If I don’t like it, I can walk away!

The story begins with a check we received in the mail.  A $15 check from a hospital that The Man was in over a year ago.  Just a check; nothing else.  It wasn’t worth trying to find out the source or the reason, so I stuck it in my purse to cash it for a little pocket change.  Of course, I forgot about it and got a bit panicky when I thought about it and realized it had been a couple of months since I received it.  Fearing there was some sort of expiration date, I whipped into the bank’s drive thru when, in the little town 13 miles from home, I was picking up The Man’s prescriptions.  I don’t use the bank much; I said I was going to close the account when my favorite officer retired, but as usual I had procrastinated.   Hurrying to the drive-in window, I stopped, turned he check over and signed my name to the back.  The  bank teller asked me for the last four of my Social saying, “Ms. McCoy I don’t think I’ve ever seen you here before.”  (I have only banked there since 1980.) After what I believed to be somewhat of a wait to cash a $15 check, she returned to the window to tell me that they were unable to cash the check because it was made out to The Man, yet I had signed it.  I protested, “We both sign on the account.”  “Sorry, Ms. McCoy, it’s policy.”  Of course, it was too late to just pull out of sight and sign The Man’s name, and I should have just looked at the front before I arrived.  I always sign his name anyway; he never wants to.  (So arrest me;  I don’t think he will testify.) I took the check back out of the little moving box and tore it into approximately 100 pieces and put it back in the little moving box and thanked them for the experience, telling them I completely understood policy and respected their need to follow it.

I pulled around to the front, went in and saw them all huddled together presumably talking about the crazy lady that just came through the drive thru.  Picture this scene:  the entire staff of women were in those Friday football jerseys for the local team – some pink, some gray, some green.  The only person in an office was browsing through a yearbook.  Saying, “You can stop talking about me now; I’m here”, I proceeded to the only teller that appeared to have that color thing worked out (She was in a gray spirit shirt.) and told her I wanted to close the account.  I explained that I had really intended to close the account anyway when my favorite bank officer had retired, so now was as good a time as any.  I could tell they had been well-trained in customer service when she told me that they could reassemble the check (I should have let them do that and then closed the account, but the old brain just doesn’t always think too swift.), deposit it in my account, then I could write a $15 check and get the money that way.  Clever, but too late at that point.  The teller than proceeded to tell me that I should really take that money in the form of a cashier’s check instead of cash. (She should never leave an opening like that.)  I explained that I had already had trouble cashing one check at their bank, so I really didn’t want to take any chances on another check.  Just cash please.

I hope I just made their day more interesting with something more to talk about instead of looking at yearbooks and worrying about the spirit shirt color for Friday night lights. Aww, you’re right; spirit shirt colors are more important.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=siW8MkUSo1s

Whoops! A red light

Dear People, (City of Fort Worth, Automated Red Light Enforcement)

It is plain to see that I ran that red light.  The worst part of the whole ordeal is that my granddaughter was in the car.  We had spent the day shopping for material to make doll clothes and she had said, “Oh Grannie, that light was red.”  Of course, it was too late.  I had desperately tried to get over, but being unfamiliar with the new roads, waited too long.  (No one was being too friendly.)

I do want to say this, ” I was sure the intersection was clear, but could not get even one more look up to check the light.”

So, to sum it all up – I am really sorry for breaking the red light rule.  Here is my punishment along with sending you the knowledge that my granddaughter (who was in a very tragic accident when a drunk driver hit her mother) will probably only remember that her Grannie Pam ran a red light and that, my friends, is a far worse punishment than the fine!

Love to All

The Words are impossible to hold back

Dear prior and future siblings in education.  Just a “touch base with you” sort of letter.  I felt very strongly about speaking to you about some strange happenings in the land of the “normal.” (Although I know that my quotations and period are correct, I still wish we could just step out there and move the quotes to the inside.) Stay on course you lazy retired teacher person that is up at 1:45 after an hour with “George and Gracie”.  (Oh I can see you correcting me if I was wrong this time.)  If you can’t tell by now, my style of writing is nothing short of the familiar stream of consciousness.  ANYWAY, I have found the perfect second life for all of us.  Teaching, (don’t run away) the once-a-week Sunday School class.  Churches are in need of teachers.  It’s only one time a week.  You have all week to prep. If any sweet little darlin’ gives you issues, you can send them to Mom or Dad (right down the hall) or tell them not to return (Wow, the ultimate definition of a bad kid.) Add all that up; then, throw this gasoline on the fire – the class only lasts an hour.  It can run over,  but never more than two hours tops.  O.K, now get ready for the piece de resistance. (for you Dr. Tracey) You get paid just as much as you have before – VERY LITTLE.  O.K., to be fair, just enough to enable you to keep on paying the electric company, gas company, phone company, grocery store, pharmacy, doctors, dentist, etc., etc., etc.  AND don’t forget that you can teach 3 year olds with the Kids Praise and just sing Do Lord for an hour.

Spastic tubes???? Plllleeeeaaaasssseeee help us!!

Health Experts Dismiss Assertions on Rape

By PAM BELLUCK

Published: August 20, 2012

Dr. John C. Willke, a general practitioner with obstetric training and a former president of the National Right to Life Committee, was an early proponent of this view, articulating it in a book originally published in 1985 and again in a 1999 article. He reiterated it in an interview Monday.

“This is a traumatic thing — she’s, shall we say, she’s uptight,” Dr. Willke said of a woman being raped, adding, “She is frightened, tight, and so on. And sperm, if deposited in her vagina, are less likely to be able to fertilize. The tubes are spastic.”

Leading experts on reproductive health, however, dismissed this logic.

“There are no words for this — it is just nuts,” said Dr. Michael Greene, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. David Grimes, a clinical professor in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Carolina, said, that “to suggest that there’s some biological reason why women couldn’t get pregnant during a rape is absurd.”

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/21/us/politics/rape-assertions-are-dismissed-by-health-experts.html?_r=1

 

 

What kind of underwear does a Southern Baptist wear? Not this kind!

It’s a good thing that my faith does not require certain kinds of underwear with little symbols on the boobs and knee and slits across the belly.  Who checks for those things anyway.  Is there an underwear policeman?  I’m having a hard time looking at Mitt and his perfect, good-looking family and imagining this underneath.  Will his white house staff be subject to morman missionaries?  The White House can be a new assignment request for young Mormons.  I really don’t see how evangelical Christians can vote for a Mormon or any other religion they describe as a cult. It appears to me that they must stay home or be labeled a hypocrite, but them one of their problems is how hypocritical they can be.

The Old People’s Olympics

I had to laugh.  My mom and I were having a discussion about all the things we could not do anymore.  It led to talking about what we did well.  With that in mind I would like to enter the Old People’s Olympics.  Here are a few of the events:

How many times you can pee during the night.

How fast can you get your cell phone out and get it answered.

An agility course for the various kinds of walkers.

These were just three that I thought of quickly.  Can you add to my list?

 

 

You need a rooster at your place?

After relocating to the thriving metropolis in Central Texas some 30 years ago, I decided to really immerse myself into the culture.  The first immersion was really just fortuitous.  Having to use the windmill for water, the need to learn simple repairs led me to try to purchase the “rubbers” for my windmill, when actually I needed “leathers.”  That’s an earlier blog.

Having met my closest neighbor, a lovely hard-working woman who had raised four children on her own after her husband had been accidentally killed by an electric shock.  They had a dairy, so she was left to run the dairy and raise the small children.  This she managed to do, and by the time I met her she was remarried to an old high school friend that had returned to the area from Dallas (a bit better off as the head of an electrical company) and made her life much more comfortable.

Neighbor lady had a relative that worked at a local college that experimented on animals to create hybrids.  They had developed a hybrid chicken that matured in four weeks to be able to butcher in a relative short period of time.  After they had completed their experimentation, they had these leftover chicks and she had access to them.  She asked me if I wanted any.

Well, since I had become such a great little farm lady, I quickly said sure (not realizing exactly what that meant).  The next morning, I found a box with 25 day old chicks on my front porch.  They were making an awful lot of noise cheep, cheep, cheeping and desperate to get out of that box.

I brought them in and sat they on a table.  The middle child was just toddling around and as I tried to figure what I was supposed to do next, he abruptly reached in the box and grabbed a handful, in both little chubby hands, of baby chicks.  Only two were squished before I was able to pry them out of his fat little fingers, and I quickly got them to the barn, got them enclosed, and got a light on them.  Adding the food and water made me think I had pretty much taken care of the baby chicks.

Well, all went well for several days, then as baby chicks tend to do, they began to grow.  Now remember, these were a hybrid that had been genetically altered to mature in four weeks and ready for butcher.

Four weeks came and each hen (and they were all hens) had begun laying eggs.  By this time, I had just turned them loose, and they had a chicken house for the laying and roosting.  Now of course, not all hens lay every day, but out of 24 it was not uncommon to have days with 17 to 20 eggs.  It began to become a bit of a problem what to do with that many eggs.  Remember, this was daily.  We ate eggs, the dogs, cats, and pigs ate eggs, and I began to wonder what my next step should be.  This is where having an experienced neighbor is so valuable.  Her question was, “Why don’t you just put some in the freezer?”  After receiving instructions (before google), I went home to prepare for the butchering.

I was a city kid.  They closest I had been to butchering any animal was purchasing the meat already packed in the grocery store.  Occasionally, I would see some large cuts of meat being whittled down in the back of the store, but certainly not enough to get the butchering certificate.

Now, elderly neighbor suggested wringing the neck or chopping it off, followed by plucking by hand as many feathers as possible, followed by dunking now dead chicken in boiling water in order to get he remainder of the pin feathers (very small feathers that are very gross if you see them or eat them after cooking chicken).  You can then freeze the entire chicken or cut it up before freezing.  Sounds simple enough doesn’t it?  These elderly farm people did it all the time for Sunday dinner, remember?  I don’t either.

Out I go to the barn.  I decided that I was incapable of wringing anything’s neck, so armed with an axe I set out to kill me some chickens.  I killed a couple, but no one told me that they kept running around after they had no heads, and to say the least this really spooked me.  I was convinced I was being chase, punished, or haunted by chicken spirits from millions of years past.  My other thoughts were that these hybrids were some sort of bionic, nuclear, radioactive, killer chickens.  Not a pleasant thought.

They finally went down, and I went about following the remainder of the instructions.  I managed to sort of complete four chickens.  There seemed to be a lot of leftover feathers.  I was covered in wet, stinking feathers and the barnyard resembled the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  This would not work.

After traumatizing the remaining 20 hens and having 4 pitiful looking dead chickens, I decided I would just go to the store to get my chicken.  It was a family tradition, but I still had a bunch of chickens, laying a bunch of eggs.

The next plan of attack was to allow the hens to set some of the eggs and hatch some babies.  (Wait for it.)  I was relaying my plan to the elderly neighbor when her obvious shock showed in the tone of her question, “You got a rooster out there?”  “Why no,” I replied, at which point the obvious dawned on me.  “Oh my gosh,” I stammered, turning beet red – no redder.  “Please, don’t tell anyone that I said that, ” I pleaded.  I knew what kind of idiot they would all thing I was.  Remember, I was the one that asked for the rubbers for the windmill.  “Well honey,” she slowly drawled, “You can let them hens set all they want, but without a rooster you won’t ever get any babies.”  She probably got her chuckle for the year or lifetime out of that one.

I know she got on that party line the minute I left her house.  It really was too good a story not to tell.

I pulled up to the little store in the little town several days later.  I was what was referred to as a “grass widow” (divorced) in their neck of the woods, and there was always lots of speculation about what I might be up to out in the country.  I saw as I put the car in park several of the old men in town, one of the old bachelors, standing on the porch.  When I was fully out of the car I heard the comment I had been dreading, “Hey, Mrs. I hear you need a rooster out at your place.”  I just ducked and plowed ahead.  After all, I was fast becoming the entertainment in a town with not much entertainment.

One of those on the porch was the Mr.

Even this was a new one for me

First off, I would like to report that I really enjoyed the confetti easter eggs that are around now.  The grandkids and I really enjoyed smashing them off of each others’ heads although I had a slight advantage in height. 

But, this Easter Sunday we had a first.  Our baby girls and her family visited as well as our middle son and his family and my mom, so we pretty much had a circus.  The youngest granddaughter, LD, is 3 years old and while her mother was doing some baking she evidently took a few RAW eggs and colored them with her hard-boiled ones.  I think my daughter knew, but just let her go on with her artistic side.  And how you might ask did we discover this?  Well, what were we doing with the confetti eggs!

One of the best easter egg hunts ever although I still don’t get the connection between Easter, Resurrection, Rabbits, and Hard-Boiled Artificially Dyed Eggs.

What holiday is next?? OMG it the DAYS – Mothers’, Fathers’, and anything else the card, flower and retail moguls can get us to buy into.

 

Mitt, Newt, Rick……….

It really bothers me to hear people disrespect the President by calling him Obama.  You should not call your teacher Jones or Smith or whatever.  You should not call your mother’s friends by their last name, “Hey, McCoy, can little Johnny come over to play.”  It just sounds slightly irreverent and mean.  Even if you  can’t refer to him as President Obama, then call him Mr. Obama.  Please, people let’s get back in the game with some sort of decorum.

And how about those names for the Republican candidates.  I am enjoying their names before the election.  Mitt, Newt, Rick…sounds like a frat house.  Short, easy to spell to fit the brain size, and cutesy for their momma to embarrass them with.

Just think of some of the nicknames from the past and present.  I know there are many more.

Buzz, Scooter, Butch, Buster, Skeeter, Goober, Mick, Mitt, Rick, Newt,  Corkey, Whitey, Slim, Chub.  See how they just fit right in with the tennis club?

I guess we must of been the lower class since we called my brother Bozo!!

The Mr. was very sick today.  I hope tomorrow is better.  He is a perfect example of nicknames gone crazy.  Named, what he though was Sidney McCoy Jr. at birth, for some reason when the doctor registered his birth at the courthouse he put on the birth certificate – Sid McCoy Jr.  Now there can be no Sid McCoy Jr. because there is no Sid McCoy Sr.  His dad is Ruben Sidney.  Anyway the Jr. stuck and to this day we use Sid for most things, but Sidney Jr. for income tax.  Then when he was a baby he earned the nickname of Chub (I know why this happened.) and then the nickname Chief.  He liked that one.  When he was playing baseball, they began to call him Rod and that stuck as well, so depending on who you are talking to you could call him one of several names.

He is weakening daily, and he hates that, and as a matter of fact so do I.  It’s hard to watch.  He’s sleeping next to me now and snoring away so I assume he’s resting comfortably.

Easter in an Islamic country

Many years ago, I went to Iran with my then 3-year-old first-born son.  I went to work for Bell International, but ended up working for the military because of the benefits.

When Easter came, the NCO club dyed 60 dozen (yes 60) hard-boiled eggs for an Easter egg hunt.  First off, let me forewarn you that I am not a holiday person.  I really don’t care for any of them.  They have become just too commercialized for me, plus they always involve a family crisis.  I think I might have liked them when I was young, but all the good feelings have long been shadowed by feelings of dread and forced smiles and relief when they are over.

Back then, however, I had a small child that was still excitable about those things, and I was a long way from home so I tried to compensate.  (I should have just quit all together when I had the opportunity.)  (O.K. maybe not. Maybe it’s just been a cynical day.)  Enough parenthesis.

We went to the egg hunt and of course my little darling found 63 eggs.  Now, that sounds like a lot, but when you think about 60 dozen…  

Of course the question immediately comes to mind, what do we do with 63 eggs?  Well, for those of you that don’t know, Iranians eat a lot of boiled eggs.  We like boiled eggs, but they eat A LOT of boiled eggs.  Most eat one or two for breakfast every day.  Knowing that, I thought it would be a good idea to give away as many of our boiled eggs as quickly as possible so they would not go to waste.  My son and I proudly carried a basket of several different colored boiled eggs downstairs to our landlord’s house.  They invited us in, and as I told the story of the Easter egg hunts (remember Islamic country; does not practice Jesus resurrection), I noticed they began looking toward the basket.  It was hard enough for them to understand how a rabbit brings boiled eggs for kids to hunt as some sort of significance to resurrection and Jesus, but when I handed them the basket their faces were shocked.  I couldn’t understand what that look was about until Mr. Shab asked me quite seriously, “How many different colors of chickens do you have?”

They would not eat the eggs, and he politely declined both my eggs and my explanation of egg hunting.