Not as creepy as it looks

Not many people know I’m on the cemetery committee of the Brentwood Historic Commission. I saw an article in the paper about this group and how they were on a mission to document with GPS the location of all the remaining family cemeteries in Brentwood before developers turn all the old farms into subdivisions.
I don’t know why it sounded like fun to me, but I knew instantly I wanted to help do this. I had never even seen an old family cemetery besides the ones you can spot from the road, and I had no idea there were so many in this town.
If you think about it, in the 1800s and early 1900s, where else would country folks bury their relatives but on family land? This was definitely the country, and parts of it still are. But with all the residential and commercial growth in Williamson County over the past 20 years, making a permanent digital record of these plots has become urgent.
In our old neighborhood, there was a historic cemetery in another home’s side yard. As a newlywed, this used to freak me out. Since a few of my grandparents have passed away over the past several years, though, I guess I have grown to value the idea of the final resting place even more.
It’s fascinating to see a 150-year-old cemetery with eight or nine members of the same family buried together under a massive oak tree out in the middle of the woods. Some of these have been fenced by builders and cared for by descendants, while others are buried under shrubbery, used by the homeowners as a place to toss yard trimmings or store firewood.

The fun part of the job is the hunt for a cemetery we’ve heard about but not plotted yet. A man who lives in Southern Woods, one of the largest neighborhoods on the Williamson/Davidson county line, took us on a hike through a wooded area on his property, which is on one of the main roads. After about five minutes on a “trail,” he said, “Oh, here it is,” and we came upon several tall headstones standing among the trees. In the filtered sun, it was beautiful. All I could do for a minute was wonder how the family got to that hilltop spot with a coffin in a horse-drawn wagon. I considered the difficult job of carrying the heavy stone markers up the ridge and felt pretty lazy in comparison to that generation.
I’ve also learned a ton about history and geology and religion: how granite is better for headstones because it’s an igneous rock that won’t let in water. Of course, it wasn’t available in this area back then, so most of this area’s limestone and marble tombstones are breaking down. How much of the stone in this area was from Louisville, St. Louis and Cincinnati because it was easier to float the stone down river than haul it upriver from quarries in Georgia. Of course, this changed, like everything, during the Civil War. How spring is a great time to search for unmarked graves because the surviving family usually planted daffodils and periwinkle on top to encourage growth over the newly turned dirt. How, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, people were buried on their backs, with their feet facing east so that when Christ returned, all the dead would rise and walk toward the east to meet Him.
I’m attaching some of the more intriguing photos from our hunts so far. One of my favorites shows a tree growing around a headstone from 1827. It shows how time won’t let anything manmade last forever, but we can work to keep what we value around as long as we can.

Live from where?

It is so weird to hear NBC's Brian Williams say, "Reporting live from Mississippi for the presidential debate." I can't wait to see how the news media deal with this. If the drive from Batesville to Oxford along Highway 278 doesn't kill them.

I love Mississippi. Most of my ancestors are from there. And Oxford is lovely, a genteel oasis on that boring highway. I actually am glad they chose the middle of Mississippi for the first debate because mainstream reporters will be forced to see firsthand that we do exist. I mean "we" as in the small-town South. As a teenager, I remember reading fashion or bride magazines with designer ads that list retail stores in each state where the clothing is sold. They'd have Miami and Boca, which are not the South. Then Texas would be well represented, but as they say, Texas is like a whole other country. It was as if the only Southern city that existed was Atlanta, and there were a whole lot of us who didn't get to Atlanta very often.

Actually, Nashville has come a long way, and I'm not doing that much designer shopping anyway. Besides, I really don't know if I want the secret of our greatness to be shared worldwide.

Football overdose

After the Vols' pitiful showing last weekend, my boys gave up in the third quarter and went out for their own backyard football game. Apparently the main job for Owen, the 5-year-old, was to say, "Down, set, HIKE!" and hand the ball to a big brother.

Well, he must have spent too long "under center," as they say, because when they came in for dinner it was his turn to say the prayer, and he closed his eyes and said, "Down, set... oh wait!!!"

He recovered in time to say his usual, "GodisgreatGodisgoodletusthankhimforourfood.Amen."

Polyester curtains and a redwood deck

Apparently all the same fools who run to Kroger if our local meteorologist mentions snow flurries have decided to cause a gas shortage here in Middle Tennessee. Just here, nowhere else.
No one can explain why, but panicked drivers yesterday caused such a run on gas stations that the paper reported today that 85% were out of gas. OUT. As in "can't get any, now matter how much money you have."
Oh, believe me, it was a crisis here in Brentwood. You know it's bad when moms driving Escalades are sitting 15 cars back in line to get gas, because they don't like to wait for anything. There was no interruption of cell phone service, of course, so those were fired up and in use as the No. 1 boredom-prevention device.
I drive a Ford Explorer, which is like a junior varsity SUV. I justify it by reminding myself that it uses regular gas. But I had let my gas gauge drop below 1/4 and just assumed, like I always do, that I'd fill up after dropping Owen off at preschool Friday. See around here, we're used to getting what we "need" when we need it. So when I pulled into my favorite Mapco, which was eerily not busy, my heart sped up when I saw plastic grocery sacks over all the gas nozzles.
No, no, no, this can't be happening here. Only the teeny tiny country towns actually run out of gas. This Mapco is about 50 yards from Interstate 65 and the biggest mall in the state. I still have to pick up three boys from three different locations and drive to a birthday party at Glow Galaxy! We cannot be OUT OF GAS.
Same story over at the Shell station. Grocery sacks. No gas. No prices on the signs. That's when my "low gas" light came on. I went home and began thinking about hoarding canned goods.
At this point we only had one vehicle that had a couple of gallons in it. To illustrate how our lives were thrown into a tailspin during the Brentwood gas crisis, my husband and the boys RODE BIKES to Owen's soccer game this morning. I, of course, drove the vehicle on fumes because I was bringing the chairs.
On my way there, Tim called my cell phone and whispered, "I just heard someone say the Concord Corner Market has gas and there is no line." I drove straight there and took up spot No. 9 in the newly forming line. Rather than piling up cell phone minutes, I commenced to judging the other people in line in front of me.
"Well, she got done pretty quick," I thought. "She must not really have needed gas. I'M ON FUMES HERE, PEOPLE!" I started thinking it would be a good idea for the store employees to come out and order the lines according to need. If cars have half a tank or more, send them on home. Of course, I assumed I'd be near the front of the line since I was running on FUMES.
My nominations for worst violators of the unwritten gas crisis rules were the woman in the Yukon who kept trying to top off, and the man pulling a trailer that carried a lawn tractor and three five-gallon gas cans. "Oh please, does he really need to MOW today? I'm running on FUMES here, mister, and I'm late for my kid's soccer game."
I mean, what's next? I may actually have to carpool.

Scratch off

All the talk about area school systems with such money problems that they want to lay off coaches and teachers, can't run school buses, can't get new textbooks and can't build enough schools made me wonder about all the Tennessee lottery money that was supposed to go to education. Then I remembered a column I wrote a few years ago about trying to buy my first lottery tickets. "Like to hear it? Here it go..."

It’s sometimes called an idiot tax, but figuring out how to buy a Tennessee Lottery ticket made me feel pretty stupid.
I mean, each time I thought about going into Mapco to buy one just for a lark, I’d get intimidated by some construction worker who reeled off his selections like an auctioneer: “I’ll take four Cash Threes, a Lotto 5, four Powerball quick picks and a pack of Winstons.”
Somehow a guy who hasn’t got sense enough to turn off his truck’s engine while filling the gas tank knows what to choose from the dizzying array of lottery tickets displayed next to the “energy pills” and beef jerky.
Under the guise of research, I’ve visited many local convenience stores, though somehow I always came away with more Hostess Ding Dongs than lottery tickets. Hey, we all have our guilty pleasures.
I finally figured out that there are instant games and online games. But the decisions I had to make were staggering. Do I scratch something or pick numbers? Should I choose my own numbers or let the computer pick them for me? Does Hostess really consider one pack of Ding Dongs to be two servings?
The Cash 4 game alone has 13 different ways to pick your numbers. It’d be easier to stand in the Wal-Mart line behind the woman who’s pushing two carts and hollering at four kids.
I never thought of Williamson County as a lottery hotbed, though officials say we rank 15th out of 95 Tennessee counties in ticket sales.
So why not join the fun?, I asked myself. I know, I know, there are those who believe the lottery is gambling and that gambling is a sin. But so are pride and faultfinding, and anyway, that’s a whole other column.
So I lined up behind the rest of the sinners who had chosen to throw away their entertainment dollars, and I told the jovial Mapco clerk I wanted one Powerball quick pick and four Lotto 5 numbers.
She gestured to the back of the store, where I had to get a separate form to bubble in my own numbers. That display had a sign pointing out that the Moores Lane Mapco had had a $25,000 winner, which I decided would come in handy when the twins leave for college at the same time.
You can guess how this story ends. The two most pitiful aspects of my lottery ticket experience are that my husband had to wake me up at 10:34 to see the Lotto 5 numbers on TV, and that I actually expected to win something.
I didn’t think I’d get the $75 gazillion Powerball prize, but the lottery Web site has enough pictures of folks who have won a couple grand that I thought I’d at least get some new den furniture with my “investment.”
Either that or a year’s supply of Ding Dongs.

Birthday Fun

We celebrated my baby's 5th birthday this weekend with a Candyland cake that I copied from a picture in Taste of Home magazine. We all had so much fun decorating it that I wanted to post a photo of the results.

The perfectionist in me would have made the surface more green like the game board, with green frosting, but the boys all said it's perfect, and each had his own favorite section. I love the Lollipop Forest, made with Dum-Dums, and the twins like Lord Licorice's Lair because they love Twizzlers. It was fun and easy to do, as long as you have a big-enough sheet cake pan!

Do not forget your checkbook

Most men probably have never been to a home party, but I’ll bet their wives have. It’s one of the necessary evils of suburban life.
At a home party, women gather in a friend’s home to view a presentation by a product consultant who will make them wonder how they’ve lived this long without that product.
Since I moved here 17 years ago, I’ve been to most every kind of party there is, beginning with a Longaberger basket party the first year I was married. These baskets are intricately made, which means “expensive.”
In that budget-conscious newlywed year, I forever ruined my husband’s view of home parties by purchasing what is still known in our house as “THE $65 basket.”
The key to a successful home party is the consultant, who, if she knows what she is doing, will suck you in with stories of how the company founder built his fortune one odd job at a time. She will impress you with tales of how, with a quick change of the machine-washable liner, one basket can serve as an ice bucket or, say, a baby cradle, and you suddenly think you need three of them.
Since then, I’ve enjoyed eating snacks and looking over products ranging from jewelry to developmental toys, books, candles, oil paintings and kitchen gadgets.
Which brings me to the Pampered Chef party. If you ever are invited to one, you should go because the consultant prepares food. The samples are worth enduring your husband’s eye roll.
Working as a consultant enables stay-home moms to make money, and the parties give us another reason to get together and talk. As if we needed one.
Not everyone loves them, though. I have a friend who once announced to our group, “Please do not ever invite me to a home party. It will not hurt my feelings, but I will not come, so save yourself the postage.” What a refreshing, straightforward approach.
Like baby showers, I haven't been invited to as many home parties lately. I'm mostly in the graduation gift-buying market.
Husbands usually speak derisively of home parties, probably because a) they either have to clear out of the house for 2 hours or entertain the kids and b) they’re jealous because there aren’t any home parties geared toward men.
I can just see my husband and his friends munching tomato-basil pizza squares and chatting up the merchandise the way we do.
“Dude, you should so get that Weed Eater. It would be perfect for that tight spot between your mailbox and the curb.”
“Yes, and those UT floormats you picked really bring out the brown fleck in your car upholstery.”
Copyright 2004

My idiot license is certainly up to date

This year I received my car tags a whole week before the deadline. This won’t mean much to you, though, if you don’t know about my dysfunctional relationship with County Clerk Elaine Anderson.
In the 17 years I’ve lived here, I’ve hardly ever completed the car tag renewal process correctly. Almost every time I send in the forms for my new stickers, I forget some piece of the puzzle and have to start over.
Perhaps examining my method will uncover its flaw. The form arrives in the mail, and I immediately put it in a “safe spot” on the fridge between the fall baseball sign-up sheets and the McAllister’s Deli coupons.
The form hangs on the fridge until my husband comes home one day and says, “The stickers on your license plate expire at the end of September.”
Ha! Those who know my husband can stop laughing, since you know he would never notice a detail like that. It was really my dad who said it.
I then decide the best way to start the week would be to get that required car inspection crossed off the list. One problem: Back then, the inspection station was closed Mondays, which I didn’t clue into until I drove up and naively thought I was the first person in line.
That’s one of my more common tag renewal blunders. Over the years, I’ve goofed up this process so many ways that the county clerk probably thinks she’s getting punked every time my name comes across the system.
Before the county required vehicles to pass emissions testing, I would invariably write my check for the wrong amount. I didn’t mean to, but bad math is one of my special gifts. Two days later, I’d get a hand-addressed envelope from the county clerk’s office with my check and a polite note congratulating me on my special gift.
Once the county added a visit to the emissions testing center on peculiarly named Merylinger Court to the process, my mishaps multiplied exponentially. I once waited in a 30-minute line at the inspection station only to have the attendant point out that I’d driven there in our minivan while the renewal form was for our other car.
I’ve had a potty-training twin start doing the pee dance in the middle of that inspection line. All hail the spare Pull-Up I found under the console.
In an earnest attempt to do it right, one year I opened the reminder envelope, filled out the renewal form, checked the math on my check and promptly mailed it in. Of course, in my organized blur, I completely omitted the inspection step.
Say what you will about government inefficiency. I deserve the blame for any problems in this relationship.
Believe me, Mrs. Anderson. It’s not you. It’s me.
Copyright 2006

Yet another sign we're getting old

Saturday night, on the way to bed, my husband said, "You know how it used to bother me when I had never even heard of the musical guest on Saturday Night Live? Well, I still usually don't know who they are anymore but now I don't even care because I know I'm not gonna stay awake to see them anyway."

Rock rebel in training

My older twin was listening to the radio, supposedly doing homework in my office, while I washed the dinner dishes. Suddenly he started laughing.
"HA hahaha. That is so weird! Why did he say that? 'You can't have any pudding if you don't eat your meat!' Who does this song?" Henry asked.
Finally. FINALLY! All my years of listening to classic rock had broken through to one of them, and here was the segue I had been waiting for.
"Yeah, that's Pink Floyd," I said coolly as I rinsed a skillet. "That's a really old song, you know. I think it came out when I was about your age."
I should have known he'd love that anthem, "We Don't Need No Education," from their album The Wall. I'm sensing a rebellious tendency in that one, who's usually my "by the book" kid. When he got an Ipod Nano for his birthday in July, he said one of the first songs he wanted to download was "that song 'Teenage Wasteland' by that band The Who."
Instantly I flashed back to the early 80s, when I was really getting into music. My dad had always had a lot of albums he'd let me listen to if I was very VERY careful, and I never got tired of spinning that rotating cover on Led Zeppelin III or trying to figure out who all the people were on the cover of Sgt. Pepper. So when I would see a video of a song I loved on MTV, I'd yell at my dad to "come see this awesome new song omigosh I love this song you have got to hear it wait no here it is wait listen to this part."
This was back when they actually showed videos on MTV and you might only be embarrassed by the production quality, not the vulgarity.
Inevitably my dad would be all, "Oh, yeah, he dances just like James Brown." Or "Meh, they sound just like The Beatles." Hearing that made me a little less excited about the song but more inclined to seek out the links on the rock-and-roll DNA chain.
So it was with measured restraint that I informed Henry that his favorite "new" song was ACTUALLY called "Baba O'Riley," and how The Who was a band that you really needed to SEE performing, like a Shakespeare play, to appreciate the impact. I think I was halfway through my exposition of how I read somewhere that Pete Townsend wrote the song about people who complain about the world's problems but don't do anything about them when I noticed that Henry had already left the room.
He was probably thinking, "It's rock music, lady. Don't overthink it."

That covered wagon has a glass ceiling

For his fourth birthday last year, Owen received a big tub of Army stuff with about a hundred of those little green plastic soldiers. Then he also got a giant bag of about a hundred little red plastic fire fighters. He mixes all those heroes together when he plays his favorite thing to play, which is going around and setting up what he calls "forts" in various locations in our playroom and den.

Last Christmas he got one of those Wild West "toobs," which is a plastic cylinder full of miniature figures from the Wild West like cowboys, Indians, some tee pees, covered wagons and various livestock. Owen happily assimilated these into the "forts," along with some Playmobil knights in armor. So now our Thomas the Tank Engine train table looks like some surrealistic tableau in which a modern fire brigade and some Star Wars Happy Meal toys are defending the Ardennes woods from marauding cowboys and knights with donkeys and Lego airplanes.

Yes, it's a very macho scene at our house of three boys, but I had no idea how male oriented we really were until last night. I sat watching my favorite new guilty-pleasure TV show, "Million Dollar Listing," when I felt like I was being watched. On the end table next to me stood the pioneer mom, complete with apron and swaddled infant, and an American Indian squaw (can you say that word anymore?) kneeling as if before a fire.

Out of all those thousands of tiny plastic figures, Owen had managed to cull the only two females from the group and isolated them from the action on a dusty end table in the den.

So good luck, Sarah Palin. Let me know what it's like if you actually get to play with the big boys.

Most evil

So I thought about it all summer, and I've decided that the French pedicure must be the most evil of all beauty treatments.
It hit me as I sat in the orthodontist waiting room across from another mom who had on the standard Capri pants and sandals. Scanning down to her feet, I noticed that she had the most precise French pedicure I'd ever seen, and I tried to picture the person who did that lovely job.
My biggest problem with the French pedi, beside the fact that you are paying someone to work on your FEET, is that it requires two things I don't have a lot of: (1) a good, clear block of previously unclaimed time to just sit and let someone work on your feet, and (2) anywhere from $35 to $50 about every two weeks.
Those things and the image of a nail tech hunched over my feet in pursuit of that straight white line under my toenails make me hate the French pedi.
Or maybe I'm just jealous.