Farmers Almanac

Drove highway 61 again today, along with a bit of Highway 3 and some of the 4. Went through Tunica, Little Texas, Askew, Sledge, Crenshaw, Sarah, and I think Hollywood (not in that order) Mississippi.

The ladies I lunched with were born and raised in Marvel, AR and Lambert, MS. When I say raised I mean they weathered some good seventy three plus years of living including kids, grandkids, foster kids, and great grandkids. One of them told me that when her son was not even a year old, a lady ‘cross the street told her how to get him off the bottle by waiting until the moon was working. You know, when its on its way to getting bigger until it’s full. “I waited until the moon was there – jus right and took the bottle out of his mouth and he never want one since. Even spit a pacifier out the next day.”

It’s all in the farmers almanac, including the best time to get your teeth pulled.

(from the Tunica Museum)

Good day for a drive through the Delta

There was a spirited conversation about the 9 mile an hour cuhshun police give you for speedin’ on a local radio station. I counted the times they said cushion and the number was eighteen. Like many northern-born know-nothings, I used to think a southern accent was undesirable but now, to my developed ears,  it sounds deelish - like melting time, candied pecans, and porch swings.

My Magic Words

My last post was a pimento premonition. Today I had lunch at Au Fond Farmtable with my darling friend Jaclyn and she ordered the pimento sandwich. She was already planning on it  (and she doesn’t read this crappy blog or know anything about my fascination with southern people like herself eating pimento cheese) when the woman in line in front of us insisted she order it. She was about to go into graphic detail about mayo ratios when the couple in front of her started in with a breathless endorsement for the cinnamon rolls. They started humping each other (new restaurants make people happy) to the rhythmic sounds of “buttered organic flour” and me and J were left to order on our own. 

And if I wasn’t already in enough of a reminiscing mood after the movie last night – I found out that Alex Chilton died today (Big Star also makes me think of my Detroit Glory Days/musical education – so does Black Label beer, smashed windows, and Newports). The night I moved to Memphis, me and B and a fella he was working on a project with – well now that I think about it the project was the Big Star box set – went to the Memphis Italian Festival and saw The Box Tops:

RIP Alex Chilton. I will miss being weirded out by your performances.

What’s With the Pimento Cheese?

It’s late and I am thinking about how I have found myself next to lunching ladies splitting a pimento cheese plate or nibbling on pimento cheese sandwiches more often than I would have expected. Of course with Pimento Cheese, comes the unexpected.

Speaking of cheese, I was in Bookstar the other night and the whole place smelled like re-hardening mozzarella trapped in cardboard. The store was crawling with an unusual amount of employees, all recognizable by their hunter green and burgundy polo shirts, standing on sit stools, squatting near journal racks, and crawling on all fours holding laser guns and producing the most epilepsy inducing cacophony of barcode beep beeps. It was depressing, knowing that there was pizza waiting for everyone after they were done with inventory, knowing that adults are rewarded with pizza for giving up their lives, for crawling on floors, for becoming numb to the beep beep, for tucking in their polo shirts, and for wearing kahkis – yes,  it’s heart wrenching.  I’ve been to more than a few of those pizza parties and I’ve since moved up a caste to boxed-lunches.

Other things this week: an unexpected Dixie Chicks Landslide sing-along, initiated by a dental assistant and shown up by my dentist, while giving me a filling (you can hear a lot over a dentist drill), Walgreens Walgreens – trying to come up with a sport or art  or sport-art project I can get Walgreens to sponsor me in, watching We Live in Public and being promptly creeped out, giving up clip-ons and getting my ears pierced, finding new place to live (complete with a mantle), seeing the White Stripes Rock Doc (featuring Canada) at the Studio on the Square and reminiscing about the Gold Dollar (just in case I am pressed for such information, I can use this site to reconstruct the good part of my twenties) and just trying to adjust to being a SXSW widow and training myself to function on less sleep and more pimento cheese.  If I have everything in place as planned, my body will be 43% pimento by summer.

Waffle Shop Yum

It’s been a busy week so until I can update I leave you only with the important information that The Calgary Waffle Shop is open for a few more weeks.

Back from Bucksnort (and Nashville)

Michigan Adrift

This piece made in my continuing education course, Enameling on Metal, is an accurate depiction of my life. I call it "Michigan Adrift".

Monday and March in the Same Day?

Today I talked with at least a half dozen people about how ohmygoodnesscanyoubelieveits March already. And like all conversations about weather, those conversations about time whizzing by and March sneaking up and spring being so late and Mondays coming faster than Fridays never get old for me. I cherish them in these long dark destitute days of Tennessee winter.

Time really did get away from me and I forgot to post highlights of my past week here.  To summarize a summary of what I need to catch up on: More Mississippi Love – particularly: Crenshaw Mississippi and Giant Dinosaurs in Marks Mississippi – happenings like: an unfunny workweek, an inappropriate student essay about swinging, and another attempt at winning a trazzler contest (well I have only tried once but I could really use a free plane ticket so favor/save my trip NOW) oh and, of course, the (late) personal discovery of Royce and Marilyn. Drunk, middle-to-old-aged women discussing fine music and elegance have long been my favorite source of entertainment and what I consider to be the aspirational version of my future self and pretty much the guiding factor of which I measure the progress of my life.

Also (meaning bullet-point summary):

• I love getting name tags and email addresses at the places I work. I like the emails that end in .edu - .org does not interest me, but anyway – thanks for the email addy.
• Driving into West Memphis from I-40 West reminds me of a stretch of the I-10 near Pomona, CA.
• I am going to keep my new phone even though TMobile had no reception in Williamsburg (Tmobile tower strength cannot penetrate irony) during my trip. I don’t think it will be a problem here and now that my coworker told me “you can’t return your phone! Ya got yourself a cute lil phone cover” I realize I have no argument. So call me.
• I enjoy realityshowreviews/fanfiction (thanks BB).