Leigh Ann Northcutt

Archive For: My Personal Pandemonium

Food Network Television: A Review From My Couch

I have already mentioned that my husband likes to watch Iron Chef America, a one-hour cooking competition, on the Food Network. What you might not know is that there are about 200 episodes of Iron Chef America and we have watched 450 of them. At least it seems that way.

I have often wondered what draws my husband to the show. It isn’t an abundance of pretty women or even a little bit of comedy. And it definitely isn’t the amount of action involved . . . unless you consider using a knife to chop delicate herbs or julienne fresh vegetables to be action . . . and most men I know do not.

This week, I asked my husband why he likes the show. He said that when he watches Iron Chef America, he learns things he did not know before. If you know my husband, you know that makes sense.

In an act of spousal solidarity, I decided to pay attention as I watched the show and see if I learned things that I did not know. So while my husband was at work, I sat down on the couch with a diet coke to drink, a bowl of popcorn to eat and a fork to stab into my legs to keep myself awake.

I watched an entire episode of Iron Chef America. This is what I learned.

1) Liver, whether marinated through, herbed over, liquored up or salted down, is still a gelatinous blob of yuck.

2) No television commentator should be able to use the words “blood sausage” and “ice cream” in the same sentence and still collect a pay check.

3) The New York City power grids can heat Radio City Music Hall, light up Yankee Stadium, and power the NYC subway system or they can run the appliances on Iron Chef America.

4) There is a lot of liquor floating around in the Iron Chef America stadium. I’m just sayiing.

5) None of the professional iron chefs or their assistants, called sous-chefs, wear gloves on their hands while cooking. They evidently adhere to the wash your hands and go philosophy of culinary arts. That absolutely works for me as long as they also wash their hands after they “go”.

6) No woman wearing a shapeless chef’s jacket with steam on her glasses and chicken innards in her hair should smile into a video camera. But she should consider pilfering a bottle or two of the floating liquor because her chances for getting dates after the competitions are not looking good.

7) Men sweat a lot when they cook. I was amazed at how they dealt with that problem. Some of them dabbed it with their hand towels. Others of them smeared it on their aprons. The men with their hands full just wiped it with the sleeves of their jackets and let the excess fall into their sauces. From this, I learned that women must make adjustments when following a man’s recipe. We should either wrap men who cook in cellophane to keep their body fluids out of the food. Or we should add a little extra salt when we make their sauces.

8) Apparently, if you cook for Iron Chef America . . . and you take a gabunch of obscure culinary tools, use them one time and then strew them across every inch of your cabinet space . . .and you dirty enough pots and pans to fill a double bowl sink hole . . . and your culinary work area resembles a food fight battlefield . . .

And then you simply walk away when you finish cooking . . .

Without even looking back . . .

While you are gone . . .

KITCHEN FAIRIES SHOW UP TO CLEAN!!

THEY LEAVE THE WORK AREA SPOTLESS FOR THE NEXT COOKING EPISODE!!

Now that is something I could learn from Iron Chef America!

Who will tell me where to find those fairies?

Really! Who will tell me?

And are there laundry fairies that get the food stains out of your white, chefy shirts?

Or hygiene fairies that wash the smell of bacon from your hair?

Come on, guys, I really would like to know.

I won’t tell anyone your secrets. I promise.

It will be just between you and me . . . and my husband . . . and the other 12 people that watch the show.

One Hundred Pounds of Female Fearlessness

My mother’s birthday was a few days ago. She would be 74 if she were alive but she has been dead for almost 19 years. My youngest daughter, who also bears the middle name that my mother and I share, never met her. Neither of my daughters have many memories of my mother. But they learned fearlessness from her . . . because she taught it to me. I wrote this story recently to answer the prompt, “What did you learn from your mother?”.

The back door was open!

Although my great-aunt was certain she had closed and locked it when we left the house, the door stood wide open revealing the third cleanest kitchen in Kentucky, falling in line just behind my grandmother’s kitchen and the break room at the center for infectious diseases. We stood on the stoop, huddled in apprehension, discussing the situation as if it were our war room.

Aunt Sissy was sure the door had not swung open on its own. My grandmother suggested that perhaps her son had come home from work early and left it open. My great-aunt shook her head. His car was not in the driveway. And besides that, we could tell from the stoop that his coveralls were not on the floor, the door to the refrigerator was closed, and the room did not smell of dirty socks. No, my cousin was not home.

My grandmother began a list of questions. “Can you be mistaken about locking the door? Were you expecting anyone? Does anyone else have a key? Do you keep an extra key under the mat or somewhere else that is easy to find?”

“No! No! No one expected! No key under the mat!” With each of her negative responses, Aunt Sissy became more agitated. In desperation, she asked her own question. “Do you think an animal could have opened the door?”

My grandfather, God love him, was ever the voice of gentle reason. He quickly put his arm around his sister-in-law and said, “It’s not likely,” before the other adults could respond with more rational but less kind comments. Even I, as a child, wondered what my great-aunt was thinking. What kind of an animal could lift the mat and unlock the door with the key she insisted was not there?

As we stood on the stoop looking at the open door, each of us came to the same conclusion. Someone had entered the house uninvited. My great-aunt and grandmother cut loose with a barrage of other questions. “Who could it be? Do you think he is gone? Do you think he took anything? What if he is not gone? What if he is still in the house? What if he is dangerous?”

As my grandfather tried to insert a bit of reason into the discussion, my mother, who was five foot nothing and might have weighed 100 pounds in a hard rain, decided we had talked long enough. She walked around our circle of trepidation and through the open door.

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“But there’s a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got on your face. Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking. But behind all your stories is always your mother’s story, because hers is where yours begins.” Mitch Albom, For One More Day

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As I think about it now, I don’t remember why the door was actually open that day. I am not sure what my mother found in the house. I just remember she was not afraid. My mother was never afraid . . . not of open doors and dark rooms. . . not of thunder and strong winds . . . not of the world outside her house and the risks it held for her children.

My mother with my three oldest children

In a world where many of the women I know live behind locked doors with anxious eyes always looking to protect their children, I am thankful for my mother. I can stand in my home with no fear of being alone because I learned it from her. I can sit on my porch as a storm blows in and watch my kids run barefoot in the rain and raise their arms to Heaven to let the wind blow their shirts up because she did the same. I can leave my doors unlocked without worry and shake the hand of a stranger without misgivings because she taught me how to do it.

My mother gave me many things I have passed on to my daughters. Among them are the names we share and the recipe for the driest cornbread dressing ever to sit on a Thanksgiving table. When my daughters stand on the stoop of the unknown, I hope I also will have passed on my mother’s ability to walk through the world without fear.

I post on this website twice a month. To receive my humor and God thoughts directly, click on the link to the home page and subscribe to the website. My mother would want you to do that.

Nine in a Motor Home: Want to Talk About Road Rage?

I can tell the kind of day my husband had at work by what he watches on television when he gets home. A good day at his office means he will watch a drama with me. On a bad day, he needs to laugh. So our evening holds a lineup of half-hour comedies which requires mental activity no more challenging than the 20 seconds it takes to sing the Big Bang Theory theme song.

On the beyond-bad days, the days on which he wonders why he became an attorney and I wonder how many extra crowns God will give me for living with an attorney, he watches reality TV. Iron Chef America, Pawn Stars and The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross work for him on those days. He need not find the energy to laugh and all his mind has to do is remember to breathe.

He came home for lunch on a beyond-bad day this week and we watched Tiny House Nation on the FYI Network. On Tiny House Nation, hosts John and Zack travel the country helping families design and construct mini-houses of 300 square feet, give or take a patio the size of a Twister mat.

We watched as John walked us through one of their mini homes. (It was actually more of a shuffle. If he had picked up his feet, I feel sure his head would have scraped the ceiling.) The house was as cute as a smallish bug. Zach welcomed us into a spotless, new room that had been professionally decorated with an eye towards creative storage and pleasing colors. Even the basket of fruit by the sink matched the colors in the wallpaper . . . and took up half the counter space in the kitchen. Over Zack’s head was a small bedroom balcony. The bed was neatly made and adorned with cute, little pillows that drew your eye away from the closet which was just big enough to hold Barbie’s wardrobe.

My husband, who was having visions of quitting his job and selling everything that needs to be mowed, painted or super-glued, was enthralled with the mini house. As the credits scrolled, he looked at me and asked, “How would you like to live in a mini house?”

Casey and Peter as we drove. We all had a bit of road rage.

How would I like to live in a mini house?

Is the man crazy?

I have lived in a mini house. I have lived in a mini house with him. I have lived in a mini house with him, his parents and our five kids. As many as nine people in a 29 foot motor home, traveling across the country for weeks at a time, that’s the way we vacationed for 25 years.

Our mini house was not new or spotless and the fruit on our counter tended to attract ants. We slept on everything that would lie flat: two in the bed in the back room, two in the bed over the cab, brothers together on the pulled-out couch, a daughter on the table, a son on the floor and the baby in a laundry basket beside the garbage can.

We did have an abundance of creative storage space. We had clothes stored in every crevice with a door. We kept shoes in the shower, toys in the oven and guitars on either side of the bed in the back room. To get our clothes from the closet, we either had to crawl across the bed or send our most agile child to traverse the room balanced on the edge of a guitar case.

Living in the motor home did bring about an unusual amount of closeness in our family.

We were a well choreographed unit when getting ready in the morning. While one was doing what could only be done in the bathroom, the rest of us were adapting to what we had to work with. The one of us who needed an electrical outlet to help with grooming, sat on the bed, curling iron held between the knees, feet resting on a guitar, and threw toiletries to those who called for them: toothpaste to the one at the kitchen sink, hairbrush to the one primping before the reflection in the refrigerator door, deodorant to the one dressing in a prone position on the bed over the cab, baby wipes over the one tying shoes on the couch and into the hands of the one changing a diaper on the kitchen table.

I think, perhaps, that mini house is where we learned to hug so much. We had no choice but to stand side by side. We had to do something with our arms and hands. They might as well have been wrapped around the one standing next to us.

I must admit, we had great fun in that motor home. But, as the one in charge of preparing meals, finding clean underwear, retrieving stored items, breaking up sibling fights, and forcing children to take a bath . . . all while holding my tongue so my kids didn’t hear me vent inappropriately at the those d@#% guitar cases beside the bed, . . . I also experienced some high levels of stress.

Let me tell you what living in a mini house is like.

It always looks like a tornado rolled in the door . . . and then out again, realizing it could do no more damage than had already been done.

The bathroom always smells like urine. I am pretty sure that having grown accustomed to peeing together in larger bathrooms, the boys formed a line to pee around each other and into the mini latrine.

To get to the peanut butter, you have to unload the bread, chips, and cereal boxes, all the hostess crap you bought to keep your kids happy, the cans of healthy stuff that will never be eaten, and the chocolate you have hidden in back of the cabinet to get you through the day.

To get to the paper towel reserves, you have to move five people off the couch, wake the sleeping baby, lift the sofa seat, crawl into the storage compartment, and dig through pots and pans, grilling utensils, mosquito candles and mouse traps.

To change into your pajamas at the end of the day, you have to tie the bedroom door closed, crawl across the bed to pull the shades, hang upside down to pull your PJs from under the guitar cases, and make sure your kids don’t open the door and come face to naked face with emotional scarring.

Do I want to live in a mini house?

Not until senility sets in and I have no mind to lose.

But, I’m glad we took those trips when our kids were small. They were wonderful vacations. I would not have done them any other way. And, if I could tie the motor home back together with rubber bands and chewing gum strings, I would load up my much larger family and drive it one more time . . .

. . . to a lodge that would hold us all in stress-free comfort.

The campgrounds were always lots of fun.

Ben and Greg with the guitars.

Tessa in the laundry basket. Her bed for the trip.

Micah, Tessa and Ben on the bed in the back. Tessa traded beds a lot. No one wanted to sleep with her.

Peter and Tessa on the table bed.

On the road again.

Torn Between Two Santas

My husband thinks he is Santa Claus.

He thinks so through the whole Christmas season. Now, please don’t ask why; no one quite knows the reason. It could be that his job is too stressful. Or it could be, perhaps, that his problems are mental. But I think that the most likely reason of all… may be that his need for attention’s not small.

But, whatever the reason, his job or his head, he spends every Christmas as the big man in red.

All rhyming and reason aside . . .

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My husband with our oldest granddaughter

My husband really thinks he is Santa Claus.

With the coming of the Christmas season, he lets his beard grow and replaces his belt with a pair of red suspenders. He wears little, rectangular reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose. He sticks a pair of flannel antlers on a miniature horse, hooks the horse to a goat cart he made for one of our kids and rides down the road in his miniature, fake sleigh with one tiny, wannabe reindeer.

Although I made no vow to love, honor or pretend things with a crazed Christmas fanatic, I try to be a good wife, even in this. I bought my husband his own Santa suit. I keep the kitchen stocked with milk and cookies. And I let him use my hairbrush to fluff out his beard.

Christmas Eve in his imagination

I do admit that when dressed in his suit, with his eyes twinkling and his smile very merry, my husband makes a nice looking Santa. I had never known one better . . . until a few weeks ago.

I was standing in the children’s section of the local library, surrounded by Christmas books and stories, with carols playing softly in the air, when I heard a resounding, “Ho Ho Ho”. Warmed by the deep chuckle that followed, I turned.

And there he stood.

He was the best Santa I have ever seen.

He was dressed in the fur of a Super Deluxe Santa Suit, the kind with a long, Old-World jacket that gives its Santa a splash of class. His beard had not been brushed out into a nest for small vermin. It was well kept and neatly combed and I could find no sign of his breakfast clinging to any part of it. He was bright and cheerful, a rather jolly man. And I smiled when I saw him . . . in spite of the fact that I had another Santa rocking himself to sleep in the chair around my Christmas tree.

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Me with the other Santa

He spent time with every child, holding them in his lap and listening intently to each of their Christmas wishes. Then he turned invitingly to me.

I knew it was wrong. I should have firmly said, “No”.

But he was insistent and I couldn’t turn him down.

So, I did it.

There in the library, with my grandchildren and all the librarians watching, I cheated on my husband.

I sat on another Santa’s knee.

Keeping Christmas Past

They had to go.

It was decided.

They were going this year.

I had made up my mind.

This Christmas, they would be gone!

I opened the boxes with intention and determination, “I think I can. I think I can. I know I can. I know I will. I will get rid of all the shabby Christmas decorations that have been tacky-ing up my house for years!”

The elves, slightly creepy pixie dolls with no hands or feet that my husband and I bought 20 years ago when “cheap” made everything attractive, . . . they were outta here.

The Old World Santa who ditched the reindeer, chucked his sleigh and chose to travel through our Christmas decor in a metal steam boat, . . . I was sending him and his sorry excuse for enchanted transit to the Salvation Army.

The horribly mismatched stockings, the stuffed Santa bear that no longer plays music when you squeeze its paws, the Christmas potholders we use for coasters because they are so pitifully small, . . . they were all about to be replaced.

Even the faded and frayed Santa left from my childhood, whose plastic face falls off when he topples over was destined to disappear in a corner of the attic.

I pulled all those things out of our Christmas storage boxes. And I looked at them one last time.

That act was my mistake . . . and the death of my intentions.

As I held those ratty, old decorations, I caught sight of the memories that are attached to them. Those memories stop me from pitching the tacky things every year.

The elves . . . they joined our Christmases when our children were young. They were new and exciting {and still a little creepy} and our kids thought they were wonderful. How do you get rid of your children’s wonderment?

The mismatched stockings have laid by our fireplace every Christmas morning since we became a family. Even empty of candy and toys, they overflow with the anticipation of Christmas surprises. How can new stockings that have never felt my kids’ hands digging deep into their toes replace the old ones?

When our oldest daughter was a child, she spent hours making the potholders/coasters. To throw them away would be to throw away her concentration over the little, plastic loom, her determination to correctly weave them into a pattern and her pride in the imperfect product. How does any mother with half a heart do that?

And the faded, frayed Santa whose face tends to fall off has definitely lived past his time. But he came from my first life, the one in which my mother and father were alive and I was a child awed by the magic of Christmas. He will keep his place of prominence on the mantle in our living room.

So, it is true that these storage boxes contain slightly tacky Christmas decorations. But they are my family’s slightly tacky Christmas decorations.

And, evidently, they are not going anywhere.

CHRISTMAS PAST

The memories most endearing

No matter where we roam

Are those of Christmas past

In a place we knew as home.

—-

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When Santa and I were new

The magic of the season

With scent of wax and pine,

The aroma from the kitchen

That beckoned us to dine.

—-

The dancing lights upon the tree

That cast their Yuletide spell,

The joyous song of carolers

Singing “Peace on earth, Noel!”

—-

The ghosts of cherished loved ones;

They live and always will,

For no one ever dies in

The place where time stands still.

—-

The treasured scenes of yesteryear,

Could prayer but make them last.

Traditions of the heart live on

In dreams of Christmas past.

—C. David Hay

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My mom and I – Christmas, 1963

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My dad, my little brother and I – Christmas, 1963

The Day I Shot My Husband

I was minding my own business. I really was.

My husband and I were at a convention in Louisville. Greg was there to get Continuing Legal Education hours. I was there to spend time in a hotel room with nothing more important to do than sit on a bed I didn’t have to make, watch a television I didn’t have to dust and throw candy wrappers in a trash can I didn’t have to empty.

Greg found me that afternoon in the hotel room writing a humor article.

If I divide the amount of money I have made writing humor by the time I’ve put into it, my hourly wage would begin with a decimal point. Nevertheless, it is technically income. So, when Greg found me, I was in the room literally minding my own business.

He came to ask if I wanted to join him for lunch.

I had been planning to throw three novels into a bag and walk a couple of blocks to Panera for lunch. Once there, I intended to spend a delicious hour or two in their courtyard with a bowl of butternut squash soup and whichever of the books enticed me at the time.

But Greg was wearing the look he gets when he has spent too many hours as an adult. I was afraid that if I left him alone he would have a maturity meltdown, change into a cape and leotard and return to his legal education class as Super Man-Child, champion of juvenile behavior, to hold a brick-breaker tournament on the speaker’s PowerPoint screen or convince his fellow attorneys to enter a best fart joke contest. So I abandoned my afternoon plans and joined Greg for lunch and a few hours of playing hooky from his classes.

Because I failed to subdue Greg’s delinquent alter ego during lunch, he used its superpowers to persuade a friend to cut her next class and spend the afternoon playing with us. She had heard there was a police training simulator set up in the hotel to promote its services to Kentucky police departments. But she was pretty sure it was actually there so the convention attendees could play cops and robbers in their free time.

Cops and Robbers?! Well, that was exactly what Greg wanted to play after spending the morning pretending to be grown-up. So that is where we went. And that is where it happened.

The room was dark and set up like a movie theater. People were watching a large screen where a computerized program was playing dozens of variations of crime scene scenarios. One by one, men in ties and women in heels stepped up to look down the sights of very realistic toy guns to shoot virtual bad guys with pretend bullets.

Fortunately for him, my husband has not always worn the cape of a childlike crusader. For years, he rode the back of his trusty pony, Jill, (I’m sure Jill was tougher than her name implies.) in a cowboy hat and polyester chaps. So having shot many a pretend bad guy, he did very well in his crime scene scenarios.

Our friend, Lisa, also took aim with the gun and got her virtual man.

I sat in my chair and sincerely rooted for the two of them as they played their games. I figured the sooner the cops killed all the robbers, the sooner I could go and introduce myself to the characters that were waiting for me in one of my books. Although those fictional characters also lived in imaginary worlds, I was pretty sure their worlds would be more rational than the one I was in. Earlier, I had watched a lady giggle as she shot through the private parts of a man who wasn’t really in the room.

Just as I thought we finally were ready to leave, Greg looked at me and said, “I think you should try this. What do you think?”

What did I think? I thought, “I can’t possibly do this! I have never held a handgun. I’m a lousy shot. And I left my superhero leotard hanging in the closet at home with my Batgirl mask and my Wonder Woman push-up bra.”

Nevertheless, a few minutes later, I was standing at the front of the room with a gun in my hand. I had learned to use the sights to aim the gun and I had hit the practice targets with only one miss. Evidently, I wasn’t such a lousy shot.

I had already killed a guy on the street with terrible hygiene habits and a gun hidden under his jacket. Granted, I had previously seen his scenario so I already knew he was a bad guy but I hit him dead in the heart and I thought that was pretty impressive. I was ready to holster the gun and walk off into the sunset . . . because just beyond that view of the sunset from the lobby windows were the elevators to the upstairs rooms.

But the man running the simulator program wanted me to play one more time so I aimed my gun again. When the screen came to life this time, I found myself looking at the door of a virtual bedroom. The instructor had told me that in this scenario I was in my own home. My husband and I had been awakened by a noise and he had gone to investigate, leaving me in the bedroom with the gun.

At that point, the story line had already veered from the realm of my personal probability because on the few times in our marriage that Greg has gotten up to investigate a suspicious noise, I have patted his back, given him a thumbs-up for good luck, turned over, and gone back to sleep. I’m not much of a worrier.

On that day, however, I wanted to win the game and I knew from watching the other scenarios that anything could happen at any time so I tried to pay attention to the doorway. But I kept getting distracted by the things in the room.

“Is anyone in the bedroom? What an odd color for a bedroom. When was the last time this bedroom was cleaned? How much dust is on that book by the bed? I love that book!

“Look at the doorway. Don’t look at anything other than the doorway. Don’t look at the dresser beside the doorway. Could that dresser beside the doorway be an antique? I really like the mirror hanging over the antique dresser by the doorway!

“Pay attention. Do I see anything? I see lots of things. I see mail on the nightstand. Who gets mail in a pretend crime scene scenario? Maybe its my mail. No, it can’t be my mail. Can I read the address on the mail? No, I’m too far away to read the address on the mail. Maybe the guy by the door can read the address on the mail.

“The guy by the door!” Suddenly, there he was . . . the guy in my crime scene scenario.

My job was to assess whether or not he posed a threat to me and shoot him if he did. Was he a threat? I wasn’t sure.

I didn’t know the guy. But, realistically, how would we have ever met? I live in the real world and he lives in stream of light projected on a wall.

He was in my pretend house without being invited. That was true. But I didn’t know why he was there. Perhaps his car had broken down and he wanted to use our pretend phone. And when our pretend doorbell had not worked, he had picked our pretend lock and come looking for help.

Did he intend to hurt me? Well, that was hard to say. He did have a knife in his hand but I didn’t know why he was holding it. Perhaps, while walking through the house, he had noticed a mess in the kitchen and stopped to do a few of the dishes. If that was the case, I needed to thank him. I didn’t know what my pretend husband was doing at the moment but I was pretty sure he wouldn’t stop to clean anything.

The guy was sweating and agitated and had a wild, rabid look in his eyes. Well, there was my answer. There was no threat here. The poor guy was obviously sick. What could I do to help him? Somebody needed to run to the store to get this guy some medicine. Where was that pretend husband when I needed him?

Before I could do anything to help, the guy in my scenario turned and ran away. I thought he was probably going home where his own mother could could take care of him.

That was not what my real husband thought. He thought I was an idiot for letting an intruder run free in the house. I could hear him saying so behind me. I turned to face Greg and I could tell from the look on his face what he was going to do.

He was about to attack my sanity! I knew exactly how he would do it. He would pick up a few “What were you thinking?” barbs, soak them in a “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen!” tone of voice and throw them at me with an accuracy he has gained from years of dealing with the way I react to circumstances.

Well, if he wanted me to react differently to a threat, I would react differently. I took a breath and steadied my nerves.

My job was to assess whether or not he posed a threat to me and shoot him if he did.

Did I perceive a threat? Yes, I did. Was I prepared to deal with it? Yes, I was.

With his first sarcastic statement, I looked down the sights of the gun in my hand and I shot my husband.

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Mother of the Bride

It’s been a little over a year since I stood in our front yard on a beautiful day in September, surrounded by family and friends, and watched my oldest daughter marry her love in the delightful wedding ceremony we planned together.

Do the words of that sentence convey peaceful, stress-free memories of that day? They do, don’t they?

Do you see, peeking through the lines and phrases, ghastly, panicked memories of a sick and sobbing bride, 200 chairs that didn’t arrive until just before the ceremony, or a malicious thunderstorm that hovered over western Kentucky for several days then swooped down to attack the rehearsal and threaten the wedding? I don’t either!

That means I can now write about my daughter’s wedding.

I stand behind a statement I made after my son got married. (I would stand behind it in a chicken suit if that would cause people to pay more attention.) On the day a woman decides to have children, she should hit her knees, lift her voice to heaven and beseech . . . spelled capital B E G, exclamation point, exclamation point . . . the Lord for boys. As the mother of the groom, there is a chance she will have enough physical, mental and emotional energy to survive the wedding preparations without melting into a puddle of pooped poverty.

However, I have hope to offer mothers with daughters. As a girl, I did not grow up daydreaming about wedding ceremonies. As a college student and young bride, I was somewhat lackadaisical about planning my wedding and left many of the decisions to my own puddle-of-pooped mother. As the mother of two daughters, I hoped early-onset Alzheimers would set in before I had to plan their weddings. So I can say with confidence and credibility . . .

If I can plan a wedding, anyone can do it!

Here‘s how I made it through:

In the war against wedding stress, I recommend having fun with your daughter whenever possible. Casey and I danced as she chose music for the reception. We had popcorn parties during our nightly viewing of pinterest weddings. And when stress began to build, we shopped together for wedding desserts. We shopped together for chocolate wedding desserts and blueberry wedding desserts and chess bar wedding desserts and more chocolate wedding desserts and . . .

Warning: There are bakery owners who charge prospective brides to sample their products. Stay away from them! If you are dealing with the stress of planning a wedding, you need more than cake to taste. You need free cake to taste. It’ll be the last thing you get free for a very long time.

In the war against wedding stress, if you can find the right dress, you have won half the battle. When Casey looked in the mirror and said, “I feel beautiful,” we knew we had found the right dress for her.

I knew I had found the right dress for me when it met all my requirements. It looked good with the wedding colors. It covered all the imperfections between my neck and my knees. And I could wear it and breathe at the same time. It also twirled! Every female, no matter her age, feels better in a dress that twirls.

I might have actually won the war against wedding stress if I had known then all the little things I know now:

—-Having a wedding in our yard means twice the work. But it also means the Tylenol and trailer load of diet coke I need to make it through the wedding day are just steps away. As are the band-aids which is important because . . .

—-Wearing pretty, new shoes for the first time on the day of a wedding is a huge mistake. By the end of Casey’s reception my heels were raw and blistered causing me to dance like a wounded duck. Having lived all my life rhythm-challenged, this would not have been such an issue if I had realized . . .

—-When dancing at my daughter’s wedding reception, I should think twice before choosing to dance near the woman we are paying to take pictures.

—-There are 285 shades of red. Expecting bridesmaids to find dresses in the same shade is senseless. Give up on that one early and concentrate on finding shoes they all like, jewelry that suits each of them, and toenail polish that screams, “OMG, tooooo cute!” Only the closest of relationships can survive those decisions.

—-Burlap, when bought in large quantities will make the house smell like budweiser horses have come to visit.

—-Although my husband and sons, appeared attentive to our wedding conversations, they had actually gone to the happy places in their minds. Next time, we should just leave them there until we need them to carry something heavy or escort somebody down an aisle.

—-Above all, I learned my family and friends will be there when I need them . . . when I need them to plant flowers and beautifully arrange them in my yard . . . when I need them to take burlap and create the perfect setting for a wedding . . . when I need them to show up on my daughter’s wedding day to clean my bathrooms and serve food to our guests . . . and, most importantly, when I need them to tell me I look good in my twirly dress.

Despite the hurdles we jumped . . . and the ones we hit at a dead run, my experience as the mother of the bride ended well. The wedding was lovely. I lived to write the story. A really good guy joined our family. My husband and I still speak. And my daughter, the most beautiful of all brides, will owe me for the rest of her life.

Just a Little Walk in the Park

Many women are well-groomed when they exercise. I am not one of them.

I shower, shampoo and make myself up once a day. To do so more than once would be to waste perfectly good reading, writing or front-porch-rocking time.

So, when I left my house this morning to walk the trail at Mike Miller Park, I was unwashed, uncombed, and unencumbered by the many layers of middle-age-defying make-up I use to hide the real me from public viewing.

Many women are well-dressed when they exercise. I am not one of them either.

I was wearing a pair of shorts that are loose enough to let my legs breathe . . . and bounce a bit. . . and a shirt I bought from an inebriated artist on a beach in Key West, Florida, in 1991.

Evidently, I looked particularly pitiful today. I met a guy in a Hollister shirt who must have assumed from my appearance that I was poor and destitute because he approached me with Christian concern and asked if I knew Jesus.

Coincidentally, Jesus was there with me on the trail today, as He is most days, and He and I were jamming just a bit to Amy Grant music.

(Those of you who think it would be impossible to jam to Amy Grant music don’t understand the limitations of my ability to jam. Amy and I are well suited.)

For an hour, she and Jesus and I walked together in the park. I was the one puffing, sweating and waving my hands in the air to an invisible and pathetically unrhythmic beat.

Unfortunately, we were not the only ones at Mike Miller Park this morning.

There were a few of those well-groomed, well-dressed, walking women. No problem there. I bent over and played with the laces of my tightly-tied shoes when I met the ones I knew. I passed the rest of them with a wave of my hand . . . palm turned upward in case they too thought I was homeless and were willing to drop in a dollar or two.

There were also hundreds of middle school students in the park on a field trip. My daughter, Tessa, was one of them.

A lesser, inexperienced mother would have known she would be there because she would have listened as Tessa talked this morning.

But, I am a master-mother. If I combine the time I have parented each of my five children, I have 114 years under my maternity belt. I learned long ago to look my children in the eye and nod convincingly while hearing absolutely nothing they say. It is the survival technique that kept mothers sane in the years before DVD players were put in our cars.

I did not know she would be there and I was pleasantly surprised when I ran into Tessa today.

She, on the other hand, was seriously mortified when I met her friends dressed like a bum and singing along with my invisible friends, Amy and Jesus.

Worth of my exercise attire: About $1.95 clearanced at Goodwill

Cost of a three mile walk: Headache, back strain, shin splints, leg cramps, knee pain, ankle blisters, respiratory distress and possibly a mild heart attack

Embarrassing my middle-school daughter: Perversely priceless

I Can’t Make Up This Stuff

I was asked this week, by a lady who laughs at this blog, if I make up the things I write or if I find them somewhere.

To answer that question, let me set the stage to tell you about my morning.

My daughter, Casey, came home after a couple of years in Thailand to find that her car had died a loud and painfully expensive death and had been laid to rest in a junkyard where he selflessly donates his used parts so other Mitsubishi Mirages can live.

Casey was forced to either buy a cheap car or drive the 1990 Buick Century that had previously belonged to her 92 year-old great-grandmother. Her bank account persuaded her to choose free over cheap and for the last year she has been driving an “old lady” car that she named Miss Daisy.

A few weeks ago, Miss Daisy also kicked the oil bucket.

My husband, Greg, was taught by his father, who was taught by his father before him, the Northcutt automotive philosophy, “Why spend money to buy a new car when you can hold an old one together with toothpicks and duct tape?” Greg found Casey a new used-car. It will be delivered to our house as soon as the back half of its body has been replaced.

(It recently survived a wreck, which according to its insurance company, totalled it. But, Greg feels that once a little superglue and a rubber band or two are applied, it will be just the car for his I’m-25-but-I-look-like-I’m-12-and-easy-to-kidnap-if-stranded-on-the-side-of-the-road daughter to drive.)

Until the car is ready, Casey has been forced to borrow a car from me or her brother, Peter.

Not long after Miss Daisy’s passing, my son, Ben, who has been taught from birth the Northcutt ”One for All; All for Cheap” automotive philosophy, lost one of his family’s minivans to ADHD . . . need-Attention . . . owner-has-money-Deficit . . . just-Hyperactivate-me-right-on-over-a-cliff-please . . . Disorder.

So, Ben, who had to spend this week in Louisville, borrowed Peter’s car, leaving Casey, Peter and I to share my van.

Last night my van broke.

Casey, Peter and I are now sharing our only working vehicle other than Greg’s car, . . . a souped-up, diesel, farm truck . . . that smells like a horse . . . makes enough noise to drown out KISS in concert . . . blows black smoke up the engine cover of every car following within a half-mile distance . . . and is currently loaded with dead limbs that have hung from our trees since the ice storm of ’09 . . . which we cut down this week so our yard would look reeaall nice for the fried catfish wedding reception of our other son, Micah, in a few weeks.

The truck has a stick shift. Casey and Peter can’t drive a stick shift. So, in actuality, Casey, Peter and I are sharing a vehicle that only I can drive.

This morning, Casey, who is working as a freelance writer had to cover a breakfast meeting of governmental representatives in Paducah.

I got up at six o’clock to drive Casey to the meeting in the farm truck. We rode to Paducah with the windows down because the chewing gum that held in the air conditioner coolant fell off years ago.

Casey was dabbing at her make-up . . . which she applied to her freckles this morning in hopes that her interviewees would take her seriously and the breakfast hostess wouldn’t offer her the children’s menu. I was mentally writing this blog.

My philosophy is: If I have to live it, I sooooo should get to write about it.

I dropped off Casey a block from the building that hosts her meeting. She didn’t want the guys in ties and the ladies in heels to see her repelling from the cab of a jacked-up truck that her mother was driving . . . something about professional behaviour and embarrassment.

Evidently, Northcuttness runs recessive in her genetic makeup.

As I put this story in writing, the truck and I are parked in an abandoned lot overlooking the Ohio River with an eight foot concrete wall blocking us from the view of the men in ties and women in heels. We are waiting for the meeting to end and for Casey to covertly find her way back to us.

It’s actually not a bad place to spend a couple of hours. (However, I could be spending the time more usefully if the stupid truck had enough gas to get me to Wal-Mart and back. But that is another story . . . )

So . . .

To answer the original question, I don’t invent the stuff I blog. And, I certainly don’t hear about it happening to any other family.

I’ll admit that my stories and blogs may have been stretched just a bit and perhaps dusted with a little extra humor. But the canvas on which they are painted is the truth of my life . . . absurd and aggravating and occasionally awesome as it is.

First published August 13, 2012

The Simple Life

My sister suggested that I buy a subscription to a magazine called “Real Simple”. Her son was selling them.

It was written for people like me, she said. Full of organization tips for women looking to simplify life, she said. Just what I needed, she said.

And, so, I wrote my check for 20 dollars and my nephew got one subscription closer to earning his bonus gift . . . the two dollar flying saucer that doesn’t fly but does require 10 dollars worth of batteries to light up the sky with the voltage of an anemic firefly before falling apart a day and a half later.

I got my first issue of the magazine within a few weeks.

The cover looked good.

“No More Clutter” in big, black letters was followed by “Get Organized”, Stay Organized”, “Bug-bite Remedies” and “5 Minute Summer Hair”.

Wow! No mess in my house. No frizz in my hair. No scratched-up sores to draw attention to the spider veins in my legs. That was JUST what I needed.

I sat down in my favorite reading chair to check out the issue.

The table of contents was simple to follow. The editor’s article was about dealing with inadequacy. The magazine fell open to an ad that featured a smiling, well-dressed, healthy-sized woman . . . no unrealistic, size “anorexic, skinny butt” anywhere in the picture.

I was beginning to think that my sister had been right . . . until I got to page 23.

On page 23, the editors of the magazine had printed organizing ideas that were sent to them by other subscribers and readers of “Real Simple” . . .other people like me.

I read . . .

“When my daughters were little, I would put together complete outfits, down to the hair clips, place them in large plastic bags, then stock their dressers.”

“I organized all my tablecloths by length and hung them on flocked hangers.”

“The narrow spice racks I installed inside my pantry doors hold approximately 75 spices, from A(achiote) to Z(za’atar).

“I created a spreadsheet on which I write the title and author of every book I finish along with a synopsis, the date I turned the last page, and a comment on how easy it was to get through.”

What?!!

Who are these people?!!

What kind of person has time to organize their children’s clothes . . . including hair bows . . . and place them in bags to be arranged in drawers?

I dress my kids in anything I can find that is clean. If that plan fails, I pull something out of the laundry hamper, shake out the wrinkles and sniff the arm pits. If my eyes don’t water, it’s good to go.

In what world does a woman own so many tablecloths she has to organize them by length to find one?

I own two tablecloths. I know exactly where they are. The one I bought under the delusion that someday I would care enough to set a beautiful table is hanging unused in a closet. The tablecloth from my childhood that I inherited from my mother is hanging on my windows . . . my answer to our kitchen’s need for curtains.

Why would a person flock a hanger? What the crap are achiote and za’atar? And, how could anyone think that the lovely, lazy pleasure of reading should be organized on a spreadsheet?

These people are not like me! They are not like me at all.

It turns out “Real Simple” is NOT just what I need.

Evidently, I need something called “Really, Real Simple Organization for a Mother Who Wants to Feed Her Somewhat Clean Family a Meal Spiced with Only Salt and Pepper on a Table Set with Half-Finished Art Projects and a Plastic Army-Man Battle Scene While She Tells Them About the Wonderful Book She Is Reading That Was Written by a Guy Whose Name She Can’t Remember”.

Where can I get a subscription to that magazine?

First published June 25, 2012

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