Tag: My mom Bev

If This Rocker Could Talk, You’d Hear A Lot Of Cursing

On By SuzIn As blogged by Suz41 Comments

My Mom has had this rocking chair since Jesus was a small child forever.

It was gifted to her when she was pregnant with my brother Mark by my paternal Grandma, the only Grandma I knew. If Mark were alive, he would have turned 59 this past September. This chair is old; Mom rocked both of us on it. In it? On it?

1966-Mark. I remember that little wooden 3 legged container/table. It held sewing supplies. 

1967- Suz enjoying a beer after a long day of being a baby. Probably not my first, thanks, Dad. Have we discussed recently what a dysfunctional childhood I had? See the rocker in the background? It looks like Mom changed the cushions from yellow to green. 

1972? My G’ma, Mark and myself and my G’ma’s dog. Goodness, Mom has the decorating bug: She added paneling to this wall and a mantle. Do you remember having the Rick Rack trim on stockings?

1976? My parents are now divorced and this is my soon-to-be stepmom and step-sister. It was Christmas Eve, and we were at my Mom’s house because my Paternal Grandparents spent Christmas with us. I distinctly remember my father giving Mary her engagement ring on this night. At my Moms house. Ya’ll, we put the FUN in dysFUNctional! I should write a book. Or at least a pamphlet. I did (and still) love Mary and my step-sister, but they had the worst freaking nine year marriage. The police were involved quite a bit, and always around the holidays. {Merry Christmas, here’s a restraining order!} See the Rocker? Looks like Mom found gold cushions this time. 

I got off-topic. This Chair Gets Around. 

My Mom held onto that rocker forever and talked about painting/refinishing it a few years before she passed away. We moved it from her place in Georgia to our home in Florida, and we held onto it; I pictured myself rocking grand-babies in it one day. 

We brought it up to Georgia when we first moved into our house in 2020. Once it was there, I said: I’d really like to paint it. 

The Coach agreed and said we should bring it back home, and we could have the Custom Cabinet Painting department (which he was just putting together in our shop) paint it for me; much better than me trying to DIY. 

So, it went back to Florida (again) and sat in our garage for two years because the Custom Painting Dept. was flooded with work, and painting the chair was put on the back burner. 

A few months ago, I decided to take matters into my own hands and inquired with a custom furniture painter in our area about the chair. His price was fair, but he wanted to charge me $400 to pick up and deliver. I was shocked at the delivery price so I vented to the Coach, and he said casually: 

Why don’t you have our shop paint it? 

My eyeballs rolled so hard into the back of my head that I almost fainted. 

DOES ANYONE ELSE WANT TO OCCASIONALLY SHANK THEIR AMAZING HUSBAND? 

I’d been in the shop a few weeks prior and noticed a beautiful cabinet job in the process; it was painted the most remarkable dark, flat color, and I was drawn to it. 

Coach took the rocker to work the next day, and I had it back in a week. Mom had talked about painting it white, but I’m more of a black girl; although I usually identify as white. Goodness, you know what I mean!

There was a large crack down the side/center of the seat, but it was still usable. Our cabinet guys repaired it for me. I recall Mom saying that chair had been airborne at some point; my father had the absolute worst temper.

Is it dark gray? Is it light black? 

It’s SW Black Magic!

Coach’s Mom made me a nice cushion, which is so comfortable. Recently, I’ve been sitting in it near the fireplace, enjoying my morning coffee while rocking a dog.

Hey, I gotta start somewhere!

Fun fact: The logo on the bottom of the chair led me to do a little research. 

“S Bent & Brothers, a furniture company established in 1867 in Gardner, Mass. They closed in 2000. S. Bent and Brothers was known for producing well-made, high-quality furniture. They specialized in the style known as “Colonial Revival.” The two most common primary kinds of wood are maple and ash, stained to look like oak. S Bent & Brothers were known for their well-made chairs, especially Windsor.”

I found several for sale on Etsy and Ebay, ranging from $100 to $599.

Generally I refrain from having antiques in the house because they are haunted; this is the exception because I’m familiar with all the spirits surrounding this chair.

This chair has a new story to be told and it has many GOOD days ahead of it!

Do you have any furniture with a family history?

XO

Speaking Of Labor Day, What Was Your First Job?

On By SuzIn As blogged by Suz47 Comments

Happy Labor Day. For my Canadian friends: Happy Labour Day!

Let’s talk about earning money.

DISHWASHER

My Mom was a waitress for a good part of her life and when I was eleven/twelve we moved from FL to GA. Bev had a hard time finding a job and ended up waitressing at The Waffle House while looking for something better; she was with Waffle House for sixteen years as a waitress/manager. I think she just gave up and settled down there. When I was twelve I worked as a Dishwasher there. I wasn’t officially employed, but the waitresses would give me a couple of dollars and then feed me something scattered, smothered and covered. If you know, you know.

Beverly and look who’s photobombing? That’s my brother Mark; she convinced him to work there for a while.

AVON

When I was Thirteen I sold Avon. Which is kind of a lie because I purchased more than I sold; THE MAKEUP!

BASKIN ROBBINS

I Scooped ice cream at Baskin Robbins and earned $2.50 an hour in 1981 at fourteen years old. The owners of the shop were HORRIBLE people. Mean. Cheap. Horrible. And I’m here to tell you that scooping ice cream is more challenging than it appears. This wasn’t soft serve; that’s for sissies. I looked it up and the minimum wage at that time was $3.35. Do you think I can get back pay?

PONDEGROSA & MARSHALLS

I was in 10th grade and I’d moved back to Florida and was now living with my Dad. I needed a job because Phil didn’t care to share his income with me and this girl needed some fashion. I was a waitress/runner at Ponderosa Steakhouse; do you remember that place? It was buffet style dining. I worked my biscuits off; some weekends found me working double 8 hour shifts and when summer came I took a position at Marshalls that was in the same plaza and worked both jobs; some days I would walk from one to the other and change clothes. I ended up working at Ponderosa for about 2 years and stayed at Marshalls for about 3 years. I can’t remember why I ever left Marshalls because my butt sure as heck visits the one in my town at least once three times a month and I could use a discount!

SCAB WHAT?

After High School I attended Cosmetology College and the most interesting job I had happened while I was in beauty school. My friend Tanya’s Mom was a supervisor/manager for the Phone Company (Bell South? AT & T?)and there was a time when all the Operators went on strike. Tanya’s mom convinced us to go through the training and work as Operators until the strike was over. Ya’ll I was young and didn’t realize what was happening until Tanya and I arrived at the location and there were picketers all over the place and they were hollering SCABS!! at us as we drove into the parking lot.

I didn’t have a clue in what we were getting ourselves into. But hey, it paid well; I think $15 an hour. It was NOT an easy job. Was 911 a thing in Florida yet? I’m not sure, but I got a lot of emergency calls and some of them I can not get out of my head all these years later.

My first job as a hairstylist. I wonder if that lady tipped well? Fun fact: I still have that belt and I purchased it at Marshalls with my discount.

What was your first and/or most unusual job?

These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things

On By SuzIn As blogged by Suz27 Comments

Sharing is Caring and I Care Hard. A few years ago I did a favorite things Kitchen Edition, but these today are not related to any ONE thing. And as usual, I’m not compensated for any of my favorites.

A New Dawn

Have you tried the Dawn spray? As if Dawn could be any better than it already is.

I love my countertop tray of Mrs. Meyers cleaning stuff, but occasionally you have to pull out the big guns and I keep my big gun under the counter: Dawn Powerwash spray. I think it’s magical and they are trying to use less plastic with the reusable sprayer.

This spray is great for ridding your dishes/pans of anything greasy, but also it’s a miracle worker on my gas range top. I will admit, that I don’t clean my range top daily; we cook so much, I feel like it’s just gonna get dirty in a hot minute, so why bother? When I finally do a deep clean, I spray this magical potion on it and with a bit of elbow grease, and it’s almost shining like new.

I have special eyes

I love to brag about my good vision…all thanks to Laser Eye Surgery. But the downside I’ve found is that my eyes, much like my personality are dry. I use moisturizing drops a few times a day, but when I wake up in the morning my baby blues greens are redder than green. ONE drop of this and they clear up before someone can ask: “Are you stoned?”

I buy them in a two pack at Costco. Two pack. Two pack. Tupac.

numbr wun dawg

Wait, how did that one eared dog get in here? Lillie hacked my blog!

Honestly though, she is a favorite around here…

Nailed It

OPI Nail Envy

I do get a mani-pedi on the regular, but this has been a life nail saver.

You’re supposed to apply two coats and then every other day add another coat and after a week, remove the polish and start over. I generally forget to add the other coats after the initial two. What can I say, I have a hard time following directions. Still, my nails are stronger than they’ve ever been even though I’m constantly digging out weeds, moving rocks, squishing aphids…generally playing in the dirt like I did when I was four.

My True Emotion

My favorite emoji that generally sums up my thoughts about the world and its inhabitants.

You know exactly the face because you also make it.

Celebrating Bev

In honor of my Mom who would have been 79 today, my dear Friends Dawn and Stacy joined me for Mexican food and a margarita.

A few of my Moms favorite things aside from her family: Mexican food, Margaritas and Latin men. Yesterday I enjoyed all three two of them.

Behold The Blackberry Basil Margaritas; they were as delicious as they were pretty.

When is the last time you had a margarita that was so good you wanted to immerse yourself in the glass?

That’s all the nonsense that’s fit to print.

Actually, my fingers are just tired of typing.

🥴🥴🥴🥴🥴🥴🥴

Until next time XOXO

A Hairy Tale As Old As Time. Or A Hairy Tale {At Least} As Old As Me.

On By SuzIn As blogged by Suz37 Comments

I have dreams at least twice a month about hairy legs. My hairy legs. In my dream I’ll be somewhere in public, look down and the hair on my legs is about 1/2 inch long and I’m horrified. In some dreams I only had hair on the backs of my knees, which is really interesting if you think about it.

My daughter might have a Masters degree in psychology, but I’m usually great at analyzing myself, but the ‘dreams about hairy legs’ took me almost 50 years to figure out.

In real life, present day, I could care less if there is hair on my legs, but that wasn’t always the case and I believe this is why those particular dreams still come to me.

Put on your seatbelt because I’m driving the WAY BACK machine and I’ve had wine.

I believe my hairy legs memory starts when I was in first grade; you know how memories can become fuzzy over time. I remember walking to the bus stop and looking down at my skinny little girl legs and noticing the hair on them was unruly. Long and unruly.

I did what any normal person would do: I stopped walking and took care of the situation by licking my palm with saliva and ran it along the hair on my legs trying to smooth it down.

Crisis averted.

Only it wasn’t. That was just a temporary solution to the problem as I noticed either later that day or the next that the issue was still there.

WHAT TO DO?

I think I complained to my Mom many times about this and she poo-poo’ed my worries. You know how moms are.

Finally either I just i figured it out, or Beverly told me to do this: I used some Avon lotion to assist with he unruliness.

But in the end, this really only helped a bit more than my saliva. In my eyes the hair was an eyesore.

If you think I grabbed a razor and shaved the hair, you’d be wrong; Mom said I couldn’t shave my legs until I was 13, which is funny because there really weren’t that many rules being enforced in our home.

THIRTEEN? How will I survive that long? I felt like I looked like the Monkey my Mom always said I was. (I loved to climb on everything)

BLAME IT ON BEV FOR MY NEXT SOLUTION

My Mom was a waitress and she always wore knee-high panty hose under her pants along with her orthopedic nurse shoes.

Do you remember the L’eggs? All those plastic eggs are still sitting in the landfill..

My plan was pretty genius if you really think about it.

I remember finding a pair of my Moms knee-highs and putting them on. They came up pretty high, like to my thigh, but when I started walking, they would slide down my skinny little girl legs. Hmmmmm…how in the world could I get them to stay up?

I’m {almost} A GENIUS.

I found some safety pins and pinned the falling down knee-highs to my underwear.

PROBLEM SOLVED.

I remember walking to the bus stop wearing a cute dress, happy as a well fed monkey because my legs were now as smooth as silk when my plan suddenly started to fall down apart.

As I was walking, my underwear were slip, sliding down. I pulled them up, only to have them slowly slip, slide down again.

My plan had holes in it {just like my head} and I failed again to cover up my hairy monkey legs.

You do realize that I tried to invent Garter belts for kids, right?

Where I learned this Garter Belt idea from is beyond me, but since I didn’t have much supervision, I probably saw someone wearing a garter belt on HBO or at a strip joint.

I’m just kidding, we didn’t have HBO.

I HELD OFF TURNING INTO EDWARD SCISSORS HANDS UNTIL I WAS ELEVEN

Circa 5th grade.

I might have gotten over the hairy leg issue for the time being after my garter belt contraption didn’t work…but by the time I was eleven I took matters into my own hands and shaved my legs, even the backs of my knees.

If you think that shaving my legs was a smooth situation, you’d be wrong. I’m lucky I didn’t bleed to death because there was a LOT of blood as I was a novice with a razor.

Later that day when Bev came home and saw the crime scene in the bathroom she cussed and probably tossed one of those 10lb orthopedic nurse shoes in my general direction.

Hey, a HAIRY girl has got to do what a HAIRY girl has to do.

Not Letting History Repeat Itself

Well lo and behold, I gave birth to two hairy AND adorable little monkeys as well. They both begged to shave their legs early on, but I insisted that they waited until they were at least in middle school before they took to the razor. I recall we/they tried the NAIR hair removal cream first and almost died of chemical inhalation. (I can still smell it!)

I texted them yesterday asking how old they were when I let them shave and they confirmed middle school; so 11? 12? But at the beginning I would only let them shave from their ankles to the top of their knees.

Why? What is the thought process here? Did I want my girls to mimic a cricket?

I have no recollection at this point, but they both confessed that they currently don’t shave above the knee all the time. Perhaps I started a trend.

So shave share with me some deets.

Did you have hairy legs as a kid? If so were you embarrassed?

Have you ever heard of NOT shaving above the knee?

After typing that last line, I can NOW only picture someone shaving ABOVE THE KNEE and leaving the lower portion hairy. Guess what I’ll be dreaming about tonight…

XOXO