Reviving the Home Base

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

Old Fashioned House Dresses

Comfortable, old fashioned house dresses.

I have become my grandma. Maybe even my great grandma! Why? Well, it's in many more ways than just one, but for one, as I've hit the 50+ plus mark in my life, I'm more apt to speak my mind. I'm certainly way less polite about taking crap off of people anymore. For another, I am trying to stop letting other people's issues about me, bother me, and troubling my mind so much over such things. I guess you could say I've become very Crabby Road. And, I like it.

If you are out there in the public eye - especially across the interwebs - you will make many acquaintances (some will be authentic friends, some will be users disguised as friends), but you will also find that some people are just gonna dislike you, talk about you, gossip about you, gang up with their friends against you, and frankly, there are just some things that you have to accept in life, give them to God and let them go. And that includes those 'Takers and Haters' we have all encountered in this world today.

Yep, as crazy as it seems, even running an innocuous recipe website is gonna earn you some 'Takers and Haters.' I know! Crazy, huh?  It happens in day to day life, and it really happens in the online world. There are a few food bloggers out there in my genre who do not seem to like me very much. And they have gathered some friends together to dislike me equally. Why? They did something wrong, I called them out for it, they did not like being called out. Refer to that first paragraph above. There are those who are simply takers and just never content enough to be happy with their own successes, that not only do they take from others to boost themselves, but then have to target and tear down those they perceive as "competitors."

Dr. Phil wrote a whole book about the topic of these kinds of people, what he calls "BAITERS - folks who are Backstabbers, Abusers, Imposters, Takers, Exploiters and Reckless," and the "Evil Eight" identifiers to help you spot them in your life. We just live in a different world these days and wow, was that an enlightening read. If today's world and the behavior of people astounds you, read this book.

But... all of that is a topic for a whole 'nother post, now isn't it? ☺

My Grandma Mac, who lived to be nearly 100, once told me that was how she was happy and how she had lived so long. "I just don't let things bother me," she once told me. I am still trying to learn to do that Grandma!

Wow, was that a roundabout way to get to today's topic! Clearly I had a few things to get off my chest. Anywhoooo.... today, I am talking about house dresses, or if you'd rather, adult sundresses. Grandma dresses. I have taken to wearing, and loving wearing, simple house dresses.

Now, my husband and I are not fashionistas. We clean up pretty good, don't get me wrong, but we are most at home in our t-shirts and sleep pants or sweats 99% of the time when we are, well, at home. Pretty funny coming from somebody who actually second majored in fashion design in college and once upon a time put a lot of value into that. As I got a little older spending two hours to get ready in the morning gave way to just looking clean, well groomed and decent. With a one hour commute, each way, every single day with my last corporate job, trust me. I treasured that extra sleep much more than feeling like I had to look like I stepped out of a magazine all the time. Ain't nobody got time for that!

My Hurricane Katrina imposed retirement, pretty much limited my public appearances and truth is, I love being at home now and working from home with my blogs. I love it so much that I have declined a number of ideal blogging opportunities - being a judge for a cable network food show competition, being a contestant for another to be on a major network, and several gigs working with professional chefs to help promote national brands, just to name a few!

Once I weighed the pros and cons, I liked being at home, with my family, much more than traveling to Hollywood or L.A., just to boost my ego and attempt to gain me popularity. Maybe if I were truly 30-something, but at 50-something, nah. Not interested. In turn, my dress moved solely into being comfortable. Period. Comfortable, and a little too big for me t-shirts and sweats or sleep pants are the fashion style my husband and I sport more these days, but in the summer those sweats can be a little too much.

I once worked a case up in Minneapolis that kept me there over a week and I discovered that most of the women I was around in the courtroom and the law office, did not have on a stitch of makeup. That really intrigued me because I know some Southern gals who will not even go out to Walmart without being dressed to the nines, all jeweled up, hair all poofed and perfect and sprayed with enough hairspray to set their head on fire if a spark shot by them. And, yes, full out, going-out, all dressed-up, makeup from primer to foundation to finishing powder and everything in between. Well... ain't nobody got time for that either! I guess you could say that I'm not all that many more steps above those "Walmart People" you've all heard about. Okay... maybe I'm not quite that bad.

Pair of blue jeans or shorts with a modest cut t-shirt ... meaning boobs and cleavage contained and covered - a true rarity these days ... sandals, flip flops or even (gasp!) classic Crocs, hair brushed and pulled back, a little CoverGirl Olay foundation or powder (LOVE!), eyebrow pencil and quick swipe of lipstick and I'm good. Sometimes I even put on a little mascara! 5 minute routine, max.

Can you tell how much I love CoverGirl? Been using it since I was a teen!

Some of my further north Southern belle sisters must surely be on the edge of a fainting spell about all of that right now. Well... hold onto your petticoats Betty Jo and Billie Jo, because now I've moved into house dresses and I LOVE them!

I'm guessing that I'm not alone either. Doing a search for house dresses on Google showed me there are an awful lot of women who are also looking for them. I found these house dresses right on (where else) none other than my favorite shopping source, Amazon! And, they are a bargain.

They are comfortable to wear while you cook or do chores, they have handy and roomy front pockets for tucking away things as you pick up around the house, they are long enough to hold onto your modesty while you stroll the yard to pick up stray pine cones and cool enough that you can even wear them while you do your Walk Away the Pounds tapes to get in your daily exercise.

They launder beautifully, stay soft and don't shrink, and I could not possibly be more pleased. I bought the National Print Sun Dress version in the Grape, Floral Fruit and Turquoise Butterfly patterns (left to right above), and I am ordering more of them, although there are a number of different dresses available. Click here to browse them all!

Now, I won't go so far as wearing my house dresses to Walmart ladies, so I haven't gone off the deep end - at least not yet - but if you're around the house more these days than you are out in the corporate world, and you just want something to wear around the house that makes you feel like you've dressed, but is still comfortable, check out the house dresses from National!



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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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The Gladys Files - I Am the Grouchy Old Fart

Remember Gladys Kravitz on Bewitched? I'm feelin' a little bit like her these days. I know that I haven't written much lately so the few readers I did have are dropping like flies around here. Sorry about that folks - all that cooking has been keeping me very busy these days. Since leaving my Big Legal Career and working from home the past few years, it's not that I'm at a loss for material, believe me. It's just a time issue really. Besides, it seems that while I do get a lot of material to write about here lately, seems the majority of it has to do with my neighbors, and seems a lot of it is grumpy.

I swear y'all, I am a nice person. I get along with most people. I am compassionate. I have empathy. I have paid it forward. I have performed many random acts of kindness. When a disaster hits, I never miss an opportunity to reach out.

But these people who live by me make me want to spontaneously combust into a string of four-letter words most of the time! I guess it doesn't help when you are at home all the time and you don't get away from them. Ever. And there's always something going on. So.... seems I've become a bit of a Gladys here in my old age. Might as well write about it.

When I was growing up there was a fella who lived on the corner of the street, slightly catty-cornered to our house. He was, I believe, military retired and still sported a crew cut, though his was pretty gray. He was known as "the grouchy old fart" of the neighborhood, because for one, he didn't like the fact that all of us kids would tromp across his pristine front yard taking short cuts, or to retrieve a ball we accidentally kicked over there playing kickball. He also wasn't too fond of all those stray 4th of July bottle rockets that would accidentally pop in his carport over his car when the bottle fell over. I can't imagine what his problem was with all that!

Well, karma will always get ya in the end.

Today I ran off a group of about 6 boys who were, not all that well, throwing, or mostly missing a football in the busy, and narrow street in front of my house. My front yard is small and my house closer to the road than anyone else's house, and these boys who apparently can't catch, wanted to "go long." The football was bouncing all over the place, way up into other people's yards and consequently into other people's cars.

Now, in my defense, none of those boys live anywhere near me. In fact, I know where they live. Up a side street a few houses away. When I went outside and told them, while I wasn't at all opposed to boys tossing a football around, would they please take their football practice elsewhere, like perhaps, down the side street, OVER IN FRONT OF THEIR OWN HOUSES... they balked a bit. One would even say talked back. And then they ignored me. Like I wasn't there.

Two things I've learned I really dislike in my old age. Being disrespected. And being ignored. Especially from children who need to learn how to say "yes, ma'am." So I did what any modern Gladys would do.

I came inside grabbed my iPhone and got it on video. Oddly, they must've suddenly decided they were tired, because when they saw me, they left. And went away. Up the side street. On their own street. But I noticed they weren't throwing a football by their parent's cars.

What? I was just shooting a video of this beautiful day!

Course, yes I do realize that there is no telling what other mischief I'm liable to endure as a result of this pleasant encounter. But, in all fairness. That's only liable to make me even more grumpy.

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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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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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The Ongoing Saga of The Annoying Leaf Burning Neighbors

I swear, just looking at this pile burning makes my lungs hurt.

The past few days were just downright gorgeous here and I spent most of Friday and Saturday working in the yard, turning beds, moving around plants, raking and getting ready to plant.  The hubby and I raked the front yard and carried those leaves to the curb for trash pickup, but the backyard is much larger, and has lots more ground and lots more leaves. Those leaves we mow over with the bag on the mower and then spread the mulched leaves in the gardens along the fence line. When my husband tried to crank the mower late Friday afternoon though, it wouldn't turn over, so he had to run that to a friend to do carburetor work.

Southern Style Hissy Fit Ahead Warning:

Well, the annual struggle with the leaf burning out here where we live, but most especially with the Annoying Leaf Burning Neighbors closest to me, has begun again with the spring shedding of our oak trees out here.  We are in the county, where it is not illegal to burn, but the area we live in is not rural county with acreage around neighbors, but is a typical subdivision where houses are right next to one another, like any other suburban neighborhood in the city. All of the lack of rules, regulations, ordinances and protective covenants that apply to people who do have acres of land between each other, also are missing for those of us who live right on top of each other. It's a nightmare.

Saturday morning I canvassed the neighborhood pleading my case with the neighbors in the houses surrounding mine, to talk with them about my personal health issues with leaf burning, and leaving behind a flyer about how leaf burning affects my ability to breathe...

Click to enlarge

... and attached to that, was a separate document from the EPA that outlines the specific air pollution, health problems, and fire hazard risks associated with residential leaf burning. I guess I went by about 30 or 40 homes in the blocks surrounding our house.

Read this on the EPA site.

The Annoying Leaf Burning Neighbors closest to me weren't home, so I left one rolled up in the gate of the chain link fence that encircles their front yard. Last year either my husband or I told them on 4 separate occasions when they burned, how sick it was making me. We also told them that the smoke was seeping into our attic vent, and into our house, making it impossible for me to escape it.

The 4th time I was told by Annoying Leaf Burning Neighbor Wife to "get over myself" and that she "had no intention to stop burning her leaves."  Yes! She said that! She burned leaves 8 more times in the next month and a half, making me sick for more than two months, and remember ... this is a small, suburban lot. She burned leaves 12 times over a 2 month period on a small suburban lot. Her own son later apologized to me and told me that the excessive burning that she did was on purpose to antagonize me, making it both malicious and intentional.

Late last night, when I was watching television, Annoying Leaf Burning Neighbor Wife was on her way out and apparently stopped by and dropped this off on my door. It's a copy of the back of the flyer that was attached to the EPA document.  My front door was wide open at the time, so she could see through the glass door that I was home and awake, and could have very easily knocked on the door and talked with me, but she just left this instead.

Now, to be honest, I like to think the best of most people, so I thought that maybe she really wasn't aware of the health issues related to residential leaf burning, namely:

☠  The toxic, irritant, and carcinogenic (cancer-causing) compounds released in leaf smoke.

☠  Or that leaf smoke also contains carbon monoxide.

☠  Or that these microscopic particles can reach the deepest regions of the lung and remain there for months or even years, and even cause lung cancer.

☠  Or that a substantial portion of the hydrocarbons in leaf smoke consists of polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, some of which are known carcinogens (cancer-causers).

Reading this document from the EPA, I really thought that as an RN, she might then have a pang of consciousness and perhaps even some empathy for the health problems and illness she was causing me.

I also thought that being a breast cancer survivor, she might appreciate learning about the toxins and cancer causing properties that burning leaves puts out and be concerned about a recurrence of her own cancer.

I thought she might have concern that she was affecting the health of another family on the other side of her, or another across the street from her, both of whom have several young children.

I thought she might have concern about her own grandson who lives with them full time with his daddy.

Nope. All she was concerned about was this.

That it is not illegal.  And that by me asking her to use another alternative to burning, that I am harassing her.  Oh, yes, and this...

Okay. Guess she didn't see this part...

I left out the part where since she burns so close to my house, and the smoke seeps into my attic vent, then into my attic, then into my house, which quickly fills with the odor of a dirty ashtray, that I cannot even take refuge in my own house to escape it.

I also left out the part that despite it being gorgeous spring weather where I could potentially open up the windows and air out the house, not only can I not do that, but I also have to run my air conditioner to condition the inside air in my house due to her burning smoke seeping into my house.

And, I guess she also missed this part...

Or.... I guess, to her, these issues are "nothing."

I also left out the part about how it also causes extreme difficulty breathing (think gasping for air while it feels like somebody is sitting on your chest and you're having a heart attack), plus nose bleeds, ear and nose congestion, a severe chemical rash reaction to my skin, especially on my face, on top of the panic, anxiety, stress, irritability and exhaustion it causes. 

Since our county supervisors keep shelving this issue and refuse to pass a no burn ordinance for heavily populated unincorporated areas of the county we live in, my only recourse is to take this to the courts.  A ridiculous waste of money for both of us, considering the many alternatives to burning she could be using. In my county, if you simply rake or dump the leaves at the curb, they will pick them up. Or you can use your bag mower to mulch them and put them around your trees and gardens. Or you can use your bag mower to dump them into bags to put on the street.

Do you know that last year, I swear before God as my witness, that after my husband told The Annoying Leaf Burning Neighbor Husband TWICE how sick their leaf burning was making me, I watched him run his mower over the leaves with his bagger on it, then dump the bag of mulched leaves on the side of his house by my back door, and set it on fire? He could have easily dumped that into a garbage bag and put it on the street!!

But, you see, The Annoying Leaf Burning Neighbors think that if it's not illegal, it's okay to do, no matter how it may affect others.

But... there is also this little private nuisance law that applies no matter where you live, because a person has a right to the quiet enjoyment and use of their land under the law, regardless of whether they live in a city or in the county. A private nuisance is something that interferes with that person's use of their property in the manner of comfort, convenience, or health, or in some way disturbs an occupant's mental tranquility. That can include foul odors, SMOKE, dust, loud noises, including excessively barking dogs, or dogs that act vicious or aggressive, even if any injury is only threatened and not actual.

Course, I haven't mentioned yet that since I work full time from home now, she is also interfering with my ability to work when she makes me ill.  

I already know that the law is on my side and that I will prevail. Thankfully I can also sue to recover court costs, attorneys fees, and especially in this case, since the residents there have been informed of my health issues, and that they continue to repeat the contributory behavior, namely burning, that is an act of malice and reckless disregard, subject to monetary awards for pain and suffering for intentional infliction of emotional distress.

It's all just a shame.

You know, it's sad, but I don't need to be their friends.  I don't even need to be friendly with them and I could care less whether they like me or not. So long as they leave me alone and stop infringing on my right to breath, and my right to enjoy my own property, instead of having to hide away inside my home to avoid their hateful behavior.

Thanks to the Other Annoying Neighbors chain smoking in their garage adjacent to my back door, I have already had to use one of these masks almost every time that I go outside - which by the way Annoying Leaf Burning Neighbor Wife, has seen me wearing.

It's not much, but it does seem to help to prevent me from inhaling the cigarette fume chemicals. {I saw the price of cigarettes last time I pumped gas. Geez... seriously, are people willing to pay that much to slowly kill themselves?}

Even still... looks like I'm gonna need to upgrade. Shame all this, ain't it?

Neoprene Carbon Mask

I miss the good ole days when people actually cared about one another.  Such drama.
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Psychic Pollution

The past week or so has been wonderful.  Amazing even. The sun has been shining. The temperatures mild and spring-like.  I felt great. Energized. Even happy.

I hadn't been pummeled with cigarette smoke the second I walked out my back door.  Yes, all of my Other Annoying Neighbor's smoke. (I know, nothing like a "reformed smoker" huh?)  Two of them on one side smoke out in their garage with the door wide open and the front of which is adjacent to the back door of my house, so that the smoke drifts right to my back door. When they are both home, it's a chain smoking fiesta over there! There's a fog of smoke that hangs in the air over on that side of my house - as soon as one goes in, the other one must go out. I mean it's ridiculous.

As if that weren't bad enough, apparently somebody is a pretty heavy pot user too. And these are not 20-something folks living over there, they are more like 40-something, and well... I'm not passing judgment on anybody for smoking pot, to each his own. But, I don't exactly want to smell it all the time. Besides, last I checked it was still illegal in the State of Mississippi and we don't have medical marijuana in this state either. I'm just saying if you're gonna smoke that much pot to be so damn obvious, well, you probably ought to do it in the privacy of your own home. Just sayin'...

Well, y'all know how I love my herbs - well, the non-chemical laden kind - so some of you will completely understand what I am about to say. Some of you will freak out and I can feel you clicking on unsubscribe even as I type this. But, it is what it is, so here goes.

I got so annoyed with this one day last week, while I was outside raking and doing some work in the yard, and The One Who Smokes a Lot of Pot was home and polluting my environment with pot and cigarette smoke, when I suddenly remembered that I had a couple of old sage smudge sticks from years ago when I used them to bless my house after the divorce. I went in, found them, took one outside with me, lit it, and let it burn while I was outside working. As God, and Mother Nature, and The Universe tend to work, the wind shifted and started blowing the smoke from the sage right toward and into the front of their open garage. In case you don't know, sage is a cleansing, purifying herb - one that Native Americans believed tended to clear away negative energy. Besides that, it sort of acts as a pest repellent too - pun intended.

Do I have to tell you that it wasn't long that the garage door went down, and has stayed pretty much closed since, and The One Who Smokes a Lot of Pot left and really hasn't been around much the past few days. I haven't been assaulted by pot or cigarette smoke either - well, for a few days anyway.

Maybe the sage coupled with all of these protests on the television lately are so reminiscent of the 60s that I'm feeling retro, because after that, I decided to order some incense from Amazon to burn in the house - something I haven't done in years!  Frankly I'd forgotten how much I like the way it smells, and these days they have some that smell just beautifully fragrant. Then, I had a sudden desire to order some Jovan musk oil when I saw it too!  Used to wear that back in the 70s.  Watch out y'all, I'm liable to start wearing headbands and saying things like cool, and man, and far out, and even groovy soon y'all! ;) (There will, however, be no pot smoking.)

Anyway, with the beautiful weather, and the smoke stack gone from one side, I noticed it had been a little quiet on the other side of the fence too. You see, the Hatefuls had apparently gone away somewhere over the weekend and for days there was nobody over there.  It was nice.  And quiet. And there was a feeling of peace. No wonder I'd been feeling so great!

(Yes. I do realize I am the common denominator here in case you were wondering, but I swear y'all, it is not me. It's not!)

And then today... they came back.  

I have always been a person who absorbs the energy of others - good and bad. A psychic sponge if you will. Some call us sensitives, or empaths.  Toxic people have always thoroughly drained me. Hospitals really zap me. I don't do well in graveyards either. I have never even been to New York City, yet I know in my heart that there is no way that I could go to Ground Zero without becoming sick.  No way. There are some upside traits to this sensitivity too. It's kinda hard to lie to me and get away with it!

Anyway, I kid you not when I say that within an hour or two of The Hatefuls being home, I could feel my energy being sapped. I had been suffering with constant headaches the past two months, but then I realized, I couldn't remember when I last had a headache. I have one now. Even The Cajun had one tonight. Coincidence? Maybe.

I'm just wondering how long it will be before the leaf burning assault starts.  First event and I'm taking it to court this year.

Psychic pollution. Do you believe in it? Do you draw energy from other people, negative and positive? How do you shake off the bad stuff?

I know one thing for sure. I'm definitely planting a very large pot of sage this year. 

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Here's Your New Health Care Plan in Action

Photo: Emergency Dentist 24/7

I gave birth naturally. Not a single drug, at all.  I felt the pain. I remember the pain. It hurt like hell, but I had my reasons for wanting to go that route back then and I'm glad that I did.

Tooth pain, however, is probably the worse pain that there is. It hurts from your jaw, up through your eyeballs and into your brain. Yes, I say the pain is worse than even childbirth and considering I have experienced both, I would say that is a qualified statement. 

How would you like to live with excruciating tooth pain, while you wait nearly two months, to have a tooth requiring a root canal, worked on? 

First, let me back up and say that I do believe that everybody is entitled to receive care when they are ill, and clearly there needs to be a program in place that is better than the current one to help the uninsured and under-insured, and to provide preventative care. I have had periods of my life where I was uninsured, and certainly periods where I was under-insured, and there's always a possibility that I will find myself in that position again in my life. That possibility exists for all of us really.

My mother, who died from lung cancer was uninsured. My father who died from another rare form of cancer, was uninsured. In both cases their illnesses, once diagnosed, were terminal. Would it have made a difference if they had been able to have preventative care through a national health care program? Maybe. But, in both cases they received treatment under Medicaid, and in my mother's case, she was able to receive benefits for hospice care under Medicaid. 

The far left liberals in this country who like to label more conservative people as evil because they oppose this Obama health care bill, have it all wrong... as they usually do. The opposition doesn't come because conservatives don't want all people to have health care. Nobody should be denied health care because they are poor. Nobody should be denied health care because they are young college students. Or single parents who can't afford private health care. Nobody.

But completely turning the current private health care system - the best health care system in the world - upside down to achieve that seems excessively costly, and unnecessary in my opinion.

The things that are most disturbing to me about the politics of today - and I don't care whether you are left, right, somewhere in the middle, Republican, Democrat, Independent, whatever - is that the people who are sent to Washington to act as our representatives, ignore We The People and push through their own agenda that The People clearly do not want. As was the case with this nationalized insurance plan, our representatives forgot that they were our representatives, but acted in their own political interests. The other thing that disturbs me about this is that we already have a health care plan in place for uninsured and under-insured people that could clearly have been improved and expanded upon to cover the poor, without affecting the entire private insurance industry for those who work full time and have a private health care plan.

And, if you've ever read any of my Katrina rants, you already know that I am not a fan of the insurance industry as a whole. But that's a whole 'nother story.

My husband is a veteran. He served in the military and he gets his health care through the VA.  Fortunately, he and I are healthy people overall, with no health issues to speak of. But... nearly two months ago, he went to the dental clinic at the VA with tooth pain. Tooth pain that was likely created by the very VA dentist he visited when that tooth was drilled for other dental work. My husband was told that he needed a root canal. He was also told that he would have to get on the "waiting list" at the local military base, since the VA is not equipped to perform root canals.

That was almost 2 months ago.  Imagine, living with that kind of pain for 2 months.  Oh wait. I almost forgot. The VA dentist did offer to pull the tooth. You know... to provide immediate relief. But that was all he could offer. Wait two months. Or pull out the tooth.

This, my friends, is what your health care is going to look like when the government takes over.

Oh yes, they did pump my husband up with antibiotics, so that the infection would be kept under control in the meantime, because in case you don't know... you can DIE from a tooth infection.  And they also prescribed him some heavy duty narcotics for the pain. So he could spend the next two months in a fog while he waited for an appointment.

Despite that, he still went through horrible pain the past two months - pain that interfered with him being able to enjoy both Thanksgiving and Christmas - because for one, it was difficult for him to eat with the tooth, and also, because he had to rush home to take the pain medication.

I am not saying it is because the VA or the military base are negligent in caring for our military or our veterans. It is because they are a government run health care that is overtaxed.

I tried my best to convince my husband to go to a private dentist to have this taken care of. If it had been me, I certainly would have. But my husband is stubborn, and a very proud military veteran who feels that he has paid his dues to the military and should be cared for thorough the health care he earned from his service. He is sadly misguided, but stubborn.

This, my friends, is your new health care plan in action. And YOUR health care hasn't even kicked in yet. Your wait will likely be even longer.

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The Tribulations of Travel

Well, I haven't been around this poor little blog for 20 days! Is anybody still hanging around? Now, granted, 10 of those days I was running around back and forth to California for a couple of blogging events, so I guess my creative juices weren't flowing much the other 10.

I got to go to my first blog conference ever in San Francisco - more specifically a food blog conference. I didn't sleep well the night before to begin with because I had to catch a 6:00 a.m. flight, which means I had to get up about 3:30 in the morning, so I started out my San Francisco journey already exhausted.

From day one, start to finish, there was so much going on, that there was barely breathing time in between. Kind of sensing that, I didn't even bother with bringing a laptop with me, and as it turns out, I'm glad I didn't because it would have only been extra weight to lug around for no reason. As a conference attendee, there seriously wasn't a free second (or maybe it was enough leftover energy) to blog anyway, without sacrificing something, you know ... like sleep. I'll be blogging more about the conference experience over at Deep South Dish soon as I can collect my thoughts, so if you're interested in that kind of thing, stay tuned to check it out. I flew Delta in and out and back and, except for having to change planes in Atlanta due to a mechanical issue, it was otherwise uneventful for the most part.

Was home only for a few days when I had another flight out to Fresno, California to be able to experience both the harvest and production of pomegranates for POM Wonderful's fresh and juice divisions. That was a busy, but much more relaxed trip, and extremely interesting, so I'll be posting about that over at DSD soon also.

The trip home from Fresno however was a literal nightmare.

The airport there is tiny and apparently there is exactly one plane for the (not Delta) airline I was on, that flies back and forth between Fresno and Dallas all day long. After spending the entire morning on Saturday out in the heat in the orchards, several of us were dropped off at the airport around noon. After getting our boarding passes, going through security, and waiting nearly 2 hours for the flight time, we boarded and got everything stowed, only to have the pilot notify us that there was a gauge issue with the plane and they were waiting for a mechanic to come check it out. Trouble is? They have no on-site mechanic at the Fresno airport, and the on-call guy was at least an hour away.

So we deplane and sit in the terminal another nearly 2 hours, when they call us back for boarding. We get boarded, stowed and actually take off and are well into the flight when the pilot comes on, tells us there is a temperature issue in the tail of the aircraft and that we will have to return to the Fresno airport. Oh yeah. And don't be alarmed by the emergency vehicles on the ground - that's just standard procedure. Okay. After landing, we sat on the tarmac while some truck with a thermal reader checked the tail to make sure that we weren't on fire or something before we could safely return to the terminal.

So we deplane again, where we are handed a slip of paper with an 800 number that apparently we are supposed to call to try to arrange for a new way home. Trouble is, without an "official cancellation" of the flight we were on, the customer service people could not do much about rescheduling us. In fact, the people at the 800 number actually thought the flight was still in the air!

I collected my luggage and decided to go ahead and get into the ticket line with all of the other passengers while making my third call to that 800 number. I finally got somebody who, instead of saying without an official cancellation they could not help me, was willing to take the time to put me on hold and investigate and find out what was going on. It was hours later as I was sitting in the terminal waiting for my new 8:00 p.m. flight out of Fresno a full 6 HOURS after I was supposed to fly out - along with the original crew from the original flight who were also waiting - when I overheard the pilot receive a call and tell the flight crew that the flight was (finally) "officially canceled." What a fiasco!

Typically in this kind of situation, the airline puts you up in some crappy hotel overnight so you can catch a flight out the next day. Trouble is there were no available flights out the next day since they were all already sold out!!  Remember, there is apparently only one plane that flies back and forth between Dallas and Fresno all day long.  So, even if I had spent the night in Fresno, I would have actually had to stay in Fresno another night too, until Monday, and then still would have had to stay overnight in Dallas Monday night since I would also miss my rescheduled connection from Dallas to Gulfport and all other flights for that leg were already all sold out on Monday! Geez Louise.

Fortunately, the agent found me a way out, but it was not going to be pleasant. I ended up having to hang around the Fresno airport until 8:00 p.m. (remember I got there at noon), to catch a flight to Los Angeles, where I had to layoff until 12:45 a.m. Sunday to catch a red-eye to Dallas, arriving there at 5:30 a.m., where I could connect to my rescheduled (from the first gauge issue) 11:00 a.m. flight back to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Thank goodness I was smart enough to get in the ticket line while trying to get help on that 800 number in Fresno, because several people in line ahead of me who gave up on the 800 number call, were told that flight to L.A. was sold out. I literally must have gotten the last seat on that L.A. flight.

I arrived at my home airport, a full 24 hours after I was originally supposed to originally be there, meaning yes, there was no sleeping for that full 24 period (ever tried to nap upright in an airport terminal seat while clutching your carry-on bag so that it stays in your "possession" at all times?) plus I had already been up since 5:30 a.m. the morning before and spent the morning in the hot sun of the orchards.  And my luggage? After all of that, and after charging me almost $50 for my one bag to travel round trip, I received my crushed luggage with a broken zipper and one of the legs busted off. Needless to say, as soon as I have enough energy to channel back my anger, I'll be writing a letter to this (not Delta) airline.

I won't even begin to go into the mess that I came home to, except to say that I was both exhausted and furious and I sure let my husband know how I felt. It took me a couple of days to recover from this entire experience and let me tell you, while I had a great time, and both trips were fun and educational experiences, there's certainly something to that saying, there is no place like home.

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I'll Take Your RV and Your Unkempt Backyard & Raise You...

... a Front Yard Playset, Tent, Party Table and Throw in FOUR Supersized Garbage Bins.

Pssst... might as well warn y'all right away on this one. Sweet Mary has left the building and her alter-ego Lizzy Beth has shown up for another segment of Southern Style Hissy Fit.

It's really the fault of two other bloggers that I bring you this. Well, not really. I had already planned this post when I learned that the Leaf Burning Hatefuls put their house up for sale. But when Annie over at Real Life Living posted her Back Yard Jungle Neighbor Rebuttal to SlugMama's Un-Neighborly RV Obstruction, I knew the timing was perfect.

So... The Leaf Burning Hatefuls are moving. Well, they have their house on the market anyway, which, in this depressed economy of bargain basement houses and sky-high insurance rates down here, thanks mostly to money-hungry-greedy-insurance-company-pigs post-Katrina {ask me how I really feel about the legal extortion business that is insurance}, might mean a long wait on the market. I saw a report recently that said existing home sales dropped 27.2% in July, the lowest in 15 years - mostly thanks to high unemployment. Yeah, good luck with that.

Anyway, The Hateful Neighbors want to move and in all fairness, that above was the first sign they put up in July, taped up to their mailbox. Ain't it classy? But, alas, within a few days, well the rain pretty much took that one out. They have since lowered the price to $119,000 and hired a Real Live Respectable Real Estate Agent, who came to visit recently, and apparently must've informed them that it's probably not a great idea to make your front yard look like a back yard since the screen house tent that has occupied their front yard - yes, I said front yard - for years now, has recently come down.

Too bad they can't take down that gargantuan playset that they constructed in the front yard - yes, I said in the front yard - last year. I'm sure that's gonna be a sale-killer for many folks. Yeah, didn't think that one through too good did ya when you were puttin' it up? There's a reason they call them BACKYARD playsets jackhole, and I'd venture to say that most folks with kids would prefer that it be in the back yard too. As a matter of fact, your house would probably have been ideal for an elderly, retired couple, but then there's that, well...

And ...  that big white fold-out banquet style table right by your front door that is always littered with food and junk and cold drink cans and beer bottles like there's a perpetual picnic going on over there? Ya might want to consider removing that too.

Oh yeah, how could I forget, although I realize that you must think they are attractive...

...those FOUR HUGE WASTE RECEPTACLES that y'all have accumulated {purportedly commandeering one from nearby houses every time somebody moved out, since really each house is issued only one but I understand, y'all are takers, and feel entitled and all} and have all nicely lined up in a row along the chain link fence that encompasses your front yard as if they were works of art,. Well, a buyer might not have the same appreciation for them like y'all do. Maybe ya might wanna stick 'em up by the side of your house instead?  Maybe?  Just sayin...

I did notice that Hateful Neighbor Wife has been sprucing up the yard though.  Well from what I can see that extends out over the top of my privacy fence that I had to install 1) thanks to their big dog charging their chain link fence every time I went out in my yard, and 2) The Hateful Neighbor Husband who used to stand out there smoking cigarettes and staring at me when I first moved here. {Course, I was a bit younger, and thinner, and kinda hot back then. Now? Um, well, maybe not so much. But I digress.} 

Anyway, I see some garden art showed up the day before the real estate agent did - a big 7 foot lighthouse. It used to be up, then it wasn't and now it's back.  I can only see the top of it, but I remember when this guy was selling them somewhere around here and I wanted one of them. But then, not so much. They are kinda neat though. Especially if they light up.

And there's two new metal arbors that looks kinda like this that I saw the tops and that weren't there before. Very nice. I wouldn't mind a couple of those in my yard.  Betcha a dollar that they will lead the buyer to believe these will stay, but they will end up taking them when/if they move. Why, I just noticed that Hateful Neighbor Wife even planted some annuals in the front yard the other day. They never had flowers in their front yard before!

And that sign up there says that they even have a 14' x 14' x 3' pond in the backyard, with fish and a turtle and an occasional bullfrog. Sounds so nice and serene and peaceful back there doesn't it? Well ... it will be for the new owner when Hateful Neighbor Wife isn't there to screech and scream and holler through the always open back doors/windows. How they tolerate the summer heat over there with the windows open is beyond me, but I did hear Hateful Neighbor Husband fussing with somebody about the air conditioner one day so maybe it doesn't work so well. Though their sign does say the house is "energy efficient." I guess it is when you don't run the air conditioner.

Anyway, they sure are makin' an effort to look normal over there... now that they want to leave.

So the Hateful Neighbors want to move. I am glad, for them - because they need to live someplace where they have no neighbors; for me - because they are miserable to live by. But, there is also a bittersweet element to this.

At least I know the jerks that live there now. No telling what might show up next.

On the other hand, I am considering putting a large screen tent up in my front yard now that they have taken their front yard tent down. Just sayin'...

Anybody else got Annoying Neighbor Complaints? Let's talk so we can all vent vicariously and get these pent up frustrations out of our systems for pete's sake.

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