Stop the Heat!

It’s my annual summer rant! 

I am allowed one weather rant per season. And it sure is time for my summer heat rant. Are you kidding me. . .100-degrees plus!?! No!

Daily heat warnings from the U.S. Weather Service? No!

A heat index that makes one feel they are entering a sauna when leaving an AC building? No!

My greatest challenge during the day is to get from one air conditioned building to the next as quickly as possible. I’m walking much faster lately.

During this kind of Oklahoma summer, the most exercise I get is turning the page on the latest book I’m reading while sitting on the couch. I took on “To Kill a Mockingbird” again (for the fourth time) last week. Amazing author Harper Lee understood a southern summer. She relates how southern women, er, ladies, deal with a southern summer in Alabama– THREE baths a day.

“I can relate!” I told friends. They admitted to at least two cold showers a day, and sometimes more. My water bill has increased alarmingly.

To help ease the heat, I turned to John Grisham writing about fall in Mississippi. I’m much cooler now.

Wondering how other authors wrote about summer heat I searched the internet, which does not generate a lot of sweat, oops, that should be southern perspiration. 

First up, another one of my favorite authors, who has a bit of a hometown tie courtesy of grapes. That’s John Steinbeck.

He wrote, “What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”

Hum, maybe Mr. Steinbeck didn’t spend a summer in Sallisaw, OK, before writing “Grapes of Wrath.”

And there’s more authors, who are more to my point.

-Walter Winchell: “It’s a sure sign of summer if the chair gets up when you do.”

-James Dent: “A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken.”

Me: Exactly! I actually had a couple weeks of a perfect summer day, and no lawn mower, earlier this year. It was heaven.

-Anonymous: “Wow. I’m really enjoying this 100-degree plus weather, said no one, ever!”

-Anonymous: "I’m glad it is finally hot enough to complain about how hot it is.” NOT!

-Jane Austen: “What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.”

Me: Brilliant woman. She writes so well about sweating and heat-destressed hair!

-How hot is it?

- The cows are giving evaporated milk.

-The chickens are laying hard-boiled eggs.

-I saw a dog chasing a cat and they were both walking.

-Hot water now comes out of both taps.

Me: Unfortunately true at my house.

-You burn your hand just opening your car door.

Me: Again, unfortunately true in Sallisaw this summer.

-You can say 110 degrees without fainting.

Me: Yes, I faint in 110 degree heat. It’s downright embarrassing.

-You learn a seat belt makes a pretty good branding iron.

Me: Yep. Happened to me.

-The temperature falls below 95 degrees, and you feel a bit chilly.

Me: Not really.

-The four seasons are tolerable, hot, really hot and ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Me: And I’ve already said that.

OK. So it rained on us last week, and cooled off a bit as thunderstorms blew through. So it followed. . .

-Best observation of the day by Bob Hope: “If I’m on the golf course and lightning starts, I get inside fast. If God wants to play through, let Him!”

And then there is the final observation, which I noted many years ago, and still makes me a bit sad.

-“Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well.” George R.R. Martin

Yes, summer will end soon, the cooler fall weather will make us feel better, then the joys of the Christmas holidays will perk us up considerably. But after that, gloomy winter lurks, and we will be wishing it were summer again.

Having a Foxworthy Moment

One of my favorite Funny Filosophers was having a Jeff Foxworthy moment this week. He sent me the following Jeff Foxworthy quote:

“If your favorite kind of wine is Welch’s grape juice, you might be a Methodist.”

Oh wow. Did that remind me of my youth. Yep, I’m a Methodist. Mom raised me that way. And I was so excited at my first communion. At last, I was going to get to taste wine! I could hardly wait. We, of course, were a wine-less, liquor-less family. But my above normal curiosity really wanted to know what wine tasted like.

You may imagine my disappointment that it tasted just like Welch’s grape juice. That’s because it was Welch’s grape juice. Oh dang. Of course I wasn’t allowed to say “dang” way back then either.

So my Funny Filosopher’s shared Foxworthy quote kicked off a need for Foxworthy moments for me. I had to go find some of my own Foxworthy quotes.

Not many comedians can make me laugh out loud. Bob Hope could, but he’s dead. Tim Allen can, and still does. And Jeff Foxworthy is the other one. How he comes up with his one liners is a mystery to me. It’s a talent I envy.

So I just went to Foxworthy’s website and stole the following. I’ve been told that if it’s on the internet, it’s free.

Read on and enjoy.

“You might be a redneck if. . .

-you advertise on the inside walls of portable toilets.

-your financial planner told you to buy lottery tickets. (Me: Yep. My own decision.)

-you’ve ever written your resume on a cocktail napkin.

-you wake up in the morning already dressed for work.

-the stock market crashes and it doesn’t affect you one bit.

-you ask to open a savings account and the teller asks, ‘With what?’

-you carry a case of beer to your tax audit. (Me: Not in my Methodist family!)

-you don’t need a clean shirt to go to work.

-your wife’s job requires her to wear an orange vest.

-every job you’ve had paid daily.

-the biggest sign on your place of business says ‘Minnows.’ (Me: Well, actually. . .oh, never mind.)

-you made up your Social Security number.

-you list ‘beginner’s luck’ as a skill on a job application.

-the family business requires a lookout.

-you spend 40 hours a week at Walmart, but don’t work there. (Me: Hey. I have legitimate business at Walmart!)

-you see a sign that says, ‘Just say no to crack,’ and it reminds you to pull up your jeans.

-you wake up early but still get to work late.

-you sell rabbits out of your car. (Me: Well, no. But if those dang rabbits don’t get out of my strawberries I’ll be selling them out of the back yard.)

-you were late to work because a cow was lying in the middle of the road. (Me: It wasn’t a cow. It was a horse. And those folks needed my help!)

-you won’t work on Garth’s birthday. (Me: I actually know folks who won’t work on George Strait’s birthday.)

-your lifetime goal is to own your own fireworks stand.

-your business sign has three misspelled words

-your new job promotion means the company foots the bill to have your name sewn on your shirts. (Me: Hey, boss!)

-you think common stock is a pig owned by more than one person.

-the receptionist is responsible for checking the rat traps at your place of business.

-you’ve ever been paid in tomatoes.

-you’ve ever missed work because of chigger bites. (Me: That is a legitimate reason to miss work! Unless you want to see me scratching in all the wrong places!)

-your retirement plans include getting your own place. (Me: Well, of course!) and

-you’ve skipped work for a sidewalk sale. (Me: Again, well of course!)

You know, I know people who are certified rednecks, and they are a pretty good bunch of folks. I will admit to qualifying for about one in 10 of the above, and I’ve got to say, if I qualify, then I’m proud to be a redneck.

Thoughts on Senior Citizenship

My Senior Citizen Funny Filosophers are at it again. They love to email me wisdom of the ages, their ages. After all, they are so much older than me. Ha.

Read on and think about the days to come, in those Golden Years.

-I think more about running away now than I did as a kid. But by the time I put my teeth in, put my glasses on and find my keys, I forget where I’m going.

-I don’t need a personal trainer as much as I need someone to follow me around and slap unhealthy foods out of my hand.

-Why is it that the one who snores the loudest is always the first one to fall asleep?

-Calories are the little devils that get together at night and sneak into your closet to sew your clothes up tighter. My closet is infested with the little devils.

-The best thing about being older is I did all my stupid stuff when I was younger, before the Internet.

-Pardon me. My body is experiencing technical difficulties right now.

-Nothing makes you feel so old as having to scroll down, way down, to find your year of birth. I’ve often thought about stopping sooner.

-Words on motorcycle-themed T-shirt: Sons of Arthritis – Ibuprofen Chapter

-I’m not old. I just need some WD-40.

-When I get old I’m not going to sit around knitting. I’m going to be clicking my Life Alert button to see how many handsome firefighters show up.

-The sad part about getting old is you stay young on the inside but nobody can tell any more.

-Don’t be afraid of getting older. You will still do stupid stuff, you’ll just do it slower.

-I think people my age are much older than me.

-Two elderly gentlemen from a retirement center were sitting on a bench under a tree when one turns to the other and says: "Slim, I'm 83 years old now and I'm just full of aches and pains. I know you're about my age. How do you feel?"

Slim says, "I feel just like a newborn baby."

"Really! Like a newborn baby?"

"Yep. No hair, no teeth, and I think I just wet my pants." 

-I still get carded, when I ask for my Senior Citizen Discount.

-You know you are getting older when everything hurts, and what doesn’t hurt doesn’t work!

-Young at heart. Just slightly older in other places!

-At my age I have seen it all, done it all, heard it all. I just can’t remember it all.

-You know you are ready to retire when getting lucky means finding your car in the parking lot.

-Feeling old means looking at an old picture and wishing you could go back to that moment.

-Coming Soon! Large Type Alphabet Soup!

-Just once I would like to read a medication label that says: “Warning - May cause permanent weight loss, remove wrinkles and increase energy.”

-Inside every older person is a younger person who wants to know, “What the heck happened!”

Frizzy Hair Funnies

A couple of us – my office mates and I – have the frizzy hair funnies.

My hair, which has suddenly decided to go elsewhere now that I am of a certain age (and I’m not saying what age), is getting longer. I decided to let it grow longer when it decided to get thinner. I thought thinner and disappearing hair only happened to guys. Oh no. Ladies too it turns out.

OK. Then you are gonna’ grow I told hair. No, I am not planning a strange looking comb over like certain presidential candidates. I decided to let hair grow out because I didn’t want to get it cut every six weeks, because I’m tired of messing with a fancy hairdo, and because longer hair is now the IN hairdo for we senior women.

Consequently, my longer hair got fuzzy ends, and now I’m fighting frizzy. Hey. Frizzy is not an option. But my buddy Delanna has been fighting her frizzies all her life. Delanna has naturally curly hair, and a little humidity does amazing things to Delanna’s hair. Delanna’s hair may be the original frizzy hairstyle. 

On her recent vacation to humid Florida (from humid Oklahoma-go figure) Delanna complained loudly. Yes, Delanna’s head looked like an unsheared sheep. My ends just frizz up. So, in self-defense, I went looking for support on the internet. I found a few thoughts and philosophies that may help my friend’s and my own frizzies.

Read on:

-May we have a moment of silence for all those good hair days when no one saw us.

-Jeep hair. Don’t care.

-When your hair won’t listen to you, and it’s a mess and you’re like? So you tell your hair, ‘But I grew you myself. I gave you life. And this is how you treat me?’

-Having curly hair is like playing a guessing game where you don’t know what it’s going to do until it does it and the only way to fix it is to take another shower.

-Keep Calm. Moisturize. And detangle.

-Due to some circumstances, overnight conditioning can sometimes be too much. Causing limp, lifeless hair. (Oops. Been there, done that, and it’s true.)

-Only try new hairstyles on the weekend. That way if they go wrong, no one will notice.

-The average person sheds 60 to 100 strands of hair per day. (EEK!)

-Curly hair problems #588: When the only person who can cut your hair well moves way, you consider moving too.

-Curly Hair problem #792: How to sleep and lay down in weird positions so you won’t ruin your hair.

-Curly hair problem #398: Don’t worry about your curly hair being in place because it really doesn’t have a place.

-Thank you humidity. I always wanted to be The Lion King.

-You can’t control everything. Your curly hair was put on top of your head to remind you of that.

-Question: “Do you have naturally curly hair?” Answer: “Do you really think I do this on purpose?”

-Curly Hair Problem 921: Your hair grows out (width) before it grows down (length).

-I’d walk through fire for my best friend. Well, maybe not fire. That would be dangerous. Maybe I’d walk through a super humid room. Well, maybe not too humid because, you know, my HAIR! (Hope Delanna reads this.)

-They are not grey hairs. They are my wisdom highlights. (Yep!)

-My hair style today is called “I tried.”

-When your mom is mad at your dad, don’t let her brush your hair. (OW!)

-I miss being a kid. My only responsibilities were running around and laughing a lot. And someone else was in charge of my hair. (I remember those days. And I really can’t say that my mom did all that well.)

Well, I feel better. I’m gonna’ pin my hair up in a clip or stuff it in a ball cap and just let it frizz. Take that humidity!

How Do Court Reporters Keep Straight Faces?

I love it when my friends send me the funny stories they find online.

The following was submitted by a friend, who found it online in a book entitled, “Disorder in the Courts.”

The following were actually said in court, word for word, and taken down by court reporters. I laughed out loud. How the court reporters did not laugh out loud is the question of the day.

You, the reader, are allowed to laugh out loud. 

ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?

WITNESS: He said, 'Where am I, Cathy?'

ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?

WITNESS: My name is Susan!

_______________________________

ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?

WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.

____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: What is your date of birth?

WITNESS: July 18th.

ATTORNEY: What year?

WITNESS: Every year.

_____________________________________

ATTORNEY: How old is your son, the one living with you?

WITNESS: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can't remember which.

ATTORNEY: How long has he lived with you?

WITNESS: Forty-five years.

_________________________________

ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?

WITNESS: Yes.

ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?

WITNESS: I forget.

ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?

___________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?

WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?

____________________________________

ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the 20-year-old, how old is he?

WITNESS: He's 20, much like your IQ.

___________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?

WITNESS: Are you kidding me?

_________________________________________

ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?

WITNESS: Yes.

ATTORNEY: How many were boys?

WITNESS: None.

ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?

WITNESS: Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?

____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?

WITNESS: By death.

ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?

WITNESS: Take a guess.

___________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?

WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard

ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?

WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I'm going with male.

_____________________________________

ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?

WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.

______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?

WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.

_________________________________________

ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?

WITNESS: Oral...

_________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?

WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 PM

ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?

WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I finished.

____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?

WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question?

______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?

WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.

ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?

WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

I really, really, want to read this book!

I Did It!

I did it!

I did it! I grew a tomato! I’ve been trying to grow that tomato for three years and I finally did it!

Let me explain.

I grew up growing things. Mom and Dad, children of The Great Depression, insisted on it. I think that was because they didn’t have a lot to eat back in the 1930s. So our garden was about two acres big, and they grew everything we ate.

I must admit, I didn’t do a lot of the gardening. I thought it was extremely boring back then. Oh, occasionally I’d go out and help Dad weed. But sometimes I would pull up a seedling instead of a weedling, and Dad would send me back to the house. In truth, he loved gardening.

Mom just did the cooking, and she was good at it. To this day, it is hard for me to eat out because nothing compares to the veggies straight out of the garden and on to the table. I particularly liked Mom’s green beans, cooked all day long with a chunk of salt pork, and fresh sliced tomatoes on the side. I’m hungry already.

But, again, I must confess, how badly I embarrassed Mom one day. I was cutting up my broccoli, which I like, when I noticed a bit of off-color green. The more I sliced the more I wondered what I had on my plate. That’s when I told Mom, “This isn’t broccoli. It’s a worm.”

Oh boy, did I get the Mom stare. I said Mom was good at cooking. Didn’t say anything about her veggie scrubbing abilities.

Later on, as the mother of three and married to a back-to-the-land sort of fellow, we put in a large garden of our own. And that’s when I began to draw upon those childhood years in the garden with Dad. Between all five of us, we managed to raise some pretty good food. And that’s when I found out how I loved to can and freeze. I can put away some of the best frozen strawberries ever, and had a pickled beet recipe that was out of this world.

But families grow up and grow apart, and I gave up gardening. It was too much work, just for myself. And my grown children were not interested at all.

Then retirement happened.

Boring is too mild a word for retirement. Good grief I had to get out of the house and back in the dirt. I started out with flowers. Hey, veggie gardening for one hardly seems worth it. And those flowers were amazing. They gave me hope.

So I put a couple of tomato plants in pots. Hot house tomatoes don’t appeal to me at all. I don’t buy or eat hot house tomatoes. They don’t even taste like the tomatoes I grew up on. Unfortunately, my potted tomatoes didn’t seem to want to produce tomatoes either.

Then Darling Daughter came by one day and wanted to know what I was going to do with some leftover tomato plants. “Give them to you,” I offered. Hum. She took a tomato plant, stuck it out in the ground, and, believe it or not, that was the only plant that produced a tomato that year.

Good grief. What had I done wrong? Got to looking around, asking some questions. And yes, I did notice there was a lack of bees in my little garden. Tomato flowers require bees. I knew that much. And they must fly from flower to flower.

So this year I planted my two tomato plant with another plan in mind. I went armed with a cotton swab. Hey, if the bees didn’t show up to do the job, I could handle it myself. But I must confess, when I explained the purpose of that cotton swab to Granddaughter, I embarrassed her into a bright-red face. Yes, it all had to do with the Birds and the Bees. Really!

But, I got tomatoes. I got more than one tomato. I’ve got a bunch of tomatoes. Yippee! I’m back to gardening.

Now grown daughter and grown son are digging in the dirt themselves, and have their own tomato plants.

Wow. There is hope for the future.

The Fascinating ‘American Ninja Warriors’

“American Ninja Warrior” in Oklahoma City!?!

Wow! 

If I’d known I would have been there. Just found out this week when we received a press release from the governor’s office.

For those who don’t know about “America Nina Warrior,” the show is an obstacle course competition on NBC, and that originated in Japan. As part of its American format, different cities each season serve as hosts for city finals. Episodes of the show last season averaged more than 7 million viewers. It was the second-highest rated summer series on NBC last year. 

The show features mostly young men, a couple young women, and a few middle-agers who manage to qualify, all of whom are amazingly fit and buffed, and who must run what appears to be (at least to me) an insurmountable obstacle course. They must hang right side up, upside down and sideways, crawl over and under numerous obstacles that won’t stand still, then hop, skip, jump and nearly fly over things that bump and spin, and climb up a wall with no handholds or footholds. If a competitor misses any of the above, they drop into a big pool of water.

It’s amazing.

The “American Ninja Warrior” episodes in Oklahoma City are scheduled to air June 20 and Aug. 1.

I didn’t happen upon “American Ninja Warrior” until last year. The show fascinates me. I don’t know why. I’m a nerd. I like TV shows on PBS that feature critters, history, science, etc. “American Ninja Warrior” is way out of my interest box.

It’s like “Downton Abbey” on PBS. I, and the rest of America it seems, got fascinated by “Downton Abbey,” a show about England in the first 20 or so years of the 20th century. It featured a cast of characters depicting the rich and the poor. I tried hard to figure out why “Downton Abbey” was so attractive. I never figured it out. My great-great-great-great ancestors came from there, and I often wondered if I just wanted to know what they were up to before moving to the USA, before it was the USA. Now “Downton Abbey” is over. They quit while they were ahead.

And now it’s “American Ninja Warrior.” Why am I so fascinated? A quick check on the Internet reveals most of the guys watching the TV show believe they can “do that.”

Ha, ha, ha, ha. No, I can’t do that. I don’t even want to do that.

Some may detect I like to watch good looking young men, with lots of popping muscles, jump around, through and over things, looking like Tarzan, and wearing about the same amount of clothing. Well, maybe, just a little.

But there’s a whole lot more about these youngsters to admire. First, they set the goal. Then they work every fat cell in their body off training to reach that goal. Then they perform, most usually with great humility, and most fail. They splash down, then face an interviewer who wants to know “How do you feel?” now that you have failed. I’d be tempted to push the interviewer into that same pool of water I just had to climb out of on national TV.

These intelligent young (from my perspective) athletes have a grace I should work on to develop myself.

It is their determination, their dedication, and sometimes, their delight in making it through the course that fosters hope in all of us. And if they celebrate winning with a Tarzan-like yell, who can blame them. Do they fascinate me because they demonstrate that, if we work very hard at what we wish for, we can accomplish that goal?

I’d like to hope so. I am inspired.