Simplicity

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

Simplicity, Simplicity, Simplicity

Henry David Thoreau encouraged his readers to follow him to Walden Pond and live with less.

·                                     If I have not used it in the past year, I will discard it: trash, give away, garage sale.

·                                     If I have not used it in the past year because I never saw it because it’s underneath lots of other things…

·                                     If I’ve held on to it because I might need it someday and that someday has been lurking for 15 years…

·                                    If it’s been in my closet because it goes with something, and I’ve forgotten what that something is…

Organization Fever traditionally accompanies September and is swirling about my head. Even algebraic expressions beg to be “simplified,” reduced to lowest terms. My life requires the same. I will begin to channel Henry David Thoreau. 

Someone To Talk About

            When my brother was in elementary school, his teacher led the class into reading a funny story about a baseball team’s antics and misadventures. At the conclusion of the story, she made a writing assignment: a paragraph about what made the story so funny. As she surveyed the room, noting all the diligent young writers, she saw that Thomas had not put pencil to paper. Standing over him, the teacher whispered, “Thomas, why aren’t you writing the paragraph?” An athlete even at a young age, Thomas replied, “Because nothing about it was funny.”

            I feel exactly the same way about one of Cassandra King’s earlier novels,

The Sunday Wife. The outrageous situations and the churchy-dialogue are meant to be funny. The book cover depicts an ocean, white sand, a beach chair, and blue skies. I'll usually enjoy a book with that setting. Not so, here.

       The main character, Dean (short for Willidean), performs the role of “preacher’s wife” with as much grace as she can muster. She is not the woman she portrays, not the woman her husband, Ben, pretends that she is and insists that she become.

            Dean and Augusta, an audacious woman who says and does pretty much whatever she dreams up, become fast friends. Augusta is married to Maddox, a very wealthy mover-and-shaker in the small town. Both women have underlying characteristics which show them to be who are not, trying to survive the lives enveloping them.

            Ben’s church is affiliated with the United Methodist denomination. The church ladies, the church leaders and their committees, the gossips, the magnifying glass under which Dean lives, the parsonage and its inspection committee, along with her sanctimonious husband contribute to one big ball of angst in her life and my stomach. The use of very-Methodist vocabulary, titles, and situations make the whole setting too close for my comfort. Though the women friends do what most preacher’s wives only dream of being able to do, getting themselves into situations similar to those in “Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About,” I found all the vignettes to be contrived, but still too close for comfort.

           While I made some of my dearest friends in the various United Methodist churches he served, I was far more comfortable when I belonged in the congregation as a member rather than a “preacher’s wife.” Many of the best pastors I have ever encountered are United Methodist and I grew spiritually under their guidance; the graces of their sweet wives, however, never rubbed off.

The book goes back to the Library this afternoon. Removing it from my home is almost cathartic. The dichotomous memories of my stint as a Methodist “preacher’s wife” retreat to their proper place in my memory bank.

Carb-Balance Pizza. Hello, Beautiful

Pizza...one of the stalwart, stand-by meals everybody loves. Pizza…coming in varieties of crust flavors, toppings, and cheesy stuffings.

It’s been difficult to bypass pizza while we’ve avoided bread, starches, desserts, and sugars. Praline pecan fudge and coconut cream pie are far too tempting, but we’ve been able to “Say No to Pizza.” We considered just eating the toppings and leaving the delicious crust to languish on the plate. Food seldom languishes on either of our plates.

Today, while roaming the grocery aisles, I thought, “I’ll make pizza for us tonight.” After all, it’s Friday night and that’s Treat Night.

The crust will be built of overlapping Carb-Balance Tortilla rounds. I pitched them into the air to add the Pizza feel! 

I’ll spread on pizza sauce, a layer of Sargento thin-sliced cheese, then the toppings: red, green, and yellow peppers and onions, browned ground beef, crisp bacon, and pepperoni. 

I’ll top it all with shredded cheese.

Voila! Carb-Balance Pizza.

 

Add a salad and it’s a meal to celebrate FriYay!

(The Pizza was my best "I Made This Up" recipe ever. How can you go wrong, though, with meat, cheese, peppers, bacon, and more cheese? The Carb-Balance Tortillas were crispy, so Thin Crust Pizza, Hello!)

I Should Have Known Better

I should have known better.

            It was an omen, a foretelling.

            “I don’t think I put my make-up kit in the car,” I said.

            “Surely you did.”

            “No, the more I think about it, the more I’m sure I didn’t. Let’s stop at the next town and check. They’ll have a store where I can buy make-up.”

for little emergencies

            “Let’s get where we’re going and then we’ll check. If it’s not there, then we’ll find a drugstore. Don’t you have a little kit in your purse?”

            “That’s just for touch-ups – little emergencies. This is a big emergency.”

            “Let’s get to the hotel first.”

            “Ok,” I said.

            I should have known better.

            I knew it…no make-up kit. I made do with a bit of pressed powder and an odd shade of lipstick for that evening at a darkened restaurant and an even darker stage show. Funny thing, though, the next morning, he didn’t want to get the car out of the hotel’s garage. Walking around the French Quarter, we ogled through opened doors, drooled over estate jewelry, and sipped a Hurricane, but saw no place for a girl to buy make-up. “We’ll do it tomorrow,” he said.

           

"...another man done gone."

Tomorrow came and we never went anywhere that sold make-up. I was rather plain-faced for the long weekend. I felt like Marie Laveau, a woman who should never be seen in the light of day, one of those creepy, back-alley New Orleans haints, a witch who lives in a hollow log with a three-legged dog. He insisted, “You look fine.” 

            The disastrous trip continued with upside down maps, dysfunctional directions, a drag queen show, and it ended in a cotton field.

            “What’s that?” I said to break the tense silence as the car sped along highways through Louisiana fields.

            “Cotton.”

            “No, it’s not. That’s some kind of bush with flowers.”

            He twirled the steering wheel and the car ran off the highway, bumped onto a dirt and rock patch, and braked to an abrupt stop. “Get out,” he said.

            “Uh-oh.” My eyes widened. He turned to open the driver’s door and I grabbed the keys from the ignition. His intention was to give me a lesson in how cotton grows, showing me the flowering stage. Just like he’d given me lessons in direction giving, map reading, and tassel twirling.

I should have known better.

because you just never know

            Speed ahead several years. As we pulled away from the church, our future ahead on the highway out of town, past the paper mill, onward to El Dorado and points south, I had a bad feeling.  I looked into the back floorboard.“Uh-oh.”

“I don’t have my make-up kit,” I said.

            He did a 180 degree turn. When we screeched to a stop at the church, Daddy was aghast. “Are you bringing her back, already?”

            “She forgot her make-up kit.”

            While husbands may come and go, a girl and her make-up should never part.