Hello Delta

One of my best friends Win just moved back to the Delta from New Orleans. I’m so excited to have her an hour away in Greenwood! We were on the phone the other day just chatting about weekend plans and she mentioned that on Saturday she and her mom were going to drive to Jackson for the day to lunch, shop and do the big-city thang. I can’t remember exactly what she needed to do in Jackson that she couldn’t do in the Delta, but for most women it usually includes shopping for new clothes and replenishing our makeup and beauty supplies. That next week, I drove to Greenwood for the night and I met Win for drinks at Giardina’s. She talked about how fun it was to have her mother so close again. ”Oh she just drove over and spent the night on a Tuesday and we had lunch on Wednesday! So fun to have her an hour away!” As she talked about how much she loved spending time with her mother, I immediately missed mine.

I started to think about the days I spent with my mom and sisters back in Texas. What I wouldn’t give to wake up in the morning and meet my mom for lunch. And the thought of calling my sisters, raving about the Deena Harness over-the-knee Frye boots that I had just spotted online and begging them to go to Nordstrom with me to try them on, makes me miss them even more. We’d decide that spending $500 on one pair of boots is absurd and tell ourselves that we could find the exact same shoe cheaper if we kept looking. That of course would never happen, and I would forever blame them for talking me out of buying them.

If my mom were there with us, we’d all walk over to the cosmetics department and buy our favorite lip-gloss by Mac called “Orgasm”. Not sure why Mac felt the need to name their lip-gloss something so racy, but it was the best lip-gloss of all!  It was the only lip-gloss we had ever found that looked great on every girl in our family. Then all the sisters would cry laughing as we overheard our mother telling the sales woman that she would like two orgasms, please! That one would never get old.

An hour later we would still be laughing about my mother’s request for two orgasms as we split fajitas at Pappasito’s. The waiter would ask what we would like to drink and I would say “A coooooooooold margarita, please!”. My mother would immediately interject with some comment about how she wished I would not drink. The entire family was raised in the Baptist church and my mother and I would never agree on the matter of drinking. And then after a solid twenty minutes of me arguing the point that there is nothing wrong with having a cold margarita with your fajitas, she would lean over and ask me for a sip of my drink and I would rejoice that I beat her, yet again, in one of our silly arguments.

Having three older sisters and a mother is like having a readymade group of friends. I miss the days when my oldest sister Casey would tell me something about my other sister Katy and make me swear that I would not tell my other sister Carrie. I would tell my other sister Carrie during a weak moment but make her swear that she would not tell Casey that I told her. A few weeks would pass, Carrie would let the secret slip and we would all get in an enormous fight and cause a huge scene. My mother would play referee and ask to hear all four sides to the story and I would apologize for spilling the beans and beg them to please stop telling me secrets.

Even the fights are something to miss.

Having a hard time keeping up with all of our names? Me too.

my mom

My mother is the worst. She never called us the right name when we were growing up. I was a combination of Carrie and Kallie. Carrie-Allie. She’d remember my name half way through saying Carrie’s. She had five children so she could barely remember her own name in the morning, much less all of ours. But I do have to ask, what was she thinking naming her first four children Casey, Katy, Carrie and Kallie? Too many K’s and C’s.  She set herself up for that one….

Casey, Katy, Carrie, Kallie and Buck.

This is the only photo I could find of all the siblings together. It’s not the best quality but at least we are all dressed normal with our hair fixed. Just about every photo my sisters and I have together, we have no makeup on and we are all sweaty from a tennis match. And even better, in this particular photo we are in order of birth! From the left, oldest to youngest.

I’ll always miss Texas and I’ll always long for my family. Butttt if I was going to have to move far away from home and be stuck in a cypress lodge on the Mighty Mississippi with a deer feeder in the front yard and fishing lures hanging from the curtains, I’m glad the man I’d have to share it all with had an ass like this in a new pair of Dickies…

Just saying…

The End.

I woke up and glanced at my planner to see what was on the agenda today…

Wow.

I hope I can get it all done.

I need to get this off my chest.

Yesterday we were cleaning the downstairs and curled up underneath some old flood damage was a Copperhead snake. Luke spotted it first and calmly stated…

“Hold on. Don’t move. Be still.”

I froze. I knew exactly what he saw but I didn’t see it and I was trembling. I followed his eyes to my left and down to the ground and there it was, curled up in the corner with its fangs out and ready to strike. Well, not really. But it was curled up in the corner!

I stood there with moldy insulation in both hands and thought about my escape route. I dropped the insulation and bolted to the right and out the side door. Luke followed behind me and after finding a canoe paddle, walked back into the snake pit and BAM–Bye bye Mr. Copperhead.

I’ll fish, bait a trot line, drive the boat, ride a tractor, load my pistol and shoot my bow–but one thing I can’t do is kill a snake. I’m terrified. So terrified that I think I black out for a few seconds while I’m screaming and running away from them.

Let’s go back to three days ago when I was upstairs in the kitchen doing the dishes and enjoying the lake view through my dirty window. I really need to clean all the windows in my house. It’s embarrassing. All three dogs had just woken up from their morning naps and were moving around the kitchen. I figured I’d walk them down to the lakeshore and let them swim and exert some energy. I threw on my Chaco’s and headed downstairs.

One step. Two step. Three step. Fourth ste——–AHHHHHH.

I couldn’t stop screaming. I screamed so loud I thought people in the town of Benoit would confused my cry for help as the tornado siren going off again. I sprinted as fast as I could back up the stairs, screaming and screaming and screaming. My hands were waving over my head and I was screaming. Why were my hands over my head? I could have won an Oscar for this performance. I have a slight tendency to overreact. I get it from my Mama.

If I would have put my shoe down on that fourth step I would have stepped on the head of a black snake. It was so scary because I actually used the muscle in my thigh to hold my leg in the air so that I wouldn’t step down on the snake’s head. I was terrified. I had no clue what kind of snake it was and because Luke and Buck were upstairs, they never had a chance to see the nasty thing slithering away towards the bank of the lake.

My biggest regret is that I screamed and freaked out and acted like a scared little girl while I ran away. I wish I was a real woman that would have run to the storage room, grabbed a canoe paddle and gone and killed that silly slithering snake! Because now the only thing that I think about is that snake, sitting on the bank of the lake just waiting for me to step on it again.

Unless of course I get two cats.

Why don’t I have any cats? Don’t they keep snakes away?

Luke doesn’t know this yet, but we are getting two cats from the Cleveland Animal Shelter.

I might not even name them. I think I’ll just refer to them as my “snake army”….

Slithery little snakes….

Ew.

There’s a new addition to our household and I’m having a difficult time adjusting. I value family, friendship and sleep. This new addition is taking one of those things away from me. (Yaaaaaaawwwwwnnnnn)

I’m sorry. Excuse me.

Allow me to paint a picture for you.

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I hear a faint whimper. I’m dreaming so deeply that I subconsciously tell myself to go back to sleep. The whimper continues. I turn over on my side, pull the comforter over my head and try to fall back asleep underneath the covers.  The whimper turns to crying.  I realize that my date with George Clooney must come to an end. I hate getting pulled out of that specific dream. I was just getting to the part where he tells me that eating Chipotle for every meal is the sexiest thing he has ever heard and after he proposes,  I tell him sweetly that I am in love with another man and I hope that he will be able to move on. It is the perfect dream. But no, the whimper turned crying turned howling has officially woken me up from a dead and dream-filled sleep.

what time is it? where am i? who am i? 

I nudge Luke. After all, it was his idea to bring home a new puppy. He could deal with her.  He immediately jumps out of bed to take her downstairs and I’m immediately angry that I’m awake. I feel the need to lash out, but I refrain.

go back to sleep. go back to sleep. Hey George, where were we? 

The thought of sleeping three more hours makes me the happiest woman alive. Who in their right mind would be up at 6:30 a.m. on a Saturday anyway? People with puppies and babies. Luke walks back into the bedroom. I can see him out of the corner of the only eye I have exposed. The other eye is buried deep in my pillow and I planned to keep it there. He has the new puppy snuggled underneath his chin and he is smiling. Is he serious? Of course he is serious. He is the only man I know that can jump to his feet from a dead-sleep and immediately be in the best mood and ready to take on the day. That makes me even more angry.

Leave the puppy outside for the coyotes to eat and come back to bed.

I feel crazy that thoughts like that even enter my mind, but then again I’m not quite myself in the mornings. I’m pretty sure it is genetic in my family to act like Satan when you first wake up. My Dad is the worst. When we were growing up, we weren’t allowed to talk to him for the first hour he was awake. It was his “alone time” and he would sit in my mother’s piano room on a beige couch and drink two cups of coffee. I think his “alone time” was really his “I have five children and I need an hour each morning to cope with this fact before I start my day” time. Luke puts the puppy back into her kennel and crawls into bed.

Ahhh. Here we go. Bring on the sleep.

The whimpering begins again.

That’s it. Where is my pistol? 

Luke sighs and walks to her kennel, picks her up and puts her in our bed. She bites my toes, fingers, nose and even my hair. I’m so far past annoyed that I swallow the situation and embrace my new puppy. After all, she is pretty darn cute.

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Sorry that was getting kind of long, but you get the gist.

I’ve got a new puppy and I can’t sleep late anymore. Help. 

After two cups of coffee and one scrambled egg, Luke suggested we walk down to the lake and take a boat ride in the chute, maybe cast the rod a few times. I agreed, threw on my boots and grabbed my camera.

Who cares about sleeping?

Especially when you could be doing this?

So I apologize to Foxy, our new pup, for threatening to shoot you with my pistol and feed you to the coyotes. I’m not a morning person, but thanks for forcing me to be one.

I think I’m enjoying it!

I’m writing to you from my apartment in Nashville today! I made it back here safely last night after two wonderful porch-sittin’ and picture-takin’ days in the Delta. On Tuesday morning I was supposed to head back to Nashville for a Wednesday morning interview, but when I found out it had been pushed back, I decided to stick around and spend the afternoon hanging with the boys.

My goal was to stop by the shop and say hello to the boys, head to Beulah and gas up the combine and then mosey on over to Shelby, MS to take some photos for a client. What a lovely afternoon it would be!

I hit the gravel road runnin’ and headed to the shop in Benoit.

I love when Millie rides with me. Look at that face! Have you ever seen anyone so excited to be doing absolutely nothing but hanging their head out of a window? God love her.

I got to the shop and hung out with John Henry and Pee-Wee while they were fixing up the module truck we are trying to sell.

If ya know anyone that needs one, I can probably swing a pretty good deal.

Have your people call my people.

Luke and Buck walked around and checked on all the trucks, Millie walked around and stepped in all the grease and I walked around and made up a song in my head about checking on trucks and steppin’ in grease.

I was eager to get to the town of Shelby though. I had promised this client that she would have her photos that day so I didn’t have time to piddle around. I told the boys we needed to head to Beulah and gas up the combine and get the show on the road! They agreed and we hit the highway.

It was one of those gorgeous blue-sky-cloudy-days. All of the farmers were out and about transferring combines from one shop to another and I was hanging out of the passenger seat window waving to them while I snapped photos.

Click click click.

Then I realized that I knew the guy driving the combine and I felt like a weirdo for waving and taking pictures of him. He probably thinks I’m a stalker.

Stalker? Blogger? Tomato. Tom-ahh-to.

We arrived in Beulah with the trailer and gasoline tank and of course…

This was going to take “two seconds.”

Why oh why must I be so naive? Nothing ever takes two seconds in the farming world! Buck fired up the combine but there was no fire, if that makes any sense. Okay I’ll just say it–the combine wouldn’t start.

This is when I threw a mild temper tantrum that I’m not proud of but yes, it happened.

“Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhh of course it broke down! I need to get to Shelby for my client’s photos! How long is this going to takeeeeeeeeee?”

Luke told me to pipe down and go take some photos.

So I did.

And while Luke grabbed his wrench and began the daunting task of figuring out what in the heck is wrong with your machine….

I got lost on the Beulah side streets looking for cool photos.

This one was definitely my favorite. Oh how I love symmetry. I love symmetrically placed grain bins especially when symmetrically placed bird feeders are placed symmetrically in front of them. It’s so symmetrical. Symmetrically speaking. Moving on…

I’d come back to the combine every now and then to check on the progress of things.

“How’s it coming up there?”

“Two more seconds!”- Luke would say.

Then we would laugh and I would begin walking in another direction…

I did eventually make it to Shelby… And I got to photograph my client’s childhood family business. It was called Fava Grocery in Shelby, MS and even though it is no longer open (at least I don’t think it is??) she wanted the photo as a memory she could hang on her wall.

Peace out! And remember….

(say it with me now!)

NOTHING takes TWO SECONDS on the FARM!

The End.