Hydrangea ... just a great Southern flower ... they are everywhere in bloom right now, this one bloom is the size of a dinner plate.  The bush was covered by periwinkle flowers, and will bloom through the summer. During the fall and winter the bush loses its flowers and leaves and will look like sticks, dried out and brown, brittle sticks poking out of the ground.  I prefer this blue/purple colored flower, but they are available in many different shades ranging from greenish yellow through the blues all the way to pale pinks and bold magenta's.  Sometimes right on the same bush.


Yesterday a couple of my daughters and I joined a bunch of church ladies at the lake for ... fellowship. Great venue ... outside on the water.  As the sun set shimmering golden over the water, little fireflies twinkled in and out of gardenia bushes, and cicadas sang.  Four likes the lake even better then the beach ... I can see why.


An avocado salad and crisp tortilla chips was the ice breaker course.

(thanks Barefoot Countessa ... really good recipe:

• 4 ripe Haas avocados
• 3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice (1 lemon)
• 8 dashes hot pepper sauce
• 1/2 cup small-diced red onion (1 small onion)
• 1 large garlic clove, minced
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 medium tomato, seeded, and small-diced)

We have lived here for around twenty years now and I still feel like an observer at this type thing.  It's me.  I just don't quite fit.  There is room enough for me in this ground, but ... I am not a hydrangea.  Any one of those women would bring casseroles, and pans of warm bread, and tea so sweet ... well so sweet it's thick with sweetness, any one would "be there" for me if I were in need.  I look out for them as well. I do and would for a lot of nice and good reasons, but none of them find root in true affinity ... these are not my people.  Wish they were or maybe I just wish that I were among my people.

I wish it were possible to write about this.  I understand that I am not like them and I secretly wish they could be more like the women in Texas rather then the other way ... the way where I am more ... hahaha ... sweet.  It's very complicated really, and impossible to write about without sounding, I don't know, ungrateful, condescending, bitchy.  


We were learning how to coupon.  Coupon, like twenty-five cents off on a box of pasta, but only when you pair the purchase with their sauce.  I shop for  meals for six people and our grocery bill would love to be dialed back.  I don't even know where to "get" coupons.  Well, now I do.  There are web sites and they are also inserted in the Sunday paper.  Yesterday I learned that coupon thieves are coming on to people's lawns in the wee hours and stealing those coupons.  People coupon.  Amazing.  A guest speaker was there to help shed the light on this.  She said she routinely gets a store gift certificate for money back when she goes shopping ... and ... her husband has built another room on to their house to store all her "bargains".  She stressed that if you coupon correctly a lot of stuff is free ... and who doesn't want free stuff.  She even mails expired coupons to military bases overseas because there's some kind of leeway on the dates.  Sitting there, taking notes, I realized a couple of things ... one, I could do better ... two, I do do worse, maybe even a lot worse.
  

Today we are going to buy some of the little local newspapers ... specifically for coupons.  We stopped taking the paper years ago when the front page headlines reported a local man's homosexual lifestyle had culminated in him jumping to his death from some big city bridge. Ummm, his wife was a neighbor.  I just couldn't see how any aspect of that was news-worthy ... it was in print because that's the way they do things over here.  He was old South ... seersucker South I think of it as ... then apparently he let some things go public and ... people were willing to buy newspapers reporting on his transgressions.  Maybe that happens everywhere.  I never noticed stuff like that until we came here.  Yesterday one of the ladies was recounting a snub from a local pastor ... it did sound like something I would be surprised to hear coming from him.  We know him.  Excellent sermons ... truly excellent. His social skills are maybe not so great ... he is a bit of a "blurter", and he feels a bit awkward, maybe shy, when he's part of a crowd rather then addressing a crowd.  She said he said the exact same thing to them last time he spoke to them ... both times in a "receiving line" at a funeral.  I gathered that he saw himself in a sort of a "bouncer" role ... crowd management.  I think he whispered something like "we need to keep the line moving" ... something like that.  She was extremely offended.  Persnickety, eyes narrowing offended, even as she retold the story.  I laughed, and she looked at me asking, "What kinda preacher says stuff like that?"  I said ... "Well, he is an excellent preacher from the pulpit, maybe not so great socially ... why didn't you just tell him to mind his own business?"  (Mind your own beeswax ... floats up from childhood memories) See ... that's why I don't "fit in" around here.  They make room for me, they actually kind of like me ... kinda, they have high hopes for my redemption.  Yes, a stunned silence followed by nervous laughter then me again, "I'm serious, if you had a problem with what he said why not take it up with him?"  and the answer ... Seersucker Southern ... "Because that would not have been nice and  it is important to always be nice!"  I would have said bullshit right there ... well, I did, silently and maybe with just a glint of amusement dancing in my eyes, but aloud I said, "Well, I disagree." I disagreed with the queen bee ... but, I didn't say that sitting around at a church thing with a bunch of ladies trash talking the preacher at the church across the way didn't seem very nice to me. 

Yes, we must all be nice at all times. 
Connections ... This is where I am ... where I live my life.  I am looking at these connections and thinking to strengthen them, and be strengthened by them.  I have always thought that church community was/is very important.  I've just been wary of these very nice women.  Some of them are nicer then others.


Here's a joke.
Two old college roommates were sitting on the back porch of one of these magnificent Southern homes ...rocking and vistin'.
The hostess, waving her beautifully manicured hand around, said, "Sugahr, when I said yes to my husband he gave me this dazzling (five carat engagement) ring.
OCR: Smiles and says, "That's nice."
Hostess: "And on our fifth anniversary he gave me that darlin' Rolls Royce ... . "
OCR: Smiles and says, "That's nice."
this "he gave me thing goes on for awhile" ... the rocking gets a bit faster, but the old college room mate always responds with a smile and says ... "That's nice."  Finally the exasperated hostess asks, "Sugahr, dint chour husband ever give you nothin'?" and the OCR replied ... 
"Well, yes ... after we had been married for a while he did send me to charm school ... ."
"Charm school!?! Well whatever did you learn at charm school?"
OCR: "I learned to say that's nice when I really mean Eat My Grits*"


I never hear any of these ladies say "that's nice" or "be nice" or any kind of nicey-nice without remembering this joke.


*Eat my Grits" is a nice way, the Seer Sucker South way, of saying "Kiss my Ass" ... or something even worse.



"PS" ... especially for H: