Carolina Girls-Katy Perry Don't Know Nothin'

I know a place where the grass is really greener

Warm, wet and wild...there must be somethin' in the water

Sippin' grape juice
Layin' underneath the palmetto trees
The boys break their necks

Try'na creep a little sneak peek
But we don't mess around. 

You could travel the world

But nothing comes close

To the South Carolina Coast

Once you party with us you'll be falling in love

Oooooh oh oooooh ooooh oh oooh

Carolina Girls

We're unforgettable

Sundress, sandals--Pure T Class

Sun-kissed skin with grandma's pearls from her wedding

You'll always love us 

Oooooh oh oooooh oooh ooooh oh
*******

Carolina Girls

We're undeniable

Fine, fresh, fierce we got it on lock

Eastcoast represent now put your hands up

Oooooh oh oooooh

Cute on the beach, with our coverups and flipflops
Dancin' on the pier; shaggin' music on the radio..

You could travel the world but nothing comes close

To the SC Coast -- once you party with us

You'll be falling in love

Oooooh oh oooooh

Toned, tanned. Fit and ready

Grab your boogie board and surf the waves...

Sweet and crazy these are the girls I love the most

I love the beach just like I love SC 

Myrtle Beach and all the Charleston ones 

Summertime is everything
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Carolina Girls

We're undeniable

Fine, fresh, fierce we got it on lock

Eastcoast represent now put your hands up

Oooooh oh oooooh...

I wish they all could be Carolina Girls.

Explosives and Burn Injuries And Ignorant Photographers

I finally got my camera cord to work, and I'm kind of proud of this picture.  I shot it myself.

I still know very little about photography.  I really want to take lessons.   My idea of learning about photography is to carry my 400 page Nikon instruction book out to the sidewalk on the 4th while adults and children alike are assembling potentially lethal explosives, note absently that my childen are doing their best to seriously harm themselves, ignore that and thumb through the section in the book entitled "Night Shooting" using my cigarette lighter to read, punch a few buttons, sacrifice a goat for good luck and click.

So the pictures finally loaded on the computer the camera and  showed them to the family.  I certainly had no expectation that I would get any compliments on the pictures.  Good thing.  Not only did they ignore the pictures all they could talk about was how badly they were injured in the manner of combat vets rehashing battles:

"I remember that.  I burned my finger."

"That's nothing.  I burned half of my arm."

"Remember when Jennifer almost lost the tip of her toe when a sparkler fell on it?"

"That's nothing.  I actually died from my wounds and came back to life."

Eh, whatever.  Go play Warlock-Explosion-Grand-Spaceship-Theft-Auto with your Triple X WII and leave me alone.  I'm looking for online photography classes.

Blogher 10: Part Three: We Are Family, I've Got My Daddy's Cousin With Me

View from Sally's balcony.  Those are tennis courts over there.

Yes, I know, I need to move along before I start writing posts that start off:  We had a nice Christmas. Now let me tell you about what I did at Blogher between 10:00 AM and 11:00 AM Saturday morning.

First I'd like to tell you just a little bit about my family.  Okay, I'll make it short.   Daddy (H. Grady Callison, Jr.) and Sally (Sarah Randle Callison)'s fathers were brothers.  When I wanted to move to New York in 1985, Daddy and I flew to New York for a visit with Cousin Sally.  Sally agreed to let me live in her apartment till I found a place of my own. 

The Callison cousins grew up in the South in different places.  Sally's folks lived in Winter Haven, Florida, and Daddy's folks lived in Columbia, SC.  During their childhood most of the cousins gathered at the home of their paternal grandmother every summer in Callison, South Carolina and partied. 

I'm sure they only drank lemonade or...lessee..um..seltzer water.  After all, people didn't really know how to have fun in those days--I don't think anybody was necking or rolling reefers.  And just think, there WAS no rock n' roll, and Lord knows none of the cousins ever let a sip of the devil's brew touch their throats.  At least that's the story, and I believe everything that I'm told.

Sally told me a lot about Daddy as a boy and teenager.  He was never one to talk much about his upbringing.  Maybe if the three women in the household had ever paused to take a breath, we could have heard some stories, but...well...

"Grady Jr. was such a gentleman," says Sally.  (I'm sad that she is probably the only person alive who still calls him Grady Jr.).  Dr. Grady (Grady Sr., my grampa) let him drive his big black Buick all over and so we thought he was ultra-sophisticated."

Grady, Jr. back when he was ultra sophisticated

Daddy and Sally were close friends and we had a ball visiting her and her husband Joe in 1985.  We went out to dinner and it was the only time I ever saw Daddy order alcohol at a restaurant.  It was a Orange Grand Manier and he gulped it down like you do just before you sit in the chair and hope for a call from the governor.

Mom was a lot of fun, but she didn't believe in the devil's brew.  I seriously cannot believe that an educated woman such as herself seriously believed that if you took a medicine dropper and placed one sip of alcohol on your tongue you became a raging maniac and unable to operate heavy machinery, including nail clippers. 

Ma and Pa were married in 1949 and by 1985 she had managed to whittle away 95% of his testicular region, so it was absolutely delightful to catch a glimpse of the man he could have been had he not been married to Carry Nation.

In case you were passing notes or dozing during US History, Ol' Carry was quite the good time girl.  Doesn't she look like it?  I wish she was alive today so she could enjoy the Nanny State where you can't smoke, drink, or enjoy an occasional hit of LSD without getting arrested.   She was just about single handedly responsible for Prohibition.  She loved to take an axe and smash up saloons.

  Between 1919 and 1933 it was illegal to buy a drink in our great land.   Good times.  They repealed Prohibition just in time for the Great Depression 'cause I guess they figured people needed a drink in between losing jobs and getting evicted. 

Thank heavens, is all that I can say.   It's a shame you can't sit on your former steps today and enjoy a martini (shaken, not stirred)  and cigarette when the sheriff  nails up the foreclosure sign and your possessions are being thrown onto the lawn by the deputies.

Anyway, here's Sally's apartment.  She let me sleep on the sofa.  I brought an air mattress but couldn't figure out how to blow it up.  Don't start with me.  I didn't put the right nozzle in the right hole or something.  I was tempted to fly Roger up to help me but really, the sofa was very comfortable.

Sally watched the WTC disaster from this window.

Man would I love to gut renovate the place and buy it one day but a one bedroom in her building is on the market for $716,000 plus $1223 monthly maintenance.  We pay less than $1223 a year in property taxes.  In my mind I'm stayin' in Carolina....

And here's an interesting bed.

Sally was born on this bed in 1925.

Her mother was born on this bed.

Her grandmother was born on this bed.  

(the sheets have been changed since then).

I'd love to have this bed one day but I won't be birthin' no babies in it

I adore Sally.  She never had no babies of her own, so she is now my foster mother.  She refuses to adopt me, though.   Sally finished college and high-tailed it to New York City on the next train.  The entire clan, consisting of dozens of cousins and aunts and uncles and father and mother and grandmother, made trips to NYC to convince her that she was crazy.  (Her own words). 

Mom and Dad spoke of her in hushed tones when I was a child.  Then she married a Jewish man and the family was stunned into near apoplexy.  Even though her new husband Joe played stickball with Norman Mailer growing up the family was still convinced that he was trifling with her affections, and I guess he was, because they only spent forty blissful years of marriage together before he died.

Sally calmly ignored her family's conniption fit, got herself a job in publishing, traveled all over the world, and at 85 still works 20 hours a week at the library and votes for the Democratic party.

Here's a picture of me and Sally. 

We don't look anything alike do we?  I'm adopted.  But I consider her my mother from another brother. 
 

And that thing about when you're old and don't have kids so you're all alone? 

Sally has four or five "adopted" daughters who are fighting over the opportunity to nurse her back to health if she has the hip replacement surgery she needs.

You don't need kids to be loved and adored in your old age.

You just need to be awesome.

Oh well, I'm still glad I have these
monsters:

Even though Madeleine is already reminding me that she'll be picking out my nursing home. 

Edited to add:   My kids are always available for rental or loans if you with to cultivate a relationship with two adorable and charming young ladies who will be earning large paychecks in about 15 years and will also be able to give bed baths and lift large heavy objects including your safe and you, if you fall down.

So Much For That Whole "No Wrinkles" Thing

I hit "Glow" twice in Picasa before I posted this. Got my Iphone pictures on the computer, now waiting for the Nikon cord. I tried putting the memory card for the Nikon 300D in the computer and the computer snarled and spit it back. Hopefully the cord will be here soon.

Time to schedule my first Botox.

Blogher 10: Part Two: New York State Of Mind

...and I would think to myself:  Even the vegetables in New York are better.  It's not just the vegetables, of course.  I look out the window and I see the lights and the skyline and people on the street rushing around looking for action, love, and the world's greatest chocolate chip cookie, and my heart does a little dance....

Nora Ephron, Heartburn

I love New York.   My heart did a little dance as the plane landed.  But I see I'm skipping over a tale which will help you understand just what a friendly, gregarious, nosy, and suspicious person I am.  I started talking to a nice lady in the Columbia airport who was flying to a modeling convention with her daughter Crystal and the cost was being picked up by the modeling agency and they were staying in a downtown hotel and neither of them had been out of South Carolina before, let alone on a plane to New York.   I took her email address and I hoped that things would go well.

New York requires you to undergo a complete personality change from South Carolina.  Well, except that if you're me you have this incredible and uncontrollable compulsion to talk to everybody and anybody and sometimes that works in NYC and sometimes it doesn't but you'd be surprised that most people wandering around the city are just like anybody else, although when I first started to visit I thought they were all ultra sophisticated and fashionable and certainly much cooler than a country bumpkin like me.

Not really.

So here I was in LaGuardia broke, disabled, and trying to save money every way I could.  So I made a decision that certainly could be used as evidence against me in my sanity hearing.  I decided to take a bus into the city.  Now I'm totally familiar with how to get where I need to go if I arrive in Newark, New Jersey which sounds strange but it's actually much easier to get into the city from there....but I had never landed in LaGuardia before.  For some reason Priceline's flights into Newark were like $500 as opposed to $250 for LaGuardia.

I'll cut to the chase:  I ended up meeting a woman who was going to be on the Today show in 2 days, who rode the bus with me into the city and then we took the subway and she carried my suitcase which weighed approximately eleven hundred pounds up four flights of steps and I want to publicly thank you, Camille Terry, for helping me out.

I eventually landed at my cousin's apartment smelling like I'd been dumpster diving forscraps in the 100 degree temperature.  She lives on E. 25th street in an apartment that she & her husband rented in 1965.  It's a huge apartment for New York City and even has a large balcony.  My cousin, Sally, is 85 and still works 2-3 days a week as a librarian and is truly one of the most wonderful people in the universe.   I arrived at her doorman building (love doormen) and we went out to eat at a diner that reminded me of the Seinfeld one.

So I got up to NYC on Sunday August 1 and the Blogher convention didn't start until Friday, August 6, because I knew I would need to rest.  And that's what I did all day Sunday and Monday.  Rested.   Because that's what you do when you have fibromyalgia.  And NYC was calling to me and the best ethnic restaurants in the world and dear friends were only a few blocks or miles away instead of 800 miles away and all I could do is lie on the sofa and sulk. 

I got up on Tuesday, though.....and I took a lot of pictures with my camera but I've lost the cord that connects it to the computer and I've ordered a replacement because they wanted $52.00 for a bunch of cords all together at Best Buy which seemed a little high to me so as soon as the cord arrives from the online store I'll show you pictures of the city, because nobody has ever thought to photograph it before and you're probably curious what it looks like....so stay tuned.

Addendum

Madeleine Margaret Watson Will Lock Your Kids In A Closet

Pride goeth before a fall.   I dragged my handsome, wonderful, loving husband over to read my post about our um, well, you know, intellectual abilities and such and he pointed out that I had misspelled Algebra.

I also wish to add that I promise not to embellish my adventures in New York which include attending an X rated party and stalking my X Fiance Who Jilted Me At The Altar 24 years ago for 4 hours.  Trust me, the truth is humiliating enough.  But you WILL want to tune in for the entire saga.  It makes Survivor look like the Brady Bunch.

The realities of our legal system today also have inspired me to add that I was a pretty good babysitter, except for that time the 1 year old ate shoe polish and the time I stuck a glass thermometer filled with mercury into the mouth of a two year old.  (I certainly wasn't going to use the other one if you get my drift).  

HOWEVER.

I have discussed babysitting with Madeleine, and the conversation goes like this:

Madeleine:  I want an Iphone and a Corvette.

Me:  Perhaps you should consider earning money by babysitting.

Madeleine:  I hate children.  If I babysat, I would lock them in the closet.

Me:  I do too, but I feel as your attorney I must warn you that it is illegal to lock children in the closet.

This is all true, except that I don't hate all kids, I just hate bratty kids. 

 Consider yourself warned! 

Blogher 10: Part One: Leaving On A Jet Plane

3:30 AM August 1, 2010

I cursed muttered "Gosh gee whillikers, how annoying" and slapped ineffectively at the offending instrument as the iphone played a peppy, inspirational wakeup call.  In five minutes I had my hair in clips and my clothes on.  The plane left Columbia, SC for New York at 6:00 AM.   Priceline always gives me flights that leave at 6:00 AM.  That's okay.  There are never any delays when you leave at the crack of dawn. 

My family drove me to the airport where I floundered around ineffectively.  I have not flown in four years, since the fibromyalgia turned me into Elizabeth Barrett Browning, only without the poetic talent.

 Elizabeth Barrett Browning, blood relative to Lorraine Callison Watson Barrett Browning

Digression:  omfg she looks like me!  Seriously.  I must be a blood relation.  NO WONDER!  I always knew that I was blessed with ALMOST as much poetic talent as she was (I was only being modest in the above paragraph) and now I know where I get it from.

Back to the airport.  I fumbled around looking exactly like a confused, dazed and sleepy idiot.   Funny how close to reality that was.   The first thing that shocked me out of my coma was learning that checking two bags cost SIXTY DOLLARS.  Idiot!  I could have carried on one extra bag.  I had my old diaper bag from Land's End packed with my laptop, etc.  It could have been a carryon.

Later, I got into conversation with an airline steward.  "Ya shouldn't have checked ya laptop in the cargo," she cheerfully noted.   If they're on, they've been known to catch fire."   I replied cheerfully that I was sure the laptop was off.  Sure I was.  It had been charged for days before being jammed into the diaper bag 15 minutes before the flight.

So I kissed my family goodbye.  We all looked tremendously relieved to be rid of each other for 10 whole days.  Well, except Roger, who managed to both look tremendously relieved to be rid of me and terrified at the thought of single parenthood.  The day before, he had suggested that I make childcare arrangements for his working hours with my sister.   I noted that a SEVENTH GRADER could care for herself quite nicely and that I was BABYSITTING in 7th grade.

Yes, mah babee is starting 7th grade (and did I mention that my 7th grader is starting English I and Alegbra I, high school courses?)  If you don't know that you must have missed the billboards I put up, perhaps?  Also did I mention my new 4th grader will be studying to be an ENGINEER in a magnet program?  

Surely you remember that they both had STRAIGHT A AVERAGES IN EVERY COURSE LAST YEAR?  So did I!  Roger didn't.  His teacher noted that he was a "nice little boy."  (cue derisive snort).  We are all nice.  Some of us just happen to be INCREDIBLY (insert your own words here which could be, my, I wonder why Roger was so thrilled to be rid of her for ten days) BRILLIANT.

Also, Roger is also brilliant.  Seriously.  He is.  I love you babe.  Please don't divorce me and leave me with these INCREDIBLY TIME CONSUMING YET EXTREMELY WONDERFUL children.  I'd tell you all about his accomplishments, but I don't feel like it.  Let him start his own blog.  It's a free country.

"Someone who is taking HIGH SCHOOL COURSES doesn't need a babysitter,"  I argued. Also, I might add, we just shelled out for a calculator that will calculate a moon voyage for Alegbra I.  TI-83 Special Edition or something like that.  (Anyone who could operate that didn't need a babysitter.  I bet you that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart didn't need a babysitter when he was composing music at age 7).  I got the moon shot machine at Used Calculators.  Then I blew the 15 dollars I had saved on checking unnecessary baggage.  Good God, what a moron.

"She's still ELEVEN," he cleverly observed.

"TWELVE NEXT MONTH," I even more cleverly observed.  "I babysat constantly when I was 12."  I omitted the frightening, yet undeniably true, fact that I was no more qualified to babysit at twelve than our chihuahua.  My sole interests were finding where my babysitting clients had hidden their pornography and sugar snacks and whether they had cable.  The health and safety of their children was only of interest to me after I realized I would probably not be paid for my labors if any children passed into the loving arms of Jesus on my watch.

At any rate, I had somehow "forgotten" to make childcare arrangements.  No matter.  They were his problem now.

Off I flew, into the wild blue yonder.

.....to be continued......

Blogher 10

So, Blogher 10.    I went.  I have loads of photos and stories to share with you, but I'm tired.   I just got back on Tuesday.   I wanted to spend some time with my cousin, age 85.  

Hang on--I've got more to come!!!!!