Everyone knows everything everyone else does small towns, although they live quite a distance apart.  One day, in my best redneck accent (I do voices quite well, and though it’s dead-on, you’ll rarely meet anyone who sounds as inbred as I do when I do it), I quipped, “By God, you could fart at one end o’ th’ county and by the time ya git to th’ other end, ever’body knows what it smelt like!”
     They died laughing, although they didn’t like that I said “fart.”

     Good thing they don’t hear some of the other words I say on a regular basis…

     One of the things I’ve always known is that there are many factions in small towns.  There are people who it’s okay to talk to, and there are people who it’s not.  That’s kind can get tricky, because quite honestly, I talk to everybody and don’t care about that kind of stuff.  Generally, people don’t bother to get upset with me about it, because I’m a “nice guy.”
     One of the unique things, tho, is the constant use of the archaic word “queer” to describe these people you’re not supposed to talk to or “watch out” for. Although, it has nothing to do with someone’s sexual preference, and is pronounced quite differently…  
     One day, I asked, “Quare?  How ya spell ‘at?  Like ‘square’ without the ‘s’?”
     This resulted in the age-old, universal, one-fingered gesture in my general direction.
     To which I replied, “Well, ain’t that mighty Christian of ya?!”

     Also good for a laugh.

     A couple of weeks ago, after hearing about how everyone in town was “queer,” someone asked me, “So, Mark, how ya like it here?”
     I said, “I dunno.  They’s too many quares.”
     “What?” they asked, shocked.
     “Yeah, by God, ever’body I talk to, they tell me, he’s quare, she’s quare, and by God, they even told me you was, too!”
     The blank look was priceless.

     Give it a minute, give it a minute… Yep, they died laughing.  😉

     Another incident happened when an elderly gentleman came up and said, “Oh, man, it’s a beautiful day!  I’m gonna home and work in my garden!  Do you have a garden, Mark?”
     “No, sir,” I replied.  Keeping a straight face, I added, “My girl won’t let me play with hoes.”
     One person who overheard the conversation cupped her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing.  It took him a minute to catch on.

     Now every time I see him, he laughs, and tells me, “Stay away from them hoes!”

     Another day, I was answering questions about some software when I leaned forward and hit my funny bone on the edge of the desk.  My uncontrollable reaction was to blurt out, “Motherf…” at which point, I caught myself and stopped the profanity midstream.
     She ignored it, and continued her explanation of the software issue without skipping a beat.
     I gave her the answer and showed her an alternative method to do what she was asking.
     She responded to the answer, and added, “And, by the way, I know that must have hurt.  But next time, just go ahead and finish the word because we all knew what you were thinking, anyway.”

     Laughter is always good medicine.

     And being just slightly off-color does tend to relax even the most uptight people.

     Older people, especially, seem to enjoy it even more…

Life is short…

So what am I supposed to do about it?

I think the answer can simply be summed up as: live happy, live right, and it will be easy to live your conscience.  Don’t let yourself get stressed out, it’s not worth the effort or the time it takes to do it. 

Praise your sons and daughters, friends and family, co-workers and bosses, when they do something well. If they go against the grain and they do poorly,  don’t be afraid to point out where they made a mistake. In the same token, don’t chastise them while you do it.  They are people too…

I know this is a little hippy for me but life is too short to stay mad and unhappy.  Joke them if they can’t take a…

I make my rounds down  at Blogger’s Landing on a daily basis. 

Here you’ll find all kinds of people.  You find folks who rant and rave, folks who have public service announcements, folks reflecting on life… you name it you’ll find it.  

I recently saw something that has been bugging the piss out of me.  I’m not going to make a daily stop at a particular page anymore because it is a major buzz kill to my joy and happiness factor.  And God knows, I don’t need anybody kicking me out of joy and happiness.  I won’t name any names, that wouldn’t be right.

This is just a public service announcement so that folks will realize that a blog that is used as a platform for a non-stop personal vendetta is extremely boring.

I’m not the victim of the below bunch of bullshit.  I’m not even sure I know who the victim of this blogger is, but I know for a long, long time this has been going on and frankly I’m bored as a monkey with no fucking trees to swing from with it all.  I don’t think I’ll be passing by her blog for tea and crumpets again because her style of writing makes me sad.

It’s a mean nasty person who is constantly stirring up crap with an people by constantly picking old wounds to keep them open.

I totally understand the occassional happening with an ex and it being something interesting or even just something a sister needs to vent about. Or a past ghost comes up and bites a brother in the ass…. makes for interesting reading and is perfectly acceptable. 

But, when someone makes it part of their daily routine to check up on and often write crap about someone, it’s sad.  These kind of people need to get a life.  A real life, not fantasy world. 

Whether whatever happened was right or wrong on either side, enough is enough.  The slamming of another person and constant degradation is boring to say the least.  I don’t think the person I’m referring to bothers to check my shit out, but if they do, I hope they are not infatuated enough with themselves not to realize this is a wake up call.  Knock it off. 

Get a fucking life, or not.  I don’t care either way. I’m a big girl and I can just stay away from your blogs.

     “Dude, you’re like Forrest Gump,” someone told me a few years ago.  “You should write a book!”
     It’s funny… For all my devil-may-care, seat-of-my-pants adventures — all the while incessantly telling people to “Quit planning and do it” — writing it all down was the one thing I never did.  I’ve always toyed with the idea, and even written a few chapters here and there, but never decided to go all out and do it.

     Mushy, on the other hand, did.

     Unfortunately, the plan is also to close up shop at Mushy’s Moochings, which, in a word, blows.  I love that blog, as it reminds me of why I decided to move back to East Tennessee — Mushy presents his various adventures and misadventures, and still manages to come off as “down to earth,” “good people.”  The best thing, of course, is that when you know him, you find that he actually is that person, and someone I’m proud to call a friend.

     Buy the book.  And while you’re at it, be sure and check out his work of fiction, as well.

     And, of course, check out his R-Rated humor blog, The Silverbacks.

     Congrats, Mushy. 🙂

Dr. Tony Lightens the Mood

I’m sure everybody knows that Tony’s mama got really, really, REALLY sick on the day we got married.  It is amazing, incredible even to see Ms. Pat now and how incredibly far she’s come along since that day. Had I known the day we got married, before I walked down the aisle, that she wasn’t there I’d have postponed the whole damn thing again (yah, yah Spanky, you’d have won the bet again).  But I didn’t know until I actually walked up to Tony and they played the first song in the ceremony that she was even sick.

By 4:30 that afternoon, Tony’s brother called and said that Tony needed to come to make Ms. Pat go to the hospital because she was “out of it” and really, really ill.  We made it to Methodist Medical Center, where they quickly found out she had suffered a life threatening aneurysm and needed to be transferred to Univeristy of Tennessee hospital immediately.  They did surgery and it honestly appeared that things weren’t going so well and the outlook was grim.

That was six weeks ago.  Today she is in EXCELLENT shape!  The first thing she got back was her since of humor.  When asked “Mom, how do you feel?”

She’d shoot back, “With my fingers.”

She is breathing and eating without any assistance from machines, which 6 weeks ago she could not have lived without..  Her right side is getting stronger and stronger by the day.  She has improved so much that she has been moved from UT to Patricia Neal Rehab Center where she’s walking with parallel bars and peddlin’ her ass off on the bikes.  GO MS. PAT!

So, we were there to visit her last night.  Tony keeps her laughin all the time, which is what she needs for sure.  Nobody needs to be sad and worried anymore!! She’s made it through the bad stuff already.

We walked into her room and Leacha is sitting on the end of the bed with her.  I took the real chair and Tony got to sit on the portable shitter.

“Damn, mom.” He says.  “If you’re not careful on this thing, you’ll shit on your shoes.”

It’s always so good to see her smile and laugh.

As it turns out, Ms. Pat had found out what all had happened to her in the last six weeks yesterday.  When we got there, Tony’s sis (Leacha) asked his mom to tell him what had happened. 

She looked at Leacha really sad, then over to him still really sad, like she was afraid she’d scare him if she told him.

“He already knows what happened, Mom.  He just wants to hear you tell him so he knows you know what happened.”  Leacha told her.

Ms. Pat looks over at Tony, still worried, “Well, they told me I had a brain aneurysm and that I was real sick.”

“Yah.  You were pretty serious, Mom.” Tony pets her arm.  “You know how that happened don’t you?”  He asked her all serious like.

“No.”  She tells him as we all sit and wait for his professional diagnosis.

“Well, it happens when people hold in their farts.” He explains.  “If ya don’t let it out, then it travels up and causes real problems.”

“That’s your son.”  Leacha tells her.

Ms. Pat laughed to hard to say anything back.

Thank God for Dr. Tony and his warped since of reality.