Southern Girls Living Fearlessly

Wherever you are, make it better.


My chosen bathroom book is a little hardback by Donna Smallin titled, The One-Minute Organizer Plain & Simple. I flip through looking for inspiration, even though most of the suggestions are things I will never, ever do, like taking pictures of my shoes and labeling my shoe boxes with them. But that doesn't mean my I'm not serious about my quest for organization. It is my obsession despite its slipperiness. So I skim through Smallin's book periodically, in hopes of finding a tidbit I haven't yet considered.

Because I sometimes get rewarded with an "A-ha!" moment. One that changes the way I view not just my personal possessions or my home, but the way I view my life. For example, one of her suggestions for staying organized once you get there (as if that is a destination where anyone stays for very long) is to never pass through a space without making it better or improving it somehow.

I tried it. As I passed through the kitchen, I took a dish out of the sink and put it in the dishwasher. Walking up the stairs I grabbed a belt thrown over the rail and put it away. Resting for a moment on the den sofa, I plumped the pillows. I started to feel like I was making a difference, if not a remarkable dent, in my clutter. It was reward enough, since my family had failed to notice.

And it hit me, while wiping the top of the dryer with a rag, that this wasn't just a method for finding satisfaction in my immediate surroundings. This was a method for living - to make a small improvement where ever I am. To put a misplace can on the correct shelf in the grocery store. To pick up a piece of trash off the sidewalk. To write a thank you note to the housekeeper who cleans my hotel room.

Isn't that how we picture ourselves, we southern belles, making grand entrances and exits, sweeping gracefully through rooms, changing the world as we go? And aren't we brave enough to do it, even if we have to actually sweep, even if we are not dressed in a flowing ball gown, and even if nobody notices?

TODAY"S ASSIGNMENT: Stop where you are right now. Do one thing to make it a better place.

Southern Girls Living Fearlessly

L - Look the part

I - Invent your future
V - Validate others
I - Identify your inner matriarch
N - Never quit (just change your mind)
G - Go until you get there (then keep going)

F- Find you passion
E - Evolve
A - Act the part
R - Roll with it
L - Live every day
E - Enlist your friends
S - Smile
S - Seek Adventure
L - Lose the clutter
Y - Yes, you can!

Pause for a Manipulative Silence

My daughter came into my bathroom while I was preparing myself for the day. "I can't find my toothbrush," she announced followed by a long pause, during which she looked at me inquiringly but never asked if I might know where she had misplaced it.

Finally, since I said nothing but, "Mm hmm," and continued applying creams and tonics to my aging skin, she asked, "Can you find yours?" as if all the oral hygiene products in our household had been absconded.

"Yes," I responded, "it's right here," and I held it up to show her.

Another long pause ensued accompanied again by an inquisitive expression.

"No," I firmly stated, "you can't use my toothbrush."

"Why not," she asked.

"I don't share my toothbrush," I said.

"That's not nice," she huffed and left, determined to work the art of her manipulative silence on her daddy.

Wordly Wise

I've been browsing at my favorite boutique, Target, and I am incredibly confused about product labeling:

Is "natural" the same as "green?" And do either of those equal "organic?" And are chickens the only things that can be "free range?"

For example, could the watermelon that I just bought out of the back of that old man's truck, which he swears he grew unhindered by fences or trellises or pruning, letting the vine find its own way, and that he promises me was grown without the use of pesticides or fertilizers, other than manure from Old Bessy (his cow), be marketed as a natural, green, organic, free range watermelon?

Or would that be redundant?

Don't Go Through Life Without Goals

Last night, we sat around the fire pit in the back yard watching our kids burn their school papers and workbooks. Yes, I know it may have sent the wrong message to let them wantonly celebrate the beginning of their summer by destroying the evidence of their education, but we were low on wood. Don't judge me.

Anyway, one of my 9 year-old son's friends, in the middle of tossing his science notebook onto the raging flames, announced, "Do you know what my goal is?"

Of course we all said, "What?"

"To be valedictorian of my senior class."

"Well that's quite an ambitious and worthy goal," I encouraged, knowing that he's fully capable of the achievement.

My son, of course, just had to reveal his lack of vision by asking, "What's a baledectrian?"

"The valedictorian," I corrected, "is the student who has earned the top grades over four years of high school or college. He gets recognized at his graduation and he gives a speech to the graduation guests and his fellow classmates. It's quite an honor," I explained. Then I gave him a chance to redeem himself. "So, do you have a goal?"

He thought for a minute, then said, "Yes. My goal is to be the prime meridian."

It was my turn to get clarification. "The what?"

"The prime meridian, the center of attention. I won't have to wait until graduation to get recognized or to get people to listen to what I have to say."

What can I say? At least he has a well thought-out goal. And he's fully capable of achieving it.

Another Happy Mothers' Day

For Mothers' Day, my husband and kids took me to see a University of Georgia baseball game at Foley Field in Athens. For my mom for Mothers' Day, we took my dad with us.

Instead of chocolate, flowers, and sparkling diamonds, I got general admission seats, serenaded with, "Take me out to the ballgame," and Diamond Dawgs.

On the way home, feeling like he had helped the kids plan the most successful Mothers' Day event of all time, my husband asked, "So, next year for Mothers' Day how about we get you a tube top and a push-up bra and take you to Talladega?"

"Sounds great," replied my dad.

And I'll go along with the sordid idea, too, if it includes another day of eating peanuts and saying to heck with the laundry.

Southern Girls Living Fearlessly - There's Empathy Then There's Thievery

Our school librarian received an urgent phone call right around lunch time on a Thursday. "Your house is on fire," the voice on the other end exclaimed. With that, she slammed down the receiver, grabbed her purse, ran to the office to announce her immediate departure, and flew down the hall out the doors to the parking lot.

I work in an elementary school and by nature it is filled with estrogen. So of course, it is a grand incubator of female behavior patterns. News of the disaster traveled quickly up and down the corridors, in and out of classrooms, until every teacher buzzed about it in hallways, beyond closed classroom doors.

As soon as she caught wind of it, one teacher ran out, hot on the librarian's heels, saying, "I can't let her be all alone when she sees the damage."

Another teacher, in response to the news, remarked, "Oh that is just terrible. But thank goodness it didn't happen at night when she was asleep."

A third colleague, teary eyed and weeping, said, "My students keep asking me why I'm crying. I told them it's because I'm so sad. I just called my burglar alarm company and made sure my fire alarm is connected to their system so that if my house catches on fire the firemen will get there fast. It's just so scary when you think about it. And I left my cat in the laundry room this morning. If my house did catch on fire, I worry about what would happen to my cat. I should put a note on my door when I leave home to let firefighters know to try to save my cat." She shed more tears and blew her nose and went on and on.

There is empathy. There is sympathy. Then there is downright thievery.

It's funny how the very women who shun thrift store fashions, are the same ones who crave hand-me-down drama. They latch on to another person's crisis and make it their own tear-filled, fate changing, woe is them, life altering meltdown. In essence, out of fear that they will never have their own perfect storm of attention demanding drama, they steal another woman's crisis right out from under her.

How to spot 'em:

Sympathizers: They keep a distance, and are known to give a pat on the hand accompanied by a platitude such as, "Dahlin', everythin' will be fine. You all will be just fine." Casseroles and hams often come with the reassurance and are used as a barrier between the sympathizer and the scene.

Empathizers: These women come to your house, clean it without judgement, and sit in the bathroom with you while you cry until the well runs dry. No empty words cross their lips. They don't just bring a meal, they dish it up and serve it to you to make sure you eat. Empathizers never fear your pain.

Thieves: These ladies pat your hand, bring a casserole, and take your tissues. Before long, they've got themselves so worked up about all the what ifs and how they narrowly escaped such and such, that you're comforting them with, "Sugah, it'll be alright. You hang in there."

Which one are you?

Think about it.