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

On March 25, 2022March 24, 2022 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 remembe}*_{r 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

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

This And That; Find A Grave & Find A Giggle

On March 11, 2022March 11, 2022 By SuzIn As blogged by Suz28 Comments

I don’t know where I stumbled upon this but I thought it was fascinating. Find A Grave is a website that allows you to search for a grave. Anywhere. Well, it’s only for marked graves, if you bury a body in the woods, you’d better use a GPS tracker.

I found out where both my Paternal Grandparent’s Mausoleums are located (this was a mystery prior) and I could see a photo of my brother’s gravesite. Of course, I can actually drive there to see it too when I’m in GA, but it was cool nonetheless.

I was tickled to see the butterfly figurine on it; I think my Cuz Patrick left it there.

Speaking of death because who doesn’t. I was on the phone with Lolo this week and she mentioned that Nathan would be late getting home because he had to go give a Death Notice.

Me: Oh, that must really suck. Do you have to do that too?

Lolo: Oh yeah, plenty of times. I’ve learned not to pussy-foot around, you have to be clear and concise with people. If the EMT is there, they are supposed to do it, but then they just stand there with a blank face and say nothing, So I have to do it. Sissies.

{Is it just me or does Law Enforcement get to have all the fun?}

This gave me a flashback to the day my brother Mark passed away. My Dad and I were living in Florida, Mark and Mom were in GA. Mom called me really early one morning and said that Mark had been in the hospital and he had a heart attack. (He had been sick with AIDS for 2 years) We knew he wasn’t going to survive AIDS, but still it was a shock. I called my Dad and said: Mark had a heart attack.

In my 21 year old brain, that meant that he was gone.

Later that day I went to my Dad’s house and said we need to get our plans in order, so we can get up to GA and help mom with the funeral plans.

Dad: WHAT?!

Turns out, he went the whole day, NOT knowing that Mark had passed away because I didn’t say it. I assumed he knew.

*sigh*

As he typically did, my father went batshit crazy and started raging. Because we all know that helps.

*sigh*

I’m so happy I didn’t marry my father; I’ve heard that’s a thing.

And just so I don’t leave you with death on your mind…

That will always make me laugh. Always.

Anyone else make a huge faux pas when sharing bad news? Spill away.

If not, did that meme make you laugh as hard as it did me?

XOXO

There’s A Fine Line Between Family History Research And A Never-ending Rabbit Hole. Also, Bittersweet Memories

On February 23, 2022February 22, 2022 By SuzIn As blogged by Suz33 Comments

I’ve once again fallen down the rabbit hole that is Ancestry.Com. I can place the blame on an almost complete stranger even though we share DNA.

I was recently contacted by a long lost family member; I think we’re 3rd cousins 29 times removed. Or something like that. Anyhoo, He and I were messaging and emailing back and forth; and this caused me to do some updating of my family tree since I was given more information. I was also able to give him a lot of photos that I inherited from my Paternal Grandma. Which then led me to reminisce about my Grandma. *sigh*

She was my favorite and she was the bright spot of my somewhat weird and dysfunctional childhood. Grandma had several brothers, two sons herself, three grandsons and me, I was the only girl she nurtured. I always felt loved by her and can only recall one time that she raised her voice at me. (I was about 7 and merely trying to walk across the pool in my church clothes because I thought if Jesus could walk on water, why not me?)

I posted the following shortly after she left us, but didn’t allow for comments because I was in a raw place at the moment.

It was a bright and sunny day outside, but inside this cold and dreary place you could only catch a glimpse of the sun through the stained and dirty window.

Grandma was in and out of sleep. We sat or stood around her bed, having mindless conversations.

I wondered if she was hearing our words, or if she was off somewhere better.

I hoped she was revisiting some of her better days; the joyful times when she and Grandpa traveled, piddling at her favorite stores, playing cards with the neighbors, bowling, laughing.

I was now standing next to her, she opened her blue eyes and said to me, clear as a bell: “Suzanne, you know, you are the light of my life.”

I smiled, a few tears spilling from my eyes.

I knew this already, but it was so touching to hear the words. Grandma never minced her words, good or bad.

I looked around the room; My Uncle was staring at the muted TV and even with his hearing aid he missed this comment. The Coach was sitting nearby, but I’m not sure he heard her either.

Gosh, I adore that woman, she knew to say this after my cousin Will left the room.

For someone who rarely filtered her words from her thoughts, this was the first and possibly last time, that she thought before she spoke.

_{Suz and Grandma at her surprise 90th birthday party; she didn’t act surprised at all.}

3/4/1913-9/29/2009

I’m so thankful that I had her in my life for so long, but I still miss her dearly.

Some of the old posts that I shared about her might make one think that she didn’t love me as much as I thought she did; I mean, she fed me cigarettes for breakfast and almost let me drown trying to teach me to NOT swim underwater. Maybe I could walk on water after all…

XOXO