Hide Me Quick! A Christmas Story...

Some men have it.  Some men don't.  Sex appeal.  Have you ever noticed that when you go to a Christmas party there is always one fellow that the women are just naturally drawn to?  He might be fat.  He might be bald.  But, he's got it!  He is surrounded by laughing, giggling women that keep bringing him drinks and letting him nibble off their plates.  He never has to stand in line to get his food,  Miss Tight Sweater is bringing it to him. 

Has he got a billion dollars in his bank account?  Well.... he might...  but, it might just be that he knows what women love to hear.  Somebody once said that men love with their eyes, but women love with their ears.  And what is it that women love to hear?  "Wow!  I love that dress!  You look good enough to make a bulldog break his chain!"  Yep.  As much as I hate to admit it, it works for me!

Some men can say that to a woman and she is putty in his hands.  Other men can say the same thing and end up with the woman thinking, "He is disgusting!!!! "  It all depends on whether or not the man just naturally has "it".  And my daddy had "it".  He had a way of making the most homely wall flower feel attractive, and, like I said, women love with their ears....  Well, when I was a little girl seven years old, my daddy made the mistake of telling one particularly homely lady that she put Marilyn Monroe in the shade.  Bad mistake.  Nowadays, I guess you can't say somebody is fat and ugly, you have to say they are weight and beauty "challenged".  I go along with whoever said, "Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes slam to the bone!" 

 But, getting back to my story.  It was Christmas Eve 1963.  I was the youngest of six children.  My two oldest sisters were married and moved away.  That particular Christmas Eve found Mama, Daddy my three teenaged siblings and me all at home. Mama told me to go on to bed because everybody knows that you have to be asleep for Santa Claus to come.  So I hugged everybody good night and went on to bed.  Of course I wasn't about to go to sleep.  I was straining my ears to see if I could hear any reindeer hooves on the roof.  I didn't hear any reindeer, but what I did hear  was my brother John say, "Daddy, there's a lady out in the front yard hollering your name!"  I could hear my mother say, "Roy!  That's Mrs. Green!  I think she must be drunk!"

 About that time Daddy came busting into my bedroom with a terrified look on his face.  "Suzy!  Hide me quick!"  I didn't know what was going on, but I could hear Mama and my brothers and sister laughing.  I held up my bed covers and Daddy dove under down to the foot of my bed. About that time Mrs. Green, who was not only fat and ugly, but drunk as Cootie Brown, came busting into my bedroom with Mama and all the gang right behind her. Mrs. Green flipped on the light switch and hollered, "Where is that handsome devil?  I want my Merry Christmas kiss!!!"  I held the covers tight up under my chin, but it was a dead give away.  That big lump down at the end of my bed was Daddy!

"There you are!"  Mrs. Green squealed with delight as she yanked the covers back and discovered Daddy squashed up in a ball as small as he could make himself.  I, at that point, was jumping up and down on the bed and saying, "There he is! You found him!"  And at that Mrs. Green grabbed Daddy up and gave him a big old smackaroo right on the mouth. Well, there is no use even trying to describe what poor Daddy looked like. His arms were hanging limply by his side and he just squinched his eyes closed tight like he was about to be given a dose of castor oil. After she had laid one on him, Mrs. Green turned and said to my mother, "Your husband thinks I look better than Marilyn Monroe! He told me so!"  My mother just laughed and said, "I believe you."  Then Mrs. Green sashayed out the front door.

 Of course that was one Christmas Eve that I'll never forget. And did that cure Daddy from being a terrible flirt?  Heck no!  When he was eighty-eight years old I got a call from the assisted living facility where he was living.  The director said Daddy had chased a young nurse into the kitchen and she had jumped up on the counter to get away from him.  He was driving in a scooter chair!  Oh well, I guess she just looked good enough to make a bulldog break his chain!


This Christmas give her what she wants the most.  Take her in your arms. Kiss her. And tell her she is beautiful......

She whupped a healing on her!

  Dear Gentle Reader,

I'm sharing with you another bit of my book, "Dear Girlfriend- A Handheld Walk Through Breast Cancer".  

When you have finished reading, PLEASE leave me a comment.  Just look for "Comment" or "No Comment" at the end, click on it then sign on as Anonymous if you want, then leave me some feedback.  I really need it and thank you so much for it!!!

She whupped a healing on her!

Dear Girlfriend.

As I've said before, my mother lives in an assisted living home. I usually drive to Columbus twice a week to see her. Well, before I went into the hospital, I told the director of the home and a couple of Mama's favorite caregivers that I had cancer and was about to go in the for surgery. I remember telling this one particular caregiver, I'll call Sally, that I was going into the hospital and I might not be able to see Mama for a few days. She hugged me and said that she would pray for me.

Now I have a sister, Cea, that is twelve years older than I am. We look very much alike except that Cea is older. So I had my surgery and staph infection and immediately went back to visit Mama, but I just didn't run into Sally for two or three weeks. She must have been working on the night shift. So in the meanwhile my sister, Cea, came from Virginia to visit Mama. Sally ran into Cea in the hall of the home and thought Cea was me. She got a horrified look on her face as much to say, “I can sure tell you've been sick! You've aged ten years in the past few weeks!” Then she took Cea in her arms and she said, “Oh I need to pray for you! Dear Lord bless this woman and make her well! Heal her Lord! Heal her!Hold her up through her times of suffering! Bless her sweet Lord! Bless this poor woman!”

Cea knew that Sally thought she was me, but she didn't want to interrupt such fine praying and she didn't want to embarrass Sally. So Cea just let Sally whup a healing on her and she thanked Sally very much. Then Cea called me on the phone and told me what happened. We just cracked up. I said, “Why didn't you tell her you were not me?” Cea said, “Are you kidding? I need all the prayers I can get!” So a couple of more weeks went by and I ran into Sally at the assisted living home. When she saw me I said, “Sally, thank you so much for your prayers. I feel good.” Sally was grinning from ear to ear and said, “I can tell you feel better. You are sure looking better than the last time I saw you!”

He was jumping around like a monkey!

Dear Gentle Readers,

Today's post is one of the funny chapters from my book, "Dear Girlfriend- A Handheld Walk Through Breast Cancer".  This shows that even though I had cancer, I was still Suzan. Cancer could not steal my funny memories....

Dear Girlfriend,

When we first met in January of 1974, we were seniors in high school. When my mama and daddy met in 1938, they were in high school. That was the day of big band music. Every weekend my parents would go to a big pavilion in Columbus called The Idle Hour, where they would jitterbug the night away. Even though their relationship was rocky from day one, when he held her in his arms on a dance floor they had chemistry. They won dance contest after dance contest.

The whole time I was growing up all of my brothers and sisters loved to dance. We had a stereo in the living room. My sisters who were ten to fourteen years older than I, would turn on Chubby Checker and dance. When I was only five years old my sister took a home movie of me doing the peppermint twist. It was not unusual for one of my teenage sisters and her boyfriend to be slow dancing in the living room while I watched.

My mother always danced while she stirred gravy. Her hand holding the spoon would be going around while her shoulders and hips swayed to the music. I remember once in the 1960's after she and daddy had separated , she was just stirring that gravy while singing along with the radio to I Can't Get No Satisfaction. So when Walker asked me to go to the prom in 1974, I expected him to dance. I was all dressed up in a red ironclad polyester formal . He had rented a tux with a ruffled shirt and had pulled his shoulder length hair back and tied it in a ponytail with a black velvet ribbon. We were styling!But when we got to the dance I was so disappointed that my handsome prince would not dance.

We married in 1976 when disco was all the rage. In the late seventies, John Travolta was busy ruining his back in “Saturday Night Fever.” Wasn't he a hottie?! Walker and I at that time were living in Athens, Georgia, and going to the University of Georgia. To say we were living on a shoe string would be too generous. Let's say we were living on some scraggly little fuzz that hangs off a shoe string after its been in the tennis shoe about ten years. We were so broke Walker actually handmade our wedding invitations and delivered them on a bicycle to save the money for postage stamps. So, for us to actually go out to a disco was a big deal. Waitresses hated us because we would buy one beer and nurse it all night.

But, it was my birthday so we decided to go out. We went to a disco in downtown Athens that had a cover charge. After paying the cover we really only had money left for one drink. Now you have to remember that this was 1976. At that time in Athens, Georgia, black kids and white kids went to class together, but partied at different locations. Thank God we are past those days. So we paid our cover and when we got inside we realized that we were the only white people in the place. That didn't bother us and none of the black kids seemed to notice we were there, so we sat down and ordered our beers. When the waitress brought them Walker hollered in my ear over the loud music, “Drink it slow!” I longingly watched the other kids dance as he crumpled up little pieces of his napkin and put them in his ears. Everywhere there was sparkly light reflecting out of a large mirrored ball that hung over the dance floor. Walker and I just sat and sipped our beers and watched all those fellows in platform shoes get down.

There was a big long box about four feet high and twelve feet long out in the middle of the dance floor. It was covered in bright green shag carpet and had steps that you could walk up to be elevated so everyone could focus on the really good dancers up on this platform.“Wow!!! They can really dance!!! Look at their clothes!!!” I yelled in Walker's ear. “I'd rather die than get up on that thing!!!” he yelled back. “I'm going to the bathroom!!!” I hollered back and he nodded.

Now you know what the ladies room in a bar is like. All the girls have got a little buzz on and they all laugh and talk to each other even if they are total strangers. I told that to Walker once and he said, “Nobody talks in the men's room. We just do our doings and get out of there.” But as I stood in line waiting for a stall to come open, a group of six rather rotund girls came in behind me. They were all laughing and talking and having a good time. One of them said, “How come y'all aren't dancing? Don't you like the music?” I said, “Oh,we love the music, but I can't get my husband to dance . He never dances with me.” One of the girls that had a pretty major buzz, put her arm around my shoulder like we were long time friends. She started rocking her head from side to side and said ,“Girlfriend,we can sure fix that!” The other five girls all started laughing and giving each other the high five. “Honey, you just wait for us at the table, but don't you let on to your husband!”

So I just went back and sat down and sipped my drink. In a minute I saw the six girls headed straight for our table. They were laughing and giggling when the one I had talked to in the bathroom put her hand on Walker's shoulder and said, “Come dance with us!” Walker looked like he was about to faint as they all six pulled him up out of his chair and literally dragged him up the steps of the green shag carpeted platform. He turned and looked at me with the look of a condemned man being drug up the steps of a scaffold. I, of coarse, was enjoying every minute of this.

The six girls formed two lines and proceeded to bump Walker back and forth between them with their hips as the disco music blared out of the huge speakers so loudly that Walker stuck his fingers in his ears. He was as stiff as an old man with arthritis! He looked so pitiful until they all started pushing him back and forth amongst them while they were putting the bump and grind down on him. The D.J. started playing Disco Inferno by The Trammps. I was just cracking up! The music was blaring out so loudly that you could see the speakers vibrating. About that time I saw Walker was clapping his hands and jumping around like a monkey! He was bumping and jumping and winding and grinding while all six of those rather healthy looking girls worked him over real good. They had somehow flipped his switch! When the song was over he actually looked disappointed as they took him by the hand and brought him back to our table. We were all laughing so hard we could hardly breathe. Then the ringleader of the girls put her hands on her hips, rocked her head from side to side, pushed Walker towards me and said, “Honey, we fixed him good!”

I owe an awful lot to those six girls because after that night Walker became a dancing fool. One time in the 1980's we went to a New Year's Eve party at the Columbus Country Club. I looked around and there was Walker doing the funky chicken with my brother-in-law. When Walker went back to work at the Georgia Forestry Commission on Monday, a man who had seen him dancing at the club told all the men that Walker supervised, “Boys, I hate to break it to you, but I saw your boss down at the Columbus Country Club dancing like a chicken with another man!” All the fellas said, “Boss man! Tell us it ain't so!”

I remember the last big New Year's Eve party we hosted . Walker was wearing what was supposed to be a toga but it came off looking more like Ebenezer Scrooge's nightgown. He had a wreath on his head made of gold laurel leaves. My nephew Todd and I were sitting together on the staircase as Walker was trying to jitterbug with my niece, Susan. He was pretty lit up and every time he twirled her around, he did it so fast and hard I was afraid he was going to throw her out the window. I said to Todd, “Now that is something I will remember the rest of my life.” Todd just looked at me, shook his head and said, “That's too scary to think about!” See, I keep telling you these little flashbacks from my life so that you will believe me that cancer can't steal your memories. It can't steal your stories.

Girlfriend advice: Keep on dancing! Drag your husband into the living room, put on your favorite music and dance. When you are all alone at home and the fear of the future starts to overwhelm you, turn up your music as loud as you can and dance and dance until you drop. It will make you feel so much better. If you can hardly put one foot in front of the other from radiation or chemotherapy, when you feel your worst, start as slowly as you need to but do it! You won't believe how much better you will feel.

When we got back to the cottage long after midnight on that New Year's Eve of 2009, I felt so happy. I had such high hopes for 2010. I built a fire in my little fireplace and snuggled up in a soft blanket with my hot chocolate and I thought about how my life was going to be so much better than at had been in 2009. Thank God we can't see too far down the road....

Miley's booty- Part 2

Dear Gentle Readers,

So what was I to do? The answer came to me immediately. Get her out of this house! I just stood there holding the coffee pot while Michelle held Bébé up to her face, covered her with smoochy kisses and said “Oui! Oui! You are such a sweet Bébé!” Walker was sitting there staring at her and I imagine he was thinking, “I sure wish I was that Bébé!

I just put down the coffee pot, took Bébé from her arms and gave her the old “southern simpleton” look. That is a look of sheer and total innocence. It is a look of sweetness and blankness. It is the look that says “I haven't got a clue what you are up to” but honey, let me tell you, behind that look of idiocy on my face I was planning my battle tactics!

She knew she was feeling a breeze under that T-shirt! That (not so) little fanny flash at my husband was no accident! She just hadn't planned for me to see it, too. Ah ha! I knew she thought I didn't see what had happened. I said, “Michelle, Macon is lovely, but how would you like to see Washington D.C.?”

“Oh oui! I'd love to see Washington, but I have no way to get there.”

“I'll drive you.”

Walker said, “That's a thirteen hour drive............are you sure?”

I gave him a not-so-simpleton look, a look that said “If you don't shut up this very second you are going to have a pot of hot coffee up your nose.”

He shut up.

In the next six minutes I arranged to drive Michelle and Bébé to my sister's house in Manassas, Virginia, right outside of Washington, D.C. My sister is the most hospitable southern bell you will ever meet. At that time she had a husband and three young teenage sons. I just told her I was bringing a sweet young French girl to visit and would they take her around in Washington? She readily agreed. I left out the part about which town she came from in France (the one where girls where no pants!).

It was a long but immensely rewarding thirteen hour drive to Virginia. Along the way, I started wondering if I should have just dumped her in Atlanta, but no........that was too close to my husband!

When we arrived in Virginia, my sister, her husband and three sons were so excited to meet Michelle. The next day the boys took her on the Metro to Washington. When they got back the whole gang was sitting around the kitchen table. My sister asked Michelle, “What did you think of Washington?”

“It was beautiful! Oui!”

“Well, what do you think of Americans in general, I mean?”

“Oh! They are all fat and so unattractive.”

All of us at the table just looked at each other, flabbergasted by her response. And of course, each of us was thinking “of course she didn't mean me!”

Then my sister said, “You mean you have not seen one attractive person in America?”

“Oui, they are all either fat or ugly. I saw women, many women, in Washington that had stomachs shaped like the capital dome.” We all sucked in our guts.

After supper my sister pulled me aside and said, “Do you know anybody else that might let her visit them?”

“I have some friends in New York City...............” We high-fived each other. I called my New York friends and they arranged all her travel plans for a wonderful guided tour of the city. “Goodbye, please!”

Years later one of my nephews told Walker “You remember that French girl that came with Aunt Suzan to our house in Manassas?”

“How could I forget her?”

“That was the best present I ever got from Aunt Suzan. I was in middle school at the time. I remember Michelle didn't close the bathroom door all the way. She was standing at the sink, brushing her teeth, with no shirt on! I was laying in the bed in my room with a clear view down the hall, just watching her. It was the first truly enjoyable physics lesson I ever had. She was a vigorous brusher and when she would charge right with the toothbrush, the lovelies would swing hard to the left. Then she'd give an equal thrust to the left teeth and here they'd come, flying back to the right. She evidently believed in long, thorough brushes and it was enough to make me dizzy! I know there are those out there who might think it left me scarred for life, but actually, it made me quite hopeful for the future!”

And to tell you the truth, Michelle must have really impressed my nephew because he ended up marrying a girl that looks very, very much like her.

And me? After I packed Michelle off to New York City I put Bébé Laurel in the car seat, looked in the rear view mirror and said with the “southern simpleton” on my face, “Who me? I would never be inhospitable to a visitor!”

And the Bébé and I drove oui, oui, oui, all the way home.

Oh, and Miley Cyrus, let me give you a bit of advice that every good southern mother gives her daughter: You start being sexy when you stop trying to be!

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Miley's booty ain't the first to shake...........

Reading all the uproar over Miley Cyrus' bottom made me laugh. Booties have been shakin' around as long as there's been booties to shake, much to the disapproval of non-shakin' women, much to the approval of bootie lovin' men. When my husband, Walker, and I, were in our early thirties, we were in an international friendship club. We would host a guest from another country and then we were supposed to go visit that guest at their home. The problem was that we never had the money to go visit our guests in their countries. And, we had Baby Laurel, less than a year old.

It was the summer of 1989 when Walker and I drove up to the Atlanta airport to pick up our guest from France. In those days you could still go far enough into the airport to watch the passengers walk out of the plane, down some steps and across the tarmac and on into the airport. All we knew was that we were to pick up “Michelle” a young French girl in her early twenties.

“She wrote that she would be holding up one of those little French flags on a stick!” I hollered over the noise of the people and the planes. I adjusted the sweaty, sticky bundle of baby that was sliding off my extended hip. Motherhood had left me feeling rather unattractive lately. I was always covered in some ooey-gooey glop of one sort or another. Now underneath that glop I was still a hottie, but the problem was I very seldom seemed to get enough baths to get off enough goo to expose the hottie level. Baby Laurel would not take a pacifier . She preferred to gnaw on my chin. Wise women told me she was just teething and not to worry about it. It was all very natural. But why does natural have to be so wet? I tried to break her from sucking on my chin because it sent torrents of warm baby slobber that smelled like her “natural” formula made from goat milk running down my hot neck. They don't tell you this before you get the baby...

So Laurel was just gnawing away on my chin and slobberizing my face and neck when I looked up and saw “Michelle” sashaying down the airplane steps. Oui. Oui. Oui. “Oh {bad word}!!!” I uttered under my breath. She looked like a runway model from Paris. Walker lit up like a Christmas tree. “There she is! Wow!!! She's a looker!!!” I gave him a look that wiped that smile off his face but fast. “Well, I mean...she's looking for us...” He started waving his arms around like a drowning man and yelling, “Michelle! Michelle!” Just at that moment Baby's diaper sprang a leak and I could feel something warm running down my leg... I was still using cloth diapers because I was trying to save the earth. At that moment I decided to start using Pampers.

Michelle came bouncing up all smiles and sweetness. Ooh la la... She hugged Walker and kissed him on each cheek. Then she blew kisses in my general direction. “Well, I'm Walker and this is my wife....”

“SUZAN. My name is SUZAN,” I reminded him.

So we trudged out to our little compact car and went through all the gyrations of getting the baby in the car seat and Michelle's enormous amount of luggage in the trunk. “I thought she was only staying two weeks,” I whispered to Walker. “Maybe she decided to stay all summer,” he said with a big grin. So, we all got in the car, Walker driving, Michelle in the front passenger seat and me crammed in the back with suitcases falling on Baby Goat's head while she screamed her lungs out.

We got on down the highway and Walker asked, “What's that smell?”

“Chanel No.5,” “Goats,” Michelle and I answered simultaneously.

I had to let my back window down to get the smell out. The hot wind blew my hair onto my face where it stuck to the drool. I was a sight. All the merry while Walker and Michelle chatted away. Oui. Oui. Oui. “We are going to take you to a pool party this afternoon,” he told her.

“Oh how lovely! I bought a new swim suit! It has a top!”

At that moment Walker let our car go over into the other lane. I guess I shouldn't have kicked the back of his seat so hard. Some guy laid on the horn and shot an impolite gesture at Walker as he sped around us. “My sentiments exactly, Mister!” I thought.

We made it back to Macon and Michelle was so lovely. She was absolutely so polite that I couldn't say a thing against her. How could I be jealous of this precious young girl? After all, she brought me French perfume and she brought Walker an expensive bottle of French wine. She brought a Madeline dolly for Baby Laurel. So, ooh la la, it was off to the pool party. All the young mothers gathered in the shallow end of the pool. We were all bouncing our wee ones up and down in the water while all the hubbies were grilling and drinking beer.

“We brought our new friendship club girl with us. She's a real sweet girl. I know y'all are going to like her!” I said with my back toward Michelle who was walking out of the pool house wearing a black, string bikini . “I don't think I like her at all!” one of my girlfriends said. I turned around to see Michelle surrounded by Walker and all the other fellas. The boys were all laughing and having a grand old time. “Run for cover girls!!!” All of the mothers jumped out of the pool and ran for the terry cloth!

That night back at our house Walker and I put Baby to bed and sat up visiting and drinking the French wine with Michelle. I had to count the dunk in the pool as a bath and doused myself with Chanel No.5. She really was an adorable girl. What was I worried about? I could still turn a head or two myself. When he came to bed Walker said, “Why did you put Michelle in the downstairs by the kitchen? That's not the pretty room.”

“Shut up Walker.” He shut up.

The next morning I hopped out of bed and ran to take a shower while everyone else was still asleep. Walker got Baby Laurel up and took her downstairs to play on the floor of the dining room. Then I came down to make coffee while Michelle got up and took a shower. What a sweet picture the three of us made. Young mother filling the baby's bottle... Young father sitting at the table reading the funny paper... Darling baby playing with blocks on the floor... Life was all that it should be. Then our darling house guest appeared wearing a T-shirt with no bra. She was drying her wet hair with a towel. Her shapely long tanned legs went down down down to her lovely little pink toenails that were polished to perfection. And then it happened. She bent over to pick Baby up from the floor and I heard Walker choking on his coffee. I turned to ask, “Are you okay?” just as I heard and saw Michelle bending over and picking up the “Beautiful Bébé!!!” and then I knew. I had no doubt. Michelle was from the place in France where the girls wear no underpants and the dance they do is the Hoochie Coochie Coo!”

Stay turned for part two. Ooh la la!!!!!!!

You mean I'm dead???!!!

 Dear Gentle Readers,

Many of you have probably not had a chance to read my book, "Dear Girlfriend, A Handheld Walk Through Breast Cancer".  So I thought I would use this post to share a brief chapter of the book with you.  This is a funny account of what happened while having one of many procedures during treatment.  When finished, if you want to read more about the wild ride I took with breast cancer, click here!  Enjoy!!!

 

Dear Girlfriend,

When we got back to Macon from our trip to Florida, my oncologist, Dr. Pippas, ordered a test called a Muga Scan. I was told that I needed to start chemo just as soon as my incisions were healed because chemo is the most effective if it is done within six months after the surgery. My problem was that my left breast, the side on which I had had cancer , was just not healing. After six weeks that left breast still looked just like it had right after surgery. But, I went ahead to the hospital to have the Muga Scan, a test to determine if one's blood is pumping throughout the body properly. It's important that your blood is pumping normally if you are going to do chemotherapy. The Muga Scan does not hurt. It's done at a nuclear medicine center or by a radiology tech at the hospital. You don't eat or drink anything for four to six hours before the scan and you don't use caffeine or tobacco for four to six hours before the scan. Also, remember to wear comfy clothes because you are going to be lying on a table for a couple of hours.

Before the test, the technician will inject a little bit of radioactive material into a vein in your arm. This material is sort of like dye and it will hook up with your red blood cells as they carry oxygen through your body. See, like I told you, you are on automatic. When you woke up this morning, did you say, “Okay, red blood cells, get to work and take the oxygen I'm breathing all through my body. Chop! Chop! Get to it!” No. You didn't give your red blood cells one little thought because God is controlling all the inner workings of your body, just as surely as he holds the stars in the sky and keeps you from floating off the planet by controlling the force of gravity. But, do we ever think about any of that? Heck no!

So the technician had me lie on a table and she said, “This thing up above you is a gamma camera that uses gamma rays to take pictures of how blood is going through your heart. This won't hurt, but try to lie as still as you can or the pictures will be blurry and we'll have to do it over. I'll leave you here for a few minutes. Just relax, nothing will hurt you.”

So I just lay there and thought about my blood traveling through my veins. I thought about the camera taking pictures of my heart. I was warm and cozy and unafraid until... the technician came back into the room and with no trace of a smile on her face she said, “I'm so sorry. You flatlined.”

I jumped up off the table and shreiked, “You mean I'm dead???!!!” She started laughing and said, “Well, obviously not!” I could hardly breathe and I said, “But you said I flatlined, doesn't that mean I died?” She said, “I'm so sorry! I mean the machine stopped working. The machine flatlined.” I lay back down on the table and said, “You scared me to death. I thought I had died, but just hadn't zooped up yet!” She said, “Well, I'll try to choose my words more carefully next time.” We both had a good laugh, but I 'll bet she never told anybody else that they had “flatlined.” My test came back normal, but I could not start chemo because my incisions had still not healed.

I outfoxed the phone company!

Dear Gentle Readers,

As you recall, in my last post, I was telling y'all how good I was at changing my voice to sound like Stinky, Winky and Blinky, the three little pigs. When my daughters were very small, on Saturday mornings my husband, Walker, would get up early with the girls, and try to let me sleep. But, the girls would all three come to my bed and pounce up and down on top of me while they tickled me unmercifully. I would try to hide under the covers and say, “Girls! Don't torment your mama! Let me sleep!” Then they would jump up and down on the bed yelling, “Torment! Torment! Torment! Get up Mama!!! Get up Mama!!!” Such gentle children they were... Then they would yank the covers off of me and pull me up into a sitting position with my feet dangling off the side of the bed. My hair looked like flying monkeys had played in it. I had on no makeup. You get the picture.

“Make your feet talk, Mama!” Now, I hope you realize that my feet can't really talk, but I could throw

my voice down to my feet and my feet would jump all around saying in a very high squeaky voice, “No! No! I don't want to get up! No! No!” The girls loved this and they would pull my poor feet down to the floor and then drag the rest of me out of bed into a standing position. Now you must realize that I had twins and another child a year older. So, I had two babies that were three years old and one baby that was four years old. This is why my feet would protest getting out of bed. My feet knew that once they were out of bed there would be no rest for the weary!

So the years rolled on by. Now the girls are in their twenties. Sometimes when they are home, one or the other will bring me coffee in bed. We snug up together and they talk to me like I'm a girlfriend. We are all so close, and I feel so mightily blessed that they love to come home. They don't pounce on top of my head anymore, but we do laugh about those good old times.... Yes, the years rolled by and it became time for my mother to break up housekeeping and move into an assisted living home. I would have brought her to live with me, but I'm so small I couldn't lift her.

Cleaning out her home went very smoothly. Two of my sisters, Camille and Cea, my sister-in-law, Janelle and I took on the task of moving all of Mama's stuff out. We had heard so many horror stories about relatives getting into fights over their parents' stuff that we were terrified that we might get into an argument over who took what. So, if any of us wanted something, we would hold it up and ask in our most sugary sweet slow little southern voices, “If none of you girls want this dishrag and used Brillo pad, may I have it?” And the rest of us would reply in unison, “Oh no honey, you take it, we insist!” So we proceeded just like that and through some kind of miracle we didn't have one cat fight! Whew!!!

When everything was out of the house I realized that I had to call the phone company and get Mama's service moved over to her room at the assisted living home. I didn't think this would be any big deal, oh boy.... I called the phone company on Mama's phone because I didn't have a cell phone with me. Mama had a land line phone with buttons on it. This a a true account of what happened.

I dialed the phone company. “Service department,” said the friendly young voice on the other end.

“My name is Suzan Rivers. My mother is Mary Lampp. She has just moved from this address to an assisted living home. I need to change her phone service from this house to her new address at the assisted living home.”

“Is your mother there? I will need to talk to her” said the friendly voice.

“No mam, she is at the home. But my name is somewhere in your paperwork as someone you can talk to about her phone service,” I replied in a friendly voice.

“I'm sorry, but I don't see your name anywhere. I must speak directly to your mother on that phone, no other,” she said in a not-quite-so-friendly-voice.

“Look, my mother just had hip replacement surgery. There is no way she can get up the steps to get in this house to talk on this phone. That's the reason we moved her to the assisted living!” I said in a not-so-friendly-any-more voice.

“I'm sorry, but we have our policies,” said a not-friendly-at-all-voice.

“So, you are telling me that I need to find a big strong man to carry my eighty-six year old mother with a bum hip up the steps into this empty house where there is not even a chair for her to sit on while she talks to you on this phone? Is that what you are telling me?” Kiss friendly goodbye.

“We have our policies.”

“ Okay. I'll go look for a muscular man.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.” I hung up.

I sat down on the floor and tried to figure out what to do. Then it hit me. I had a great “granny” voice that I used when I did the “Little Red Riding Hood” puppet show. So, I worked on giving the house a good cleaning to kill some time. Then I called “Cathy” back.

“Hello Cathy! I have my mother here now. Do you want to talk to her?” I asked.

“Yes. Please put her on.”

So I took a deep breath and in my most shaky, quavering, dear old granny voice I said, “Hello, this is Mary Lampp....”

“Mrs. Lampp, I need to know your birthday, sweetie,”

I replied in the best sweetie granny voice I could do, “My birthday is October tenth, nineteen twenty- one.”

Cathy said, “Okay Sweetie, what is your social security number?”

I thought to myself that I was in trouble because I didn't know Mama's social security number. So I just pretended to be a tad senile and said, “ Oh dearie me, I don't remember my social security number, but I remember how to make applesauce. Do you want the recipe? And my birthday is October tenth, nineteen twenty one. Did you get that? October tenth, nineteen twenty-one, October tenth, nineteen-twenty one....”

At that point Cathy had started to laugh and said, “Okay honey, you can put your daughter back on the phone,”

“Hello? This is Suzan Rivers...”

“Mrs. Rivers, we will switch your mother's phone service over to her new residence today. She sounds like such a sweetie pie. I'll bet you two are very close.”

“Oh yes, very close, very very close...”

He Thought He Was Hearing Voices!!!

Dear Gentle Readers,

For many years I worked as a children's librarian. I really worry that the fine old art of reading a book to a wide-eyed child is fading away. Everywhere I go I see tiny children being babysat by a handheld gaming gizmo or tablet. They are usually blowing something or somebody up! Now, don't get me wrong. I think gizmos are great, but so is human contact. Imagine yourself tucking your child into bed and then snuggling up next to him while you read “How The Grinch Stole Christmas” in your most grinchy winchy voice. Now the child is laughing. You are enjoying each other, and how much did it cost you? Time. Just a little time to make a beautiful memory that will last a lifetime.

Since I was diagnosed with cancer, even though they say I'm now cured, I have come to value time and to value people so much more than before cancer. I watch my children. I take note of what very lovely young women they have become. Yes, I watch people instead of gizmos. If my husband, Walker, is chopping wood for the fireplace at our cottage in the woods, Fairy Ring, I watch him.... I think how truly beautiful his arms are still... His legs are so muscular from walking in the woods all day.... I smile to myself.... Cancer taught me that even if I live to be one hundred that is no time at all! Time is my gold.

But, you asked me to write something funny, so here goes.... When I was a librarian I discovered how much children love puppet shows. I bought all kinds of truly cool puppets and had my husband, Walker, build me a very simple puppet stage that was supposed to be a castle. That stage was made of plywood, but you can use a big old cardboard box. Anything. If children are given the chance to use their imaginations they will. If you tell them the cardboard box the new washing machine came out of is Cinderella's castle, they will be cool with that.

So, there is one thing that a good puppeteer must have, different kinds of voices. The  prince and the frog cannot sound alike. A frog has to sound froggy and a prince has to sound princey. You knew that. It's instinct!

When I first started doing puppetry, Walker had not been to one of my shows, so he really didn't know just how well I could change my voice. Believe me, I'm good! So one Saturday morning I woke up and Walker was still asleep next to me. I took off my socks and put them on by hands and started to practice my voices for “The Three Little Pigs”. I wasn't talking loud, but it woke poor Walker up. He had his back to me and before I knew what was happening he pole vaulted out of bed with his hair standing straight up, half blind because he had his contacts out and shrieked, “What was that???!!!”

I was just lying there with my socks on my hands, instead of my feet, and calmly answered, “That was just Stinky, Winky and Blinky.” He looked at me like all that he knew to be true had just fallen away. His very sane wife had lost her mind. He hesitated, and with a wild, bewildered look on his face like he was about to step out onto slippery, icy pavement he said, “Who the {bad word omitted} are Stinky, Winky and Blinky?” I calmly answered, “The Three Pigs. You know, they tricked the Big Bad Wolf into the boiling soup when he came down the chimney.”

He still looked pretty shook up as he stood there in his boxer shorts running his hand back and forth over the top of his head. He again ventured out onto thin ice and asked in a squeaky little voice, “Where are they? Are they under the covers, Baby?”

“No, you fool, they're in a fairy tale!”

“Then why did I hear them?”

“Because I'm practicing my voices to do a puppet show!” The look of relief that came over his face as he finally exhaled is indescribable. Everything that he knew and believed came back and he was laughing. “Suzan, I thought you had gone 'round the bend. You know your mother told me there is insanity on your Daddy's side of the family.”

“Oh, I know! She always says it's on Daddy's side....”

Come back to my blog for the best part of this story!!!! “Oink! Oink! Oink!”

Wow! These are delicious........

Dear Gentle Readers,

My husband Walker and I have attended several social functions recently where he cooked his delicious stuffed jalapeño peppers, and boy did the guests vacuum them up! I'm not real interested in making my new blog a recipe resource, but so many people asked for his recipe we thought we might as well make it available here! After doing a quick bit of research on hot peppers, I found out that they have a host of medical uses and even show promise as something that may be useful in slowing down the growth of some prostate cancers, so I feel better that I'm not only entertaining you but giving you something that might improve your health at the same time!

Here goes.........

Walker's Stuffed Jalapeños

Ingredients:

Disposable surgical gloves

12 large, plump jalapeño peppers

2 8 oz. blocks of fat free cream cheese at room temperature

1 cup of shredded sharp cheddar cheese

3 Tablespoons powdered chicken bouillon

Black pepper

Chili powder

Before beginning, PUT ON THOSE GLOVES!. Handling peppers leaves a residue on your hands that will be most unpleasant for you the next time you touch your eyes, nose or other "tender" spot. If you forgot to buy the gloves, coat your hands with cooking oil prior to handling the peppers, then wash thoroughly with soap when through.

Wash and dry the peppers before cutting them. If you cut them under running water, some of the capsaicin, or heat, in the peppers will volatilize and make you cough. Avoid this by washing first then cutting them dry.

Slice the peppers longwise leaving half the stem on each piece. Using a small paring knife, remove the seeds and the white membranes. If you like hotter food, leave more of the white membrane. That is where a lot of the heat in the peppers resides.

In a bowl, thoroughly mix the two blocks of cream cheese, the cheddar cheese, the chicken bouillon and black pepper to taste.

Using a butter knife, spread the soft cheese mixture on each pepper half, filling the cavity and leaving a slight mound. Place on baking sheet. When finished, sprinkle chili powder on each piece as a zippy garnish. Oh yeah- now you can peel off those gloves!

Bake in 375^o oven for 20+/- minutes until peppers lose their bright green color and cheese mixture browns slightly.

Allow to cool a few minutes before removing to a serving tray as the cheese filling will be extra gooey when it is hot. Have cold milk available for your guests who aren't accustomed to eating hot peppers. Drinking milk will help cool the heat in their mouths whereas water, beer, etc. will actually intensify it!

Yield: 24 pepper halves

Calories: Who cares?

Preparation Time: Longer for slow people.

How Did YOU Get Here???

Dear Gentle Readers,

I was born in Savannah, Georgia on November 1, 1956. If you are a Catholic, you know that November1st. is “All Saints Day”. All Saints Day is a holy day and more important to me as a child attending a Catholic school, it was a holiday! No school on my birthday! Yippee! This was extra special because the day before, October 31^st, was Halloween.

My mother told me that on that particular Halloween in 1956, I was overdue to be born. My family lived in a big old sprawling two story frame house on Maupas Avenue. And on that street lived dozens of children. And every single child on Maupas and every other street in Savannah went trick or treating that night. My mother only had five children in seven years. Yes, when she was twenty-seven, good Catholic girl that she was, she already had five wee ones. Then for some mysterious reason she had no babies for seven years. That's when my three sisters, Cathy, Cea and Camille, aged ten, twelve and fourteen, started a campaign for my mother to have a baby! My two brothers Larry and John, aged seven and eight were not really interested, unless it was a baby brother. My sister, Cea, campaigned the hardest. She really, really wanted a little baby to play with and wouldn't stop begging my mother for one.

So finally Mama relented, and got on the nest with little ducky number six, me. I guess you could say I got into this world by the skin of my teeth! But, on that Halloween night, while my five brothers and sisters went out to trick-or-treat, Mama stayed home to give out candy to literally “hundreds” of children. “Well, I was as big as the side of the barn, and every time the doorbell rang I had to get up out of my chair and go give out candy! After about a hundred trips to answer the door, it was time to go to the hospital! I had already had one false alarm, so when I went, I knew I better not come back home empty-handed!” she told me.

I was born after midnight, and so I guess I am supposed to be a saint and not a witch! When Daddy got back to the house from the hospital, he wouldn't tell any of my siblings if the baby was a girl or a boy until they were all sitting together on the staircase steps. Then he announced, “It's a beautiful baby girl! And she looks just like Cea!” Cea said that was, at that point, the happiest moment of her life. When the new baby was brought home Mama showed the little bundle to my brother Larry. Larry took one look at me and said, “Another girl. Yuck!!!” Larry ended up having eleven children. Mostly girls! He thinks they are all beautiful...

So I ask you, do you know the story of your birthday? In this day of smart phones and texting, will family stories survive? Will the art of southern storytelling survive? If you know about your own birthday, please share it on this blog! If not, go ask your relatives that remember, before the story is gone for good... “Another girl. Yuck!!!” 

Front row: John, Cathy, Daddy, Mama holding her Halloween treat and Larry   Back row:  Camille and Cea that nagged me into this world!

Lampp Family 1959 in the Woody Wagon in Savannah

In case you missed me!!!

Miss Paper Doll 1960 Columbus, Georgia  I couldn't resist! Ha!

Have faith. Do nothing!!!

Dear Gentle Readers,

This is my very first blog post on my new blog, “Suzan with a “Z” . On this blog we will be chatting away about anything and everything that catches our interest. I want to tell you today about an amazing experience that I had night before last. If you have read my book, “Dear Girlfriend- A Handheld Walk Through Breast Cancer” you know that sometimes things happen in my life that could be written off as coincidence. I really don't believe too much in coincidence. I believe that if I ask God to “take the wheel” of my life, then my life just takes off in directions that are not at all what I would have expected, but are truly wonderful! Sometimes it takes a lot of faith to sit back and do nothing a while and watch what happens! Does the idea of doing that scare you? Well, it scared me at first, but I figure if God can hold the earth and trillions of other planets and stars in place then He can take care of the little speck of dust that is me!

I have a girlfriend named Josephine. She was the one in “Dear Girlfriend” that set off the chain of events that led me to heal the hole in my chest that just would not heal. Well, every year Josephine goes to the beach with some of her girlfriends. This past week was her annual beach trip. Unfortunately, when she got to the beach she got sick. So while her friends were out and about Josephine was missing all the fun, cooped up in the hotel room feeling rotten. Bummer.

Now here is where you can say this is a coincidence, or you can say somebody up there was doing a little directing in my life and the life of Josephine and Sandy. Since Josephine was not able to go “play” with her friends, she went to sit by the pool at the hotel. And who should come sit by her but a lovely woman named Sandy. Now, you know how it is with women. They either hit it off immediately and will know each others deepest secrets within five minutes or they will move a little further away and go back to reading a magazine. Well, Josephine and the new girl, Sandy, hit it off immediately. Sandy just so happened to tell Josephine that she has been battling breast cancer. Josephine told Sandy about me and insisted that Sandy come to Macon to meet me. Well, guess what? Sandy was already scheduled to go to a conference in Macon when she left the beach. Is that a coincidence or not? You decide...

Sandy had all kinds of questions about breast cancer. Various questions about her condition were giving her many sleepless nights. She shared this with Josephine and Josephine gave Sandy my phone number and insisted that she should call me.

Sandy did come to Macon and she did call me. I told her to come on over to my house and she did. For some reason she just had a good feeling about meeting me and hoped that I might be able to answer some of her questions about breast cancer. We had a blast! It was one of those things where I immediately felt comfortable with her and she felt comfortable with me. We sat in the living room, and of course Walker joined us as we yacked about breast cancer and other things as the evening wore on. So, in short, I think Sandy was supposed to meet me. And I had been praying for somebody to take me under wing in the Savannah area, where Sandy lives. So here this angel just flew into my living room with such beauty and energy flowing out of her I know she was sent to me as an answer to my prayers. Sandy is going to have me come speak to her breast cancer support group in Savannah and I want her friends to come to Macon to visit me. Of course I'll have to invite Josephine who has helped me once more!

So Gentle Readers, here is the scoop. You got a problem? Stop trying to fix it!!! Ask God to take over and have the courage to sit back and do NOTHING for a while. Try it! And don't say what happens is a coincidence. It is just somebody up there finally being ALLOWED to do His job... Love, Suzan

Sandy and Suzan