original banshee and i mugging on the sofa

MB has been taking 8 mm film of the family when we get together these days. It’s so wonderful, all grainy and shaky with emotion. It’s suggestive, not entirely illustrative, and that’s the beauty of it.

Below are some screen shots I took of his footage from back in March of this year. It’s Original Banshee and I just doing some basic goofing around. I don’t really remember what I was doing or saying but she was just laughing so hard. Her little hand over her mouth is just so cute to me.

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I love that girl.

“trusting god”

I’ve been recently perusing some of the emails we received when we had our FOC blog up last summer. Many people poured their hearts out to me which I found really touching, but even the ones who no longer attended a FOC church still spoke the “special language” of a FOCer and were still in the process of deprogramming themselves. Some of them were sweetly manipulative in asking me for access to this blog. One lady — who actually goes to Maybe Church — wrote me quite often and at one point said, “I’d really love access to your ‘real’ blog but I don’t want to ask. I’m just trusting God with that.”

She had been quite complimentary to me in the email and then followed it with that non-request request. It’s classic FOC. Butter ’em up to get what you want and for extra emphasis, throw God into the mix.

Uhm, peaches, here’s the thing: You were actually asking for access to this blog, there just wasn’t a question mark in your request. I’m all for trusting God, I am, but unless God appears to you in a burning bush to give you this blog’s URL, he’s not the one in charge of giving you that. I am. (Or, alternatively, I suppose you could ask Joe, since goes to your church and seemingly has this blog’s URL memorized.)

Assuming you wouldn’t do that, then yes, I’m the only one who could give that information to you. So why are you trusting God with that since I’m sure we can both agree he’s got more important things to do than to appear to you in a Starbucks cup announcing this blog’s URL?

Ohhh, wait a minute.

Could it really be that you’re trusting God to move my hard heart to give you the URL? That can’t be what you really mean, could it? But giving you this URL would totally defeat the purpose for having published a whole different blog elsewhere. It would make that decision seem irrational and, while I can be quite irrational, I’d rather not appear to be so if it can be easily avoided.

But that’s what you’re really doing: You’re trusting God to move my hard heart to give you the URL.

Well, it’s been over a year now, so good luck with that, Crackie.

I kind of hope God moves my hard heart to give you the URL in, oh, 23 years so you’ll look in your inbox and say, “What the hell is this?”

That would amuse me.

one of many reasons why i love cara

Here’s the thing about my dear and soon-to-be-married blog friend, Cara Ellison: She’s razor sharp but soft and silly too. It’s so endearing.

People who need to be the smartest person in the room, even if it’s the bathroom, bore me big time. They’re relentless in their need to show you up. They never relax. Their impressive (and boring) data banks are always “ON.” Big whoop, you know? So you’re smart. We get it. Here’s a Groucho nose. Wear it, okay?

The thing about Cara is she probably is the smartest person in most any room but she doesn’t need to prove it. She can be so silly and, personally, I just love that about her. She will go there with any premise. I mean, we’ve spit-balled zombie novels together, discussed if yard gnomes are sexy, done an hours-long sexorcism on a poor sexually repressed reader (with Sheila O’Malley), and just last week, she and I went down a crazy conversational rabbit hole on Facebook about a nutso bridesmaid dress she posted.

This one, to be exact:

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The whole conversation devolved into swapping endless Gone with the Wind references. We both went mad with it and, frankly, I wanna go mad with it all over again!

Here’s the conversation:

Annette: OMG. LMAO!

Cara: I know, right?! What kind of horrible bitch would force her friends to wear this? Besides me, I mean. : )

Annette: Aside from you…no one I’d know, for long anyway. 😉

Cara: LOL! It’s just so hideous. I can’t imagine anyone thinking that this is the perfect dress! So awful.

Tracey: OMG. It’s Hello Scarlett.

Cara: Hahah! It is! Maybe a nice pink bonnet will really complete the ensemble?

Tracey: Rhett would NEVER approve.

Tracey: And she’d end up slapping him. It would be kind of awesome, actually. You could write a whole short story just from this dress. I DEMAND YOU DO IT.

Cara: I shall never be without my pink Hello Kitty dress again!

Cara: I might have to now. It is so miraculously inspiring. I must know exactly what the creator was thinking when she brought this lovely article of couture into being.

Tracey: After all, tomorrow is another day with Hello Kitty!

Cara: “This Hello Kitty dress tis the only thing worth fightin’ for and dyin’ for, Katie Scarlet O’Hara, because it is the only thing that lasts.”

Tracey: “He went out and shot dat po’ Hello Kitty dress, and, for a minute, I thought he was gonna shoot himself.”

Tracey: “The only thing I’m afraid of is they won’t hang you in time to pay the taxes on my Hello Kitty dress!”

Tracey: I have a problem. I can’t stop.

Cara: OMG you win the internet! Please don’t stop, I’m laughing so hard.

Tracey: I am now actually imagining what the taxes would be on a Hello Kitty dress. At LEAST 300 dollars!

Jessica: There is a certain … something … about it that screams “whiskey and Ambien” for the bridesmaids lucky enough to wear it.

Cara: It has to be that much. Especially with all the sparklies.

Cara: GWTW is my favourite book and I’m suddenly drawing a blank on it – you’ve totally owned this meme.

Tracey: And now I’m imagining Scarlett showing up to that Yankee prison wearing this Hello Kitty dress and begging Rhett for the tax money. I seriously have a problem.

Tracey: It’s one of my favorite too. 😉

Cara: Jessica, I love that imagery!

Jessica: Well now I have a deranged Fushia O’Hara prancing around in my head thanks to you!

Cara: Tracey, oh yes, instead of the drapery dress, this would have been much more effective. Yet I do wonder if Scarlett was wearing it when the old foreman with his new wife (the loose woman) came to Tara if things might have gone better for her. She’d rip off a ruffle, fling it in his face, and say, “That’s all of my Hello Kitty dress you’ll ever see!”

Tracey: Hahahahahaha.

Cara: Careen: “I guess a things like a lady’s Hello Kitty dress isn’t important anymore…”

Cara: Sue Ellen: “She stole my Hello Kitty dress! It was mine, I was going to marry it, and she stole it from me!”

Tracey: HAHAHAHAHA! “What’s my little lamb gwoine wear?” Scarlett points to Hello Kitty dress. “Oh, no, you ain’t!!”

Cara: LOL! Omg, Yessss!!!!

Tracey: “What’s that rustling I hear, Mammy?” “Why, Mista Rhett, that’s jes the Hello Kitty dress you done got me.”

Cara: I was thinking about that one! You got it though. Damn, where is Sheila O’Malley? She needs to get in on this!

Tracey: Yes! We need our trio!

Cara: I love your mind, Miss Tracey. : )

Tracey: Ditto, my dear.

Cara: Why, if I tell my Hello Kitty dress that I love it, it won’t marry Melly!

Tracey: Hahahahaha!

Tracey: “I can’t go all my life waiting to catch you between Hello Kitty dresses.”

Tracey: I can’t stop giggling over how stupid this is. It’s out of my control.

Cara: OMG that last Rhett line is masterful! I know, it’s totally dumb but it is also awesome.

Tracey: I have now mentally replaced every fabulous Scarlett gown with this Hello Kitty dress. At the Wilkes’ barbeque — in Hello Kitty. Mourning at the Atlanta ball — in Hello Kitty. Going to Ashley’s party — in Hello Kitty.

Cara: Marrying Melly’s cousin (suddenly drawing a blank on his name), Hello Kitty dress.

Cara: Knitting with India and the other women: Hello Kitty dress.

Tracey: Charles Hamilton. Put HIM in a Hello Kitty dress.

Tracey: Opening scene of the book, on the porch with the twins … in a Hello Kitty dress.

Tracey: “Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by the charm of her Hello Kitty dress as the Tarleton twins were.”

Cara: Good lord. You’re beyond awesome.

Tracey: Or beyond help …..

Cara: We have a long history of Internet awesomeness. (I believe she is referring to our above-mentioned sexorcism of ’09. We need to do another one.)

Tracey: That we do, my friend. That we do. 😉

interviewing happy jack

Here’s a short video snippet I took of 18-month-old Banshee Boy — now known as Happy Jack — on Labor Day. I had just taught him the all-important life skill of whistling into a Sharpie lid.

You know, I’m so glad he’ll be able to share at my funeral about all the ways I changed his life.

I love his little “oh” at the end. Stay tuned for the last word of the video; it gives a hint at his real name, which we don’t mention here and still won’t. Also, I’m kind of laughing at the conversation in the background between my brother and sister-in-law about what to give Happy Jack to eat. He had a bit of a virus that was giving him troubles ….uh, down south …..so they were in a bit of a dither as to what to feed him. Haha.

Anyhoo …. for the curious …… and for those who love cuteness …… there he is. Oh, and my voice is there too. Bleah.

so ……

I’ve been sorta/kinda back on Facebook for a couple of months and I now have a pending friend request on FB from my mother-in-law. I’ve just been letting it languish in the upper left-hand corner where it’s been the little red flag of menace now for several days. She’s out of town so I know I can let it sit there ……. for now.

This can’t be good.

Can it?

I will now be forced to post only about my family all the time until she unfriends me in disgust.

You see, she shuts down and virtually pouts at any mention of my family or my nephews/nieces and takes our childless state very personally. (Uhm, guess what? Not about you, peaches.)

My sister, who is not on FB, said the other day, “Facebook just seems like another place to get in trouble with people.”

I think she’s probably right.

Ugh.