Tag Archives: girl power

Law and Order FPU: Vice Squad

Episode Four

“In the criminal littering system, panty-based offenses are considered especially heinous. In our fair City, the dedicated bloggers who investigate these underwear felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Feral Panties Unit. These are their stories.”

THUNK-THUNK!

gritty

Day Seven, 8am.  Let’s get down to the nitty gritty–these panties ain’t going nowhere.  This case is as cold as a well digger’s butt in January.

THUNK-THUNK!

vice squad

Day Nine, 8:30am.  This job can be a real heartbreaker, working the FPU beat.  Sometimes life on the street leaves a pair of panties with some pretty tough choices for survival.  Nice pair of cotton panties from the sticks can’t survive all alone out here, no matter how big those dreams were when they came into the city.   We’re gonna have to turn this one over to Vice Squad.  Suspect may be disguised and fabulous.

THUNK-THUNK!

If you have no earthly idea what the hell is going on here, click here to read the beginning of the story.

And then the second part of the story.

And the third part of the story, which includes a nice dog.  

(Thanks to Kathryn Keith Sims of the Feathered Nest Boutique–check her out on Etsy and FB– for making me laugh so hard this morning that I almost had to return home for fresh panties.  The accessories she sells in her store are WAY cuter than what you see in the above evidence photo.)

Everybody Hurts in a Landslide!

My journey through divorce was not all bravado.  I spent a lot of time curled up in a ball and I started buying those tissues with lotion in them so that I could go to work the next day and not look like Rudolph.  I’m going to tell some sad stories that had funny endings now, so go over to your CD player and put REM’s “Everybody Hurts” on repeat.  Pour yourself a glass of wine.  Now you’re ready.

Hey, Michael! Pass me the mic...c'mon! I'm ready! Michael!!! Dude, pass me the mic.

Hey, Michael! Pass me the mic…c’mon! I’m ready! Michael!!! Dude, pass me the mic.

 
When your day is long and the night 
The night is yours alone
When you’re sure you’ve had enough of this life, well hang on
Don’t let yourself go 
Everybody cries and everybody hurts sometimes
 

That was my “Step One” for when I really wanted to get The Sad cranked up to eleven.  I’d close the blinds and sing “Everybody Hurts” into my hairbrush for an hour.

Sometimes everything is wrong 
Now it’s time to sing along
When your day is night alone (hold on, hold on)
If you feel like letting go (hold on)
When you think you’ve had too much of this life, well hang on
 

Stop laughing as if you’ve never…oh shut UP.  I was only 31.  I was a grown woman, so I’d already fed the dogs and done the laundry and paid the bills BEFORE I got the hairbrush out.  It’s not as embarrassing to do this when you paid for the hairbrush, the CD, the stereo, the house and the blinds.

Step Two–I’d put on Stevie Nicks singing “Landslide” and pull myself back up again.  I may or may not have used a scarf as a prop during this portion of my set.

Well, I’ve been afraid of changing 
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you 
But time makes you bolder 
Children get older 
I’m getting older too
 

One night, I pulled into my driveway and hit the button to raise the garage door.  When it opened and I realized that I had still been parking on one side of the garage even though he had been gone for a month, I lost it.  I parked in the middle of the garage then closed the door with the button so there was no chance of the neighbors seeing me crying on the way into the house.  I got inside the foyer and collapsed onto the floor.  My little dachsies, Zoe and Moxie, came running over to welcome me home.  They danced around me, sniffing here and there.  I cried.  And cried.  And cried.  I howled.  They started licking me.  Zoe started on my head and Moxie took an elbow.  Their little tongues darted out to groom me.  They didn’t understand what was going on, but the knew I was hurting so they tended to me.  How can you continue to feel sorry for yourself when two little wiener dogs are daintily fixing your hair?  I got up.

So, take my love, take it down 
Oh climb a mountain and turn around 
If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills 
Well the landslide will bring you down, down
 

That house had a sunken living room, one step down and two ridiculous McMansion columns in the foyer.  That little step between the foyer and the living room was a great place to cry.  Good acoustics, grand scale set dressing, etc.  One night, I plopped myself down there for a good cry.  I was so used up that I flopped right over and rested my face on my knees…too pathetic to even hold my head up.  I cried until I didn’t want to cry anymore then I raised myself back up.  There, on the legs of my white sweatpants, was a perfect Tammy Faye Bakker face made of my cried off makeup!  It was so funny looking that I couldn’t help but laugh.  I looked around for someone to show it to, but I was alone.  So I went back to crying for a while.  Then I got up.

And If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills 
Well maybe the landslide will bring it down 
Oh oh, the landslide will bring it down
 
Next time I get sad, I am buying myself a tambourine.

Next time I get sad, I am buying myself a tambourine.

Dipping down into The Sad was a necessary part of grieving.  It’s the pressure release valve that kept me from exploding.  And even if it seems contrived, sometimes it’s necessary to do the things that crack the facade and let the sad come through.  I’m just glad I never had a crocheted top, feather hat, long-stemmed rose or a tambourine lying around.  Or the internet.    Things could have gotten out of hand.

Hey, if any of you know Mr. Stipe, pass this along so I can tell him “thank you” for writing that song–it saved a 31 year old broken hearted kid.  Or if you know Ms. Nicks, tell her I want my scarf back.

Law and Order FPU: Stakeout

Episode Two

“In the criminal littering system, panty-based offenses are considered especially heinous. In our fair City, the dedicated bloggers who investigate these underwear felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Feral Panties Unit. These are their stories.”

THUNK-THUNK!

Camouflage

Day Two, 5pm.  The panties are beginning to camouflage themselves as they adapt to their new habit.  We’re 48 hours into this stakeout and the trail is growing cold.  And breezy.  We may have to call in commandos.

THUNK-THUNK!

In the rain

Day Three, 8:30am.  Looks like someone left their cake out in the rain.  The FPU officer suffered an attack of panty pity and shielded the wad of panties with her regulation black umbrella.  It’s hard out here for a pimp.

THUNK-THUNK!

chalk outline

Day Three, 5:15pm.  Feral Panties Unit officer outlined the panty wad in order to prevent further contamination.   From this angle, it’s starting to look like the Rolling Stones lip logo…or have I been looking at this for too long? 

THUNK-THUNK!

If you have no earthly idea what the hell is going on here, click here to read the beginning of the story.

And then the second part of the story.

Then somebody help me get in touch with Ice T to see if he’ll do a guest post.

The Door Mat

I’ve been thinking about divorce for the last few days.  Settle down, settle down–I’ve been thinking about the one I ALREADY had 10+ years ago.  (Not the one I’m gonna have if someone doesn’t get to the bottom of that sink full of dirty dishes, but that’s a different story for another day.)  

If March is the month that holds a lot of memories of my time with Richard, April is the month that reeks of Fartbuster.    We had an April wedding.  Five years after that, he moved out on April Fools Day.  We signed the divorce papers on the day after what would have been our sixth wedding anniversary.  Oh, and I found out all about his pregnant girlfriend in April, too.  Another story for another day.

eliot meme

This is not Fartbuster. This is T.S. Eliot.

Isn’t it odd that one of my earliest fond memories of him, when we had only been dating a few months, was from a long drive–he read “The Wasteland” to me?  For those of you who went to college in profitable fields, that’s the T.S. Eliot poem with the famous opening lines: “April is the cruelest month, breeding/Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/Memory and desire, stirring/Dull roots with spring rain.”  After that trip, he gave me his collection of Eliot poems, even crossed through his name on the inside of the front cover and wrote mine below it.

I’ve got a lot of stories about that marriage (The Engagement Fart), some of which I’ve never written down before.  Like the time I found myself living out the biggest cliche in the book–the night he came home from “working late” with actual lipstick on his collar.  I went to give him a hug and couldn’t NOT see it right there in front of my face.  My whole body went cold and tingly.  I hesitated for a few seconds–TRYING to summon up the strength to explain it away for him before he had to–when my sane brain took over and blurted out, “Is that LIPSTICK?”  He hemmed and hawed then said it must have happened when he gave  a secretary who was quitting a goodbye hug.  I could have accepted that; I could have swallowed the lie.  Instead I said, “That’s hard to believe.”  He froze for a good 20 seconds then admitted that “it was just dinner.”  OH, OK!!!  Psshew!  I thought it was something objectionable!  It’s funny now to recall that my first thought on registering that it was lipstick was that it was a frosty pink color and I couldn’t get past the TACKY.  Jesus, if you’re going to cheat at least pick someone who doesn’t wear Bonnie Belle Lipsmackers.

That was a long night.  We fought it out and hugged it out, I swore a lot and he swore he would change….blah, my hands are tired from just the typing of it.  The next day, I called in sick to work so I could spend a few hours staring out the window and trying to remember how to breathe.  I got it together.  I did the laundry.  I even washed his shirt for him.  The whole time I had that Cowboy Junkies song, “Southern Rain,” going through my mind because there’s a line in it that goes, “Every night there’s lipstick on his collar and every morning I wash it away.”

When Fartbuster came home that evening, he came bearing gifts.  As one does, naturally.  Try to guess what he got me!  A nice pair of “sorry I dated someone other than my wife” diamond earrings?  Nope.  Two tickets to a romantic second honeymoon?  Nuh-uh.  A bouquet of flowers from Kroger at the very least?  Not so much.

eclectic-doormatsA doormat.  The man bought me a DOORMAT.  We had two dachshunds so he bought me a novelty doormat that said “A spoiled rotten dachshund lives here!”  Because if you’ve cheated on your wife, you need to high-tail it to Spencer’s Gifts in the mall to make it up to her.

Here’s my point in telling all this–people will show you who they are.  They will show you what they think of you.  When they do, BELIEVE THEM.  Don’t give any credit to what they SAY, only to what they DO.  I spent a year after this betrayal trying to swallow his bullshit about how much he loved me.  There were many tearful scenes on his part, many professions of fidelity and adoration.  He said, “I want to move back home because I’ve learned that home is wherever you are.”  That was all in the SAY column.  In the DO column?  A doormat.  An apartment in town.  A girlfriend.  Then another one.

If I had wadded up that doormat and shoved it down his throat, then punched him in the gut until he spit it back out, THEN stuck it in his zipper and lit it on fire, I think a jury of other women would have found me not guilty AND given me the Miss Congeniality prize.  

I tell you what–I kept that doormat.  I moved it from our house to my house, to another my house, to another our house, which became another my house then turned back into an our house.  The dachshunds died years ago but that doormat is still in the garage.  Every time I look at it, I remember “When people show you who they are, believe them.”  Then I usually mumble, “Dumbass.”  For the first few years after I figured it all out, I was thinking of myself when I added, “Dumbass,”  Like it was my fault for not seeing through him sooner.  “When people show you who they are, believe them, Dumbass.”  But now that I’ve done the work to get more whole, I can see that his shortcomings were all about him and not anything I was supposed to fix.  I was thinking about the woman who stayed silent while a cheating man gave her a doormat.  Now I say it when I’m thinking about the man who thought that was good enough for me.  Dumbass.  

be nice doormat

The doormat I bought for MY house.

 

If you liked this post, share it with your friends!  Spread the word about doormats and dumbasses.

If You Walk Out of Your Panties…

Yesterday, I shared with you some sage advice about fools from my father’s side of the family.  Today, let’s turn to my mother’s side of the family.  I’d like to share a nugget of advice that my Grandmama Irene told me 30 years ago that I have never forgotten:

“If you ever walk out of your panties, just keep walking.”

 

“Come again?” you might ask, as you clutch your pearls and lean in across your chicken salad plate.  Honey, you heard me.  I don’t stutter and your ears don’t flap.  If you ever walk out of your panties, just keep walking.

Grandmama Irene is 94 and has amassed a wealth of great advice over her years.  I think of her whenever I make a big breakfast because she always said, “Breakfast is the hardest meal of the day to get everything hot at the right time.”  Or when I’m cooking a big meal–“Wash pots as you go along and you won’t have such a mess when you’re finished.”  If it’s too humid, I don’t make divinity candy because she taught me that candy just won’t set if there’s too much moisture in the air.  (Well, to be honest, I’ve never made divinity because it’s too damn hard, but I know to BLAME IT  on the humidity.)  On budgetary matters, I hear Grandmama saying, “Pay your bills THEN buy your groceries.”  She’s right–you can always eat beans if the power bill was high that month.

But no advice compares to the jewel in the crown:  If you ever walk out of your panties, just keep walking.  I think I love this piece of advice so much because it came out of the clear blue.  It’s not like I was walking along with Grandmama Irene when my panties tangled up around my feet and she saved the day with sage advice.  Nope.  We were just puttering around the kitchen, probably cleaning up after a holiday meal, when she grabbed my wrist and said with a great sense of urgency, “Oh!  Ashley!  If you ever walk out of your panties (finger pointing for emphasis), just.keep.walking.”

She was born in 1918, in an age when elastic was…less dependable.  Now, I’m not one to reveal specifics about how this life lesson was learned, but back in the 1940’s on a lovely summer day, a lady might have found herself walking in downtown Atlanta, right past Rich’s department store, when her elastic decided to head south.  Should one find oneself on a sidewalk in a metropolitan area when one detects a certain “breeziness” in her skirt, one must NOT attempt to retrieve said underthings.  LET THEM GO.  Keep walking.  To quote a more modern sage, Obi-wan Kenobi:  “Those are not the panties you are looking for.”  Once they head south, they are no longer your panties and you will compromise your dignity if you stoop to pick them up.  They are feral panties at that point and belong to the street.

Keep Moving! Nothing to see here!

Keep Moving! Nothing to see here!

Why do I share this advice with you today?  Because as I was walking through the parking lot at work this morning, I see a bright pink pair of cotton panties lying right there on the asphalt.  

Someone’s mama has raised her right.  I bet you a dollar those panties are still there at 5pm today.  

If you’re thinking, “That’s good advice, but it’s never going to apply to me.”  Maybe not, but let’s take it from the specific panty-dropping probability and take a more metaphorical perspective.  Just think of the life situations where this applies!

  • Do you have a cheating husband?  Girl, he has walked out of your panties, so just keep walking.
  • Have you been eating right and exercising?  Hey!  You walked out of your panties!  Keep walking!
  • Are you breaking free of the bonds of appropriateness and embracing authenticity?  Sister, it’s time to walk out of those panties.
  • Is it time to leave the past behind?  Walk out of your panties and keeeeeeeep walking.

Not everyone is lucky enough to have a Grandmama Irene, so PLEASE share this advice with everyone you know!  Keep it breezy!

 

gi and vivi

P.S.  Some of you have asked for a photo of Grandmama Irene herself.  Here she is at Vivi’s first birthday luau, talking about cake.  She has been famous for her homemade cakes for half a century!  

The Country Bunny

Did you know that DuBose Heyward wrote the story behind "Porgy and Bess" 14 years before he wrote "The Country Bunny?"

Did you know that DuBose Heyward wrote the story behind “Porgy and Bess” 14 years before he wrote “The Country Bunny?”

Did anyone ever read this book to you?  Someone who loved you very much and wanted you to believe you could be anything you want to be?  Mrs. Carol Fowler read this book to me and I have never forgotten it.  One afternoon a week, our class walked down to the library at Flint River Academy and filed in quietly.  On top of the low shelves filled with children’s books, one book would be lying face down and near her chair–the book she had chosen for us.  Oh, the excitement of that first peek!

We sat in a semi-circle on the thin carpet–back then we called it “indian style” instead of “criss cross apple sauce.”  Mrs. Fowler wouldn’t say a word until we were all sitting down and paying attention.  I can still remember the crackle of the plastic covers that she put on the books to protect their beautiful covers.  She was magical–Mrs. Fowler could read upside down and knew exactly when to turn the page without even looking.  Library time was the best hour of the week.

When I was in seventh grade, long after the days of story hour, I got to assist Mrs. Fowler in the library during my free period.  As I straightened the books in the elementary section, I rediscovered “The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes” and read it many times.  When Mrs. Fowler had first held the book up for us to see, I was a little disappointed because the cover doesn’t look like much.  The colors were too old-fashioned, some book my grandmother would pull out of a dusty box in the attic.

young bunnyOh, the story!  A little brown bunny named Cottontail wants to be an Easter Bunny but no one believes in her.  Those jobs go to the swift jack rabbits or the giant white bunnies.  When Cottontail finds herself all grown up with 21 babies to chase after, her dream seems even further out of reach.  But lo and behold, Cottontail’s experience as a mother translates into just the “skill set” that a busy Easter Bunny needs.  She is selected and gets to live her dream, thanks to the help of her children and her own belief in her dream.   Even when the job seems to be too much, she finds the strength to do the impossible…thanks to a pair of magic shoes.

When I was all grown up, I bought a copy of “The Country Bunny” for myself.  One Easter, when my nephew, Grant, was about two and a half, I decided to share it with him.  His dad was busy fixing something around our parents’ house and asked me to keep Grant out of the way.  We snuggled into a comfy chair and I told him about this wonderful book that I had loved for so many years and how excited I was to share it with him.  Papa was snoozing in the other chair.  I opened the book, read the first page in breathless awe.  Grant reached across my lap, closed the book and chirped “The End!” He slid off my lap and went off to find out what all the hammering was about.  My dad STILL laughs about that moment!  So much for that.

tired bunnyThis is my favorite illustration from the book.  Cottontail has one very special egg to deliver to a sick boy who lives atop a mountain.  She is exhausted from her night’s work.  There isn’t much night left–the pink dawn of Easter breaks behind the mountain.  Cottontail doesn’t want to give up.    She makes it…SPOILER ALERT!

I think I love this painting because I’ve felt this way so many times as a mother.  You spend so much effort trying to get everything done, trying to make the magic happen and there doesn’t seem to be enough time.  You’re worn out.  You just need that little boost of magic.  The night wasn’t long enough.

Go get this book and read it to yourself.  Give yourself the same gift that Mrs. Fowler gave me all those years ago.  I still appreciate it.

Lest You Think I’m Imagining This…

Original FrostineThis was the original Queen Frostine when the character was introduced in the 1970s.  She could be on a float in the Orange Bowl Parade.   

frostine pink

And here she is in the 1980s and 1990s.  Roughly the same, a rounded face and no more skin than your average Gunne Sax prom dress.  Still a queen.

frostineHere’s a more simplified version of her look during this time.  Thirty years on, still regal and sweet as can be. 

frostina250

Entering the next millenium, Frostine was demoted from Queen to Princess (though still purportedly married to King Candy).  She’s “aged down” and given a more angular face and Farah Fawcett hair.  I find it interesting that her facial expression goes from one of direct contact with the viewer to one of those chin in hand, tilted eye, “tell me another interesting story” expressions.  Or maybe she’s just tired from all the skating. 

Queen Frostine 2013

And here we have the latest iteration of Princess Frostine.  Tousled hair, collagen lips, disproportinate apple head…and waffle cone legs that look a whole lot like fishnet stockings. 

Real Housewives of Candy Land.