Cute and Adorable — and Beanie Babies, Too

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Capt. Adorable, our 2 1/2-year-old grandson, is grinning because Kacky (me) unearthed some treasures for him as I was packing up/cleaning out our house for our move next week. Remember Beanie Babies? Remember McDonald’s Teenie Beanies? For some reason, when my daughters were little we went Beanie- and Teenie Beanie-crazy and collected them feverishly. And then put away childish things. Far back in a closet that hadn’t seen the light of day for years. So when I finally realized what I had, I knew the Captain would love them. I mean, a bag full of mommy and baby whales and zebras and kitty cats and doggies and ducks and squirrels … what 2 1/2-year-old could resist? Or 53-year-old Kacky? Or 26-year-old Mommy? We had a great time playing with them, and the Captain decided that the “o-tu-puss” was his favorite. Beanie and Teenie Beanie Babies were supposed to be great investments, but I think we all know what the real investment is here: Priceless grandbaby love!!!

Can I Call Myself A Photographer Even If I Didn’t Get Paid?

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Woo-hoo! It finally happened: I got published!!! Well, sort of, anyway. But not for writing. See this book cover? Look on the far left-hand side, the second photo down, where the “3” is. See that photo of a cotton field? That photo, my friends, is mine. It came from me and my trusty beat-up old Kodak EasyShare that rattles around in my purse and usually is smeared with lipstick and coffee. The photo’s also on page 113 of the book, with my name. Spelled properly, too. Surprised? Me, too! What happened is that several months ago, I got an e-mail from someone named Sam Crowther. He said he was writing a book about growing up in Texas and needed a photo of a cotton field. He had found a blog post I’d written about cotton fields and wondered if he could use the photos. I have to admit that at first I was suspicious. Sounds like some sort of scam, right? But then I googled “Sam Crowther” and found out he’s a real person from an upstanding community-minded family and he actually did grow up in San Angelo, Texas, where his grandfather owned the hardware store. So there. I gladly gave Mr. Crowther permission to use the photos and then promptly forgot all about it, until this book arrived in the mail a few days ago, and there I am — well, my photo, anyway. I’m serious here — I totally was thrilled to see a photo I’d taken printed right there in a real live book. Amazing! Who says that blogging doesn’t actually lead to fame and fortune??? And I’m serious here, too: Mr. Crowther’s book is a fascinating read. He tells wonderful heartwarming stories of his small-town childhood and other anecdotes of his life that I’m betting you’ll relate to. E-mail him at Crowther 321@earthlink.com to learn more.

It’s A Conductor. No, Really, It Is.

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There’s a super-long fence bordering the backyard of Older Daughter’s house, so of course you know we can’t leave a blank space empty for very long. Even in a non-creative person like me, the urge to Do Art cannot be ignored. (Although maybe in my case it should be.) And I know it’s not a competition or anything, but once again my son-in-law, the artist and art teacher, whipped out a chalk masterpiece with very little effort. “Look, Kacky,” 2 1/2-year-old grandson Capt. Adorable said, laughing. “Daddy’s triceratops is eating conductor!” Three guesses as to who drew the conductor.

Caffeine and Cash

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At first I was so pleased that my husband and I got these offers in the mail. I mean, it’s a free $5-purchase at Starbucks. Thank you, Our Bank, for such a nice surprise. Y’all rock. However, on a closer read, I quickly became less happy. For instance, to receive the gift card, you have to use your debit card as a credit card, which I rarely do. And it naturally makes me suspicious — why is Our Bank pushing the credit-card angle? Obviously something’s in it for Our Bank and to distract us from asking questions, Our Bank is dangling a coffee-flavored carrot in front of us. Hmm … Also, note that these two cards require two different numbers of purchases to receive the gift card. The one for my husband, who maybe has used his debit card at a Starbucks perhaps twice ever, says “20 purchases” and the one for me, who knows every Starbucks employee in three states, says “33 purchases.” Thirty-three? Really, 33??? I’d love to see the calculations that came up with that number. And, finally, there is probably only one Starbucks near any of Our Bank’s locations, not to mention the fact that Our Bank markets itself as a hometown homegrown business — the sort of opposite of Starbucks. I wonder how well these Starbucks offers have gone over with Our Bank’s customers. Not great, I’m betting, although coffee and money are two essentials in my life.

And now for something completely different. Have you ever wondered what really happens on the other side of Friday-night lights? I’m talking about the center of high-school football: Sports desks at local newspapers. Read my weekly newspaper column to get an inside glimpse of the sprints, the tackles and the fumbles involved in getting info from dozens of games to press in the space of about a couple of hours. And you thought play-offs were stressful!

Timeout for Sisters

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These are my children — my two daughters. They are beautiful young women, inside and out. How I came to be so lucky as to be their mom, I have no idea. But I’m glad it turned out that way. Younger Daughter, on the left, recently celebrated her 24th birthday by getting a new job and heading out of town to follow her dream of becoming a sign-language interpreter. She’s moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, to live with my brother & his family while she looks for an apartment, wows ’em at her new job and figures the school thing out. I’m in awe of her adventurous spirit and boundless enthusiasm. I’m also in awe of Older Daughter, on the right. This week she’s fighting a nasty sinus infection, teaching her dance classes and keeping up — as always — with our grandson, 2 1/2-year-old Capt. Adorable, and still had time to teach me the secrets of hula-hooping (shift your weight side-to-side and keep your upper body stable). This photo is so them, too. When they were little, I used timeout to get their attention, but it was a different timeout for each of them. I sent one daughter to her room with her door closed because, as a definite people person, she considered being deprived of other people to be a dire and serious punishment. I insisted the other daughter serve her timeout right beside me at all times because she’d be perfectly happy all by herself in her room and so being forced to be with people was a major infringement. I think this photo shows exactly which daughter is which!

A Blue-Ribbon Effort, or Why Was Your 1994 Soccer Team Named ‘The SandSharks’?

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Thank you all for wondering where I’ve been the past few days. I think this photo says it all, and here are some clues: I’ve been collecting boxes and saving newspapers from the recycling bin. I’ve been comparing prices on new refrigerators. I’ve been trying to figure out what’s really up in the attic and is it worth bringing down. And I’ve been wandering through more than two decades of family memories. Yup, you guessed it. My husband and I are packing up and moving out. After having our house on the market for one year — that’s ONE FREAKIN’ WHOLE YEAR, people! — our always patient and optimistic Realtor has found the perfect family for it, and we’re outta here.  But as I keep telling folks, we’re not really moving away. We’re just sort of transferring our stuff a little bit down the road. We’re downsizing to a cute new house that’s an easy commute for both my husband and I — we don’t even have to get new library cards, so that’s a good thing. But we do have to go through all the Very Important Things we’ve accumulated through the years. And we’ve accumulated a lot. I mean, I’ve been decluttering and throwing away and simplifying for months now, and we’re still uncovering hidden treasures. Such as my two now-20-something-year-old daughters’ sports ribbons and trophies. I can’t throw them away. You can’t recycle trophies (I’ve tried). My daughters don’t really have space for them but don’t want to get rid of them. So they chose a few memorable ones (you know — pardon me while I brag here — record-breakers, high-point winners, first places) and we boxed up the rest and designated them as “Keepers.” So let this serve as a cautionary tale for all you young parents out there who are so proud of the trophies and plaques and ribbons and medals your children are starting to bring home. Warning, warning! You’re going to have to deal with them all someday. Don’t think you can just put them under the bed and be done with them. Oh, no! In fact, I think they multiply while we’re not looking.

Black is Slimming — In Fact, It’s Practically Invisible

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It’s been cool here in northwest Alabama/northeast Mississippi these past few mornings — sort of like fall might actually be here, after all. We’re paying attention to frost warnings, unpacking football-game blankets a couple of weeks early and flicking the heat on … just to make sure it’s working, you know.  We — OK, me — even have rooted around in the dark corners of our closets to retrieve those jackets and sweaters that migrated to the depths during those long 100-degrees-plus summer days. But I came up empty. I knew what I was looking for: A lightweight but warm and snuggly black fleece jacket that fits perfectly over T-shirts. I knew I had one. And possibly two. Or maybe three. No luck, though. Were they hiding? Had they jumped ship and sailed out of the house in bags destined for give-away? Or yard sales? Had a daughter borrowed them and they never found their way back home? So many possible answers! But still no lightweight and warm snuggly black fleece jacket. So I turned to my trusty you-can-find-whatever-you-need shopping destination: T.J. Maxx. And of course I found the exact jacket I was looking for. At a price less than what I typically spend at Starbucks. So I brought my new jacket home, cut off the tags and hung it up in my closet in the designated “lightweight jacket” section — where of course I discovered two other practically identical jackets. One still with the tags. This may be why my husband will often look in my closet and shake his head and say, “I used to have money. Then I got married.” But I have three or possibly four lightweight but warm black fleece jackets. So there.

Boats and Books

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I don’t want to make light of the situation in case this actually really ever has happened to you, but a boat almost fell on me the other day and I just sort of thought that maybe you should add “falling boats” to your list of Road Hazards to Watch Out For While Driving. Along with — in my part of the world, at least — roving panthers (it’s true that the presence of panthers in our area is only a rumor — but there are those who swear it’s true), streams of tobacco juice and lazily drifting plastic Wal-Mart bags. And the thing is that the falling boat was only the beginning to a very strange 24 hours. So strange, in fact, that I had to break it up into two newspaper columns to get the whole story out. Read Part No. 1 and then go on to this past week’s column, Part No. 2. There are just some days when everybody stays away from you because it’s obvious you have somehow invoked the god of bad karma and all your friends are smart enough to take cover. Thankfully, all boats stayed firmly anchored the next day and all was well.

And here is one reason I’m so glad I’m married to my husband. I was browsing through his extensive book collection when I found his decades-old paperback copy of “The Andromeda Strain,” which I’d never read. I zipped through it that night and when he asked me later how I liked it, I shrugged. “It just sort of ended with the scientists saying the organism had evolved into something harmless and it was no big deal,” I said. “Seemed like a letdown for such an intense buildup. My husband just stared at me. “Uh,” he said, “I don’t think you read the whole book. There are a couple of pages at the end that you need to go back and look at it.” So I did, and he was right. Husbands rock!

Oh My Gosh! I’m A Squash!***

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All signs point to one thing: It definitely is fall. You can tell by the football games, the cooler temps, the changing leaves … and of course, my favorite: the food. Fall food is simply the best. Who doesn’t love warm, fresh and satisfying? At Jack-O-Lantern Farms market in Muscle Shoals this past week, we got a taste — literally — of fall’s abundance when Marriott chef Josh Quick prepared some winter-squash recipes. One word: Yum. Also, more words: Quick, easy and good-for-you. Quick demystified winter squash and made it seem like something I could tackle myself.  As enticing as these big and colorful vegetables are, they often seem overwhelming. I mean, what, really, can you do with a butternut squash? Plenty, Quick says. Roast it, saute it, blend it — it’s versatile enough to play with whatever flavors you want. It’s even easy to peel, Quick said, and he proved it by whipping out a simple plastic Y-shaped peeler. So you no longer have an excuse for passing up these squash treasures. And the rumor that you can make spaghetti squash look just like spaghetti noodles is true. See the pile of “pasta” in the right-hand corner of the top left photo? That, my friends, is spaghetti squash. Read Quick’s winter-squash secrets and try out his recipes at my food story in this past Wednesday’s TimesDaily.

*** This post title is in honor of a favorite book 2 1/2-year-old grandson Capt. Adorable and I like to read: “The Ugly Pumpkin.” In this wonderfully illustrated tale, an “ugly pumpkin” can’t figure out where he belongs until he realized he isn’t a pumpkin at all.

Girl with the Awesome Menu

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I have to admit that I don’t know anything about Sweden beyond that Swedish muppet guy and the wonderful breakfast I order at the Original House of Pancakes in Birmingham’s Five Points that comes with powdered sugar, whipped cream and strawberries. (Now, that’s a breakfast.) Or I didn’t know anything before I got addicted to those internationally bestselling  Stieg Larsson’s “Girl With …” books. If you haven’t picked these up, you’ve got to. And keep the coffee pot handy because that’s basically all they do in these books: Hack into computers, track down killers and drink endless cups of coffee. I can’t get enough. And luckily my food-loving book club read the first book in this trilogy — and extra-luckily our hostess for this meeting is our friend who specializes in creating marvelicious meals for the rest of us to enjoy. She went all out for our “Girl with the Dagon Tattoo” night and created a Swedish smorgasbord that I believe Larsson himself would have felt right at home with. We had smoked salmon, pickled herring, beets, potatoes, ligonberry preserves, pickles, cheese, sandwiches and of course coffee and cake for dessert. Oh my cookies. It was delicious, and she made us feel so special. We always nominate her for Best Hostess Ever and we threaten not to leave whenever she has us over. You’d think she’d learn, but we’re glad she hasn’t.