Reviving the Home Base

Oh my gracious, it's been awhile I guess! Life happens. Did ya miss me? Are you even there anymore??

Tired of Parenting YOUR Knucklehead Children

Boo, keeping watch for the knuckleheads.

Well, not your children of course, but other people's children, and more specifically children who happen to live in my neighborhood.

We seem to have an awful lot of them around here these days too. I've lived here long enough - because I apparently didn't have enough sense to take advantage of all those big loans that other people got, to buy big houses they couldn't afford, to impress who knows who (and now they want mortgage relief). If only I had known my neighborhood was gonna go to pot, I mighta gotten me one of those too. Well, I didn't and thanks to the real estate crash and greedy insurance companies, I am stuck here now.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yeah...

...so I stayed in this far too little, cramped, but now paid for, house with the crappy tiny, galley style kitchen, full of old appliances, not nearly enough storage, and 1001 handyman problems (and still haven't stopped bitching about it either, although yes, even though it doesn't sound it, I truly am grateful not to be a bag lady and to have a roof over my head) long enough to see this transition of children happen around here a couple of times. When my son was in middle school and high school, there were a lot of kids around his age and not many younger. Then they graduated and moved on with their lives and left all us old folks behind. And, for awhile, it was just us old folks.

Since the greedy insurance companies used Katrina to pad their big fat greedy pockets, and rob homeowners blind by legal extortion, people abandoned their homes in my once lovely and quiet neighborhood, and moved away, or inland, but then when they couldn't sell, they turned into landlords.

We seem to have turned into a giant cesspool, I mean subdivision, of home rentals now. It's kinda like living in a college dorm, except spread out over miles instead of just floors. They are loud, obnoxious, they have no respect for the property they live in, their neighbors, or the neighborhood, because frankly they'll probably only be around 6 months, a year, maybe two. Who cares?! With the renters came a lot of folks who seem to have, well, a lot of children. A lot of rude, disrespectful, snotty, little  knucklehead children, apparently without a lot of sense, guidance or discipline.

My master bedroom is so small that I could potentially kick the window out with my foot if I tossed and turned too much. That's my sweet little Boo up there and he likes to lay at the foot of the bed where he can see out that window behind him and keep me informed about what is going on out there, with all of these darling children.

I've had to run teens off from congregating in front of my house, mostly because Boo goes nuts, but also because what starts as two of them congregating, quickly becomes a dozen in no time, kids with no concept of boundaries, throwing trash and candy wrappers in the yard, knocking things over, messing around with things in your yard. I've had to run their animals out of my yard because they think my yard is their personal toilet. I've had to holler at them from spinning wheels in my yard with their go-carts and tearing ruts into my grass. I've had to run them off from throwing balls around our cars. Mercy.

This morning about quarter till 10 Boo was raising all kinds of cain, and I had to go out to the box anyway to put yet another piece of government waste at it's best back in the mail to FEMA to let them know that yes, after I received my notice of insurance, returned my payment, to which they mailed me my policy, and then later, mailed me another piece of paper wherein I must sign and return to confirm that I previously received my flood policy, one of 3 insurance policies I now have to carry on my house thanks to those aforementioned damn greedy insurance companies.

So, where was I again?

Oh yeah. So I walk outside and see the cutest little blonde headed boy, maybe I don't know 10, with a gun. A BB gun I'm sure, but he's pointing it at something down the street. This is the THIRD child I have seen, and run off, walking the streets with BB guns since Christmas, which means one thing and one thing only. They are shooting innocent birds, squirrels and yes, apparently at least shooting at pets. But I'm ahead of myself. Two teenagers got smart with me until I screamed at them to stop or I was calling the law, and those knuckleheads took flight.

So I walk out into the street and see that this precious blonde headed little boy was apparently taking pot shots at the cutest little white dog, a Chihuahua or maybe even a Russell Terrior. And then, as if he has a pang of conscious for shooting at this dog, he calls the dog over to him by name, meaning the knucklehead at least knows this dog and maybe it's even his own family  dog!

Well, then the knucklehead must feel somebody staring him down, because he turns around and takes notice of this fat old lady standing in the middle of the street watching him, and he decided apparently that it must be time to go home and perhaps watch some cartoons or play video games, instead of shooting innocent animals. He walks away from me down the street, taking a few glances over his shoulder to see if I am still watching him. I am. Heck he even stopped once, turned completely around and waved at me. Or flipped me off. My eyesight isn't good enough to tell which one.

I don't budge, but I stand there, watching him, until he walked into a yard a few houses away, purportedly his own yard, I would assume, with the dog in tow. Knucklehead. If I would have had the energy I would have gone to his house to chat with his parents, but truth is, they're likely just overgrown knuckleheads themselves. To be honest I was sorely tempted to tell him that if he came back around here with that gun, that I might be tempted to show him what a real shotgun looks like. Yes. I have one. Yes, I sure do know how to use it. No I wouldn't really do that. But I just might have thought about it. Just sayin'...

Parents, if you must buy a BB gun for an inadequately prepared child, it is YOUR duty to teach them how to be a responsible gun user. It is YOUR duty to make sure that the gun is secure and put away when you are not at home, or I guarantee your child will be wandering the streets with it, shooting at innocent animals. It is YOUR duty to teach your knucklehead that a BB gun is solely for yard target practice on an inanimate target, to improve upon their gun skills for when they have a real gun later in life. That you don't just shoot a living thing for target practice. For God's sake, get your nose out of your damn iPhone or Blackberry for a few minutes and direct some attention to that child you brought into this world for a change, would ya? I done raised mine.

And y'all wonder why I haven't been posting? Geez Louise.

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Things That Make You Go Hmmmm....

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"This week was the 150th anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental telegraph. Back then, before the telephone, people could only communicate by laboriously typing messages... one letter at a time."   ~Jan Leno

Tell me life doesn't come full circle.

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How Not to Do Housework

So today was going to be a catch up on housework/deep cleaning day. Since I blog full time over at Deep South Dish, I tend to neglect (and ignore) the house, and well things can get clutted up and dusty. And then I see an episode of Hoarders and it freaks me out.

I intended to start in the kitchen first, wipe down everything, put away everything and do a top to bottom cleaning including floors and walls. Went in there and decided that I was hungry so made some lunch. Checked the fan page for DSD on Facebook, got distracted, looked up some links & answered some questions for readers, worked on coding some old posts for the new recipe box before sharing the links - I'm in the midst of that on my entire site - finally an hour or more later, made my way back the kitchen.

The satellite started acting up and suddenly we couldn't get any channels at all. I remembered that we were supposed to be having some sort of geomagnetic storm for the next few days and knew that could be part of the problem but wasn't having any problems with cable (yes, we have both cable and satellite) or internet and we've been having trouble with our satellite 2 input. Already replaced the outside cable recently that was looking a little weary and thought that had fixed it.

So I pull out the tv and check the connections behind there. Noticed the dust and start dusting the curtains, wall, all behind the tv. Had to go get the vacuum cleaner to get all that up. Found the cable that runs outside, followed it and discovered the frayed cable we replaced recently was actually for satellite 1, not 2. In between having to come inside to cool off every 5 minutes, got the ladder and started checking all the connections at the switchbox outside, then at the satellite, still no signal. Grab the remote start running tests, find a problem, rerun the satellite test and in the midst of that the satellite comes back on.

Back to the kitchen.

I have cathedral ceilings that extend into the kitchen and I store cookbooks on top of the cabinets. A LOT of cookbooks but we won't go there right now. I was reshelving some of the ones that I had been browsing through for ideas. By the way {forthcoming hissy fit warning} if a blogger of food never credits another source for any of their recipes and says things like I don't watch any of the cooking shows on tv, I don't have but a handful of cookbooks I've owned forever, I don't subscribe to any of the food magazines yada yada yada, they are 1) lying through their teeth or 2) stealing recipes from cookbooks or other food bloggers, changing one insignificant detail and calling that recipe their own. Well, I don't do that.

If I want to write a new recipe, I usually have a base of an idea that just comes from experience or is inspired by something that I have seen on tv, in a book, or in a magazine. I subscribe to several magazines, some because I want to learn to write better. Others because I want to learn to photograph better. Others because they inspire me in other ways. From there, I research using those same resources - online, television, magazines and cookbooks. I have hundreds of cookbooks, some very old. I watch a lot of food television. A LOT. I write up an idea and get in the kitchen to experiment and cook it. Sometimes it's perfect, others it's not quite there. I make some revisions, rewrite, and yes, I hit the kitchen again. I know some bloggers do, but I don't want to publish failures or recipes I don't like that much, so I keep making them until they are the way I want them. To me, unless a food blog is made up of adaptations of and fully attributed recipes, that's the way a food blogger should write recipes. It's the only way to be authentic in my opinion, and that is the kind of food site I want to convey with my work. {tucks away soapbox}

All that to say, I work from the family room and there are constantly books and magazines all over the place. I like being in here with my husband rather than tucked into another room, isolated and by myself.  So I went in the kitchen to start re-shelving some of the cookbooks and let's just say things are a bit tight up there. Truth is they have also moved onto a shelf in the family room too. But anyway, I have a few Christmas cookbooks so thought, these don't really need to be in here so I'll move them to the office. Pull them down, take them in the office, decide I have got to vacuum in there. The cat litter box is in a corner of that room and although I do clean it out everyday, I just don't understand how these cats manage to spread litter all over the floor in there, but they do. So I put the Christmas cookbooks on the shelf in there and vacuum - floors, corners, top, bottom, edges, everywhere. Decide since I'm vacuuming might as well do the family room too - floors, corners, top, bottom, edges, everywhere. Might as well dust some things while I'm here too.

Finally back to the kitchen. To shelve the cookbooks I made room for. Was thinking about a photo styling project that I'm doing for Foodbuzz & thought Mama's old punch bowl cups would be nice (my cousin has the punch bowl itself) thought the box was in the office closet so back to the office. Straightened up the closet a little while looking, found a purse that had stuff in it, no money except change, started cleaning the purse out. Dug around the closet some more but never found the cups.

All that stretching, stooping, bending from vacuuming had me exhausted. Hey that's exercise - I'm not used to that! Decided I wanted some tacos. Went outside with the pup, came back inside and started intensely itching on my back from who knows what. Looked in the mirror and there was a huge red rash across my back. Apparently having some kind of rash reaction to something. What the heck? I literally just walked outside & came back in. It's not like I rolled around in anything. Took a shower, had hubby put cortisone cream on my back, put fresh clothes on and decided to take a break, started this post, checked Facebook, answered questions and looked up links for a reader.

Back to the kitchen. To shelve the cookbooks I made room for. A hundred bazillon hours ago.

Went back to the office to get an envelope for the receipts tucked in the corner. Back to the kitchen. FINALLY shelved the books and started on the kitchen. 9 hours later.

Funny thing is ... I know I'm forgetting many more distractions that happened along the way and I sure didn't make much progress. Oh well. There's always tomorrow.
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Did You Get a Push Present?

This one looks about right.  

I want my push present.

I gave birth in about 6 hours, though I had been uncomfortable and had back pains all night the night before, so it'd be reasonable to say that I was actually in labor well before that. At 3:00 a.m. I convinced my then husband to take me to the hospital, despite a phone call to them and their "doubt" that I could actually be having true labor pains that close together already. They were wrong. The winter air was cold, the sky clear as glass, and I can still remember so clearly the mirror image of the near full moon on the still water as we crossed the bridge over the bay that winter morning.

I had been determined that I would give birth to this child naturally since the moment I found out I was pregnant. I did not have a single, solitary drug of any kind during labor or delivery. No pain medication. No epidural. Nothing. Nada. It was a painful few hours of my life, but I made it through it even with nurses trying to convince me that maybe a little "something" might help. After the fact they gave me something to "relax me" and that was welcomed!

After being knocked out for a few hours I woke up in a hospital room alone, not a soul there. My head foggy, I struggled to get my legs to the floor and boost my body up from the bed. My body was traumatized and I felt Every. Single. Muscle. in my body. I touched my stomach. Had I just had a baby? I was supposed to be in a special birthing room with my baby. Where was he?  Nobody would tell me. Nobody would let me see him.

Turns out during the labor process my baby had tried to breathe in the birth canal and had a lung collapse. While his lungs had recovered immediately on their own, they had whisked him away to the nursery to place him in an incubator to monitor him. When my physician showed up to make his rounds and found out, the hospital staff were directed to immediately take me to the nursery to see him. On top of the physical trauma, there was all this mental strain.

While I got divorced not long after that, and over the years my ex and I shared custody back and forth over the years, being a mother was never easy from that day forward and there were many sleepless nights of worry through those teen years especially.

Well, I have just learned that apparently there is a new trend among new mamas that they are to receive some kind of a "push present" - preferable diamonds of some kind - when they give birth.

It was more than 30 years ago, when I gave birth to my one and only baby, a son.  I am clearly far overdue for my push present.  So my dear ex-husband, I have one question for ya.

Where's my bling?

Photo: TheGoldJewelry.com
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Go The F*#% To Sleep!

I know. Shocking blog title isn't it? Sorry about that.

I heard about this bedtime story book Go the F**k To Sleep on last night's ABC Nightline segment {click to see the video} and just knew I had to talk about it.

Meant to be strictly an entertainment outlet for frustrated parents, it actually started as a joke on the author's Facebook page after dealing with his own daughter's bedtime issues. He made a personal video spoof of a fictional book that went viral in record time and prompted the writing of the actual book that is flying off the shelves and being talked about all across the net.

Although written in the style and rhyming tone of a typical child's storybook, including illustrations, the author deems this book as a 'children's book for adults' and says that "you probably should not read it to your children."

"The cats nestle close to their kittens. The lambs have laid down with the sheep. You're cozy and warm in your bed, my dear. Please go the f#@ to sleep."

Okay. I see the humor of it, and in a way I can certainly get it. I was lucky. My son was, and well, in truth, still is, a good sleeper - when he can squeeze it in with work, school, hobbies, and his own two young children. I do know how frustrating being a new parent can be - and that is especially true sometimes when bedtime rolls around. All you want to do is get those little angels to bed and have a little me or we time, right? A little humor couldn't hurt. Or could it?

We have become a potty-mouth society without barely a blink of an eye these days, that is true, and I say that as a collective "we." Words my parents would never consider using are now commonplace, but... is this going just a little too far? What do you think? Funny? Or just downright vulgar?

If you think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, all I can say is just be sure that you keep it away from wandering eyes. I'm thinking that maybe in this case, the Kindle version or the audiobook, narrated by none other than Samuel L. Jackson, would be more appropriate for the sleep-deprived parent. Or maybe, let's just stick to this instead... and calm those nerves of both the parent and the child in a more traditional manner. Just sayin'...

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This and That

Well now, what's up on the homefront here? Clearly I have been very lazy busy, because I haven't been around much, have I?

I heard there have been problems across the blogosphere with commenting on other blogs, or maybe it's commenting on Blogger blogs, or bloggers who blog on Blogger commenting {huh?} but all I know is I apparently fell out of that loop because I've not had those problems, well so far, with the blogs I have visited. I use Chrome, if that makes any difference & somehow I do feel like it sounds like it's a browser issue.

I think I mentioned this last time, but I took all three cats to the vet for their check-ups & shot updates, and had Smoky, the newest member of the feline family neutered. It really calmed him down substantially, thank goodness because he had some behavior issues that were troublesome not to mention aggravating. Boo, my dog, got his neutering surgery done too, but somebody forgot to tell him, because he hasn't changed a bit.

My neighbors on both sides are still driving me crazy, although it comes in spurts. Been kinda quiet overall on both sides lately to be honest & so I'm counting my blessings!  Have you ever noticed that once somebody gets on your nerves it seems that their mere existence gets on your nerves?

My garden. Well, we had a nice period in early spring that enabled me to get some vegetable plants established before the early summer furnace was turned on. Now I'm dealing with drought since we've had almost no rain in at least 2 months now, and also such a severe sun already that it killed a few of my younger cucumber plants. I have been going out a couple of times during the hottest period of the day to spray the plants to help keep their leaves hydrated and keep them from suffering with blossom drop. There's been some, but so far not like last year.

I decided that was crazy and set up - or at least started and will finish this weekend - a sort of misting system on an automatic timer to come on during those hottest times of the day and just sort of spritz the plants for 10 or 15 minutes, 2 or 3 times between noon and 2:00 p.m.  I know that overhead watering is not the best way to do things, but this isn't for watering, but more to keep the plants cooler during that high noon period. This extreme heat from last year caused major blossom drop and really hampered production on everything. Even with the misting, it seems like the squash is getting too much water because the fruit just gets squishy and falls off. Probably one of the most prolific producing veggies there is, I can't manage to get one to grow for me!

The things we do for a garden - and I tell you what. To do it on such a small scale as this backyard garden - I really don't know if it is worth it! You really have to fight for every inch.

I have learned a couple of things in this process of doing my veggie gardens the last couple of years, the first being, that living in the coastal south, I should have doubled the boards on my raised beds. I planted some cucumbers in containers and they are doing miles better than the ones that are left in the garden, so I'm planning to add on to the beds before the beginning of the next season.

I also learned that whether I get a small greenhouse or not, I'm going to have to figure out some way to get my seeds started in the winter so that I can get healthy seedlings in the ground around February/March and harvest about now. It is just too hard fighting the heat in such a small garden.

T-ball and soccer are over and with this oppressive heat, I'm kinda glad. The last game on Saturday liked to have done me in, and frankly my grandson wasn't all that into either game quite yet anyway. Hard to hold a 3 year olds attention long enough, but it was fun going out to watch his games and getting to see the kids and my son and daughter-in-law. It was not fun having to compete for time with the grandbabies over my ex-husband and his wife. In situations where we are all in the same place, they seem a bit oblivious that there is another set of grands around and they use candy to bribe and monopolize the kids. Annoying.

My granddaughter uses two words predominately these days - no and mine. Actually she has a much larger vocabulary then her brother did at her age - she'll be 2 in a few months and he'll be 4 - but those two seem to be her favorite words. She's adorable, though a bit moody here lately too, and very clingy with her father who I told to cherish these moments because in about oh, 10-12 years, she'll hate him. Until she needs money or to go someplace.

My husband went shrimping twice with his dad, though the season opened earlier than usual due to the fresh water flooding from the Mississippi River washing into the Gulf of Mexico, and so, of course, the catch was smaller. They still need time to grow. Just as well really, as my freezer is full, stuffed with I don't know what, and really needs a good going through anyway.

We went out on the shrimp boat for the Blessing of the Fleet this past Sunday. Thankfully it was not too hot, and a bit cloudy, which was a good thing because I forgot my sunscreen. It looked like we were gonna get into a storm, which trust me, you do not want to be out on the Gulf, in an old wooden shrimp boat, in a thunderstorm, but it never did rain on us more than a few sprinkles, so we got blessed and made it back to the harbor in one piece.

I've been hit with what I call mini-migraines because they are heat-induced headaches and near about impossible to get rid of. My sister in law has been suffering with debilitating migraines for awhile here - the kind that really put you down and keep you from being able to work or function. The doctors can't seem to figure out why, because all they do is just pump her full of different drugs which apparently don't work. For me, it's been keeping hydrated, drinking Gatoraide, using a little aromatherapy and good ole Excedrin. I remember my mama suffering with headaches - that's actually where the Excedrin comes in for me - so I sure hope it's not a hereditary thing & something that I'll get to look forward to from here on out.

Course I'm still plugging away on the food blog, developing and writing recipes - some I've been pleased with, a few I've remade, most I've very far behind with typing up. I do enjoy the developing and cooking process the most, so much more than I enjoy the behind the scenes editing and coding parts of it all. And when you do it all, it is pretty darned time consuming. So much easier to just steal somebody else's tried & true recipe, change one or two insignificant ingredients, cook it and post it as my own without crediting them, than to do all this. Don't worry. I'm not going there, promise. Just wanted to see if I could raise your eyebrow for a second.

I guess that's it! A bunch of boring banter about stuff nobody but me cares about and frankly, I'm not even  sure that I do. Thanks for stopping by to visit & hope your life has been at least a tiny bit more exciting than this.

Happy summer!
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Idea Thieves and a Little About What I'm Up To Lately

Knock knock. Is this thing on? Anybody out there?

Seriously how y'all doin'?  Things have been kinda busy for me - well, it seems to be a bit epidemic with a lot of bloggers here lately based on the number of "I'm taking a break posts" I've been seeing for a few months - even from some of the bigger bloggers. I blame it on spring fever. Or maybe it's just simply life. I sometimes wonder if my bloggy friend Holly, who I dearly miss, and who predicted blogs would soon sort of fizzle away, wasn't right after all!

Well, it's spring, and I've been busy in the yard of course. There was all that raking that comes with the spring shedding oaks here, and we actually still probably have one final sweep to make, though I think they are pretty much finished falling... finally!  Most of the leaf burning neighbors in my general vicinity, including the ones next door, stopped burning leaves this spring, some I guess because I canvassed the neighborhood, others, like the ones next door I don't know why... but I'm not questioning it either, I'm just grateful.

There have been a few people like the fella above there, who continued to burn anyway even after I talked to them about the breathing problems it caused me. That coward set these two small piles on fire and then took off and left them smoldering all day. Someone else I talked to was burning at night a few doors down a couple of times, and I'm sure there will continue to be burning since it's not illegal here, but I know karma will get them. She always does. And I am gonna keep on fighting it.

In anticipation of the leaf burning/pollen season - and the fact that 8 out of 10 times when I step out my backdoor, I am assaulted by the odor of cigarette smoke from the chain smokers who live around me, I bought a Honeywell indoor air cleaner. This little piece of technology has truly been a life saver quite literally, even for when my husband comes home toting third-hand cigarette smoke on his hair and clothes. Yes, even third hand smoke transferred onto somebody else causes me lung pain. I know that with me, it's a chemical issue, and all I can say is there must be some seriously dangerous chemicals in some cigarettes these days. The first air cleaner I ordered made such an immediate difference in the air quality and in my ability to breathe deeply, and within only about 5 minutes of turning it on, I immediately ordered a second unit for my bedroom!

As far as the garden, my roses bloomed out, but now they are looking kinda sickly. I only planted a few pots of annuals for a bit of color out front, and nothing in the ground. I transferred some oriental lillies from the back garden to the front and moved three lantana plants from one place in the yard to another, but I didn't plant a single new flower other than the potted annuals. The dollar weed - and those horribly painful sticker weeds - were taking over the backyard again, so I had no choice but to put down weed and feed.

On the veggies this year, I raised a few plants from seed but had some bell pepper seeds that never came up, so I bought a few small seedlings of those. In the garden I currently have about a dozen tomatoes of different kinds, bell peppers, jalapenos, a couple of lima beans, cucumbers, green beans, corn, okra, and watermelon, along with rosemary, oregano, mint, basil, flat leaf parsley, sage, and even some cilantro, which I am trying to learn to like this year. Out of all of this, it'll be interesting to see what I manage to not kill, or give up to the bugs, or to the heat this year!

I'm guessing on all of this of course, but I already saw what appeared to be slug damage on my Meyer lemon tree, Japanese beetles skeletonizing a few of my okra plants, flea beetle damage on some tomato leaves, and maybe leaf hopper damage on my Canna Lilies, so while I didn't really want to, I had to break out the bug stuff already. Same story every year - weeds and bugs. Followed by heat, and we've already had quite a drought in April with less than 1/2-inch of rain, while our neighbors to the north have suffered through horrible storms and now, coming floods along the Mississippi River.

We are also in the midst of planning a big family vacation to Disney later in the year, and if you've ever been, you know there's been lots to do to plan for that! The Cajun, and I are going together of course, but we're also taking my son, daughter in law and the two grandkids, so there has been figuring schedules of what we want to do when, where we want to eat and when, and of course the character meals that have to be planned for and reserved months in advance.

My daughter in law is going all out too - scouting costumes and themed clothing from Etsy shops for everything we're doing with the kids, including prince and princess costuming for Cinderella's Royal Table and chef outfits for Chef Mickey. We're doing T-Rex at Downtown Disney and Disney Quest, and the luau at the Polynesian, Rain Forest Cafe at Animal Kingdom, all the parks and Typhoon Lagoon too, of course. Somehow we'll manage to squeeze in a day at Sea World, but mostly we'll be on the Disney property. This is my way of finally taking my son myself, and he gets to take his kids too, so I am so stinkin' excited y'all, I can hardly stand myself!!

I started this week to get my "farm" of cats and my one dog ready with updated shots, including bordella since they are being boarded, and scheduling boarding for everybody. For Boo and Smoky, neutering is on the schedule too.  I figured it is best to get that done now too. The vet put me at ease about leaving Boo, reminding me that dogs have little sense of time and that it's the humans who suffer the absence more than the pets. I'd been stressing over leaving him because when we found him, he was only maybe 5 or 6 weeks old, and since I'd lost my job to Hurricane Katrina, I have been with him every single day of his life, 24/7 from day one. I didn't want him to grieve and think that I had gone off and died or something morbid like that! Ridiculous, I know.

Course I've still been developing recipes, cooking and creating, taking photos, writing and editing, and trying to keep up with the posts over at Deep South Dish, but the new hrecipe website coding that Google search engine recently implemented is giving favor to the bigger corporate sites, and the bigger bloggers who have the money to hire people to code their sites, has all but knocked us smaller food bloggers out of the Google search rankings for people looking for recipes. I don't mind saying I have been busting my buns for several years to get a good ranking on Google, only to have Google kick me in the face and knock me off the monkey bars. That sure took the wind out of my sails a bit.

Not that I'm one of those super ambitious food bloggers that wants to be a celebrity, go on big book tours, have my own show, brand myself across every possible product in existence, or hawk my name and site  or myself across media. I'm not. While my food blog has indeed shown enough growth to draw interest from some major brands, I've actually turned down three very lucrative corporate opportunities in the past couple months.

Opportunities that many bloggers would chomp at the bit to do, and which would have given me national exposure - but for which at the stage of life I am at right now, seemed far too demanding, far too much work, far too much effort and frankly, even in exchange for proposed "fame and popularity," neither of which I care much about... I just don't really want to work that hard right now!!  I did send them on to a few bloggers I thought would be a good fit for their projects though, so hopefully they will remember that.

Don't get me wrong... if the right opportunity comes along that has the right feel for me and for my readers, I'll take it, but my primary goal for my food blog is to have a nice "website cookbook," a collection of old fashioned and classic southern recipes and good cooking that people can rely on. If I have a "hook" at all, that's it. I just have no attachments to the "fame monster" is all.

I don't have a big ego. I'm not competitive. I have no desire to be famous. I don't want to be in front of a camera, have a tv show, or anything remotely like that. I am not driven by the desire to have a lot of attention or to be constantly reaching for more and never content. Been there. Done that. Bought the t-shirt. While I appreciate and I am immensely grateful for the sweet emails I receive daily from people all over the country, my goal is not to be admired, or adored or put up on any kind of pedestal. I'm simply not that special. I'm just like anybody else who loves to cook and I like to cook the good old style food. And I am working hard to do that and keep that alive.

Which is why I am also a little bit angry.

Once upon a time, I was that gal up there in the picture waving. I was younger, and blonde, and much thinner, and kinda cute, with her body. That was what I looked like about 100 years ago, and I never had a problem having a man in my life, even if he was Mr. Right Now and rarely Mr. Right. God in all his wisdom gave me strong intuition though, even for my lack of relationship skills, and he gave me a good sense of perception - though some people would say it's paranoia. My best friend and I were chatting about this subject on this very day. There is a fine line between the two I guess, this perception and paranoia, but trust me. You know when you have the first over the latter.

Once in my early 30s, when this spooky guy I had rejected was stalking me... and I'm talking about true stalking - following me, all the time, all hours of the day and night, my every movement, everywhere I went. Watching from afar. Spying on me. But perception and intuition always had me a step ahead of him.  That inner voice would tell me to look outside at a certain time, and he would pass by in his car. Or I would be drawn to eyeball a dark corner in a club where I was with my friends, and there he would be. Hard as he tried to be covert, I always managed to be seconds ahead of him, and that kind of perception or intuition has always been with me.

There is a blogger I once thought well of. But soon their nature became very obviously different from what they put out there - they were annoyingly overly driven and ambitious, pushy and aggressive, grandiose and in a constant look-at-me mode of self promotion, in pursuit of all of those things of fame in a dizzying whirlwind of activity. They would say one thing was the most important thing in their life, but yet, their actions reflected the complete opposite of it. I began to see things happening with them that I knew were factual untruths and manipulation, but... not all that unusual in some aspects of the blogging community I guess, and in all honesty, the stuff of marketing these days. None of my business really.

Except that for months now this person has literally been stalking my site - never stopping to say hello. Never commenting. Never announcing their presence, but always coming by in stealth. And then in short time, I would see my work - not in recipes because all of us southerners have pretty much the same recipe box - but in the form of certain techniques and style that I knew was mine.

When you are true to your authentic self, there is a certain blueprint of you attached to what you do. It's just there - it's your style and you know it, and you know when it is taken. This is the outflow of that fame monster - what happens when you chase fame so hard, that you build an empire on an inauthentic and shaky foundation. You run out of ideas, so you have to pluck at the creativity of other less ambitious souls who have the talent, but not the drive of the fame monster. It's much easier to steal someone else's style and ideas, than it is to develop your own. I've had plenty of instances where people have blatantly stolen my work, but I think this is much worse really.

According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it.   ~1 Corinthians 3:10

Have you ever had an instance of this in your life? How did you keep your psyche clear of the negativity associated with the knowledge?
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Happy Spring Y'all!!

Spring has officially arrived, though I guess a few of you still have winter hanging on by her fingernails.  About the time y'all get your spring cranked up, we'll probably be sweltering down here.  It's been a gorgeous couple of weeks though. Today it was in the mid-70s with a heat index already up to 78, and it felt it, but it's not 90 or 100 so I'll take it!

The birds, bees and butterflies and even one of my turtles, Lucy, have all shown up in the backyard, every one making me very happy to see them, though they've been hard to catch with the camera. The bees have actually been a bit fussy and fighting with one another over the blooms on my Meyer lemon!  I am hoping that their work might mean I'll finally have some lemons this year.

Last year there were a ton of blooms, but not a single lemon showed up. I have no idea why.

We had a brand new Krispy Kreme open up and of course y'all know we had to go get some!

I guess I've had a bit of spring fever too since I've been dragging my husband all over the place to be out in the sunshine and beautiful weather.  Thursday we went to a very small St. Patrick's Parade in Ocean Springs. There was a marching band.

A couple of floats.

And the Ole Biloxi Marching Club of course.

They hand out little paper flowers to the ladies, usually in exchange for a kiss. They've been marching in the parades around here since 1975.

But, the Budweiser Clydesdales were the guest of honor this year.

And of course the Budweiser Dalmatian was there. Isn't he gorgeous?

There was a Pub Crawl right after the parade.

Where you could partake in a number of jello shots, green beer, or adult beverages...

...food, or both!

Or you could shop.

We stopped by the harbor to check on our Miss Lucy F.

Harbors are such a familiar sight for us, that sometimes we tend to forget that not everybody has them everywhere like we do. The clanking against metal in the wind, the gentle sloshing of the water up against the boats.

And the all too familiar sound of seagulls too.

Saturday we had a 3 year old Tee-Ball game, a BBQ festival and another St. Paddy parade in Biloxi (I think it got postponed from the weekend before), and then off to watch the air show at Keesler Air Force base.

On top of all that, I have been piddling around with more seeds (some flowers, some herbs, some veggies)

and I pulled up the tail end of the radishes, cabbage and collards so I could get the rest of the veggie gardens cleaned up and ready. Dealing with seedlings is kinda fun, but I'm learning that in the future I need to work it out where I have a place to put seeds that 1) I can set up early, and 2) not have to worry about the cats getting into the seedlings. I have to buckle everybody down every night before we go to sleep, or anytime we leave for fear they'll eat the plants {ask me how I know this}. I think I just need a greenhouse. And a potting shed.

The tomatoes are getting their second set of leaves and I've been carrying them in and out of the house to start to harden them off.

Tomorrow we'll be back outside working on getting more leaves up.  Can you believe that just a few days ago, this spot was clean? Thankfully the mower does a pretty good job of picking them up and most of these will go into the gardens.

As always, I'll be super happy when the oak tree pollen and leaf drop cycle ends because all this work combined with allergy meds and I'm tired! Somewhere amidst all of this I have multiple posts to get drafted and finalized, including a cookbook review and giveaway, a new buttermilk fried chicken recipe, a green gumbo (that I made with some of that cabbage and collards) and a peach crumb cake recipe, a few others I'm forgetting about that I need to work on!

My house is a mess, I have so much laundry to do that I have no clean underwear, and since I ain't as young as I used to be, my body is a little stiff, but it's been a fun week.  Are you exhausted yet? Cuz I am slap wore out y'all!
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