Odds and Ends

Ms. Knitingale herself being, unquestionably, one of the odds; and one end being supplied handily by Ed himself, who seems quite determined to have my entire body labelled "Property of Ed" and, as such, has made it his business to smear cat snot over 98% of me thus far, in a semi-even film without ever ceasing in his attempts to shove his tush in my face. I feel like a garden with slugs in it.

I got such great comments about my trashy background--you all made me howl with laughter. Monica, Babe, you're killing me over here. I think you grew up country, rather than trashy (which makes you at least 47% more respectable than me) but, fortunately, I can contribute there, too, having spent a bit of time in each of these very special worlds (do you think we might be related?). For instance, you might be country if:

• you have a female relative who tried to kill a mouse in the barn...with a shotgun.


• that same female relative once threw a coffeepot at the horse her teenage son brought into the kitchen one night.


• your father tells fond stories about Saturday nights tipping over outhouses....while they were in use.


• you have been chased by a bull while walking home from your grandmother's house.


• you have a relative who had a pet turkey.


• you have a relative who used to sit out on the porch and let a crow steal bologna off his sandwich (am I the only one out there, by the way, who has to sing the Oscar Meyer song to correctly spell bologna?)


• when the family reunion was at a campground, you easily found your group by the child urinating in the middle of the road in front of it


• your cousin once got bored and stuck an entire, home-canned peach in his ear.


• that same cousin had to be pulled out from under the house naked because his mother told him he'd better not go under the house and get his clothes dirty again...or else (I suspect that could happen in a non-country setting, too...but it was so funny I wanted to put it in there).


• you could get 30 recipes for apple cobbler, meatloaf, or pot roast with a single phone call, but not a one for mojitos or sushi.


• there's a funny family story about someone getting her hair caught in the wringer of the old washing machine. And that machine was around a lot longer than the semi-bald relative.


• you know exactly what an electric fence feels like. And you knew it each of the next 15 times you touched it, too.


• you once had to restyle your hair to cover where the horse chewed on it.


• you have eaten so many jell-o salads in church basements that the sight of a jell-o mold will make you bow your head in prayer (and not just because of the canned peaches and miniature marshmallows, either).


• when your grandma passed away, no one was surprised to find home canned fruits and veggies from 20 years before


• there was the living room, and the "company" living room. The latter had plastic on the furniture "to keep it nice".


• anyone in your family has been injured by a broody pig.


• or stuffed a pig headfirst into a boot in order to castrate it.


• "checking the mousetrap" meant making sure the cat was still alive

That was my dad's family...my mom's was the other one. Imagine the mixture. That said, Mr. K spent some time in farm country and can offer this one: if you've ever held onto a cow's tail and gone skiing behind it in the cow manure.....yeah, you might be country. Behold, Mr. K at age 20, engaging in just this sport:

Lastly, Mr. K and I are repainting the deck today; I'm taking a break while he replaces a few boards (in my defense, I spent the last few hours scraping old paint off with a small tool and using appropriately bad language). On the list of things I'd rather be doing, the broody pig is starting to sound pretty good. So is the cowshit ski trip. Wish me well. And send wool if I start to become faint in the heat or overcome by paint fumes.