Author: Susan Wilson

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Resolved: No Resolutions

CREDIT: Sebastian Czapnik | Dreamstime.com

I love this time of year. I always think THIS is the year I’m going to make those curtains/win the lottery/paint the shutters/wear pants every day. It never is, but somehow this never bothers me that it’s not. I keep reading these articles about how Pinterest makes us horrible slatterns who never feel adequate because we haven’t actually made our own laundry detergent or have a perfectly labeled basket for every pair of socks. Well, I have made my own laundry detergent, and it sucked the color out of my clothes. I think if you’re the kind of person who must decant all dried spices into handmade Egyptian mud canisters decorated by service dogs, you’re pretty much going to feel inadequate without Pinterest and Martha Stewart.

Sebastian Czapnik | Dreamstime.com

My home style can best be described as “there appears to have been a struggle.” I love our home, despite the fact I still haven’t committed to rugs that didn’t come from Big Lots, and, for some reason, each room has approximately three desks. What I need is to find a pin that tells me how to turn desks into comfy chairs. Seriously, let me know if that exists.

We have recently acquired a dog solely for licking plates before they go into the dishwasher. We have a new washer that is the worst. Super Poodle is in charge of prewash because the new dishwasher doesn’t have enough water pressure to rinse broth out of a bowl. Plus it runs for like four hours. What is that? Four hours to run a wash, and I still have Cheetos dust on everything.

We have a corner of our den dedicated to junk to be burned in the fire pit. Every now and then I think we should have a better system than a pile, but then I get distracted by the new issue of Living and consider making my own leather purse with gold foil accents. Then I laugh hysterically at myself and turn clothesline into a “gallery wall” for my photos because I’m “too lazy” to go get frames. It’s a style I like to call Rustic Sloth.

If our homes are a reflection of ourselves, you can see from mine why my therapist sends me thank-you notes. Sometimes I want antique Swedish furniture and whitewashed walls. Other days, Danish modern makes sense. Early American is always nice, but I do love a good Chippendale sofa. The period I gravitate to most is Found in My In-Laws’ Basement. This look starts as soon as you walk in the front door and see where I have painted swatches of four different shades of coral I thought I wanted for the living room three years ago before I decided maybe blue would be better. I guess I could build a frame around the swatches and call it modern art.

This time of year I also always think I’m going to cook really interesting meals on Sundays and use the leftovers different ways the rest of the week. I love reading how these thrifty homesteading mommy bloggers in Utah buy one chicken and use it for a month. The reason I love it so much is that I get so tired from reading about all the prep, planning, and couponing that goes into the process, I get a really good nap in afterwards. Look, I love to cook for the most part, and I’m pretty good at it. But seriously? I don’t really need to take the fat from my pot roast and turn it into candles.

Speaking of reuse, I saw — no kidding — how to make a greenhouse out of plastic water bottles. The one thing I am not inspired to do this time of year is to make mirror frames from toilet paper rolls. I have seen how to make animals from dryer lint, turn old Converse high-tops into fingerless gloves, create a chandelier from plastic spoons, and turn old toothbrushes into bracelets.

No, I don’t ever get depressed because my house doesn’t belong in House Beautiful. It doesn’t bother me that I can’t make a single hamburger patty last 12 meals. I’m not even worried my pantry doesn’t hold an emergency stash of Greek brined anchovy eyeballs, magnolia-infused peppermint onion bitters, or Parmesan-crusted chocolate blue cheese wafers for spur-of-the-moment cocktail parties. I’m not even depressed because I never have spur-of-the-moment cocktail parties. Reading about insane Type A’s who drain their own salt-water backyard pond to source their own salt and recycle hair dryers into robot car ice melters makes me feel downright grounded and, dare I say, sane.

Now, you must excuse me. I’ve just found a recipe to turn cauliflower into beef Wellington and need to get it cooked and into labeled, single-serving containers in the freezer I made from old laundry baskets and dust bunnies.

Susan Wilson also writes for yeahandanotherthing.com and likethedew.com.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Wuz That … ?

CREDIT: GilbertC | Dreamstime.com

When my brother was a little guy, he’d look through the new Sears Wish Book and make his Christmas list. He didn’t write it down, it went more like, “I want everything on these two pages except that. That’s for girls.” As an adult, my list is just as easily made. I’d like to have the freedom of a toddler to run around and look adorable without pants as opposed to being asked to “leave quietly” because I’m “disturbing the other customers in the cheese shop.”

But I am nothing if not a giver, so as I begin making a list of presents I will not buy my family and friends this holiday and instead order something at the last minute from Amazon Prime because, hey, free shipping and no pants, I have also made a list of things I want to give my beloved Memphis. Understand, I’m not offering what you fancy types call “solutions.” This is pure slacktivism. I’m just saying what I want and leaving it up to people who actually know about stuff and how to do it. I’m a facilitator. The ideas guy, if you will.

GilbertC | Dreamstime.com

My first wish is that we find another name for the flyover. That’s what it is, not what it is to us. Your old beater in high school had a name, right? Mine was the Blue Booger. I have proposed to several people that we start calling it the Grinder. We’re the home of the Grindhouse, right? And don’t you grind your teeth into meal when you’re stuck at the junction? I got those sort of blank, polite looks like when a kid in church tells the nice lady next to him that morning his daddy stubbed his toe and screamed, “JESUS HORATIO CHRIST ON A RAFT!” Then, once I drove up it, I decided on the Tower of Terror. Y’all ridden that thing yet? It’s cool as all get out. Just don’t look down. But last night I decided that Memphis should never be without the Zippin Pippin, so we could call it that.

When driving along Winchester, my husband and I play a game I call Wuz That. Wuz that a Circuit City? Wuz that a grocery store? Thousands upon thousands of square feet of empty buildings just sit there. Meanwhile, a show called Memphis Beat was filmed in Louisiana. Work with me here. I’ll tie these things together. I think Memphis should be Movie City. I don’t pretend to understand the problem with giving the film industry the kind of breaks Georgia and Louisiana do, especially since we threw so much cash at another industry that upper management dances around with their tax credits making it rain in the boardroom. Those buildings could be soundstages, post-production, animation, craft services (we are a food city, after all), whatever. Memphis has a few tall buildings to be leapt in single bounds, swampy areas for battle, Rhodes College — especially in fall — looks like the perfect New England school where two awkward nerds can fall in love. Then there are those production facilities I was talking about where giant purple horses can battle blue lizards to colonize Des Moines and turn Americans into Ood-like creatures who wail to communicate. But I don’t want to give too much of my screenplay away.

Cars are on my list, too. Get off the pot and build a damn parking garage for the zoo. At least allow me a bus route there that doesn’t take me to Collierville first. My husband, being a budget- and environmentally-conscious fellow, wanted to commute by bus to work. The commute involves starting in East Memphis, making three turns, and going straight down Getwell a few miles. Most of his commute is a straight shot. Right past a bus terminal. The 8-mile commute takes about 15-20 minutes in the car. By bus? TWO HOURS AND TWO MINUTES. In fairness, there is another route to get him to work by 7:30 a.m. that only takes an hour and 52 minutes. I understand that a public transportation system won’t expand and improve if people don’t use it. I also understand that if it doesn’t expand and improve, people won’t use it. If the Greenline has taught us anything, it’s that if you build it, they will come. And please, for the love of Pete, hurry up and make those trolley tracks of use for something other than getting your bike tire stuck in them and breaking a collarbone. Unless a secret cabal of Memphis’ world-class orthopedic professionals are in cahoots with MATA to shift business their way. I’m all for revenue, and I like secret plans.

Also: Boscos must never ever never take the black bean and goat cheese tamale off the menu. I’m willing to trade renaming the flyover for that one.

Susan Wilson also writes for yeahandanotherthing.com and likethedew.com.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Which is Witch?

There is a great tradition of fist-shaking on this page. I haven’t engaged in that sport too much here. I thought I wanted to be “The Peppy One,” but that goes against every fiber of my being because, to quote Toby Ziegler, “There’s literally no one in the world I don’t hate.”

We’re now in a full-on, DEFCON 3-level election cycle, and I hate election cycles. I know a lot of y’all nutbags live for it. My mother is one of you people. I can’t get into election coverage since Tim Russert left us. It’s nothing against Nate Silver or Chuck Todd, mind you. It’s that no one can convey the unmitigated joy of a kid on Christmas morning like Tim Russert could on election nights.

Now all I think about when I see reporters standing in front of wall-sized iPads on election night is whether or not they got professional training for that from Vanna White. You put Vanna White in front of CNN’s giant wall, and I’d watch the hell out of it. Better yet, get Oprah. YOU GET AN ELECTORAL VOTE AND YOU GET AN ELECTORAL VOTE!

My other problem is witches. But isn’t everyone’s? I’ve started researching my family. I don’t know what happens to us as we approach middle age that we need to know that our 10th great-grandfather once slept in a tavern where George Washington slept, but there it is. I like looking at the wacky names. I’ve found an Experience, Shubael, Jephthah, and my favorite, an uncle named Snowy Drift. It turns out that my ninth great-grandfather and grandmother and their children were charged with witchcraft in Salem. He confessed, knowing that other people who had confessed hadn’t been executed. He recanted and apparently was hanged for lying. Talk about a swing and a miss.

I was looking at a sketch of where these people lived. They were piled on top of each other. Everything was so tiny and close. It’s no wonder gossip and syphilis spread quickly. Add to that property disputes, poor sanitation, and old-fashioned ignorance, it’s no surprise witchcraft charges infected the population like measles.

We’re not — in general — piled on top of each other like our ancestors were, but we’re still disgusting, snotty, leaky, social creatures like they were. And while we have Twitter to tell us that there’s some dude in Scranton who just had the best fish taco like ever, they had a community well to gather around to find out that Keziah and Mercy’s son might actually be Amos and Mercy’s.

In our time, when one mother is desperately trying to find a reason her child has autism and comes across an article saying vaccinating your child is the fiendish cause of everything from autism to scabies, and you shouldn’t trust the chemicals the government is pumping into our bodies, and THEY don’t want you to know the truth, word spreads through Facebook, and Instagram, and whatever app these crazy kids are using this week. It spreads just like the whooping cough she isn’t preventing her child from getting because natural immunity or something. It’s really no different than Patience eating a certain mold on bread with effects similar to an acid trip, and since no one knows about bacteria or acid trips, the logical conclusion is she made a pact with Satan.

The problem is we do know about acid trips and germs now, but yet we have candidates for national offices who love arguing against science and reason because they think the definition of a scientific theory is the same as when Uncle Elmer tells you he’s got a theory about how Bigfoot is actually a CIA agent who’s really good at his job, and that’s why he’ll never be found.

I rid myself of the Republicans in 2005, when Jeb Bush and his merry pranksters intervened by writing one state law, a federal relief bill, and spending untold amounts of money in court costs to cause a seven-year delay to remove the feeding tube of Terri Shiavo, who had tragically suffered major brain damage and was in a persistent vegetative state. It did not matter one whit what their opinion was. Republicans are not supposed to meddle in family decisions. Period.

I rid myself of the Democrats when their platform became one giant plank made from their fear of Republicans. Good God, Lemon. Stand for something. But in honesty, I appreciated Hillary’s reenactment of a decade’s worth of Ross and Rachel’s will-they-or-won’t-they seek the nomination.

I am absolutely bone-tired of dumb politicians. Call me crazy, but I kind of want the person with his or her finger on The Button to be smarter than I am. That’s not even setting the bar real high. I’d be happy if they knew Marcus Aurelius isn’t a question.

Susan Wilson also writes for yeahandanotherthing.com. She and her husband, Chuck, have lived here long enough to know that Midtown does not start at Highland.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Weresquirrel’s Concubine

I’m cheating on my library.

We had a little tiff. That’s not exactly why I’m cheating, but let me tell you what that skank did to me. I checked out too many e-books. I’m a fast reader, and sometimes I think I haven’t read a book, but it turns out I have. Sometimes I realize that I liked the book, so I finish it. Other times, I remember why I didn’t remember it and give up.

I am also guilty of judging books by their covers. The synopsis sounds so good, and I get into the book and realize it was the best part. There were a couple of nights I checked out and returned several books in a row, and the e-brarian cut me off. I have to go cold turkey on my library e-books for a few days. I can get real books, I know, but the main reason I went to e-books is that I like to read before I go to sleep, and if I accidentally fall asleep and bash my husband in the head with virtual War and Peace, it’s a lot less painful that bashing him in the head with the hardback version. I’m kidding, obviously. Why would I read the classics when there are so many new cross-genre gems like The Weresquirrel’s Concubine?

I have to be in Collierville some, and the library there is good for hanging out, but I’m a city girl. Not that I ever walk to the Central Library (I think about walking there, but I guess that’s not the same thing). Anyway, one of my favorite places to sit in the Central location is up on the fourth floor, especially when it’s rainy. It’s not so much for the stellar view — I sit where I can overlook East High School and the scrubby little strips of cellphone stores and nail places on Poplar. I just think it’s amazing there’s this big building full of books that could answer any question a person could have. AND THEY’RE FREE! They just GIVE them to you.

When the weather is extremely hot or cold, there are a lot of scruffy men draped across the pleather chairs. They always seem to be eating Hot Fries. Back in April, I was up there on a rainy morning. Several men were sitting around complaining about wives and trading work stories. I turned out that two of the men had worked for the city during the sanitation strike, but didn’t know each other. I tried not to act like a creep, but HISTORY! I had to listen in.

And that’s why I love the library and Memphis. I can look out over a high school that looks like something out of a John Hughes movie while listening to people talk about being there the last night of Dr. Martin Luther King’s life.

The library in Collierville has carpet that costs more than my house. I don’t know how new the place is, but it doesn’t smell like a library yet. You know the smell. Paper, mold, dust, the reference librarian who still wears Wind Song. This library smells like a hotel. But credit where credit’s due, the outlet situation there is superb. There are many places to plug in one’s computer. Of course, I usually seem to be the only person using a computer who doesn’t belong to the library. The downside is I don’t get to bond with a harried grad student when we make a deal to watch each other’s stuff while we go to the restroom.

I think I could just leave my stuff on the table at the Collierville library if I need to go. I’m generally the youngest person there by at least 15 years. If the old guy behind me wearing seersucker shorts and suspenders tried to make off with my laptop, I could take him down. I don’t want to brag or anything, but I could totally trip him with his own cane. And don’t think I wouldn’t do it. I have many important pictures of kittens cuddling with pandas downloaded on my laptop.

It’s nice to be able to spread out. I might even take a snack. I find every task more enjoyable when snacks are involved. It’s kind of lonely though. The people-watching situation is sub-par. The quiet is a real quiet. Not the quiet of kids just sprung from school and eager to check Facebook on library computers. It’s not the quiet like when I try not to yell because they keep moving the 300s and 700s. And everyone smells nice. I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with that.

Susan Wilson also writes for yeahandanotherthing.com and likethedew.com.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

There goes the neighborhood.

My husband found four shrubs and a palm tree by the side of the road. Well, it’s not really a palm. It’s some kind of giant fern with a weird hairy trunk. And it’s like four-feet tall, except now it’s dead. Or maybe it’s just resting, what do I know about plants?

Neighbors who own a lawn-care business left the carcasses of shrubs and other assorted flora in the Designated Trash Spot, which was the fence at the culvert. This was the best place in Memphis to find and leave stuff. My husband Chuck and his friend Alan once hauled out our busted washing machine, and by the time they’d finished a beer to reward themselves for the manly job they’d done, the sucker was gone. I once saw a Tory Burch-swathed middle-aged woman in a Mercedes sedan try to pick up two club chairs and put them in her trunk. It was like the Filene’s Basement of junk.

You might have noticed the past tense when describing my magical happy place. Some of our neighbors didn’t like the idea of people coming through the neighborhood and pillaging our hard-earned trash. Do you have the Nextdoor app? It’s the one where your neighborhood can post notices of garage sales or lost dogs. It’s also an excellent way to find out which of your neighbors are racist busybodies. In other words, it’s the worst. I had to mute all the alerts except for lost children and pets, because I couldn’t take anymore posts about someone seeing a black man driving a white panel van slowly down the street. Did anyone else see him? Did you get the license plate number? For the love of all that is holy, has anyone called Tillman Station yet? Maybe I’m naive, but I live in a neighborhood where many of the houses are being renovated by young couples. I see a white panel van moving slowly, I assume it’s a plumber looking for the correct address. But as I said, I’m probably being naive. Nextdoor is a great forum to passive aggressively shake your virtual fist at your neighbors who obviously don’t recycle because you never see the bin out and what kind of monster are they? Being the good neighbor he is, Chuck went with the mob, I mean neighborhood, decision not to use the area as an ersatz swap sale.

I will admit, it got a little ridiculous there for a while when someone dumped a truckload of red dirt and concrete blocks at the culvert. I really miss putting out boxes of books and seeing that they were gone by dinner. The street doesn’t actually look any better because now there are piles in everyone’s yards rather than two central locations, which only two of us could actually see from our homes. Also, it means that the scary outsiders stop at several houses to see if we’ve left anything good rather than one place, thereby increasing the time these trash thieves stay in our neighborhood. But I’m not allowed to talk about it anymore, because my husband says I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, which I’m totally not. I want ALL the molehills turned into one mountain.

I don’t know why these particular plants were put out to pasture. The four shrubs have been sitting in their pots in front of Chuck’s garden forming a nice hedgerow. But I’m Southern. I must decorate my porch in some fashion. Generally, I just stuck some leaves in a basket and called it a day. Recently, I had an epiphany and stuck a shrub in an ice cream freezer.

We have an old White Mountain ice cream freezer. You know the one: wooden bucket, loud motor. I really liked the bucket, so I stuck it at my front door and threw some greenery in it. It was very Pinterest. Then, of course, I let the greenery turn brown. You’ll know my house because there’s generally an ice cream freezer full of sticks adorning the front porch. Oh, and last spring a squirrel nested in it. So that was nifty.

But that particular morning, I looked at the black aucuba leaves that were once a jaunty mottled green and yellow and some crackly taupe Nandina and thought I should be embarrassed. I mean, I wasn’t. But I should have been. So I grabbed a shrub, threw out the nest, tossed my crunchy foliage, and now my porch is about a quarter of the way to being ready for a photo shoot for a really bad Southern Living knockoff. Now I’m just waiting for a really pissed-off squirrel to come banging on my door wanting to know why I thought I could evict him without proper legal notice.

Susan Wilson also writes for likethedew.com and yeahandanotherthing.com. While not Memphis natives, she and her husband Chuck Elliott have lived here long enough to know Midtown does not start at Highland.

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Opinion The Last Word

Gen X Marks the Spot

CREDIT: Raluca Tudor | Dreamstime.com

I am a Gen Xer. I’m neither proud of that nor defensive about it. It just happens to have been when I was born. I remember a time when AIDS was called GRID. Heck, I remember when Ayds was a chocolate diet pill. I remember when Tab used to have saccharin, Madonna had talent, Bob Geldof wasn’t a knight, and rock stars didn’t brag about sobriety. I was fully present for the Iran Hostage Crisis, the energy crisis, Gulf War One and Gulf War Two: Electric Boogaloo, and the L.A. riots.

And YET, many of my contemporaries seem to think we grew up next to Beaver Cleaver with mom in the kitchen, dad smoking away in his Packard, and a kooky neighbor who called kids scamps.

What happened here? True fact: Nine out of 10 Facebookers aged 40-55 will begin at least one post with, “Back in my day … ” Back in my day what? You had to walk to the video store instead of watching Netflix? Your choices of yogurt were either strawberry or blueberry? Your cellphone was the size of a suitcase?

According to every other post on Facebook, my generation never played in our school clothes, never interrupted adults, roamed the neighborhood like packs of wolves (okay, that one has merit), minded our P’s and Q’s, always did our homework neatly and promptly, and emptied chamber pots without being asked.

Raluca Tudor | Dreamstime.com

What fresh hell is that? Is the secondhand smoke finally kicking in? Is aspartame really killing our memory? We were the first latchkey generation. Our moms weren’t home baking cakes. They were out working to afford Guess jeans and Esprit sweatshirts for us. We grew up in cities, not Mayberry. We sprayed our hair stiff with Aqua Net, wore shoulder pads that made us look like the Razorback defensive line, and snuck our parents’ Winstons and Riunite Lambrusco. We played soccer, not kick the can. Get a grip, people. We had video games. We were the first gamers! We also had VCRs (except for that one family who had Betamax) and home computers.

What has happened here? Are we that frightened of our present we need to create a past which never existed for us except in reruns we watched on cable while we stuffed our faces with pizza rolls? JUST LIKE OUR KIDS DO NOW? I get that each generation wants to play Shut Up, You’ve Got It So Good You Just Don’t Know.

You know who got to play that game? My granny who was born in the 19th century. Not even my granny. Her youngest sister, who was the one who had to carry the lantern to light the way to the outhouse for all her older siblings. My grandfather who grew up in Hot Coffee, Mississippi, during the Depression and ate so much poke he had to dip rags in coal oil and tie them around his ankles to keep the cutworms from eating him. HE could play that game. What’s the worst thing we say to our kids? Back in my day, you had to get up to change the channel? HORRORS. As a friend said, nostalgia is a big fat liar.

It’s scary out there. I think as we get older and things get weirder, we want something familiar to hang on to. Because the thing is, now we have all the weirdness shoved in our faces through E!, Twitter, and CNN. The National Enquirer is downright quaint. The Dowager Countess asked Robert if he was in his pajamas when he showed up for dinner in one of those newfangled tuxedos. And Robert couldn’t fathom getting Rose — that crazy flapper — a wireless.

It’s this idea that the good old days were really good. I don’t want to go back to no air conditioning, no birth control pill, and separate but equal. It isn’t that I want to ignore history — quite the opposite. I don’t want to look at it through gauze and a haze of Giorgio. Besides, it seems very middle-aged to go all cranky neighbor on kids these days and their hippity-hop music and their bra straps showing. Things, by the way, my generation created. I suppose that since we didn’t have the early lives we wanted, we’ve recreated them through annoying memes. We went Walter Mitty on our past.

Now, we’re not as bad as Boomers. You guys are the WORST. Apparently, you weren’t out inventing AIDS and the Internet. No, you were slamming screen doors, baking pies, collecting snails, and generally not doing anything that contributed to global warming. You were all peace and love and pot rather than Reaganomics and Enron. Get a grip. There’s an app for that. I said, THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT. NO, NOT LIKE AN APPETIZER, MOM! I kid.

But really, you guys are the worst.

Susan Wilson also writes for likethedew.com and yeahandanotherthing.com. While not Memphis natives, she and her husband Chuck Elliott have lived here long enough to know Midtown does not start at Highland.

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Opinion The Last Word

Feeling Southern

CREDIT: Msheldrake | Dreamstime.com

Msheldrake | Dreamstime.com

banana pudding

I’m Southern. I mean, I’m Southern! I don’t have blood. My veins are filled with grits and butter. With the exception of a Norway-born great-grandfather, all branches of my family tree have lived in the Southern United States since at least the 18th century. Most since the 17th.

Am I proud of this? Sure, I guess. I didn’t have anything to do with where they decided to put down roots, but I suppose my decision to stay in the South is continuing a legacy that goes back just about as far as any American immigrant’s legacy can go.

Maybe y’all have heard about this here flag controversy? You know the one where we talk about a piece of fabric instead of focusing on the real issue? IT’S HATE!! NO, IT’S HERITAGE!! No, it’s a battle flag you’re talking about, most of the time, so unless you’re fixin’ to storm my rancher and take my Maw Maw’s silver and my six-pack of ramen noodles, I think that flag does not mean what you think it means.

I’ve been thinking about ways Southerners — of all shapes, colors, funny accents, and opinions on pimento cheese recipes — can celebrate our Southern heritage without use of a flag. For example, I think we can all agree that football was invented by God to make us happy. I think we can all agree that even if we don’t all believe in God, we understand the point I’m trying to get across and will not argue theology when we could use that energy arguing about who’s going to win the Egg Bowl.

A great thing about American Southerners is that we can find something in common with any other Southerner from any country. That’s something to be proud of. It generally involves food. We all tend to like spicy foods. I once worked with several women from different countries, but we were all “Southerners.” We decided to do a potluck where we would bring foods that we grew up on. I was at a slight disadvantage as two of the ladies did not eat pork. Do you know how hard it is to make ANYTHING a Mississippian ate growing up that doesn’t have at least some part of a pig in it? I made banana pudding. Southerners always have backup plans. That’s heritage right there, buddy ro. I have come up with a few other ways we can celebrate being Southern without being asshats about it.

Make sure all your dogs are under the front porch.

Drink more mint juleps.

Use the good silver and china at least once a week.

DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, TELL A YANKEE WHAT “BLESS YOUR HEART” REALLY MEANS. They may figure it out. It’s not your fault. They are wily foes.

Develop strong opinions on the proper way to make deviled eggs, pimento cheese, and bean salad.

Have at least two church cookbooks. (Extra points if they were passed down to you.)

Call fireflies “lightning bugs” like a civilized person.

Wear a seersucker suit.

Make a Jell-O salad with marshmallows and then give it away, because that stuff is rank.

Distinguish different generations with the same name by referring to them as “Big” or “Little.”

Keep at least three funeral casseroles or cakes in your freezer at all times.

Monogram anything that will sit still long enough.

Stop pressing buttons and start mashing them.

I think the best way to celebrate our heritage is to take advantage of our colorful way of speaking. Don’t hide your accent. Parade it around on the front porch. After I told my husband I was hungry enough to eat the ass outta low-flying duck, I asked friends for some other phrases we could use to celebrate our way with words. Butts figured prominently, as in “that ass looks like two raccoons fighting in a burlap sack” and “her butt’s lumpier than a bad batch of gravy.”

Our ways of saying someone is not very pretty are also awesome. Ugly as a mud fence. So homely she’d scare a freight train down a dirt road.

We all know people crazier than a sprayed cockroach or crazier than a sack of bees. We’ve all eaten fried chicken good enough to make you slap yer mama or make a puppy pull a freight train.

We have some amazing things to celebrate about the South. We are authors, painters, potters, actors, statesmen, educators, musicians. We’re storytellers. I think maybe that’s what gets us in trouble. When it’s our story, we tell it the way we want to. We’re more than a flag. Let’s start acting like it.

Susan Wilson also writes for yeahandanotherthing.com and likethedew.com and. She and her husband Chuck have lived here long enough to know that Midtown does not start at Highland.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Fashion Backward

CREDIT: Abelena | Dreamstime.com

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I haven’t watched morning news shows in several years, mainly because if I wanted to see two middle-aged women sitting around getting drunk, I’d invite a friend over. Also, there doesn’t seem to be any news anymore. Call me a stick-in-the-mud, but I like my morning news to tell me if we went to war with North Korea overnight or if Greece still exists. KIDDING! Seriously, the only reason I don’t watch all 17 hours of the Today show is because the TV is inconveniently located. If there’s an important news story, SVU will do a storyline about it within a few weeks.

Yesterday, I watched a feature on what to wear poolside. Now, admittedly, I might not have been the target audience for the piece. I don’t dress to be seen poolside. I dress to be invisible. The surest way to do this is to wear a swimsuit with a skirted bottom and have your coverup be something like a T-shirt from a 1991 SAE mixer. Or, in my case, any number of formerly-white peasant-style blouses covered in paint and live-bait stains and a nylon fishing hat from Eddie Bauer.

I no longer have the time or energy to stage a fashion show to get in a pool, and certainly not a lake, but I was intrigued by the feature, because the Style Expert they had on was costumed, and the first outfit they showed involved a blazer. Maybe “costumed” isn’t a fair term. She had on a little Pucci-inspired shift and giant white glasses on her head. She looked like what you’d want to look like poolside. She looked cool, pulled-together, color-coordinated. She looked like a woman who would not sweat while trying to haul four beach chairs, a cooler, and three toddlers down to the water’s edge. Obviously, I hated her immediately and watched the rest of the segment strictly to mock her.

So, shorts and a blazer poolside is a thing. Because you’ll be wearing a “pleat short” you won’t need jewelry, OBVIOUSLY. Jewelry with pleats? Sure, with pleated mom jeans! Okay, first? No. Second? A BLAZER? BY THE POOL? Admittedly, her reasoning was sound: You have the shorts as a swim coverup and then you toss on the blazer for — get this— what she calls “après pool.” Just like après ski. You know this because she says, “just like après ski.”

I don’t know what skiing has to do with being poolside in the Brooks Brothers Pool Bound Business Collection™, but I am out of the fashion loop. Nowhere was this more evident than in showing a great poolside outfit for pregnant gals. The model had on a cute maxi dress with an incredibly unfortunate print that looked like an abstract crayon resist done by an unmedicated ax murderer. The model wore a fabulous wide-brimmed sun hat. You know why? If you guessed to keep the sun off her face, you are so wrong you’re probably still wearing high-waisted sailor jeans from last summer. When you’re pregnant? No. When you “have a nice, beautiful belly to celebrate,” you’ll want to “counterbalance proportionally” with a hat. WHO KNEW? Also the maxi keeps you cool, because “it’s very breezy. It almost creates an internal whirlwind inside.” DUH.

They also showed a cute little strapless shift. I say “little” because it was from Banana Republic and their entrances are decorated with pressure-sensitive doormats, so if you weigh something ridiculous like a triple digit, this giant spring shoots up and catapults you over to the food court. But they give you a coupon to Auntie Anne’s, so there’s that.

I’m sure if I had to sit on the set and come up with three minutes worth of descriptions for swim coverups, I’d be a blithering idiot and come up with stupid phrases, but what is it with fashion people? You don’t wear pants, but a pant. It’s not a pair of shoes, it’s a statement shoe, and everything is set off by a smoky eye and a nude lip. This is why models are so thin. They’re trying to lose body parts so the descriptions are accurate. Damn you, fashionistas!

I was, however, inspired. I was at my favorite boutique (Target) yesterday, and I bought a maxi dress. I’m looking to create an internal whirlwind to keep me cool. I’m hoping my accountant will let me claim that Consumer Energy Efficiency tax credit for it. Also, I a maxi will cover my ankles, which tend to stay the size of watermelons from April to October. I am undaunted by the fact that my arms have seen neither tone nor tan since before Bill met Monica. I’ll celebrate a large, pale upper arm by counterbalancing with a chunky wedge sandal and a gimlet eye.

Susan Wilson also writes for likethedew.com and yeahandanotherthing.com. She and her husband Chuck have lived here long enough to know that Midtown does not start at Highland.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

This morning, someone must have secretly replaced my regular coffee with dark, sparkling I Don’t Give a Rat’s Ass Crystals. I do not know what has put me in such a lazy, apathetic
mood but, man, am I pissy. Not pissy in an “I will cut you” way. Just sort of “can’t get
going.” More like it’s a good thing I don’t have cable because I would totally sit in front of the telly and watch Lifetime movies
and home-renovation shows.

Today, I’ve been thinking about words. I am trying to embrace
adjectives. I have a fear of adjectives. I don’t want to overdescribe
something. I like to let my imagination take over. This is also why, in
a slightly unrelated note, I will not watch the new Where the Wild
Things Are movie. I don’t want Spike Jonze ruining my imagination
of what Max’s imaginings were.

There are, however, some words I want to send to the word graveyard.
Let’s begin:

She’s a great FRUGALISTA! She now shops at Banana Republic instead
of Jil Sander.

I’m late on the bandwagon with this, but I want to ban any made-up
word ending in “-ista”. Fashionista, Recessionista, Frugalista,
Barrista — any of them. My friend commented that this made me a
“Haterista,” a term I was fine with and then later abandoned on
principle.

We had a great STAYCATION at home!

I’ve been trying to get “staycation” banned for about a year now.
Much in the same way “sweet treats” skeeves me out, “staycation” makes
me want to punch someone. “Vacation” means that one does not work or go
to school. It does not necessarily mean one must pack up the kids and
visit a six-foot-tall rodent in Florida. One may still vacation at
home. One may still visit parts of one’s city on said vacation. It does
not need a stupid name.

Check out our ROBUST PLATFORM.

No, no, I will not. By the power of Grayskull, if one more software
company uses the term “robust,” I’m chucking the computer altogether
and going back to a calculator and walkie-talkies. Here’s the thing: If
I’m spending money on your software, I expect it to be robust. I expect
it to withstand pressure, virus, and Russian spammers. Telling me that
it is robust is like telling me that my raincoat is water-repellant.
Stop it. If coffee commercials could give up “robust,” so can you,
Platform Guy.

How can we INCENTIVIZE our workers?

I am so happy to be out of corporate life, if for no other reason
than I don’t have to hear corporate buzzwords. Decentralization,
cross-functional, transparency, blue-sky thinking, change management,
value-added (oooh, that one especially makes me want to vomit all over
the robust platform I got during an incentivization), and please,
PLEASE, could we stop with the “thinking outside the box”? THERE IS NO
BOX. This was kind of fun like, oh, 20 years ago, but get over it.

She’s a real COUGAR! She’s dating a guy 20 years younger!

Why, why, why must all references to women be cat-based? Hmmm? Why
is there no male-equivalent to this? You know what we call a man who
dates a much younger woman? Mick Jagger, that’s what. “Oooh, he’s such
a Mick Jagger” just doesn’t have the same tenor of scorn to it that
“cougar” does. I mean, one of the worst things you can call a man is a
bastard, and that’s not even anything he can control. So I guess when
men date younger women there’s nothing predatory about it? HA! I crack
myself up. Dude, having a crush on Andy Samburg does not make me a
cougar. Having a tail and eating elk I’ve stalked? That would make me a
cougar.

And speaking of cougars …

I love JUICY COUTURE!

This isn’t so much an overused phrase as it is a reflection of the
fact that I hate Juicy Couture clothing. Ladies — especially you
ladies my age: Please stop covering your ass in overpriced bath towels.
The fact that you’ve got “Juicy” written on your butt is an automatic
sign that it’s not, okay? Nothing says you’re crusty more than wearing
too-small terry warm-up suits designed by the wife of an ’80s hair-band
bassist. This has really bothered me for a while. You don’t look cute.
Your kids don’t look cute wearing “Juicy Toddler” or “Juicy Teen”
clothing. They look ridiculous. I don’t think you’d let them go around
in shirts proclaiming they’re “Fresh Jailbait,” would you? Maybe you
would.

Susan Wilson blogs at KittensFartingRainbows, where a version of this column first appeared.