http://allrecipes.com/recipe/238157/blueberry-oatmeal-pancakes/

So The Man works at Tractor Supply, eh?  They sell books at a discount--How to Farm Such-And-Such.  How to Live Off the Grid.  How to Make Happy Chickens Even Happier.  Ah, I'm mocking again, aren't I?  Shoot. Sorry about that.  Actually most of them are pretty interesting, and I always try to browse them when I'm waiting on him to clock out and go to Subway.  A good selection of the discounted books are cookbooks.  Anne Byrne--who I think is downright marvelous--wrote the classic baking tome, The Cake Mix Doctor and The Chocolate Cake Mix Doctor.  That particular one was $5, so I nabbed it, having been a fan of hers for years.

The idea is pretty basic for this cake:  add one more egg to a chocolate cake mix and a cup of sour cream. Done.  And it is The Man's favorite cake.  I think I've made it about 20 times, literally. I can mix and bake it in under 48 minutes.  I usually use 3 silkie (small chickens) eggs and a cup of sour cream.  I always use the Duncan Hines  Betty Crocker Triple Chocolate Cake Mix.  I buy the FUDGE chocolate frosting.  Just FUDGE.  Not MILK CHOCOLATE.  Not that profane whipped stuff, either. 

Anyway--when cake is done and still warm, I heat the frosting in the microwave for about a minute and pour it over.  As for the cake pan, I highly recommend the Winn-Dixie brand flour spray. It works like a dream!  I let the cake cool on my glass top stove for at least an hour and it pops right out--every time. 

The frosting puddles in the middle, of course, and that is just awesome.  Sometime, I'll lift the cake with a knife and let the frosting leak underneath to keep the moisture.  It tastes spectacular, and keeps its moisture.

See how spongy the texture is?  It was super-moist and beautiful inside, too. 

You may or may not have noted that I have made this cake at least twenty times in two years.  Do you think, perhaps, that this over-experimental foodie might be a bit bored? Yaaaassss, she would be.

This week I made the cake out of quail eggs just to investigate what would happen.  We have two female quails and the eggs have been piling up--I have't known what to do with them, they're like... Barbie eggs or sumthin'. 

So it weighed them by grams and it took NINE quail eggs to equal three chicken eggs.  Here's the thing about quail eggs, though.  First and foremost, they are a pain pain pain pain pain to break. They shatter on impact, shell-wise, so you have to Dr. Pimple Popper out the actual egginess.  Second--and most importantly--they are almost all yolk.  There's very little white.  Which means:

This cake had a spongy, beautiful texture that was the best of the whole freakin' lot.  I texted Frances and said, "NO QUAIL EGG QUICHE FOR SURE!" but other than that, I highly recommend them for cakes.  Just. Fantastic. 

Now tell me, Samsung, how hard is it to put "Bundt" cake in the dictionary?  Every time I type in "Chris" you clowns suggest "Brown" as the next word, but not Budnt??? What's Bundesliga? 

Freak.  I'm Wiki'ing it right now. 

A football league in Germany.  

Bunchen brings up that model, whom, from the looks of things, has never tried a Bundt cake, ever.  I mean, look at those ribs.  Just LOOK at them. 

Good lord.  I'm mailing her the next cake.  Honestly. 

Another artistic shot to build your confidence in my recipe. Uh, well, Anne's recipe. 

Betty Crocker, I'm bored to death with you, but you sure look good, girl. It's on my North Carolina state plate.  Love state plates.  They make the best cake plates. And my commercial cake pan cover from the Salvation Army here in the Free State of Jones. 

So that's all for now.  But if you want recipeness, here it is:

One box Betty Crocker Triple Chocolate Cake Mix

1 cup sour cream

3 small eggs, or 9 quail eggs (as if, I know)

1 1/4 cup of water (or, 1 cup water, 1/4 cup Coffee Mate French Vanilla Creamer)

1/3 cup oil

Flour Spray (I've tried shortening and butter:  this always works best)

Frostingness:

1 container (well, not really the whole thing) melted in microwave.  Be sure to carefully peel off ALL of the foil.  Yes, it can be done, I do it all the time. 

Mix.  Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

Let cool until it separates from sides. It will contract. 

Turn out on super-cool looking plate, and then cover with frosting, making sure it pools in the middle.

Cut slice of cake being sure to get that pooled stuff in the middle to be smeared over cake so you give your folks an extra heapin' helpeness of good schtuff. 

Enjoy.  Comment if you like it. Please.  I can't just have my brother-in-law be the only commenter. 

Matty Matheson's Fried Chicken

About six months ago, I discovered a YouTube channel called Eater.  And I never, ever miss it.  This was on the cusp of me becoming a Serious YouTube Subscriber as opposed to just watching crap at random, particularly at either Devour.com or The Twisted Sifter.  (Nothing and I mean NOTHING beats the Shirk Report. I set aside at least an hour on Fridays for it.  I'm warning you:  old Shirk Reports are almost as bad of an internet rabbit hole as Cakewrecks.com and Engrish.com).  

When I realized that I could get intelligent, world-opening food coverage from Ye Olde Internets, I was hooked.  Here's the original Eater vid--and I highly recommend that you subscribe, they are always intelligent and enlightening.  (Except for that one from Memphis on BBQ--it was not worthy. Read comments section). 

I am dying to try the underwater salt.  I think I will put them on my "write and beg for ingredients for burgeoning going-to-be-tremendously-popular food blog."  Cause that just fascinates the heck out of me.  I wouldn't mind spending a day learning from them and just slogging away at it. 

Anyway, after I discovered Eater, I happened upon a channel that had a gadzillion (read: million) subscribers called MUNCHIES.  Since the first video I saw of them only featured pizza, I figured it was about... you know, weed-type munchies.  But no.  Munchies is a serious food channel, traveling the world. It is just about as classy as Eater, which is hard to do, especially with the likes of Lucas Peterson whom I think is just the classiest dude eating cheap food ever.  Here he is on his tour of Austin in his Dining on a Dime Series. 

ANYWAY this leads us to my latest FoodTube discover:  Matty Matheson.  He is hands down the most profane food experience on YouTube.  I really like, though, how he cooks in this tiny kitchen, makes no apologies, and by his own admission, doesn't like to eat his own food.  (He also owns 200 pairs of sneakers and never wears a watch, because he "doesn't like people to know how rich or poor I am."  This is stupid, cause, Matty darling, they can always look down and see how much you pay for shoes.

Anyway.  Love him.  Here he is explaining FRIED CHICKEN.  I say FRIED CHICKEN cause Matty, my friends, COOKS IN ALL CAPS. Which is a lesson for us all.  Sometimes, we need food to be a whisper, a gentle comfort experience.  But sometimes YOU NEED FRIED CHICKEN IN ALL CAPS.  Enjoy. 

I wanted to include something in my blog that was entirely pleasant, completely Laurel, and seriously awesome.  See that gorgeous man in that red tie?  That's now my husband.  These were taken the day before he became said husband, a moment he had waited for a long, long time. 

See, we were together, many many years ago.  I got out of school in the spring of 1987 and much to my disappointment, was unable to attend the school of my choice when I wanted to.  I had no clue about financing college, what college really meant in the long term (a job) and what I wanted to do with my life.  So I took a year off, goofing off and working a part-time job at a local department store selling housewares which I stockpiled hoping for the day I would use such items making a home. 

I entered junior college in the summer of '88.  I immediately began having a blast.  I began dating the second semester I was there--no, I mean literally began dating--I was a few months short of twenty before I had my first date--and went out with a guy for a while, then another guy (who stuck around for a while) and then I rolled into my second year of school.

I experienced a new sensation:  I was popular.  I was on the paper, and my columns were funny and well-liked.  I was bumped up my second year in to "editorial editor" of a ridiculously named paper, the Radiodian.  (It was explained to us that when the college formed their paper, the radio was brand new and all the rage, hence the stupid name).  In the first editorial meeting of my second year, there was a new set of faces.  We sat in a series of tables that were squared off.  Cattycorned from me was the table where my current boyfriend sat (more on him later), and my last boyfriend was in attendance, too.  And there was a new guy sitting across from me. 

After the meeting I went downstairs to leave the building when I saw the new guy in the cafeteria, leaning up against the glass wall waiting in line.  I thought--on a whim--I'll go eat with him--new guy.  He was tall and very thin and very tall and thin and sort of blindsided by my approach.  He thought I was butting in line, but I really just wanted to eat with this new staff member.  

He was sunk by the end of lunch.  And after hanging out with me for a few months, leaving flowers on my screen door and clearing away some wild hedges from my front yard, I decided to give him a chance.  

We dated six months when he broke up with me.  And for the only time in my life, I shook off what happened and moved on.  

Forced to move back home soon after, I married my ex-boyfriend after he showed up and proposed.  He had gotten wind that Chris and I had broken up and wanted me back, in a desperate way.  I was desperate.  I had left my abusive home at 20 for a reason.  Winding back up there a year later was more than I could handle.

It lasted six months.  The first person I told it was over was Chris.  He was thrilled.  And I left.  Feeling like I had no options, I went to live with my aunt in California.  And the letters followed.  

And followed, and followed and followed, till I had a three inch stack.  And I came home after a glorious year and a really silly near-miss marrying yet again, the wrong man.  

And there he was, feeling the same way.  I spent a lot of time with him that fall, and left, again, to go to school in Oklahoma.  And the letters followed.  And I married, again, this time to the man who seemed to fit all the stops:  he was a theology major, he talked a lot about family, and Lord, did we have fun together.  He made me laugh--a lot.  

He had, though, a fatal flaw that involved stability--economic stability. The end came when he moved us across country for a dream job that wasn't so dreamy. I was trapped in a strange town without a vehicle, without money, and two devastated children who were falling apart in their new circumstances. Even with a lucrative job offer, I looked around and saw that I had to get them out of there. I fled, once to Indiana and then to my mother's on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. There was a spring in my step knowing that I didn't have to live that way anymore. And proceeded to be devastated and grieved--hard--for the next two years.

But there were beautiful moments in there, too.  I knew that I had a future with Chris, and that it was all coming back around.  Slowly, on my Facebook feed, I started referring to him as "The Man".  Eventually, we came together and started a life here in Laurel.  I make it my mission to spoil him rotten, particularly for what all he has done for me. I have had an absolute blast cooking for him.  He's not hard to please:  he is such the Meat and Potatoes guy.  His favorite dish I make is ranch mashed potatoes, which I will include on the blog. 

In coming together, I moved to his home in Laurel.  I was still battling hard with anxiety issues, but over time, those faded completely away.  It was lovely to be with someone who knew me so well and was so observant who made my life better with each day without really meaning to.  He is an excellent step-father, and slowly over time his little girl has come to feel at home with me as well.  

Many of my friends my age complain about having to come back to Laurel for all sorts of reasons:  having to take care of elderly parents, having a hard time finding work, not satisfied with the social scene, it's too redneck, etc., etc.  Not so with me.  I remember when we were driving away from my place on the coast for the last time and Chris turned to me and said, "I'm bringing you home to heal."  I have. 

We were married on December 12 at the courthouse 25 years and 4 months after we met.  I forgot to have someone take pictures of us on my phone during the wedding.  But we had this, driving away, and it's pretty much my favorite picture of all-time.  We posted it on Facebook with one word:  Married.  

 

When Chris eats, he turns over the utensil he's eating with when he really enjoys it, particularly with deserts. It is an absolute blast to cook for someone who you don't have to worry about getting fat.  He has the most amazing metabolism you can imagine.  He's asked me what my blogs are about, and I can't really tell him except for love.  And some knitting.  And stuff. 

And pictures like this. 

Moving Shop, Peeps...

I am deeply grateful for each and every person who comes by the blog.  Brown Bird Diaries has set up camp with a different format.  I'm now at

brownbirddiaries.wordpress.com

I made the switch because the format is so much easier to work with.  I will be re-posting material from here and focusing more and more on cinema.

Thanks for stopping by.

Nan 

It is not easy becoming a stepmother--there are so many hurdles to overcome, especially since in divorce, time is relative.  I married Belle's father not too long after the divorce from her mother was final.  It was a situation because of illness, finances and a somewhat slow execution that the divorce was not final until two and half years after it was asked for. Such is life, I have found.  If anything, our experience has taught me not to be judgmental. 

My stepdaughter had a hard time with my arrival in her life.  Because her dad and I were over 100 miles apart and she was being raised by her mother in another town, we did not meet until I moved in.  Naturally, she was distant.  Children hang on to the idea that mom and dad are going to get back together and can put off their grieving until someone eventually says, "I do."  Such was the case for us.  There were tears after the judge pronounced us man and wife.  I didn't take offense, it was only natural, because the dream was over.  Mom and dad didn't yell at each other, so in her mind, they were still viable.  

For a while, every time she would come to visit--about once a month--she'd come in looking like she had come to a funeral.  That was not easy on anyone, and there was a bit of acting out with her new (and admittedly, annoying) stepbrother. 

Then there came Christmas Eve.  

Her dad--an emotional pragmatist and admittedly, a man not given to magic--became exasperated when she started crying uncontrollably over her Elves.  Now I knew she was into Elf on the Shelf, and had asked her father if I should do something with them here at the old homestead.  He said, "No, that's kinda their thing."  Huh.  Well... that didn't seem to work, because it would be Christmas and she would be expecting the elves to leap into action.  

He lost it when she started bawling when her stepbrother touched them.  She was, after all, showing them to him in person.  She had thrown something at her brother, and that wasn't cool.  Red Bird read the riot act to her, told her they were not real, and they were certainly no reason to be mean. I was cringing inside.  Pop didn't get it.  It was real to her, and after all, she was only ten.  He went outside to have a talk with the ex and explain that it wasn't right that she kept hitting her stepbrother--that's not how they had raised her.  After all, mom was an intervention counselor at a local school:  quieting trouble is what she does, and no one has ever faulted her parenting. 

That night, when all was quiet, I got up and did things with the elves. The really did a number in the dining room where the presents were, tping the room 'n' all, hanging from the chandeliers.  Also, reindeer elf pooped Hershey's kisses on the table. Poop poop poop. 

One day, she'll realize that it was me, but it certainly doesn't matter now.  And I didn't only do it for her;  I did it for her mother, too, who couldn't be there to make the magic happen.  I do all I can to make things good for all of us;  I bear her no ill will, I just--like most step parents--wish we could see her more, but my husband's brutal work schedule as a manager just doesn't allow for it. Not yet.  Our first married summer will soon be upon us, and I hope that our year will be inundated with events and the beauty of having our world rocked by his child's happy presence.  

Meanwhile, we have Christmas, and we have being asked to sit in the back seat of the car on the way home.  It's all good, peeps.  

Learning Chicken and Dumplings in the Dairy Section

MUHAHAHAHA!  It is time!  Time to open the Crock of Pot.  This was a gift from my mother-in-law who didn't quite know what to get me.  She said that my brother-in-law (The Everfantastic Brian) had told her about my existing Crockpot which was way little and had the knob broken off by one of the cats.  (Don't ask me how).  Now I have the Big Mamma one, the Serious Church-Goer one, with the snap-on lid that has room enough for at least three chickens.

Yesterday in the dairy section of Kroger (thank God we have a Kroger, we didn't have one in Gulfport and it was miserable) I met an old black lady named Dorothy who taught me--right then and there--how to make proper dumplins. I had told her I made the White Trash Way (bird singing, angels sighing) with canned biscuits, but I had been wanting to make them  by hand. 

Here's my current method:  boil your chicken (whole) until it's very well cooked.  You can add chicken bullion to the water for extra flavor.  Keep all of the stock--that fat is valuable.  Then roll out canned biscuits, roll them out, cut them up with a pizza cutter, and cook them in the stock. They cook up nice and flat, and taste wonderful.

Here is Dorothy's method:  flour, salt, and cooked in condensed milk with cream of chicken soup.  That I have to try.  So the chicken cooked down in the Crock Pot most of yesterday and I will be rolling out the dough tonight once I'm done.

I'm rather shy about blogging other people, but meeting Dorothy and her friends (they go shopping in threes) was a treat.  They taught me how to make instant chicken pot pies in a muffin tin and all sorts of little things.  They attend Beaver Creek Baptist Church.  It's all I can do not to go out on a Sunday and just sit and learn, to happenstance on a potluck--that would be glorious.  Sometimes I wonder if I should collect all I can about the cuisine of the Free State of Jones and let it roll.

I think that's what I'm going to do.

 

So you know you have a bad case of the domestics when you're this delighted to get a Crock Pot for Christmas.  My dear mother-in-law was told that my last Crock Pot (too tiny to cook a chicken) had a busted knob.  I had to ask my brother-in-law to turn it down when we went to get our wedding photos and he spilled the beans on my sad state of Crockpottery. 

Here, inronically, is a picture of me today. 

It's fate.  Stay tuned.

Subbing to Assistant to Certified: The Plan in Action

Subbing for eighth grade is not for the faint of heart.  I guarantee you I did not have this smile on my face the last two hours of school, and I most certainly did not by the time I got home.  It was a brutal day.  

I don't know why I took this pic, other than to send to my husband, whom I usually don't see all day long.  A habit that's a remnant of having spent a long time apart, where selfies were treasured immensely because that's all we had.  That and the phone, sometimes several hours a day.  

I am looking to become a middle school teacher.  Some folks think I am insane for aspiring to work with kids who can be exceptionally ungrateful for their opportunities to learn, but I feel that middle schoolers provide enough of a challenge to keep one on their toes. 

I am very well educated, I'm just not able to be a certified teacher--yet.  Yes, I do have a massive amount of writing behind me, but I've found the writing life is full of uncertainty and that--after about four years--got old.  Very.  I want to be able to make a life for me and my children without counting on the maybe jobs month after month year after year.  The type of freelance writing I do--technical and non-fiction--is non-existent where I live.  I am sure there are those that telecommute, but they have more experience than I and are highly specialized.  Freelancing is far more stressful--to me--than teaching school. 

I am hoping to become an assistant next year and segway into the assistant-to-teacher program through the University of Mississippi.  Substituting provides me a way of getting to know the administrators, other teachers, general atmosphere and students.  When a family situation needs to be taken care of, I can always answer my phone in the morning and say no--that's always good.  After two years of underemployment (which was a serious drag on the self-esteem) I am so grateful to be working it shows on my face.  

So wish me luck as I strive to become a middle school teacher making a difference.  Yes, I'd teach English, but I'll be happy with whatever they give me.  

Bring it on. 

A few weeks ago, I was up in the house when I got a phone call.  It was my soon-to-be husband asking me if I wanted to come down to the bottom of the yard to watch him light a fire.  You have to understand, we live up on a hill and our yard slopes away beneath us an acre between the house and the property line where we have an erstwhile stream.  Down in the beneath is the fire pile.

As we sat there, we had a discussion about life, and how things had turned for us.  He said something that enlightened and loosened me at the same time:  "I'm learning how to be happy again."  I nodded.  I knew what he meant.

Less than two years earlier, we had both watched our families disintegrate. After 13 years, he had told his ex-wife that it was over.  It was over, it'd been over for a while but had lingered on in a state of habit until his father died (by his own hand) and he could no longer try and please the acerbic discontentment that was spread his way.  The ex and their daughter now live 35 miles away which doesn't seem far until you're trying to manage a retail store and a 140 mile round-trip to pick up your child.  Sometimes she'll bring her over, but it's usually only once a month.  What are we to do?  Fuss?  Fight?  No, we regulate ourselves to the short time we have with his little girl and make the best of it.

Me?

Nothing made sense until I read this on Pinterest:  To the lobsters in the kitchen on the Titanic, it was a miracle.  I was a lobster on the Titanic--I just didn't know it.  I, like the passengers on that fair ship, hadn't a clue what was in store for them.  (Can lobsters survive in that part of the North Atlantic?  I doubt it, but it's a great saying all the same).

I suppose I should have known I was in trouble a long, long time ago and I had a hard hard time forgiving myself for not knowing so and lacking the judgement to have known he wasn't good for me or my children--in the end.

It was the dream job, it was a farce.  It was standing in a three room apartment bereft of my home and most of my things asking for money for groceries and being told there wasn't any.  It was the end.

And for nearly two and a half years--even as I approached my marriage with the love of my life (who had carried the torch for me for two and a half decades)--I was a crumbling sordid mess on the inside.  I would jump at the slightest provocation--I could *not* relax.  The smallest things about my life ceased to function, most notably my confidence and my sense of peace.  They were gone.  Obliterated. What hurt the most was my inability to believe in myself again, and my seeming lack of ability to support myself.  When you get divorced and you find you were Really Really Wrong about a person, it does something to your inner faith that you do know best.  And so many things are dead.

Your old life.
Your spouse.
Your joint holdings.
Your lifestyle.
Certain friendships.
Your idea of yourself.
Your trust in your judgement.

My mother-in-law couldn't believe that his ex--to whom his family has tried and tried to stay close to no avail--wanted to go and hear her divorce decree, to hear it in court.  "Your marriage," she told her, "was over two years ago. This is just a formality."  I disagreed.  I felt that no one--not a single one of us or anyone else--should tell her how to grieve complete or dissipate her marriage.  I knew this because no one could tell me.  My grief was hidden, not mine to display or subjugate other's feelings to.  Keeping it to myself was the healthiest thing for my new family and what we were trying to achieve:  moving on.

This great, gasping hole that the wind was constantly whistling through, unabated, was for time to fill. And sometimes it takes time to realize that yeah, you were in trouble.  Some guy with a white hat was moving over to your tank thinking it was your time to get a'boilin'.  And then, pow, howdy, your friend Fred starts screaming, "SWIM, FRANK, SWIM!" cause you happened to be a lobster named Frank. And you did.

When I could not hear my ex ask me a question without flinching in anticipation, when I felt my son deserved to have a life where his mother didn't have to be in fear coming home from the grocery store, when I asked my ex to leave the packing to me because I just couldn't take the ten thousand questions about my judgement, when he sold my things without my knowledge, when he lost mortage payments in the gambling houses of North Mississippi, when he got caught for fraud on eBay, when my fifteen-year-old had to explain to me that no, daddy wasn't a good man, he was watching porn downstairs on the big monitor in the den.

Well.  Someone was blind.  And no matter how much I enjoyed his company, I somehow missed that we were yelling at each other so loud that my son could hear it through the floor.

Now I have approached a situation that will put me in benefits and a permanent employ for quite possibly, the rest of my life.  I am lifted out my own personal hell of Not Knowing What to Do with my new life, and the two years of painful underemployment I experienced are over.  And I see not the loss, nor hear the whistling in the wind of this great loss--our family--I see something great, and moreover I feel it.

My husband is warm at night.  His family is warm all the time.  My son gets fatherly parenting he never experienced before.  His stepdad is a considerate and thoughtful man and although he is not perfect, gives a lot of thought to presents, approaches to discipline and the structure of our family life.  He is a family man if ever there was one, spending a good deal of his time at home and only occasionally going on nature hikes. This past week he presented my son with a fishing rod and tackle box.  As he is way into his games, I figured Aslan would hate this present, like getting clothes for Christmas.  Instead, he was awed.  He wanted to go fishing with his stepdad and stepsister.  Things in his life now--where the weren't before--are readily and steadfastly defined, and his stepfather does not passively allow him to pass through this life without engaging in nature.

So hold out through this mind-boggingly bad pain:  it will abate.  You'll see, somewhat painstakingly, that you made the right decision by moving on, no matter how painful it is, no matter how much you loved that marriage or that time together, you will find your way because even if you don't feel strong now you had the strength to leave.  Insanity is part of the grief.  Accept it.  Know that someday it will pass.  You're not going to be going to the supermart and suddenly feel that it's all passed and now you can have your shit together.  It doesn't work that way.

Be traumatized if you must.  Cry in private if you can, and don't try to move forward--you'll do that naturally in time.  SWIM FRED SWIM and get the hell out of the kitchen.  It was going down, anyway.

Just Plain Happy

First, look at this:

It's just all kinds of happy to see that sort of talent.  There's more. 

Called The Ugly Duckling. 

Have you ever seen such a good writing prompt as that last picture?  Not me.  Honestly, just adorable. 

All this happy stuff is a sign.  It's a sign that something changed. 

First of all, I'm posting.  It's because I think I should.  Because the days are happy. It's time to bury all the old things and move forward.  And it's time to stop rationalizing why I'm not posting.  Blogs are meant to be written, not waste away.  And besides.  The Man is handing my ass to me in numbers.  Just ain't write.

And look at my life:  

I have a kitten that is OBSESSED with bread.  Here is the little idiot stealing my bagel.  He was ripping it about with his head, flopping it like a dead mouse.  Three days before this, I picked up a box of Kentucky Fried bones I had on the couch to take to the huskies, only to discover the biscuit was missing.  Odd.  But then into the living room where the biscuit was EVERYWHERE.  That's right--bread fiend passed over the chicken. You bet your ass I'm going to get video.

Here's a rainbow two weeks ago when I was walking around the neighborhood.

 Here is a happy kid who thinks his new stepfather (pending) is the greatest dude alive.  He comes home with the best grades, citations for being good, and is brimming with The Happy at his school.  He was in agony back where we had to land after the divorce.  The teacher there would tell him he was going to fail in front of his whole class all the while telling me she couldn't do anything for him.  She was the first teacher in all the years my kids have been in school that I took exception to--after all, I was a K-8 major and a substitute teacher on and off--I have a good deal of understanding how hard it is.  But I would never treat a student like that.  And she shouldn't have either.  Everyone told me that Aslan was in a "good school."  I think they meant "lily white."  My son is in a classroom where he is a decided minority (one of two white kids) and is the happiest I have ever seen him.  Take that, racism. Take that, having spent a lifetime in Mississippi and being told Those People This and Those People That.

Here I am completing a sock for a Very Tall Man on 0's.  No pattern, seamless, toe up.  And I am working on the second one because I'm going to enter the pair into the fair and I am bloody going to win.  Cause there ain't much competition in this little neck of the woods, and I better get to knitting.

This is a view of my backyard.  My desk is just to the left of the frame.  I sit at my desk and watch this:

And despite the adjustments, despite the setbacks, despite not having a dream job, despite having been dealt certain blows, it's all good.  

And it's better when you decide just to let go and feel the good. 

Dear Robin,

The Mrs. Doubtfire stoop, August 12, 2014

How dare you, how dare you how dare you leave us.

When I was diagnosed ADD, your presence on the list of "famous people who also have crazy attention issues" always meant something to me.  The success--even though I knew of your demons--I've got mine, too--always imbued me with hope and a sense of pride.  Because you were allowed a venue for creativity, and you took it.  You seized it.  You let it go.  Even the greats--Jack Benny, Pryor, and the rest--were studies in structure.  You had no structure and it made it okay for me not to have one, either.  Because you knew what the rest of us knew--sometimes you just can't.  It is difficult to be in a world that wants you to fit in the structure, when you couldn't draw out a structure if you're life depended on it.  Like Einstein's Fish, had you been required to teach college or labeled in such a way or talked into Making a Decent Living, oh what, what would have done for the knowledge of my disorder?

For ADD is not something I would wish on my worst enemy.  It is difficult for those who do not have it to understand how emotionally eroding it can be to constantly struggle to remain on task.  The sink that overflows, the college loan notifications that were ignored unintentionally, the keys locked in the car, the strain on your loved one's patience when yet again, they have to tell you again and again.  The moments your mind goes completely blank.  The jobs lost.  The desire to numb the input of the world and just not deal.  Many's the time I should have finished a piece of writing where dammit, I just played Sim City.  It was easier.  I theorize ADD is why I'm a writer:  at least I can always see where I left off.  There is no cubicle in the world that would have me long. Not because I'm lazy, but in reality, how would we keep the job it came with?  Can anyone imagine you in a cubicle?

All those people, all our lives who told us, "What's wrong with you?" and we began to believe it.  How much did that play into your life?  I do not know.  I hope in the ensuing years we hear your take on it all.

For this reason, to me you were always this star in the firmament that glowed like Venus.  Venus is not a place you want to visit.  Like most ADD folks, I'm sure you were exhausting to live with at times.  I know I have been.  I am in my third marriage and I know that in at least the last marriage my ADD was a burden to us both.  I safeguard and change in subtle ways to make sure that my disorder doesn't disorder this life.  You knew how it was. Funny myself (not YOU funny, NOBODY was YOU funny) I knew people didn't understand how I could ever get down.  Very down.

On the morning you died, I woke having slept poorly and was usurped by anxiety.  There it was, sitting on my chest, saying that as an artist and a person, I would not succeed. But I pulled it together that afternoon.  It may be because I forced myself out of my funk into doing something creative and was working on a project for my new job (baking scones) when my man came into the kitchen with a really troubled look on his face.  I have known him twenty-five years, I know when something is Wrong.

And he told me.  And he told me.  And there you were, my secret harbored success, extinguished.  Having understood at least in part what the life of an ADD human existence is life, all I could say was, "It finally got him."  I wept because you were a professional comfort to me.  You were also adorable.

I suppose it stands to me and others like us to be grateful that you succeeded at all.  You know as well as I do that the only thing the world will give you for having ADHD is a pink slip.  There is so little understanding and acceptance, even within ourselves.  Our patience becomes raw, and it is easy--it is dreadfully easy--to despair.

That cup of coffee you microwaved eight times.  The swell of fury at someone who won't fucking stop unwrapping a peppermint in a movie theater.  The friends who just lose it on you because you weren't on time or forgot again.  The imagination that gets away and suddenly, you've spent time you couldn't afford on something that allowed you to escape the onslaught of data that sometimes is just too much.

I can say without a doubt you gave me a sharp poke in the eye with a stick.  Devastated is what everyone would be if I decided to let the despair overcome me at any given time.  The depression that plagues us ADHDers should not be neglected.  I myself will die a natural death.  I know other layers and events may have influenced whatever depression you battled and lost.  But I know the crippling emotions that the inattentive mind is prone to and the childhood infused with disapproval for your unusually creative and spastic mind.

I know the place you went.  I've been there--in 93 and 07, once with children, once without.  I know your friends will blame themselves for not seeing it, but no one can see inside it.  It is a deep underwater cave you feel you can navigate on your own, and cannot.  Man's first instinct, Robin, is self-preservation.  If a man's desire to die overcomes this instinct, then it is a place in which madness has had its full due.

My fiance's aunt had a neighbor who called her hysterical, yesterday afternoon.  His brother had just moved in after a diagnosis of ALS.  He committed suicide.  She herself has survived the suicide of her mother, her son (only twenty) and her brother, my husband's father.  And then you.  She posted about your death yesterday.  My future husband sat in the kitchen in our rocker and I placed my hand on his shoulder.  Suicide is always hard for him to hear.  Like his aunt, we live without understanding it.  We see the grandchildren he missed, the marriage we form that would have delighted him.  I know how your family would miss you. Only in madness would you have subjected them to such a loss.

I hope you are comfortable now where you are, and that everything is clear and bright.  For me you will never be one of those geniuses who struggled but was beset by the demons who finally won.  You will always be the ADHD person who succeeded, in spite of it all.  I still have faith in you.

Daddy

There are only two perks of living where I live:  the first are the birds.  Shorebirds, migratory path heaven, strays blown in from across the Gulf, the usual suspects who inhabit the South.  Then there is the selection at the grocery store.  It means at my local market--the one in the middle of nowhere, fifteen miles from the nearest Wal-Mart--Neeco's, carries all the Cajun brands of food.  There is lots of sausage, Chesi's ham in the deli, anything you can imagine with a fleur-de-li stamped on it--beer cozies, bird baths, shirts, tattoos on the workers--and any spice you need to make a Cajun anything.  There is a little packet rack that has a Cajun meatloaf that is to die for.  

So meeting me when I came in the door was a display of Zatarain's,

the dry kind, not the little bottle of liquid crab boil, which I highly recommend.  (You can buy an onion-shaped onion cooker for the microwave.  Cut the bottom and the top off an onion, peel, put on one tablespoon of butter and one capful of Zatarain's.  Microwave until done. Heaven).  I took a box.  I am leaving here soon, which means I will not be to my father's grave for a very long time.  I've only visited it once since I was here, since he is nothing but ash now and I feel that he is gone.  If he can hear me, then he can hear me from anywhere.  I am glad he has not been here the past two years, it would have been impossible to care for him and cope.

He died in the most terrible shape.  He was a diabetic who would not yield to his condition, and lived in absolute squalor after my  mother and he broke up.  But that is not important.

What is important is that while he lived--although he was a very easily stressed and angry man--he loved people and had a gift.  That gift was anything that was taken from the sea or garden, and transforming it into something people rhapsodized about.

Understand Cajun culture:  Those of Southern Louisiana are their own set of personnes, they are extremely open and will call you "Boo" a lot.  "Boo, how you doin!"  "Boo, I love yew!", it goes on and on and although Gulfport is on the periphery, we still call each other Boo.  They show up.  They show up.  At your door.  Uninvited.  In my father's case, with coolers and coolers of shrimp or crawdads they have just bought off the boat.  They were there to eat.  They were there because my dad was a miracle of sorts to them.  "No Mississippi boy's gonna know how to cook shrimp," the largest man carrying the cooler had said a few years before.

They would go to the carport, opening the gates that swung shut over it wide.  Daddy had a propane burner and a 50 gallon pot.  And into it would go bottles--bottles, mind you--of Tabasco, two or three eight ounce containers of cayenne, masses of uhn-yauns, (pick seafood, crab, crawdad, shrimp), red potatoes, corn, and my personal favorite, weenies.  (They are hot dogs everywhere else).  Out would come the ping-pong table (it was the seventies, after all) and the Times-Picayune, which they would use to cover the table and then eat.  And eat.  And eat.

He was always amused by that line about a Mississippi boy not being able to Cajun properly.  He was the best around, cooking for as many as five hundred at a time.  His education came by being a barge captain in Baton Rouge, in the remote bayous, where the elderly Cajuns would tell him--from their porches where he would ease up the barge and talk to them from the deck--and take their secrets back with him to the carport in New Orleans.

Thus was born my first lesson ever about food--or the one that I remembered--"Sue-Sue," my mother would say, "Do not touch your eyes when you eat."  I took this as the gospel, and there are pictures of me sitting on top of a ten gallon pot peeling and eating my own shrimp, much like the one above, Polaroid with a little date to one side, with my red-headed brother beside me at an antiqued yellowed table.

I had some frozen shrimp in the freezer tonight and I threw it into a pot with the Zatarain's, the remains of an very large onion, and a bit of corn on the cob I had in the fridge.  And there was supper.  I had turned on the stove hood, but then I realized, I wanted the whole house to fill with the smell.  And then I leaned over the pot and breathed the incense of my childhood, that smell, wafting up in the dark of the carport, the darkest sky, the friendliest voices, the best food, and a gift exercised and appreciated.

Years ago, a friend of mine named Greg--whom I respect a great deal theologically, he is a very dedicated Catholic--had to sit down and write a letter explaining why he thought his first marriage (with no children) failed.  He said it took him months, and it was for his annulment within the church.

I am nearly at the two year mark of leaving my ex-husband.  I am divorced, and since I am not Catholic, I do not have to seek an annulment.  I just have to be.

But being can be hard when the losses are profound.  I read a quote today that really stopped me in my tracks, and was exactly what I needed to hear.

                                            Forgive yourself for the blindness that put you in the path of those who                                                         betrayed you.  Sometimes a good heart doesn't see the bad.

Pinterest, if you're wondering.  No credit;  I wish there were.

And that's the thing.  My man and I were talking today, about how we were never right where some of our loved ones were concerned.  One of each of our parents made us feel like utter failures all the time.  And so did our spouses.  His directly in a critical way--his career, his hobbies and his habits--none of which bother me.  Mine, indirectly.

In the very beginning of the marriage--which by all accounts was extremely happy--I remember thinking to myself--he feels more like a parent than a partner.  As the years wore on, he talked to me more and more like a parent.  What did I contribute to this process?  It is hard to live with a spouse who has both ADHD and microsleep.  (The microsleeping is no longer a problem, and thus so the ADHD abets as well).  I was over-emotional.  I could never keep a job.  I was a self-perpetuating hurricane on a lot of the situations I was involved in, particularly work.  I just couldn't keep it together, and I had no idea the humility and insight I lacked into how the world worked.

So I'm sure that got old.  I also have a highly dysfunctional family, although it is down to just my mother.  This is a devout Christian who constantly tells me how I am doing things wrong.  I need a lesson on how to flush the toilet, I need to be told how to park the car in the yard, I am constantly at the mercy of schedule changes--additional errands--when we are out, and no matter how much I beg for her to please not do that to me, it never changes.  When I have spoke up about it in the past, I've been screamed at--literally--about how selfish I am.

I called to tell her I was going to pick up a lawnmower that she had offered to buy me.  She insisted on coming.  Then she wanted me to go with her to sign the papers to her new house.  Then lunch.  Then another errand.  And when the third one came around and I said, "I really need to get home," she refused to give me the lawnmower and screamed--screamed, literally--at me because I was being selfish.  Because I didn't want to go to the utility company.  Yesterday, I got told how evil I am that I always want to be "rescued" and put down those who love me poisoning other's minds against her and others.

This from the woman who interred my father and sent me pictures afterwards.


I thought it was life, you know, to have to pick up repeatedly and start over.  I had no understanding--until I was well, just about a year ago--what a solid career meant.  I graduated with a writing degree about four years ago in an age where you could write for online content mills and make--at least for me--enough money to keep going on.  I had a nice freelance job there for a while working for a pair of strange Scientology sisters.  (One was super-Vulcan but nice, and one was super-crazy and uptight).  When that ended, we made a move to Virginia, where I found out a few things:  I didn't love him anymore, I didn't have access to any money, and I hadn't enough to stay in Virginia on my own.

There was a time when I dumpster dived food early in our marriage, and was happy to do so.  I dumpster dived a lot of stuff, I really got into it.  The question is, should I have had to?  I didn't understand what it meant to have my own career, and I grew up with an underemployed father.  Daddy never would have accepted the things I had to do to make it in my marriage.  On my 41st birthday, I realized to my horror that I had to go buy groceries and hope the money was in our account. It was typical.

I don't need to expound on what else occurred.  I just know that hopefully, my son and I are moving on soon to a new life with a wonderful person who will never let us fall grovel for what we need nor will he ever extend my hand to my mother and take whatever I can get.


My son and I live in a rural setting, and we loathe it.  We live in a very nice double wide (truly, it is) that was let to us by a friend of my mother's, but we've had nothing but crazy neighbors to our left and rear, children that my son eventually could not play with because of their high dysfunction.  It is hard to endure;  he stays in his room and plays Minecraft a lot, with the only true advantage is he does know some really nice kids on there and his dad plays, too.  Since his dad is 984 miles away, this is a good thing.


Talk was essential in my last marriage, and there was a lot of it, especially on my part.  There was a lot of dreaming of travel, which involved either history or science or both, particularly "Wouldn't It Be Nice If We Could Go To The Smithsonian."  Air and Space, etc.

The other day my son and I were visiting our forthcoming town--my old hometown--where we are going to be living quite soon, at least 15 miles closer to a decent grocery store than we are now.  No more running to the Dollar General for every little thing and having to plot and scheme just to get into town.  Karate comes back--I get karate back, even if it's just once a week.  I do squats in preparation, and have started to stretch and do push-ups again.  I ask God for guidance and say, "Just get me in my gi, Lord."  We were sitting in a parking lot as I was disoriented as to how to get to the magnet school which we were applying to.  He was on the phone with his dad, asking for some cash later that afternoon in order to take a trip through Toys R Us on the way back home.  He said that they were going on vacation on July 12th and that my mother was probably coming with them.

We got into the magnet school. My son said it was one of the best days of his life--no more little Redneck school where he was ostracized.

Am I alone in feeling dismayed that there they go--my ex-husband and my entire family--my two children and my mother on the trip that was supposed to belong to us and not just them?  I'm whining and complaining in this post, and I probably shouldn't publish it.  It's too dark around the edges, it's still more of the same, really.

If my mother goes, my daughter will have an escape hatch for her anxiety.  Her dad made her feel--like me--completely helpless in his mistakes, and being with my mom will mean she has options.  Being around him makes her crazy, but most things stress her out greatly because of the stress she had to endure in our leaving and in--quite honestly--a mother who fell apart afterwards.  She's also got a seven year gap between her and her brother and they won't be interested in doing the same things.  She lives with my mother because she no longer could be civil to her brother, for whatever reasons--probably because she had to step in as a parent in so many circumstances while I was waiting tables or doing whatever I could to make ends meet.

But part of me feels like my heart's been pulled underwater.  I will be with my future husband by this time, we will be forming a step family, and it will be immensely better for us financially and emotionally.  But come July, I hope that whatever grace God provides to the broken hearted coats me protectively.

Who knew, really, what would become of the baby in the basket when it was let downstream?  The Nile lead past many a temple, many a person, many a priest.  Would that baby land among the kind?  There was no way to know, was there?

And we are in a basket of linen and rush, pitched, and in the hands of God.  And sometimes we just have to go with it, to lay there and float.

Dear Future Husband,

You know how I'd much rather be pinning than writing Ye Olde Screenplays, or editing, or furthering my career by Tweeting or blogging, but I had to make an exception when I saw this pin.

I want you to know that after twenty-five years of knowing you and having been through not one but unfortunately two marriages before I Figured Out It Was You The Whole Damn Time, that I do not expect you to stop your job, spend the money, or plan to take a picture of The Moment.

Because between those last two, we had 33 years of marriage between us.  And we didn't get it right.  Yeah, there was bad stuff that happened to both of us and we wound up not being with the right people.  But parts of us are wise enough to know there was enough happiness not to regret it, despite the heartbreak of separation and divorce.  Because it all costs, and happiness--especially for our parents--wasn't a reality and we know how special and rare even the good moments with the wrong person were.  We got great children out of it, if nothing else--and how can one discount all the years spent forming them?  And our ex's, although not good to us, are good parents, and that in itself is a blessing.

Mine, for example, is never late on child support.  And having walked away from his money and wound up a waitress, I became incredibly grateful for his financial consistency, particularly listening to other waitresses.  And that I had the strength to walk away from his income to protect my dignity and my kid's respect of me and therefore, themselves.

They are better off without fighting parents.

This gal that made this pin, she doesn't realize this yet.  She just wants a picture.  What she doesn't realize is that the real moments are when you can stand beside each other and wash the dishes. When the baby has colic and you can't even stand to be in the house.  When you have mean, unkind narcissistic parents who say and do terrible things and you just deal with it and your spouse just smiles.  Just smiles.  Just helps ease your pain.

She doesn't realize that this is an incredibly private moment and if she really needs someone there to photograph it to remember it, she's missing the point.

Our spoiled Instagram Tweeting world.  It isn't about the ring.  It isn't about the moment.  It's about the hardship and the refusal to be bitter.  Everyone gets a cross.  No exceptions.  Marital couples who bind themselves together in spite of it don't need a photographer, they just pick it up and move on up the hill.

I know one of us will pass in front of the other, naked as they came.  I know cancer, car accidents, unhappy teenagers, bad choices, lack of retirement, lack of vacation, lack of financial validation will come.  And it will go.  And I will be bonded to you as much as I ever was, if not more.

Don't bother with a photographer, just your hand will do.

The Great Carlisle Bird War

So let's just say that despite--deee-spite--the fact that I went to actual school to become an actual writer doing writer things--like, say, writing--I am the laziest writer I know.  Here is is the beginning of April, and I am just now adding the biggest running event in my life to my blog. It's known as The Great Carlisle Bird War.  Here I am back in--um--February--birding down in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.  (I don't have any idea how many birds I saw that day.) 

First, The Back Story.

I got married when I was 25 years and six days old.  Eighteen years and three weeks later, I found myself stranded in a strange town and thought, you know, if he's not willing to give me grocery money, then maybe I should vamoose.  Easier said than done, for sure.  Devastated and suffering from what would be months upon months of chronic anxiety, I vacated to the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where my mother was living. 

I didn't want to live in Southern Mississippi, per se, and I certainly didn't want to do it in the way I did.  But here I was, and in the beginning (and the middle, even) there were days that I just couldn't pull myself together:  the shock had been too great, the reset almost too much to process.  

The back back story is that a wonderful man re-emerged in my life, someone I had gone out with almost twenty-five years previously.  Things progressed, and one weekend when I was up at his house I suggested that he watch The Big Year with Steve Martin, Jack Black, and Owen Wilson. It's about a bird watching contest that is held every year by the American Birding Association, and boy, is it cutthroat competitive.  It's based on a seriously competitive year, 1997, where three guys (hence the three leads) vied for the top spot of America's best birder.  It works like this:

Spot as many species in North America as you possibly can.  

Have a metric ton of money to do so.

Give up all hope of having an actual life while you do so, cause it's hard to romance life with a $2,000 spotting scope constantly stuck up to your eye. 

It sounds dumb, but it's actually a Really Big Deal to spot the most species in North America.  You have everything from the Mexican border up, but no on Hawaii. You've got the Aleutians, and you should be satisfied with that.  From my understanding (and yes, feel free to correct me) there are 914 birds found in North America.  The record--according to the book the film is based on by Mark Obmascik--was 732 by a charismatic guy named Sandy Komito, a contractor out of New Jersey (See aforementioned Owen Wilson).  

After seeing the film, I get a phone call from The Man saying, "I got an idea."  He wants me, my mother, his brother (who looks spookily like Matt Damon) and himself to Big Year.  

Now I'm like, "So you have thirty years of birding, and Brian's got God Knows How Many, and mom's got at least twenty, but me, twenty minutes.  Sure." 

"What are you worried about?"  He says.  "You're on the coast."

Suddenly, it was like a whole layer of the world opened up for me. Birds were, I discovered, everywhere, and they presented not only a physical but intellectual challenge.  It gave me a great deal of comfort to distract myself with birding, and it still does.  

Still, I wasn't so sure about getting involved in a big year, even among the family because darn it, those two brothers and my mother collectively had about sixty years of birding on me. It could have been intimidating, but you know what?  Whatever. 

And, I am on the coast.  The Brothers Carlisle are inland 70 and 100 miles, respectively.  So I've got the drop, well, we've got the drop, meaning me and my mother, but that's a bit longer of a story. There are about 250 species that migrate through my neck of the woods, plus all those dadgum shorebirds.  (Guy at the gym this morning:  "Birding, huh?  Gulls are mean."  Me:  "Finding Nemo, man.")

So I proceed (with a pair of binocs he gave me) to bird.  I cruise around Barnes and Nobel looking for guides.  I smart up and get the Audobon app on my phone.  (Um, sorry, Green Mountain Digital, but I like Merlin better, but you know, only iPhone, and dudes, it's Cornell).  I start racking up the birds, despite seeing, "Unforutnately, Birds has stopped working" at least a half-dozen times on my phone every week. Still, worth every penny of $4.  It allows me to keep track of each species and has a very nifty sorting feature where you can choose from "Duck-like birds", "perching birds", etc., etc. 

ANYWAY--here's what you can see if you go birding here... herons perched in sunsets like this: 

SO MY MOTHER IS NUTS.  She won't appreciate me blogging this fact, but that be's the truth.  She is a family nurse practitioner and last year, sadly, she was widowed.  He was an awesome guy, and we miss him.  She's currently kept company by my teenage daughter who lives with her about a mile from the beach.  She's got a fine backyard and, um, the beach.  How many birds has she counted this year?

Zero.  Zeeeero.  She won't do it.  It's a lot of talk, including some real smack talk with the brother insomuch that she sent him this picture: 

She tortise, brother hare.

She said, "I've got 42 birds" or some such, and he said, "Her name is liar, for she is a liar."  To which she replied:  

Looking all innocent-like. It makes it hard being in a three-man race, so if you want to chastise her for her inability to write down bird names on a piece of paper, please do.  There were other people willing to take her place but nope.  "I'll do it!"

So anyway, there you have it.  I can blog a bit about what's occurred in between now and January, and it's all good... but as it stands (until this morning) I was in the lead at 84.  I'm tied with the brother and my man is catching up to me as well. I haven't seen him in about three weeks and we have a day trip planned on Friday to the National Mississippi Sand Hill Crane Wildlife Refuge where my guy--who has the quickest damn eyes in the freaking world (I drove with him over four days to Virginia. I would not be surprised if one day he pulls over, gets out, bends down, and comes back to the truck and says, "Roosevelt dime, 1954.") is going to hand my list to me on a plate with that cocky look he gets when he bests me--which he does quite a bit (or I wouldn't bother with him).

Meanwhile, I see that Green Mountain has updated their app.  Here is their selection on their website--they've expanded exponentially.  Before, they only had three apps available, now they even have selections such as "Central Park Birds" and "Rocky Mountain Nature" available.  

  I've downloaded the new app and will be checking it out when I go to bed tonight.  It has had its malfunctions, but it should be interesting to see the changes they've made.  If you use eBird, then you should give it a whir. 

So after a text this morning from the brother at 7 freaking 30 in the morning, it stands that we're all at about 84.  Stay tuned.