It's Just Because Day

Who knew? I didn't, that's for sure. I was going through my email---deleting most before I even open them when something caught my eye. It was from a flower company wanting me to send someone a bouquet "just because." It seems that August 27, is Just Because Day. What rock have I been hiding under that I have never heard of this special day. Certainly, no one that I know has heard of it because I know for sure that I would have received a bouquet before now. Don't you think so? As I tend to do from time to time my mind started to wonder about that last thought. In fact, I started stressing, debating, critiquing, fantasizing, bribing, bargaining and any other descriptive word you could think of to try and ascertain why I have never participated in Just Because Day. First of all, I have never heard of it. I did a little research and discovered that Just Because Day was founded in 2005 to do something good for someone without rhyme or reason. Well, I like the idea of it, but isn't that just being nice. Or thoughtful. Can you imagine if we were only nice to one another on only one day of the year? I don't think this world would be big enough to hold the 10 billion people that didn't want to be around another person for 364 days a year just because is wasn't Just Because Day. What if everyone you spoke to, came in contact with or even looked at gave you the finger, told you to *uck off or just plain ignored you for every day but one? Your BFF: "Screw you!" Your spouse: "Up yours!" Your mother: "Bite me! Why won't you grow up and move away?" I know that is certainly somewhere that I don't want to live. So, I will be the first person that I know to participate in Just Because Day. One of you will receive something unexpected and I will direct you to this post to understand why. For the rest of you, I'll just say hi and that you're doing a great job for no other reason than just because. Now, you all know. Pass it on.

It's My Lucky Day...Year VII

****It's the seventh 7! time around for this post. LUCKY NUMBER 7! This is it! This is the year I've been waiting for. Seven will be my lucky number. I think I'll buy a bunch of lottery tickets that all have the number seven on them. I just know that this will be my luckiest day ever. ****It's the sixth time around for this post. It's hard to believe I have been blogging for this long. I am absolutely positive that this is going to be my luckiest day ever. I sure have changed a lot in the last year. I'm not really a middle-aged fat woman any more. I'm still middle-aged but not nearly as big as I once was. (I'll wait while you tell me Congratulations!) Anyhow, I'll let you know how it all turns out. ****It's the fifth time around for this post. I'm incredibly excited about the whole month of August this year, not just my lucky day. Super things are happening for me right now so I just know this will be my luckiest day ever! ****It's the fourth time around for this post. I don't even remember what happened last year but I just know that today is my lucky day and the Pythagoreans believed that four was a perfect number. A perfect number for a perfect day! ****It's the third time around for this post. I just know that this will be the luckiest day of the year...Third time's a charm, right? ****This was what I posted last year on my lucky day. It didn't turn out as lucky as I would have wanted. So, I'm giving it another whirl. Maybe, better luck this year...year two! Today, August 22, is the luckiest day of the year for me. If something exciting is supposed to happen, it usually happens on this day. I can't remember the specific events (okay, maybe I can, but a girl has to have some secrets) but I do know that it was on this date. I do remember that I got my wisdom teeth pulled on this date in 1989. I know that wasn't lucky but I did get to eat mashed potatoes for every meal for a few days. And luckily, my favorite food is mashed potatoes. I think I am going to try my lucky numbers on the lottery this evening. The problem is that I have to pick five numbers and I only have two: Eight for August and twenty-two for the twenty-second. That means that I will only get two out of five numbers and you don't win anything with just two correct. But, since it is my lucky day, I might get the other three numbers as well. I'm a winner and I didn't even know it. Now, what am I going to do with all that cash?

Dollar Days

The dog days of summer are here. Kids are heading back to school and college and that means one thing: money, money and more money. Many folks are spending money as fast as it can be printed. Not only are their houses now empty but their wallets are too. Now that you actually have the time to sit down and read a book you might not have the spare cash to do it. Well, drum roll please.......................... ................I have the perfect solution: Dollar Days. Dollar Days, you might ask? Yep. Dollar Days! I have reduced the price of both of my books to just a dollar. Order my first book by clicking here. Get my second book by clicking here. So enjoy the last dog days of summer by picking up both of my books for only a buck each. As with any great offer, this one won't be around for long. Get your copy today!

Friend's Birthday...Year VI

Birthday wishes go out to the Friend that I mention in my posts. Friend has experienced several of the MA Fat Woman's mishaps and can always be counted on for a good laugh, a no nonsense quote, or a story that will upstage mine every time. Which reminds me of a story about Friend. Friend had a big time job and several underlings at her disposal for years. When birthdays and holidays floated around they always celebrated big. Everyone got cakes, presents, and usually taken out to dinner or the such. Well, Friend was really excited when it was time to celebrate her birthday. She had heard them planning and plotting the details of the party and was very excited. It didn't turn out that way. It seems the person that had done the planning had an emergency and all of the plans fell through. On the day of the birthday, there was nothing. No dinner! No presents! And no cake! Somebody realized what had happened and ran to Walmart to get an emergency cake. The day was a Friday and the office was scarcely staffed. After about 3 or 4 people sang Happy Birthday, each grabbed a slice of cake and scattered back to their respective offices. When it was time to go home that evening Friend went into the break room to get the cake to take home... ...it wasn't there! "Where's the cake?" she asked. "Oh, so-and-so took it with her. She said nobody had chipped in, so she was taking it home!" I know! Stuff like that happens all the time to her. Happy Birthday, Friend! I hope you get a cake that is all yours...

A Visit To The World's Longest Yard Sale

****In honor of the World's Longest Yard Sale that I will be attending this weekend I give you this classic post**** As a frequent visitor to many yard sales in my area I jumped at the chance to go to the World's Longest Yard Sale that stretches through five states over a four day period every August. The yard sale winds for 654 miles from West Unity, Ohio to Gadsden, Alabama. And trust me when I say that a lot of people participate in this yearly adventure. If you are looking for a particular item to complete a collection or looking for an unusual gift for someone, then you have found the perfect place. There is only one problem: Where do you start? Since I live relatively close to Alabama, my mom decided that we should head over that way. We started out early (about 9:00) and were on our way. As we left town, it seemed that every other house was having a yard sale. (Hmmmm) Houston, I think we have a problem? Mom looked over at me and asked, "Do you want to stop at any of those?" "No! I want to go to Alabama, let's keep going." We kept going, and in the first twenty miles we probably passed over 20 yard sales. (I noticed Mom glancing over at me and frowning as we passed by each one.) We were over 100 miles from the official longest yard sale; I guess everyone wanted to get on the bandwagon. After driving for 1.5 hours we reached a town that was "officially" a part of the 654 mile shopper's paradise, Summerville, Georgia. Mom looked over at me and asked the same question once again. "Don't you want to stop at any of these sales?" Quite unexpectedly, I made a sharp right hand turn into a church parking lot that was crammed full of would be shoppers. I almost threw mom into the backseat and was rewarded with a look that used to send shivers of fear down my spine when I was a child: The over-the-glasses look. When you saw that look, you knew you were in trouble. I was out of the car in a flash and was making my way to a local park that was packed with sellers of all kinds. Mom, who was a little out of breath when she caught me wanted to know why I was in such a hurry. "Trolls," I said. "Oh dear," she replied. "We're never getting out of here." To the uneducated and uninformed, troll collecting is a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide. People have been known to spend their life savings on just the perfect troll. Trolls come in many shapes and sizes, colors and styles, and each collector has his or her own particular reason for collecting them. I have a reason but I keep it to myself. I walked right over to the troll vendor and began to peruse her wares. I looked up one table and down the next. (Nothing.) I moved down to the next table and there it sat. Troll perfection!! It was a 1935 green-haired, orange-eyed beauty manufactured by the Alexander Family of southern Ohio. It stood slightly over 12 inches tall and was made of corn husks. It was a gold medal find in an unlikely place. It was the troll that I needed, longed for, and just had to have to complete my collection. Twenty years of collecting was boiling down to the next few minutes. The owner of the troll table sidled over to me and looked to be as old as the troll that I now held in my hand. "I see you're interested in old Tallulah?" she asked. "Not really," I said. (I was getting ready to do some negotiating; I didn't want to give myself away.) "Who you think you're kidding?" she said. "I've been waiting on someone like you for about 10 years since I decided that I was getting too dang old to collect these trolls anymore. I don't have family to pass 'em on to, and I sure as hell don't want the government to get 'em. I know how much the blasted thing is worth, so don't try to wear me down. How much you give me for it?" "Uh?" "I'll tell you what, I like the looks of you, you seem like nice folks, being here with your mom and all, I'll sell Tallulah to ya'll for one dollar. That's my final and only offer." As I looked over at mom and asked to borrow a dollar (I had brought only hundreds to purchase the troll.) I tried to keep my composure. By this time the old lady was wrapping up my purchase and cackling to herself. I murmured a thanks and was about to walk away when suddenly I turned around and gave that woman the biggest hug I had ever given anybody. As she pulled away from the embrace she gave me one last look and said, "You take care of Tallulah for me." (Yes, ma'am!) That's the story of my participation in this year's longest yard sale. We walked around the park and sampled a few food vendors and then were ready to go. I didn't make it to Alabama; in fact, I only made it to one town. And that was fine for me. There's always next year!! (I have a collection of kazoos that I'm working on.)

Changing Bus Routes...A Cherry Fork Road Memory

Growing up on Cherry Fork Road provided me with many memorable experiences. One memory that stands out today is when the school system decided to change the bus routes. This wasn't necessarily a good thing. I had ridden the same bus, number 7, and had the same driver, Don Vogler, for at least eight years. I knew what I could get away with and also knew when to shut up and get back in my seat. Bus number 7 and I had been through several harrowing bus rides together. It was on that bus that Sister and I had clung together while Don rushed us home to see if Brother had burnt the house down. You can check out that story here. It was also the bus that sent me flying in the air and off to the hospital which was a really scary and cool thing when you're in the sixth grade. (I haven't shared that remembrance yet.) I liked riding that bus; I knew everybody and everybody knew where to sit. The bus that I was now assigned to was number 23, driven by John Smiley, or Smiley as we called him. He was an older gentleman, kind of gruff and silent. He didn't seem to be too excited about getting a new route either. The first day on my new bus I was nervous. I was in ninth grade, a lowly freshman and I now got on the bus midway through the route instead of being one of the first kids on like I was on bus number 7. That meant that most of the empty seats were taken and I had to sit with the kid that nobody wanted to sit with. Not to be mean or anything but every bus had a kid like that: the nose-picker, the one that smelled like poop, the bed-wetter that hadn't bathed, the kid that always seemed to have shaved areas on their head because of frequent bouts of head lice, the fat kid, or worst of all, the empty seat where someone had just thrown up and now reeked of leftover puke and sawdust. I knew it was going to be a long year if I had to ride in the puke seat every day. Luckily for me, a new rule came down that everyone had assigned seats and I had to sit with my sister. Unlucky for both of us, the seats all around us were assigned to the nose-picker and the kid that smelled. Midway through the year somebody moved and the fat kid now sat directly across the aisle from us and was all to happy to share his horde of candy and gum. I only rode that bus for one year because sometime during the summer all of the new routes were changed back to the original old routes. So much for saving any money which was the sole purpose of the new routes. I guess someone's child didn't want to sit beside me either...