Foto Fiesta Friday . . .

I had a Tupperware Party.
This was my Tupperware Consultant.
Named : Dixie Longate.
It was not your Mama's Tupperware Party! It was a few years ago and everyone still talks about it to this day. Dixie's a dude. At the time he was the top selling Tupperware Consultant in the United States. I thought I'd share a few of my favorite photo's from that night.

Join in the fun at Candid Carrie's Foto Friday Fiesta!

"One time at Bible Camp" Part II will post this weekend.

The time I ended up at Bible Camp . . .

When I was in high school I belonged to the drama club - a club that lived up to it's named. One of the girl's in the drama club had a family cabin in the mountains. To unify the group we all took a trip up to this mountain retreat for a weekend of frolicking fun. Our chaperone's were two nuns and a male teacher who was the director of the drama club. The cast of characters included students from all grade levels and assorted levels of maturity.

I drove up to the mountains in a cool little maroon Corvair with a couple of the seniors. They had no idea I was there or they would have kicked me out. I hid in the back seat on the floor until we were well on our way and it was too late to get rid of me. The look on the driver's face when I popped up in her rear view mirror was priceless. She almost drove right off the side of a cliff. They spent the rest of the ride asking me what I had heard them talking about and made me pinkie swear not to tell any of their secrets. I didn't feel like walking 90 miles in the snow so I told them their secrets were safe with me.

We got to the cabin. Jumped out of our cars screaming with excitement. Had a snowball fight. Toasted marshmallows over the open flame on the kitchen stove with rusted wire coat hangers snatched from the musty hall closet. Burned 3 Jiffy Pop pans in the fireplace, told a couple ghost stories and then looked at the clock. Ten minutes had passed. We still had 935 hours to go.

The nuns turned in for the night. The poor male teacher pitched a tent in the cabin garage with a hibachi stove for his sole heating source and turned in for the night. The nuns would not allow a man to sleep in the house with all the girls. They had to protect our virtue. In a protective frenzy they locked him out and hid the key until morning when we all begged to see whether he had frozen solid in the night or survived. The odds of finding him frozen were 10 to 1. He was kind of a pansy. The nuns said a quick prayer as we unlocked the door.

He had survived the night wearing all of his clothes and burning a set of oars and some old wooden fishing poles. I collected a hundred dollars from all the naysayers who bet against him and slapped him some skin. It cracked the ice surrounding him. He thanked me and then asked if he could borrow some of the money to go into town and get a room at the local Inn. I told him we could double down if he could hang in there for one more night. He moaned and staggered to the fireplace to warm his frostbitten fingers dripping a trail of melting ice as he walked. His teeth chattered so loud we thought someone was knocking on the door. We quickly lost interest after we realized he was not such a pansy after all and looked at the clock. Only 852 hours to go.

to be continued . . .

Weigh down . . .

"Step on the scale."

The last time I visited the doctor's office I did not step on the scale immediately, instead I asked the nurse to "guess" my weight. She was not amused. I was.

For years I have dreaded the scale at the doctor's office. It is the first hurdle you must cross in what I like to call, "The Ultimate Humiliation Obstacle Course".

On prior visits I have worn the lightest clothing I owned, short of a swimsuit, or something equally less appropriate, in hopes that my weight on the doctor's scale matches the same weight on my scale at home. I have worn slip on shoes so I can kick them off before stepping on the scale. I have tossed my purse on the floor, contents falling every which way just to lose another ounce or two. I have blamed my bra and underwear for the extra pounds I see on the scale. I tell the nurse that my underwire bra is made from reinforced steel and weighs a ton so would she please deduct at least 10 pounds from the actual weight. I tell her my underwear is reinforced too. I tell her that it has some kind of titanium components woven into the fiber to keep it from riding up my rear end but the downside is that even though it feels light as a feather against my skin it weighs the same as a baby elephant. The nurse writes something on my chart. She raises her eyebrows at me. She says nothing. I try and peek over her clipboard. She flips it over.

I hop up and down on the scale. The weight on the digital readout fluctuates wildly. I laugh. The nurse does not. I stand on one foot, then the other. I touch my finger to my nose. I ask if this can be the balance portion of the humiliation chronicles. She flips the clipboard over and starts writing something on the bottom of my chart. I realize she left her sense of humor at home that day.

As she writes something down which - for all I know - could be another item on her grocery list I contemplate what it means to stand in the middle of the hallway on a scale feeling embarrassed whether I weigh as little as a super model or as much as a whale. It means nothing. This scale is not the true indicator of how much I actually weigh. The scale at home is. The scale I stand stark naked on in the privacy of my own bathroom with not a soul peering over my shoulder waiting to write a number on a chart. I am free. The weight has lifted. I smile. I reach down and grab my purse. I slip my shoes back on. I ask the nurse if she wants to join me on the scale just to see how high of a weight it can register. I no longer care what the scale says.

That day I left the office with one less thing weighing me down. And the next time I go to the doctor's I'm wearing my lead boots, my winter coat, my heaviest sweater, and ten pairs of pants. It doesn't really matter. *

*Note: I am aware that weight is an important factor in determining prescription dosage and other important medical issues. That is why I am fully prepared to hand over my driver's license in case the doctor cares to know my true weight. Everyone puts their true weight down on their driver's license right?

Foto Friday Fiesta . . .

"This is torture, at its most bizarre and terrible." - Batman

I'm almost positive Batman was talking about Walmart.

Where my son and I went last night.

We are brave and adventurous like that.

Another favorite foto . . . join in the fun at Candid Carrie's Foto Friday Fiesta.

When life was simple . . .

My mother kept all the important stuff from when I was a kid. Like this letter I wrote to her. She knew I would have a need for it. Like now. She was smart that way.

From the looks of it, I hadn't learned the correct form of letter writing yet. I also hadn't learned how to be very diplomatic either. Well, maybe a little. I started out thanking my mom for some gifts I apparently received. I remember the "Shoop-Shoop Hula Hoop". I don't remember the "hair like Beth". We had a neighbor named Beth. She had long flowing locks. I had a cropped pixie cut. Maybe I asked for hair like her. I don't remember what I got. Maybe a little kid's wig? I don't know.

Legend has it that my hair was unmanageable - so much so - that my nickname was, "Barb Wire Head". I have no idea why. I was bald as a billiard ball for quite some time and then when I did grow hair it was fairly normal looking as far as I can tell from old photos. It's just another tall tale and half truth from my childhood that I live with daily.

It appears that I was grasping at straws with this letter. I thanked my mom for "the bow on a lamb". We never owned a lamb. We lived in the suburbs. Owning farm animals was illegal. Maybe it was a cutlet frill from a rack of lamb. I do thank her for dinner so maybe that's what it was. Or maybe I was just making stuff up to confuse her.

I can look back in time and see myself sitting at my desk in my room, chewing on the end of a pencil, playing with my hair like Beth, admiring the bow on the lamb and twirling my hula hoop as my mind works furiously, trying to drum up any little thing I can be grateful for so I can get to the point. Reaching into the depths of my soul and pulling out my last desperate measure and writing down my last compliment before I requested that she remain nice to me until the day she dies.

I'd say that was a reasonable request. She had three other kids she could take her frustrations out on. She could bestow all her niceness on me. I was the third kid. The third girl. The last one in a line of girls before my brother was born. The one who made her laugh. The one who wrote letters asking her to do the impossible and believing she would. That was when life was simple . . .