Over The Dashboard

I wanted to explain a few things about Cat Daddy before starting on the third scene of Frick and Frack's rough stock romance. First, before you start getting the idea he was some kind of "loser" on the make, he wasn't. He is just very single minded in his pursuit of what he wants...in this case, me! Second, it wasn't that he was a push over either...he is and always will be, 100% peacock. He struts with the best of them and isn't going to be led around by the nose by anybody...in this case, me!

I feel much better getting that off my chest and now it's back to the Paso Doble of our courtship!

Act I, Scene 3

With that last phone call, I knew this was a man who knew what he wanted and wasn't afraid of going after it. I had been pursued before, but never with quite so much intensity. I suppose that was what frightened me so about him. I knew in my heart of hearts where this was leading and where it was going to end.

I agreed to go out with him again and with a few ground rules (like keeping his hands in his pockets!) in place, we began to see each other on a regular basis. I was still dating a few others and I thought he was too. Only thing is...I was wrong about him. He had been seeing someone pretty regular before meeting me that Friday night at the Palms and she was seriously serious about him. She caught me out one night with my friends and proceeded to give me a piece of her mind...which in my opinion she didn't have to spare! (She let him get away, didn't she?) I was shocked to say the least. I had no idea he had dumped her when we started going out, but he had very strong convictions about dating two women (especially one he wanted to throw a loop over) at one time. Seems he considered some things deal breakers and along with not putting your hand over your heart during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner, this was one of them.

I let her have it right back, reminding her that he wasn't married or even engaged to her. If he wanted to continue seeing her, that was his choice, not mine. If she had a problem, she needed to take it up with him and leave me the heck alone. It seems she had already taken it up with him and he had told her Adios! She thought if she could just get me out of the picture, everything would resume to her version of normal. Of course, the quickest way to make a man look more attractive is to have another woman want him and thanks to her...I wanted him!

So with the cowgirl tart out of the way, I felt I needed to halt any further dating of other people on my end. It only seemed fair. He had never told me not to (smart man), but I knew it was time to quit playing games and get down to business. We discussed it and he told me that he didn't need to know about my past. What he had done in the past was his past and what I had done was mine. Done, over, forgotten...strictly don't ask/don't tell! I knew then, this was someone who could make me happy!

Even though we had only known each other a few weeks, we were out together almost every night. If we didn't go out, he'd call and we'd talk until he fell asleep with the phone in his hand. After about four weeks, he began doing the proposal polka. He would dance all around the question, never asking, just doing a little fancy two steppin'. Finally after about six weeks (again at the drive-in, no less), he turned to me and said, "How 'bout it?"

(to be continued)

Talking Trash

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Doing The Tango Texas Style (Persistence, Thy Name Is Cat Daddy)!
I'll try to add photos this afternoon. David had a great suggestion and I'm working on it as you read this latest installment of my Texas Two Step Love Story.
Act I,Scene 2
I got in bed late that night (ALONE!) after my first experience at a Texas honkytonk. To say I was tired was an understatement, but I knew I would be going back and soon. The Palms Danceland was nothing like anything I had ever experienced. Their "hook" was being open in the afternoon for the T.I. employees who worked the late night shift and a great house band. What does that tell you? This was no "Billy Bob's" or "Gilleys", but a true juke joint! I was getting to walk on the wild side and I was digging it, even if I did stick out like a sore thumb with my bell bottoms and clogs! The next morning (well more like afternoon since I slept until noon) the phone rang. It was Mr. Cowboy asking for a date. I had no idea how he had gotten my phone number. I certainly didn't remember giving it to him...at least I didn't think I did. I hemmed and hawed and really couldn't think of a reason not to accept...besides the fact that he scared the living fool out of me. My friend kept urging me to say yes, that he was a nice guy, safe, etc.!!! Finally after much hesitation, I said I'd go.
That Friday when he picked me up, he looked totally different in the light. He cleaned up real nice like and was able to stand upright without swaying. I thought he looked really sharp in his Stetson Silver Belly and freshly starched Wranglers. (I just have to say at this point...there is something about a cowboy's butt that is different from other men's. I guess it's all the time spent in the saddle that lifts it up almost to their shoulders...whatever the reason, all I can say is YOWZA!) He seemed harmless enough...shows how deceiving looks really can be! We went to the Gemini Drive-In...mistake # 1. I expected him to be a perfect gentleman...mistake # 2. He had more moves than a Sumo wrestler. I have no idea what movie was showing as I was too busy protecting my virtue! I had grown up in the small town of McKinney, but I wasn't a country bumpkin. I was, after all, a child of the '60's and had been on a date or two in my time, but this guy had more on his mind than just pitchin' a little woo! I later learned that he was so nervous and didn't usually behave in such an amorous way. Seems I brought out the beast in him or that's what he likes to say now. Whatever the reason, I knew I wouldn't be going out with him again...problem was he didn't know that. After the movie, he took me by his home to meet his mother which I thought was just a little bit odd, but I went along because I knew this was going to be our first and last date. On the way back to my place, he had a flat tire on his truck and had to change it in the pouring rain. That alone should have been an omen of things to come.
To call the mating ritual that followed in the next few weeks a courtship would be a joke. A high speed chase would be more like it. It seems everywhere I went, there he was. If we went to another club...he was there. If we left that club and went to another...there he was. This boy was nothing if not part blood hound. How he knew where I would be at any given time was, to say the least, a little bit unnerving. I think it's called stalking now, but back then I called it ballsy! He'd call and I'd have friends tell him I was out. He'd call back. He was relentless in his pursuit. Finally I had enough. He called and my friend told him I was washing my hair...15 minutes passed and he called back, drying my hair...15 minutes, rolling my hair. Finally she decided to put him out of misery and told him I just wasn't interested. His reply was a simple thank you and I thought that's that. Nope...15 minutes later the phone rings. What can I say...I gave up, he won the first round and so the courtship began!
(to be continued)

Monday, August 10, 2009

You Asked For It!
A Tale of the Texas Two Step
by
Talking Trash
(A play in three acts)
That is the way that Cat Daddy and my life together should be written, but since I am not a playwright this will be written just as another blog post.
There are only two main characters in my pretend play...Cat Daddy and me. Anybody else would just complicate the telling, so let's keep it simple, okay?
When I met C.D. it was purely by accident. A friend had talked me into going to a local hangout of hers for a drink. She was interested in one of the guys there and wanted me to be her wing man. Little did I know what was waiting for me just behind that swinging door. Now keep in mind, this was no nightclub or genteel supper club, but a down and dirty, raunchy honkytonk where all the cowboys liked to gather after the rodeo. These weren't any drugstore cowboy either. Most of them (including some cowgirls) had either a gun or a knife in their boots. Oh my! These men rode bareback horses, saddle broncs and bulls. This was in the days before endorsements and private airplanes. These guys worked hard and played hard. I was, to my poor parents' regret, a weekend hippie with red hair that I could sit on. I didn't know diddly about horses or cowboys. Heck, I hadn't even dated anybody in FFA, for pete's sake, so you can imagine my surprise upon walking in and seeing nothing but a sea of cowboy hats doing what looked like to me, roller skating backwards around the dance floor! I was ready to leave then and there.
My friend talked me into giving it a chance and staying. We found an empty table close to the front, just in case I wanted to make a quick getaway and waited to be asked to dance. To my shock, it didn't take long and boy, did those guys know how to dance! My favorite partner of the night was a mortician who loved to laugh! It seems the dance I had saw the couples doing earlier was the beginning of the "Texas Two Step". It was just starting to catch on. The cowboys called it "rubbing belt buckles"...I called it unusual! The arms didn't go where they usually do in dancing, but I finally got the hang of it. I was dancing every dance and I noticed that this one tall, lanky cowboy kept asking me to dance and every time after the dance had ended, he would move one table closer to where we were sitting. Little did I know he had a penchant for bourbon with coke and redheads!
As the night got later, he had finally maneuvered himself to the table next to ours. I noticed a lot of pairing off beginning and I told my friend I thought it was time to say good night and head on home. Mr. Cowboy asked for a last dance and I agreed. He finally told me his name and asked if I would like to go have breakfast (it was about 1:30 in the morning) and I quickly declined. Something about him scared me. Then he asked if I would like to go out to the parking lot and see the new toolbox on the back of his truck. I knew then it was time for me to make like a atom and split!
Much later, I learned that the next day he had told his family he had met the girl he was going to marry.
(To be continued...)

Hospital Drive Thrus

I get so frustrated because I don't understand the political machine or big business and it appears to me that our health care is now big business. I'm pretty sure the two are sleeping together otherwise this wouldn't be happening. Somewhere along the way, medicine decided that making gobs of money took precedence over decency!

A dear friend just had surgery this morning and is being sent home this afternoon! Doesn't matter that he is a high health risk or that there was a lot of infection in the area where surgery was performed. It seems the doctors and hospitals have been getting a lot of flack from insurance companies over "unnecessary hospital stays" and don't want to pay. Rather than risk losing money, the care givers are obeying. I guess we know who is running the show as to our health issues. Just exactly when did at least an overnight hospital stay become unnecessary after a surgical procedure? When did "day surgery" become the norm for any and all procedures and sending patients home with drainage tubes acceptable?

I am absolutely livid with outrage. Instead of worrying about how to pay for health care, someone should address the health care or lack there of that is being paid for. A woman should not be expected to come home with a drainage tube where she used to have a breast just because the insurance carrier deems it appropriate. Last time I checked, they didn't have any medical degrees hanging in their corporate offices designating their worthiness to make such decisions.

I won't get started this time about the big pharmaceuticals. All I'll say is it's a sad sign of the times when a drug to make eyelashes longer takes precedence over cancer!

Money is being made hand over fist and in the process quality care is slowly disappearing. If they could get us to do it ourselves over the telephone and still bill us, I think they would!

Soapbox Derby #1

Sometimes I feel the need to get on a soapbox and just scream...not just rant, but scream! I am so tired of people (and by people I mean friends, acquaintances and just plain strangers) thinking it is perfectly correct to walk up to me and just start spouting off their political views.

I don't encourage it or even ask for it. They just feel this need to sound off and assume I share their views. While sometimes I do, I consider my political and religious beliefs personal and don't feel the urgency to foist them on others. I am so tired of vitriolic rants, e-mails that are downright stupid in their lack of credibility, and just plain racism hiding behind the Constitution.

Now don't get me wrong...ignorance isn't limited to party affiliation or denomination. It's stems from not wanting to accept what is while ignoring what was. Am I happy with the current administration? For me it is just too soon to tell, but I will say I don't consider Obama the Anti-Christ nor do I think he is an illegal alien. But I digress...this will not be a post about my personal feelings one way or the other and it is certainly not an invitation for yours either(meaning if you do leave a comment as to your viewpoint, know that I will delete it). My point is that I want folks to get out of my face about how they feel regarding our former and current presidents. There are enough people out there who do share your beliefs you can talk to or better yet, start a blog where you will find your audience. In the meantime,please, just leave me the hell alone!

What Price Fame?

How bizarre to get on the Internet tonight and see that Michael Jackson had passed away at 50. My first reaction was that it was some kind of joke. Perhaps a way to avoid all the debt he had accumulated or a way for privacy that he had been denied. Then, I am so ashamed, I thought it was a publicity stunt.

I don't know why I was feeling ashamed. It's not like he didn't do things constantly as a way of drawing attention to himself. He was odd and perhaps more than just a little tormented. His public actions in his adult years rarely made sense. Having been in the limelight his entire life, he probably didn't know any other way to live....needing the focus to be on himself just to breathe.

You have to wonder what kind of life experiences does that to a person....warping them in such a way that they never know happiness. Now what will become of the children? Hopefully someone will step in and try to undone what has been done so that they never feel the overwhelming need for love and adulation that was so obviously his addiction.

May he rest in peace finally and perhaps have a ringside seat to see the circus that most certainly will be the media exposure surrounding his demise.

Revisiting the Summer of '61

Tonight when I took Jake outside one last time before bed, I was amazed by the lightening bugs in my backyard. I don't remember seeing this many since I was a kid. All of a sudden, I was ten years old again. I could smell fresh cut grass, Mercurochrome, lemonade and Off mosquito spray!

It was wonderful to relive memories long forgotten had it not been for the lightening bugs. Now I know most people refer to them as fireflies and that may be correct, but growing up in the small town of McKinney, I never heard anyone refer to them as anything else. They were lightening bugs made to be caught by small children and kept in a mason jar with a tin lid punched full of tiny air holes.

Growing up in a small town as I did, summer was a magical time. We played outside from can till can't, coming inside only during the real heat of the day for an afternoon nap, then back outside in the evening. All the parents on our street would sit on their front porches (backyards were for clothesline, not visiting) or on the grass in aluminum lawn chairs watching the kids play and visiting back and forth. Occasionally, one of the dads would pitch a whiffle ball game for us or act as the umpire while a mother would drag out and crank an ice cream freezer full of bananas, nuts, vanilla and cream.

It was a time of dirty, bare feet toughened over summer until we could walk on glass and never feel a thing. Shoes were only for church or special occasions. We were allowed absolute freedom in our kingdom of one city block. We knew no fear. Knees were made for skinning, trees for climbing and ditches for catching crawdads after a summer rain.

I feel sorry for children today. Parents want to wrap their children in saran wrap, sanitize everything and protect them from the world. It's sad that the world is no longer safe for children and even sadder that children don't have the same carefree childhood we did. They stay in an air conditioned home, watching endless TV or playing video games when they need to be outside. Their activities are organized by parents who enroll them in summer camps for everything from swimming to science. They aren't encouraged to use their own imaginations or allowed to just be. But tomorrow night when my granddaughter comes over, I think I will spray her down with Off and we'll sit outside, count stars and wait for the lightening bugs.