Monday, September 7, 2009

LABOR DAY WEEKEND NOT LABORIOUS

Heidy-Ho, Blogging Pals!! Welcome back.

Again, my apologies for delays between posts. Time really can get away quickly, can't it?

So, to update you all... the spousal-unit returned from Texas on Friday the 28th, having celebrated his "half-century" of age while in Texas. Probably wise.

Since then, I have been wrangling with two pieces of my aunt's business. One is the pool service company which I have been talking to monthly since April. No, we are not best friends. I am simply trying to make sense of an archaic billing system and resolve some billing issues. Sigh. The second is the homeowners policy renewal which arrived in the mail with a premium that would make a grown man blush at its size and audacity! I'm still working on that one. I assure you there will be a change of company and agency forthcoming.

Then, this past Friday evening, the in-laws arrived for the holiday weekend. I know many refer to their parents-by-marriage as "outlaws" but that has never been the case in my world. They left today to return to the most obese state (according to my F-I-L) of Mississippi. I thought Louisiana held that honor but perhaps we are actually #49. Who knows? At any rate, it was fun visiting with them. Some of you may recall that my spousal-unit, whom I met in Austin, married in Austin, and lived with in Austin up until this past May when we relocated to Louisiana, was actually BORN in this town!! Yep. Long and interesting story about how that information surfaced but the short of it is it was at a work environment while I was reading the local rag which my father insisted on having sent to me. Heck! Even I wasn't born here!! I was New Orleans-born but selected as the "pick-of-the-litter" as an infant and transported to this town at the tender age of four months. (That's a much more interesting way to tell you I was adopted at 4-months of age.)

At any rate, the M-I-L had been moved here with her family while in high school. The F-I-L had been stationed at Fort Polk. You can put the rest together. They were married August 2, 1958, and produced my spousal-unit exactly one year and 20 days later! They moved to Houston, Texas when the child was about one-year old so he doesn't know anything about this town other than the information I have provided over the years and the visits he has made here up until this past May. His parents, on the other hand, apparently have some pretty fond memories of the place which made it great fun to drive around and listen to their remembrances of what someplace used to be or where something used to be. When we are together, it is typical for me to abscond with my M-I-L for at least a full day of gallivanting. In Austin, we would shop until we nearly dropped. Here in Big D, we went to Wal-Mart for Betty Boop flip-flops then drove around for about 45 minutes to try to discover what had happened to the old parsonage where she lived with her family for a while and what had happened to the apartment she and my F-I-L shared when they were first married. Not much to do here, folks. Really.

Anyway, before I get any "cougar" comments from those of you who can do the math, suffice it to say that there is some real logic in women marrying men 6-7 years younger than themselves. The actuarial tables will prove that men typically die 6-7 years earlier than women. That being the case, I figure marrying a man younger by that period would probably mean a greater likelihood of my widowhood being shorter!!! :) So there. (NOTE: No "cougar" comments will be approved for posting.)

Okay... back to the in-laws. We killed Saturday evening by dining at a local establishment... The Catfish Hut. You are required to toss your Spanish peanut shells on the floor around your table and nearly every single member of the waitstaff is over 35 and will call you "hon." It's a very casual environment, needless to say. But the catfish and shrimp are really good and there is something attractive about not having to clean up after dinner. :) We enjoyed ourselves and were plenty stuffed by the end of our dining stay.

I do have a couple of updates for you all and promise I will get to those postings as soon as I can. Please remember that I will repost my tribute to Sgt. Maj. Larry Strickland to deliver to you for Friday morning reading, 9/11/2009. I would appreciate your reading it again as a reminder that we should never forget. There are 2,995 other souls lost that day and I know I can't know all of them nor do I expect any of us to... but knowing just one and humanizing that one should go a long way to always remembering.

Until next post...

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