, studying things. Things such as a Box o’ Wine. “How bad could it be, really?” he said, impressed with the pricing that equaled to four normal bottles of wine for the price of one box. So we took it home and tried it. And the answer is, “The more you drink, the better it gets.” There’s no complexity or layers of flavor, and it’s very grape juicey. With benefits. However, as Dear Husband pointed out, it’s okay to say you drank a whole bottle of wine, but you don’t want to say you drank a whole box. So we didn’t. Just.
And Baby Makes … More Things to Shop For
My older daughter and her husband, parents of our almost-3-year-old grandson, Capt. Adorable, are trying to decide if they want more children or if they want the Captain to be an only child. And just so y’all can see that I’m a mature and reasonable grownup, I’m sharing with you what I tell Older Daughter when she asks my opinion about that topic. Okay, the “when she asks my opinion” part is a big fat lie. Older Daughter never asked my opinion about anything while she was growing up and obviously sees no reason to start now. But that probably was a good thing because invariably back then her opinions were much better than mine. (See: Past boyfriends Mom never ever should have dated.) However, in this case Mom knows best. “Look,” I tell her. “It’s true that I want all the grandchildren I can get. That’s no secret. But this is y’all’s decision, and whatever you decide will be the correct choice for your family.” I have cautioned her, though, about having only one child out of fear — fear that she can’t handle more than one or she can’t love more than one or they can’t afford more than one. Fear shouldn’t make the decision — she and her husband should. Almost every parent worries about those things, I say reassuringly. They’re normal concerns that will work themselves out. See, I can give good grandparent advice! But then we go into a posh baby/maternity shop for a baby-shower present and while the Captain heads determinedly for the toy trucks, Older Daughter and I immediately start squealing over these too-adorable baby-girl hats that we want to take home even though we have no little baby-girl head to put them on. Yet.
Gardening versus Basketball, or Another Reason to Love Winter
Less than a week ago around here, schools were closed and cars were sliding off roads and we were all hunkered down for about the third or fourth time that ice and snow had come to the South this year. Today, however, when you step outside in the sunshine and the semi-warm breeze, I swear you can hear the flowers growing and the tree branches starting to bud. Or I would hear flowers growing if I actually had planted any in our yard. While Southerners love spring and its reinvigorating warmth and gentle unfurlings of fresh color, the season’s arrival exposes pathetic non-gardeners such as me who can hide their lack of green-thumb talent behind winter’s freezing temperatures. I’m perfectly content to spend January and February and even March curled up on the couch in front of the fireplace and watching basketball on TV. But once March Madness kicks in, the gardening guilt follows close behind: When everybody else is energetically outside, enthusiastically wielding seed packages, trowels and watering cans, it’s difficult to justify lounging around in your jammies. So, while I certainly don’t want anybody to get hurt and everybody is oh-so-tired of snow days and school closings, I wouldn’t mind a little more winter before spring arrives for good. I’m not ready to give up lazy weekend afternoons wrapped up in my cozy blankie and yelling at the TV screen, “What are you talking about? That was NOT a foul! Check your eyes, ref!”
Chocolate and Coffee
I know, I know — I’m sorry! Y’all who passionately pointed out that if I’m going to talk about cool Nashville food and uber-cool Hillsboro Village then I can’t not mention Olive & Sinclair Chocolate and bongo Java’s newest eatery, Hot & Cold. I have an excuse for not mentioning Hot & Cold: We didn’t go in, even though I’d read good things about it in Nashville Scene. On the day we were in Hillsboro Village, the weather was miserable and I was in a hospital funk after sitting for days with my dad in a nearby cardiac-care unit (he’s home now and doing incredibly wonderful) and all I wanted was a cup of good coffee and even though Hot & Cold supposedly had good ice cream AND good coffee I was cynically suspicious that this was true so we bypassed it for Fido, Hot & Cold’s older brother coffeehouse and a steady and reliable source of the good stuff. But I will not make this mistake again. Next time, we’re going in. But I have no excuse for not mentioning Olive & Sinclair Chocolate– made in small bean-to-bar batches in Nashville. I simply forgot to talk about it because I was too busy savoring every smidgen of the Coffee and Sea Salt bars we bought. I won’t make that mistake again, either — next time, I’ll get the Double Chocolate Nibs, too.
How Fido and My Husband Saved Me One Day
Thanks to husband John Pitts, I now have a new favorite coffee house — Fido, in Nashville’s hip Hillsboro Village. A couple of weeks ago I spent several days lurking around a Music City hospital while my dad recovered from cardiac arrest and got a defibrillator. Did you know that hospital coffee is very very bad? (Although everything else about this hospital was very very good, including the care and skill my dad received.) Anyway, please never even try drinking hospital coffee. Do. Not. Even. Try. Learn from my mistake. So after hearing me complain for days and days, husband JP took great pity on me and squired me around town one day for some refreshing non-hospital air and some Real Coffee. He said we’d been in Fido before with friends, and I do sort of vaguely remember that. But now I’ll never forget this fun and funky cafe that’s part of the ever-growing local Bonjo Java coffee company. Bonjo Java roasts and wholesales its own beans and owns some of the town’s most popular cafes/coffeehouses/restaurants, of which Fido is one. It’s open all day every day and has a full menu, which we need to go back and check out because all I had was a restorative and perfect espresso macchiato. But when you’re dealing with perfection, one is good enough.
The New Muscle Shoals Sound
Muscle Shoals music is back in the news as two young duos
grab everybody’s attention. You know that in the 1960s and ’70s, my town of Muscle Shoals was famous for its Southern-gritty rock-‘n’-roll sound, with dozens of hits coming from local recording studios. (You still hear stories about what happened with the Stones came to town.) Today, the Shoals is claiming some of its own young people as performers-to-watch … watch take off into meteoric success, that is. Such as The Secret Sisters, siblings Laura and Lydia Rogers, who are making waves as a 1950s-style new-age country-music duo. Their debut album, released this past fall, was produced by T-Bone Burnett. They’re touring and opening for folks such as Willie Nelson and Loretta Lynn all over the country. Do not miss them if they come to your town. And don’t miss The Civil Wars, either. The duo of John Paul White, of the Shoals area, and Joy Williams, from California, is releasing its first full-length album this week. Known for a funky blend of Appalachian-folk and gospel and rock, Civil Wars first took off this past year when its “Poison and Wine” was featured on an episode of “Grey’s Anatomy.” Since then, they’ve been on Jay Leno, have collected accolades by the ton and are embarking on a nationwide tour with many venues already sold out. Give these two a listen and you’ll be able to say you knew them when.
The Folded Swan
I’m pretty much a small-town Southern girl. More than
three cars waiting at a stop light says “traffic jam” to me. The biggest building I can see from my front porch is the three-story county courthouse on the square a couple of blocks away. Also: I’m lazy and do not like housework. If we even have clean towels in our bathrooms at home, I consider that quite an accomplishment. But at the same time, I love visiting Big Cities and staying in nice hotels. For a change of pace, you know. And for endless clean towels. So when those clean towels come origami-fied as a pair of swans, it’s lagniappe. I mean, is this something I should consider doing at home? And where did this idea come from? Did somebody sitting around a corporate hotel-chain table suddenly jump up and say, “Swans! We must have swans!”? Or is it a subversive effort from the housekeeping staff? Or maybe towel swans are The Latest Thing in hotels and I’ve missed it until now. At least it’s nice to have a cityscape balcony view to gaze at reflectively while you contemplate weighty swan-towel issues.
Eating is Good
After my dad had his cardiac arrest on Friday, he was considerate
enough to be sent to a hospital near Nashville‘s West End. Which means that whenever my mom and brother and I get tired of hospital food, we’ve got some of Nashville’s finest merely steps away. Such as Rotier’s Restaurant, the 65-year-old eatery equally as famous for its meat-and-three plates as its cheeseburgers on french bread. And Michaelangelo’s Pizza, a popular spot with pizza that tastes garden fresh that’s only about 10 years old but looks and feels much older — in a good way. But the hospital food court has some great options, too — the pulled pork barbecue on cornbread pancakes today was excellent. Sauce a little on the sweet side, but there you go. And, of course, the fact that we’re talking about food instead of … well … funerals makes everything taste all the better.
I ‘Heart’ My Dad
This is the view I’ve been looking at for the past three days. Well, this … and my 75-year-old dad in a coronary-care unit hospital bed. But he’s getting better! Friday morning he was walking on the track at his town’s recreation center when he … I guess … sort of died from cardiac arrest. His heart just stopped. But he’s getting better! He was in the right place at the right time and the right folks were there to do CPR and operate the defibrillator. If he’d been walking on the outdoors trail or working on the tractor on his tree farm? Not so much. A helicopter brought him from his hometown hospital to this big city hospital, where he was sedated and cooled down for 24 hours to reduce brain swelling. Doctors kept saying, “IF he wakes up, then we’ll address the heart issues.” Um, yes, please? But he’s getting better! He woke up and practically instantly started complaining about being in bed and wanting to get out and go walk. That’s my dad. Of course, as Older Daughter said, when he starts asking how many people work at the hospital and when it was built and how many people it serves every year — then we’ll know he’s back to normal. So I’m hanging out here with my mom and my middle brother and all the wonderful wonderful dear friends who’ve come to help and the incredibly caring and skilled medical staff. And two Starbucks within walking distance. So it’s all good. And now, test your knowledge of Southern city skylines and tell me where we are. The “Batman” building on the right is the best clue.
Coffee with Cathy 