Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks

I am not great at presentation. Not great at setting a table to entertain, not great at arranging the fireplace mantle, not great at decorating the house for Christmas, and not great at putting together an outfit to go out on the town.

I still remember Don telling me we were to meet his boss for dinner at the country club that night. Not only did I dread going, knowing his boss and his wife didn't really like each other that much, but I had no clue what to wear, and there truly was nothing in my closet that was an appropriate choice. I was hesitant because I had  never been inside a country club. I remember I wore a red angora sweater with a black wool skirt, and was hot and itchy all night. My skirt was too narrow and too short so it kept inching up my legs all night long. My overall memory of the evening is a combination of being hot and itchy, flashing people, and trying to have conversation with two people who obviously did not like being together. It was a blast.

That was about 13 years ago and since then I've chipped away at figuring things out - the things that I'm not naturally good at.

So I can now set a table pretty well (I have a cheat sheet in the silverware drawer for where to put all the dishes and silverware), I cut photos out of magazines for ideas to decorate the house. One of my best resources for entertaining and decorating comes from Sandy at Reluctant Entertainer. Go meet her - you'll love her and not only that she'll equip you so that within a short time you could / should be having people over and feeling bit more confident about the whole thing.

I buy books like "How to Not Look Old' and watch funny shows on TV because they truly are tremendously helpful.  I have a few outfits that work for more formal occasions. They're at the back of my closet but I can grab one with short notice. None of them cost a fortune; in fact some of them are from consignment stores in our area. I'm all for letting someone else pay too much, wear it a few times, then sell it to me for half or less. That works very well for me.

So keeping in that train of thought - look what I found - shoe perfection!



Clinton and Stacey would say so, I do believe, and at $24.99  I'm pretty darned please. Thank you Payless Shoes. They are just a tish too long, but the sales lady introduced me to something called Heel Grips (For $1.79 a pair) that sticks to the inside of your shoe and takes up that extra space.  These pointy, black shoes will be perfect with jeans or a nice pair of slacks.

It's about more than the shoes - it's about evolving, a process I think should never stop.

You can, in fact, teach an old dog new tricks. I'm living proof of that. What could you use a little help with? Cooking, cleaning, organizing, raising children without losing your mind - the list is endless but the resources are too.

Houses with the Shine Worn Off

Earlier this week I got an email from a friend, telling me about a website.  You could type in childhood addresses and see a current, live photo of the house.

Termites have probably won the battle with a few of the houses I grew up in; some we didn't live in long enough for them to hold more than a shadow of a memory with me, but there are two. I suppose a psychologist could give good reasons why they stand out from all the rest. I just know I loved them - and the years spent there - more than any others. We moved into the first one when I was about 8 or 9, and stayed until I had just joined the ranks of teenager.

Memories that flooded, when the photo showed on the screen, seem as fresh as yesterday. Roller skating on the driveway, with the key looped through a ribbon tied around my neck; catching crawdads in the ditch and building forts from the trees left over after Christmas; learning the sad truth about Santa, dancing all over the couches to Baby Elephant Walk and piano lessons from Mrs. Wiggins who lived down the street and whose little boy died. The ice cream truck that drew us kids to the streets every day, playing music that sounded like what I imagined a circus would. I saw the tree in our front yard - home base for nighttime games of Hide 'n Seek that included the entire neighborhood. As I traveled up and down the street with the cursor I saw the culdesac where Pepi lived. Pepi the big, scary dog that tore my brother's leg open when he tried to ride by with his newspapers strapped to his bike. I still remember that the tear was in the shape of an L. I went from child to young girl in that house, so leaving behind my Barbies and Thumbelina when we moved was probably appropriate, but given the choice I would have kept them.

The website showed the Erwin's house, right across the street.. They were the only family in the neighborhood that had more kids than we did. How did they all fit in that tiny house I didn't know was tiny? Was the neighborhood that shabby when we lived there, or have forty years just worn the shine off everything that's visible to the naked eye? That's a question for adults, not little girls 8 years old.

Pulling up the picture of the house on Emile, my home when I was too young to tie my own shoes, I was surprised to see people. A black man sat on the steps with a little boy, also black. The steps my siblings went up and down to walk to school. The pecan tree I've revered in my memories is gone, replaced by a sad little sapling. As I scrolled up and down the street I saw houses with windows boarded up, yards overgrown with brambles, abandoned cars and other signs that most people who live there have a lot of month left after the paycheck runs out, if there is a paycheck at all.

Our neighborhoods might have been segregated but the schools were not. I still remember several girls in my class, trying to teach me to do double dutch jump rope at recess. I remember their knobby hair, sticking straight out at each side of their heads in fat braids that had many baubles on them. It was a sharp contrast to my yellow curly hair and fair complexion. Not that we cared about the color of our skin - we left such things to adults. I don't know if they never came home with me because we already had so many kids of our own, or that you just didn't do such a thing. If a black family lived on Click Drive I don't remember them. It seems to me when I lived on Emile there were no black families anywhere near us, but then I was little and so was my world.

I looked at the black man sitting on the porch with his little boy, in that worn-out house, in that worn-out neighborhood and I wondered. If I stopped by, walked up those wooden steps and introduced myself, if I told him I'd lived there as a little girl, would that endear me to him, or separate us more? No answers, just deep questions.