Happyfatchick

Blurg. I forget who dropped that word the first time, but I love it and still use it whenever possible. Covid on the rise is a big fat blurg. Y’all know that in 50 years, kids studying American history are going to be reading about this the same way we read about the dustbowl and the depression and the great wars. Memorizing numbers - talking about an America they don’t even recognize. You know how drepression era movies always have a sort of sepia tint? (Think about Oh Brother Where Art Thou or Paper Moon). I wonder what color we’ll be? Blue I think. I’m working like CRRRRRAZY right now. The motion picture industry opened up, and was behind in production. I thought - well, it will take us four years to get back to current pics. Oh nay nay: apparently we neeeeeeed the distraction. I think they are trying to kill me, seriously. But the unions make sure my delivery/pick up people are masked and they aren’t making me leave the house. So I’m doing double or triple my normal work load, banking all the money because this will stop. It will come to a screeching, grinding halt. Did I say before that we’re closing the bus shop at the end of December? We thiught maaaaaybe we could hold out and make it work, but it doesn’t look at way. We are on the fringe of the Atlanta airport. Our customers have been airport park/ride, hotel shuttles for the most part. Smaller number of retirement (or nursing) homes and churches. All our customers have that smacked in the face/dreading the other shoe falling look. None of our customers are frivolous, buses are a need - when people are moving. But. People aren’t moving. So yes, I’m watching the bus coming at ME, knowing embroidery may be our only income - and that it could stop at any moment. But hey. Got my big girl parties on, and a game plan. I do come with good news (and a shout out to @iwantcookies for coming up with good news Sunday). This is something that should be a tradition. Always post something good on Sunday. I didn’t post good news on Sunday, so here you go. I’m posting a pic of my Mama’s quilt that was always MY personal fave. It was white and pink blocks originally. The pink part is sort of rosey. I adore this quilt. It’s flannel, and when I wash it and bury my face in it, I still smell my mother. It was falling apart. Some of the squares were worn through, all of the stitching was giving up the ghost. I’ve been sitting here for 2 months whenever I watch TV (I have a COMPLETE inability to watch TV without something I’m my hands to work on). I’ve patched and replaced, sewn up holes, and restitched the whole dang thing. Once, in a rare moment of lucidity, Mama asked me what I would like to have of hers when she was gone. I said “I want that quilt box that Daddy made”. She was surprised, as she had plenty of jewelry and collection pieces. She says “anything else?”. I said “yes. I want all the quilts too”. I don’t have them all, I was a good sister and divided them up - but I hid the pink flannel. I can say that because no one in my family posts here. Ha!! also, I need to say I know u should have moved some clutter out of the way of the pics. Who’s worrying about clutter?? Marvel wants their seats NOW!!

Best line ever ever!!!! I do hang with a lot of non masking people - to the point we actually cross swords about it - but also people that I’m able to live and be with even when our swords Are tangled. I keep saying to them over and over and over as nauseum: it makes OTHER PEOPLE more comfortable when YOU wear a mask. So just think about it like you’re doing THEM a favor. Right? one of my cousins can show you actual studies (???) done that show you are killing yourselves masking and breathing back in your own CO2. But they found the research because they disagreed with the mask in the first place. im not an anti masker, but I live on the compound with many teens and a couple tweens. Every one of the teens has a job. My oldest is in college and is home Once a month. She’s always been our most dedicated masker. I don’t wear a mask at home. Or rarely. in my area, blacks are hands down THE BEST maskers. And depends on the “seriousness” of the journey. Grocery store - yesterday I saw 1 man unmasked, and he stood out. Gas station, 60/40 not masked.

I don’t even know how I failed to mention this before now (given that the hubs is the protagonist in so many of my stories...). He came home sick (I think) Tuesday and said he thinks he just have Covid. He runs our shop and faces customers every day. I said “you have a head cold”. I mean; it was all snot and yuck blowing out of his face. Not that we have a certifiable “list” of Covid symptoms, but I’m reeeeeally well acquainted with his cold routine. It was a cold. Not that I’m not worried about him every day, and not that I wouldn’t care - if I’d thought for one second he had Covid, I would have behaved differently, I promise. he says “How do you KNOW it’s not Covid?” I said “you get 50 colds a YEAR. This is the same thing you get every year. This means you only have 49 to go”. I think he was actually insulted that I didnt believe he had Covid. Here was his logic: with all the precautions and safety measures people are taking for Covid, there’s NO WAY a normal cold germ could get through. Huh? What?? I had to walk away and shake it off. What is even logical about that??? I then snorted my way through his explanation to my cousin - who ALWAYS gets me, and always ageees with me. But this time, he says... “well, that’s seems right, to my way of thinking”. I’m surrounded. He tested negative.

I’m am so reverse techno savvy I almost cry when we get something I have to learn. But my husband has a sound bar in the man cave. I’ve never noticed any kind of disconnect from it at all. The only thing that bugs me (and I rarely ever use that TV), is 2 different little gadgets to turn on. And always that little hesitation between each that makes a rare user (like me) wonder if it IS coming on. The sound bar hesitates and then spells out hello... but then there’s more hesitation before the TV picture comes on. It’s not a terrible irritation. K

What? I mean, are you saying I shouldn’t be posting my bikini pics? What’s the age cutoff?? I’m sitting here making a mental list of sites I need to go delete my pics from. speaking of other sites, when I went on fb yesterday, a whole BUNCH of my friends (these are people I’ve known for 25 years!!) had posted their handles for Parler.

@Emma675 yiur post reminds me of the WOOOOOOOORST thing for me, at church. For 35 years I played piano for church. It’s a thing. I did it with gusto and probably sounded like I played with my feet - but that’s a different story. I digressed (shocking, I know!) We were attending a mid sized church. Not small, not mega. I was considered staff and also worked with the youth and obviously the choir. Things worked out so that our pastor had decided to submit his resignation on a Sunday morning. He had 3 youth daughters and a slightly younger son, the whole family was well liked. I was told with the other staff members ahead of time what was going to happen. It was just timing and some serious suckiness for him that his mother had cancer and had been in hospital a few days, and on Saturday (the day before his resignation), she actually died. AND on the Friday, the day BEFORE his mother died the day before his resignation, his WIFE fell down some steps at the hospital and broke BOTH ankles. I kid you not. And required surgery on one (maybe both, I forget). so the sermon was very brief and a brief alter call, and we’ve (the musicians) all gone back to sit with our respective families. This poor man who is certainly a finalist for the worst week in the history of mankind starts to talk. He was every bit of 6’4 - HUGE in the pulpit - he’s crying and trying to talk, everybody in the entire congregation is bawling - it just could NOT get any worse. nightmarish. And then my stepson (13 at the time) got the church giggles. I know good and well he wasn’t listening, and I don’t have a clue what set him off - but off he went. He snorted. I DIED. I snapped my head toward him with the MOM eyes 00. He couldn’t stop. He held his breath, he spewed it out and laughed some more. I have never been so embarrassed in all my life. I grabbed his arm and took him out the back, shoved the keys at him - “GO GET IN THE CAR AND YOU BETTER HIDE FROM ME THE REST OF THE DAY!!!!!” it took another 20 minutes for us to get outside and go home - but when I got to the car, he was boiling sweat, hair plastered to his head, face like a beet; I said OMG!!! Why did you stay in the car??? He goes “you SAID go to the car”. I was like “I didn’t MEAN for you to come suffocate!!! Didn’t it occur to you I might think you needed to get out???” So now he’s crying, I’m crying. The other kids are all crying. Happy Fun Day at Church, God Bless Us All!!! my Daddy used to do a parody of getting all of us ready for church (back in the days that meant crinolines and the good bra) waking us all, getting us fed, dressed and in the car (which he participated in exactly NONE of), him blowing the horn and tapping his timex. And he’d end his little skit with “and we’re going to worship JEEEESUS, praise the LORD”

We were southern baptist on paper, but fundie lite in reality. many many of our beliefs were rigid. We had revival once when I was a teenager, and were also (away from church) getting ready for softball season. I had practice every night that week. My mom picked me up with a change of clothes in the car and we went straight to church. But I know what you’re sayjng. My brother is independent (he graduated from Bob Jones - need I say more??). I have had to go to their church for random things and I get the creepiest get-me-out-if-here vibes in there. I just do!!! They speak of their pastor like cult followers. I just want to say sometime “do you HAVE some idea how creepy you’re sounding?” Whole dang church full of stepford wives. It’s just cringey.

@ChiCricket.... terrifying!!! I don’t have anything to make this better for you, it’s scary as shkt!!! We are (always have been) so intertwined here on the compound, it’s so scary. We haven’t even decided about thanksgiving yet . (Split decision about having it outdoors at the river. I loved that idea). Back to you, @ChiCricket, I’m scared with you. I told someone the other day - this whole stupid thing is like there’s this big BUCKET of symptoms. I don’t know any 2 people who’ve had it that had the same exact symptoms. My daughter had it and lost taste and smell for the longest (probably still not right), but had a fever and some nausea. Her daughter currently has it (on compound as well) and had the excruciating headache, low fever for a couple days and seems fine. Neither experienced breathing issues. My huaband has a head cold and is convinced he’s Covid (he’s not). But with that big bucket of symptoms, I guess he could be right. He went to be tested yesterday but I’m confident he’s just got a cold. He’s that guy who gets a cold if you say it out loud in the room. with the onset of his man-cold (and yes, there IS A DIFFERENCE), I was down the hall and heard him coughing like a 3 year old - brace yourself, open your mouth and volcano your germs into the atmosphere. I went in and said “hon, you need to cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze”. his answer: I DOOOO when I’m around people. I mean, I do at work, you know. 😶 I said “well. Just for the sake of you know... this discussion... let’s pretend that I, too, am ‘people’ “. I mean!!!!!!

I’m working under the assumption you were raised much as I was (Southern Baptist). We were the ones at church for any and every kind of meeting - most times my mom volunteered me to babysit for meetings when I was a teenager. We never missed. Ever. I’ma just throw this out there: they are praying a HEDGE OF PROTECTION AROUND THEIR FAMILIES. If you’ve been there, can I get an AMEN!?!? Furthermore, if they’ve been regularly attending services since the mandatory “gathering” restrictions were lifted, they are fully convinced that GOD provided that hedge of protection around them. And oh... those people who got Covid at church... well, I’m sure there’s an answer for that. There always is. sort of like when the football players take a knee, thump their heart and point skyward, thanking God for the touchdown. Because, you know, nobody on the other team was praying fervently for a victory. also, believe me, I drank enough koolaid to be thoroughly eloquent in all things Baptist, Bible or Holy Ghost. The thing about families or just groups traveling to churches to save souls for Christ is exactly what @MargeGunderson threw out. Especially if this group came into a Sunday morning service. The only people getting up and attending church on a Sunday morning are already BELIEVERS. Otherwise, they’re sleeping in. The chances of a non believer on a Sunday morning a year ago were slim. Chances of a non believer during Covid on a Sunday morning are probably below zero. As for that group coming, I guarantee they held hands and prayed before singing (speaking, begging,, whatever they came for) and asked the Lord to bless them, to open hearts and minds to the message, Lord, let them hear Your message through US, Lord, use us as your vessels. Make us invisible. Sing [speak, beg, etc] through us, Lord. Show yourself here today Lord. To God be the Glory, Amen. I’m telling you, I could be a Baptist preacher any day of the week. ps: the hedge of protection is a real, hard core thing. If you pray the hedge around your family, attend church and the Covid gets you, welllllll. You didn’t get it at church, you probably got it at the Walmart when you ran out to get your pantyhose Saturday night, from one of them sinners at the checkout. PREACH!! that was fun!

I know we don’t talk about the Dugs on this thread, but did one of them get engaged? I’m experiencing engagement ring avalanche in ads. (And of course by mentioning it, I have almost certainly made it worse).

I would actually watch that. Or Tony Beets. Kind of the same thing. I think before she went back to Ethiopia to have the baby, I think she believed the penis-bearing part of the world population was all one-and-the-same. I want her to hook up with a lost tribe deep in the Amazon. A tribe where it’s perfectly acceptable to throw your “woman” off the nearest cliff if she tries to make you eat vegetables, and theyve never ever seen a white woman. WHO KNEW the culture might be different??? She’s been all these places (although I’m not sure it was ever made clear WHY or HOW she funds these adventures). For someone who DID travel, she seems so clueless.

This cracks ME up that you remember that!! the original story was about my BIL. He lived in South Georgia, alone after his wife (my half sister) died. He drove truck, and all 4 of his sons drive trucks long distance. He suddenly fell ill with heart problems, and had to give up driving, planning to heal and get back on the road. His daughter (a nurse) in Arkansas worried about him being alone, so she flew over here and drove him (in his own pickup truck) back to her house. The goal was for him to get better and drive home. No one (NO ONE!) realized how truly sick he was , and shortly after he got to Arkansas, he DIED! He was only 63. So now she has a dead father and his truck at her house. One of the brothers was in a Louisiana with an empty flatbed, and he said “I’ll come get him”. They actually contacted all the states he would be traveling through to get back to Georgia and found out they could, in fact, bring him home on their own, but he had to be in a casket. And here is how they solved that issue:

Spit bath

My dad grew up Amish. So, many layers of Amishness for me. I’m happy to report they’ve all upgraded to Indoor plumbing. Sadly, for many of them weekly bathing is still a thing. My aunt (fathers sister) raised 18 children, only 2 of whom she didn’t actually produce. When I was a little kid, they hauled water up for baths, heated it (in winter) and filled a tub in the kitchen. Once a week. And washed bodies until the water was disgusting, poured it out and started the process over. They were a farming family, and none of the kids wore shoes all summer long. They have specific words (Dutch slang) for poop squishing between the toes. My uncle (fathers bro) was an actual no joke pig farmer. I’m sure they had funky bath practices too - maybe we’ll talk about that another day. Also with the outhouse. My odd cousin Bill (I mention him frequently) had only 4 children in his family - practicing Amish but indoor plumbing and regular baths. No farm. Whenever he would go to my aunt’s to spend the night and play with his cousins, his mom would always say “I don’t care HOW dirty you get, DO NOT get in that bath water!!! We’ll wash when we get home”.

Me again - apparently you guys have to go they the whole fam one pic at a time tonight (sorry!!!). I just thought this was SOOOOO funny!

@Jynnan tonnix she’s so grown up!!!!!!! I have this one grand who has my eyes - some say he looks like me, but I really think it’s just the eyes. He just turned 3. I love 3. Please forgive me if I posted this before. my good news happened last night - except for my baby son’s toddler children, my other grands are all close enough within the same age parameters that they all got together and had a Halloween party last night. I mean, they all invited a friend or two and it was all outside (but I saw a couple of them wearing masks - RESPECT!!!) it’s just so DANG fun watching them all be cousins together and enjoy a night together like that. I hope 10, 20, 30 years down the road they’re still close enough to have get-togethers and that their children grow up knowing each other. Makes my heart all melty. also, my almost 17 YO granddaughter dressed as Napoleon Dynamite. HILARIOUS!!!

@Temperance: I hope things aren’t as scary for you today. My Granny used to say “nothing’s ever as bad or as good as you think it’s going to be”. I choose to believe her on the “bad” angle. I don’t on the good stuff - I’m still looking for my pony every christmas! I do hope you feel better and have found some resolution. It’s scary to be scared.

I have this wild hair up my butt about taking thanksgiving to the river this year. Today is a bit chilly for the first time all season. And pretty dang windy. Usually, the weather thanksgiving day is tolerably chilly. I remember one year the hubs and I (being too lazy and too full to do it up right) threw an air mattress in back of the truck and slept outside (at the river). soooooo.....: the river is gorgeous and open and lovely. Crunchy brown this time of year. If it’s not too windy , I think we can pull it off. We can take a couple generators for what little electric we need. We can fry the turkey. I even have a compartment warmer about the aize of an apt fridge to keep things warm. Hooked to the generator. I thought maybe I could Bill (with his bubble not in the middle) and the other cousins to come the night before and camp. I think my bro and his wife would camp too maybe. If not I know they’d come down the day of. This could be fun, right? theres that one chick who ain’t ABOUT to camp... and I don’t want to lose her. She’s the sister of the brothers who are already loving the camping idea - and she’s the COOKER. She gets such JOY from cooking and sharing food. How to get her on board?? She lives alone and everybody she would turn to that day will go to the river with me I think. We can’t leave her behind. If she’d go the day OF, she could cook that morning and bring hot dishes down and fill up the warmer. I’m rambling because I’m a little kid plotting how to get my waaaaay... @Turquoise: I have a whole ritual thing I do every morning (concerning Lookey). I log on, I note how many notices there are, I keep going till I get to the logon page that says if you have multiple in the same post. If you only have 3 posts, but they have 20 names each, that’s not good. But also. This gives me a chance to see if the responses that morning are smiling or sad. So far, I’ve been able to continue on to the feed. One day, when I can see it looks like a train wreck before I get there.. I’ll have to leave and properly brace myself before facing it. My son is close to her sons age and i just ache for her. I have pm’d her several times. Occasionally I get a short response - mostly she says she reads all our posts every day, but doesn’t have the energy or the brain power to answer. She DID tell me earlier this week that he’s had 2 relatively good days back to back and she was ❤️❤️❤️ That. Sweet son has an apartment attached to his house (or on his property) meant for the Lookey’s as they got older and needed looking after. So they’re actually staying there full time. Which melts my heart - that’s an ideal situation for a truly not ideal situation, right?? How many problems and logistical nightmares does that apartment Solve?? Genius!

I sort of am assuming you mean “crown”. (Or seriously, dont crowd?) So don’t pull the stem??? Really. Huh. Mushrooms have a texture that screams bloody murder at my texture rebel. But I loooooove the taste of sautéed shrooms. I throw them in and chew real fast. Also, if I have a potato or chicken or something to slide in with it, it masks the slippery slope a little. @Scarlett45.... alllllllllllll this time when you talked about your cousin and your aunt, in my head your cousin had a mental challenge. I am now reprocessing everything I remember you saying in the past. I am team @Absolom on this one. You were crazy about that aunt, yes?

I saw a meme on FB the other day that said “I’m seriously beginning to worry someone is really going to win this election” I’m at a really odd place in my own life. We’ve owned a mechanic shop for some years now (15?). It’s “airport based”; meaning our best customers are the airport shuttle buses. Park n Ride kinda thing. Our 2nd heaviest has been a tie between airport hotel shuttles and the companies who shuttle around Medicare/Medicaid patients. The third is churches, and there are some monsters in metro Atlanta. Although flights have picked marginally, our biggest AP carrier is still only using 7 buses of 100. Many churches are still online, and the mega ones are still shy of standard numbers. Cut to the chase: when things were seriously shut off, we thought we might close the shop end of December when our current lease is up. we started gearing toward that - put ourselves on a tight budget to get some things paid off, that sort of thing. And the daily discussion is “and then what???” I’d love to open a pub (just bc I think I’d be the worlds most killer pub owner) - hubs can take out the trash. My mom would HAUNT ME!!! Thought about a bakery. Not a decent one within 60 miles. My husband wants a T-shirt business. I already have an embroidery business - I could be financing our whole family operation if I’d kick it up a notch. I’ve NEVER looked for business because it has kept me as busy as I wanted to be. But If we both worked at it, we’d be well set. We’ve also talked of clearing some land and opening a campground. We have land 1/4 mile from the GA state equestrian park with miles and miles and miles of trails. This place... you drive 50 miles PAST nowhere, turn left and go another 40 miles... I love it down there. I’m sorry, that was long and rambly and wordy and just about as settled as my mind is... we have some money “laid by” as we would say down here. We have choices. I personally think the campground would only be sustainable. It’s not a loser, but it’s not going to fill our pockets either. And there you have it: we don’t wait for the world around us to be in turmoil and create unrest. aaaaaawwwww hell no. Let’s create something to give us stress!!! The kicker is (no joke) the shop is picking up and the hubs believes by spring it’ll be back in the normal range. But NOOOOOW, he’s been thinking about shutting it down and is a little mesmerized by that. hey, I can embroider all day long either way. I’m in it for the support.

@zoomama how are you?

I can’t do the texture of tomatoes, but Looooooove the taste of tomato anything. I canned probably 50 jars of salsa this year, maybe 20-25 tomato sauce for cooking, bags of spaghetti sauce in the freezer. I love ketchup, pizza sauce, hot sauce, barbecue sauce. Not many tomato based items I won’t consume. Except raw tomatoes. My parents practically lived on tomatoes back in the day. And just like you, @Olliesmom, who would you ruin a perfectly good slice of bacon by slopping a slice of runny ickiness on top??? i forgot to mention in those foods I decided never to eat as an adult: I don’t eat eggs. I can eat a hard boiled egg - the consistency is not unacceptable. But fried, scrambled, poached, sunny side up down or sideways - 🥴

@iwantcookies, you just can’t win. I hate for you that you seem so alone in your battles. So much of the time. “secretly” (!) I feel vindicated by so many others having that one oddball relative too. I usually do try to be patient with Bill, because I love him. He’s a brother to me. I love him like air. And even my husband is protective of him - keeps him employed and pays him nicely. Bill is at work rain or shine and works at (whatever) all day. He keeps the shop clean, buses clean, trash picked up and taken out, grass cut, birds nests out of odd places. He’s a handyman. the FAA is directly behind one of our most frequented hangouts. Venus comes out at roughly the same place (depending on the time of year) every night, to the northwest of the entrance door. Bill and my husband have a looooong running and stooooooopid discussion every time we walk out. Bill believes it’s a drone, sent up to surveil by the FAA. Astronomy is not my strong suit (somewhere near liver and rutabagas) - but that’s no drone, it’s a STAR!!! (Or a planet). I’m always begging my husband (before we get there) “just let him have his drone!!!” Nope. He cannot leave that alone. Cannot. but frequently his accidental word play is hilarious. he watched one of those David Attenborough shows and caught a bit about this shrimp that lives on the sea floor at its deepest. He’s describing it and says “it has testicles right up next to its eyes!!” (meaning tentacles of course) Which of course set us into fits and descriptions of what you’d see if your testicles were next to your eyes... and the one memorable night he’d seen something on TV that involved a man wearing big rubber boots that Bill continually referred to as rubbers. One of those stories I was thinking “this is going to end badly...”. I’m not saying the term “rubbers” is bad; it’s common and not ugly most places - except in the south where we don’t call them rubbers. Ever, actually. On and on about this guy pulling his rubbers on his feet, sliding around the deck, getting his rubber caught (and there maybe was a shark involved) and my husband said with the most solemn straight face EVER “how BIG was this rubber?????”

@doodlebug, my mother thought sour cream was a staple, but CREAM CHEESE was her magic food. She used to say “there is no food on earth that’s not improved with a little cream cheese”. I was in a restaurant once with a large group of friends, the the one next to me ordered liver. Me: What????? Liver. On purpose. It is a mouth full of rusty pipe rubber bands. You can’t chew it, you can’t swallow it, when you CUT it, it makes that sandy grit sound against your plate. 🤢 there are things I cannot CANNOT put between my teeth. I also don’t eat cubed steak, and my husband ADORES it. I make it - but I can’t chew it. (Although I DO know the all-day mushroom soup method, and can eat that if I’m very very very careful not to put anything close to gristle in my mouth. and an odd family thing - I can’t hold a pencil my mouth. I can’t hold ANYthing in my mouth. (Curler pins, nails, clothespins, etc). Makes me gag. I can hold a pencil between my front teeth sticking straight out like a cigar. Anything that touches my tongue makes me gag. Is that weird? Because I have 2 children (of 3) and 2 grands (of 9) who also can’t do it.