Stomping to the Death - Orange Shag Runway Style

'Tis the season for my hometown paper to report of all the local queen contests in preparation for the county fair at the end of July. Much to the chagrin of my mortified mother, I was once a candidate myself.

Why did I submit myself to the wonder of the local beauty pageant? Two words...savings bond. That's right. All that humiliation for a savings bond for the winner. Well, that, plus I was afraid I would be pestered to death by the local Pork Producers group to become the County Pork Queen and that is a title you just don't live down. I'm sure many Ivy League colleges would be impressed if I listed "PORK QUEEN" as a high school accomplishment.

My first foray into beauty pageant...I mean, queen contest, was my hometown pageant. I was running against one other person and she had 99% of the support of the crowd. I counted only my sister Lisa and my friend Heather B. as my lone supporters. Nevertheless, I bellowed my way through my talent and somehow wound up winning. For such a small town (350 people), they gave me one GINORMOUS crown. I needed a whiplash neck brace to keep my head upright when I wore it.

On to the County Pageant ruled over by the long-standing pillar named Wava. Wava was the Saturday Night Live church lady with more lipstick and extra plumpness on top. On the big day, Wava stood behind her podium and staidly announced our entrance as we climbed out of the trailers (I know...redneck city) in which we were changing clothes and climbed up the rickety metal steps to the "stage" - which was half of a trailer sitting on the drag racing track. The roof was a green tarp and covering the floor was orange shag carpeting.

We stomped to the death (move over, Tyra Banks...this broad was FIERCE!) in our clothing selected from a local clothing store. Thankfully there wasn't a swim suit competition or I would have foregone the lure of the savings bond.

There was, however, the talent competition. I had written a song a year before after a guy I had a crush on really wanted nothing to do with me. He had used the dreaded F-word (let's just be FRIENDS) and I guess I was heartbroken enough to pound out some sad, sordid number called "Nothing Broken But My Heart". I don't remember much but the chorus was:

"Nothing broken but my heart

Nothing hurt but my pride

Nothing shattered but my faith

Since I can't have you by my side."

I know...dig out that sad violin music and pour me a bottle of bourbon. Nashville, here I COME! No seriously, I had to play on this old upright piano that had been painted mint green sometime during the late '70s. The microphone poised near my mouth kept weighing the stand down and the microphone began to slide down, down, down towards my lap. I'm sure by the end I was hunkered over like the Hunchback of Notre Dame as I tried to bellow out the last stanza.

I ended up getting first runner up...the only real dig was that I lost to my current-boyfriend-at-the-time's ex-girlfriend name Julie. My family consoled me with a little ditty called "Junky Julie from George" in which they assured me that the crowded "jeered and jived" that I hadn't won. And my only chance to practice my "wrist, wrist, elbow, elbow" queen wave in a parade was rained out.

But I do still have the savings bond. And in another hundred years, it just might have doubled in value. To $50. If I actually consider the rate of inflation, I actually lost money on this whole deal. As well as a great deal of dignity.

The Need for an Adult Bib

This week I am away from home on business, training a new sales rep for my company. Now, I suppose I should feel enormous guilt for abandoning my Squirrels but they are spending the week at my sister Susan's house, and they had nary a minute to talk to me when I called. Which means they are having the time of their life, probably free feeding on TCBY frozen yogurt, riding horses, and turning Susan's house into shambles. So, if it's all right by you, I'll skip the Working Mom Guilt this week.

I indulged in something tonight that made me realize there is a market for adult bibs...a 45 minute pedicure. Why the bib? Let me 'splain...

I was in Old Navy feeling sorry for myself as I realized sometime between last year and this year, Old Navy had shrunk all their pants. I stood before the dressing room mirror in the "Sweetheart" jeans and turned and twisted trying to see if my backside looked like it needed backup beeping sounds in the pair of pants I had wedged myself into. I realized it would be some time before I would be in single-digit sizes again and resigned myself to fate (cue the violins playing sad music).

So I left the store planning to attend my Pity Party, Population One when I spotted a nail salon. The last time I had a pedicure was right before my wedding and I managed to leave the salon on my foam flip flops and promptly rear end somebody at the next stoplight as I was looking down admiring my newly-painted toes. The passenger of the vehicle I rear-ended got out and was smoking up a storm and cussing at me. She must have called the cops because soon an officer, an ambulance, and a fire truck pulled up. Suddenly she was in the car complaining of chest pains and neck/back injuries. My insurance company rewarded me with a fat increase in my premiums for the next three years. Happy Wedding to me.

So I felt it was time I climb back into the saddle again...or, in this case, the delectable vibrating, swirling warm water around my feet pedicure chair. I really think if we'd drop these pedicure chairs into the Middle East (instead of food packages and bombs), we'd have world peace in no time.

I was 15 minutes in before I figured out my pedicure chair was programmable. It started massaging my back and between that and having my feet pampered, I feared my eyes would roll back in my head, I'd start drooling like a nursing home resident, and fall out of my chair.

Alas, I made it through and must say, my feet look fabulous! At least 10 years younger (ha!) and in honor of my cute little Asian pedicurist, I indulged in some MSG-laden Chinese food for dinner. Who says business trips have to be a drag?

Slow Death & Black Hair Snobbery

After recently visiting the town we used to live in in mid-North Carolina, I have realized that adopting African-American children as pasty white parents while living in the South would have been an entirely different experience.

It isn't just because the South has some weird traditions. Case in point...when I first moved to NC, I was driving along the road and I saw signs on either side of the driveway of a house that said, "Slow death in family". I thought that was very odd to broadcast to the world that a loved one was slowly dying until I realized a punctuation mark was missing, and it should have read "Slow. Death in Family". As in, slow down...there is a 3-day wake happening in this household where people are double-fisting fried chicken, fried okra, collard greens, black-eyed peas, and gallons of sweet tea all while prefacing anything they want to say with "Bless his heart..." followed by a thorough roasting.

And it isn't just that the grocery stores in the South carry weird items...like floating bits of what appear to be brain matter they call "chitlins" and shrink-wrapped packages of pigs' feet. And evidently what I call a grocery cart is labeled a "buggy" - no horse required to pull.

It's that there is a clear racial division in the South and the blacks really don't care to mingle anymore than the whites do. There could be two grocery stores belonging to the same chain in the same town and one was where all the whites went, and one was where all the blacks went. You had your black funeral parlors, churches, dry cleaners, and schools and your white versions of the same.

Well, I show up with two African-American girls and get the look of Black Hair Snobbery from every black woman I see. I went into a African Braiding salon to see if someone could give my nearly arthritic hands a break and cornrow the girls' hair. I got the aghast looks from the two ladies braiding and was told they didn't have time for me. I asked if there were other salons in town that could help me (the town is 50% black) and was told "not really". Really? One salon for all the black women? I know how many hair relaxers, weaves, extensions, corn rows, and wigs go into making a black woman's hair look nice. I know that a black woman will pay for their hair to be done before paying their rent even if it means eviction. And they are telling me one salon caters to all the black women in a town of 23,000? Seriously...

And then the older black women think they can tell me how to raise my child. I was carrying Kate back from the breakfast nook at the hotel when the maid told me "Put her down. She's old enough to walk." I was so shocked that someone would tell me how to parent that I'm sure I looked like a guppy standing there with my mouth hanging open.

So alas, (and no disrespect to my dear friends in the South) I am glad we waited until back in the Midwest to become an interracial family. And I'm glad no black woman saw my squirrels while we were at OBX. FYI...chlorine, sea water, tons of sun, and black hair is a deadly mixture. I didn't even bother to tame the beasts until mid-week.

Olympic Gold Medal Eyeballs

The other week Squirrel #1 (Eli) came home from school and in the midst of her rambling, she told me she ran a mile in 6 minutes and 35 seconds. This, coming from the same girl who thinks she will grow up to win "American Idol" and who tears up the pages of her journal and sprinkles them in fake plants as "seeds", didn't have me batting even one eyeball. There is not even a track at her elementary school so I figured she was confused with the shuttle run or something.

On the last day of school, however, the P.E. teacher sent home the results from the Presidential Physical Fitness testing. In addition to the particular student stats, the students are given a percentile rating that indicates where they rank on a national scale of students at the same grade level (1 being that pretty much everyone can beat the pants off them - i.e. the ratings I'm sure I got and 100 being that they can pretty much beat the pants off everyone else).

There it was...mile run 6:35, 100th precentile. I wondered if the P.E. teacher had hung a shiny object on the end of a string in front of her to get her to do anything longer than 1.5 seconds. But then, well, I gotta tell you...I started to dream big dreams for my little spastic squirrel.

I mean, up until now, we were hoping that her being black and formerly in foster care was enough of a sob story to get some level of scholarship. She does all right with grades when she is not getting marked down for constantly talking during class or not staying seated (thank God for the little blue pill she takes each morning...). But now, I had visions of her blazing around the high school track, college scouts madly dialing their Blackberries shouting "Recruit! Recruit!" (okay, this may not be how it happens...). Then some reknowned Olympic coach spots her and takes her on as his special protege.

In reality, I could never afford that level of coaching and look how well athletes/entertainers have turned out that have had parents who tried to live vicariously through their children (Michael Jackson, anyone? Tiger Woods?). So in the end, I just took her aside and told her that God had given her a very special talent...and it was up to her how she was going to honor Him with it.