Proper Southern Woman

The Tuck Your Skirt 2011 Blog Tour is running full tilt today at Proper Southern Woman.   You can read an excerpt from Tuck Your Skirt in Your Panties and Run titled Girl in Cornflower Blue. It's the tale of what happens to a proper southern woman when she stuffs herself into a bridesmaid dress at the ripe age of 40. Is she still pretty? You read and decide.

Stick around at Proper Southern Woman and collect a few tips and tricks for perfecting your proper persona.

The end of November has finally arrived and today concludes the Tuck Your Skirt 2011 Blog Tour. I've met so many wonderful women on the journey and I appreciate each one's hospitality. It's been fun sharing some insight into me and Tuck Your Skirt in Your Panties and Run.

Please take a few minutes to visit the blog tour hosts. Each blog is unique and worth the read.

I'd love to visit your blog, too. Email me if you're interested in hosting a guest post.

Future Fit Girl

The Tuck Your Skirt 2011 Blog Tour is running full tilt today at Future Fit Girl.   Stop by to see what she has to say and to listen to a podcast from Tuck Your Skirt in Your Panties and Run titled Double Dog Dare Ya, a story of true love and what happens when it gets a taste of fresh air and rural living.

Through the end of November, I'm visiting blogs around the country, participating in Q&A, sharing excerpts from Tuck Your Skirt in Your Panties and Run, and giving folks a chance to listen to podcasts and watch videos about me and Tuck Your Skirt. Some bloggers will be hosting giveaways so you'll definitely want to stop by.

I hope to see you along the virtual book tour trail. Meet the blog tour hosts.

I'd love to visit your blog, too. Email me if you're interested or check here for more details.

NaNoWriMo - A Peek at Love Letters From a Stoic

Truth be told, I failed miserably at NaNoWriMo. I've composed nowhere near 50,000 words. Life invariably worked against me and my overreaching commitment.

But, I have made some progress on the project, which recounts the WWII years, 1943-1945, during which my aunt and uncle were separated by his service in the U.S. Navy.  They had a marriage that evades comprehension by most modern standards:

And I do wonder in those giddy early days if she knew the life she was courting. If she knew she would never own a washer and dryer or dishwasher because of the expense. If she knew she would have no heirs and no say over what became of her home and her possessions even after B.C.’s death in 1993. If she knew she would fill her attic with Styrofoam meat trays and her basement with jars of pickled beets as if the next Great Depression loomed ominously, even in the post-war 50s and the bull market 80s.

But usually, we don’t know. Love makes us leap in without checking the depth. That’s what’s so ordinary about their marriage. What appear to be rigors and disenfranchisement to us, were true affections to them. I believe that B.C. took the role of caring for Nita and shielding her from want. She gladly submitted to his will. And I believe it was all born of love.

The first letter of WWII:

Open only if I do not return, he neatly penned across the front of a white business envelope, in a level, straight line. Then he tri-folded the single page into even thirds and slid it soundlessly into the sleeve. Using a sponge he moistened the glue strip on the flap and pressed it firmly in place.

The completed package glared at him, white and fresh, from the smooth, cold marble top of his wife’s dresser. This business of war raised all sorts of issues of trust. Trust in commanders to make the right decisions. Trust in one’s training, that it was sufficient for the duties assigned. Trust in God’s plan. Trust that he would come home and find the letter intact, untouched, unread.

Black Friday Christmas Gift Ideas

What's better than the gift of a good read?

A good read that comes with a good laugh!

For Christmas this years, give the ladies on your list a set of books that will keep them rolling under the Christmas tree.

If Mama Don't Laugh, It Ain't Funny takes readers on a romp with an AWOL hermit crab, a three legged pig and an immortal roach. Parents will relate to the perfectly impossible picture day and go giggly over illicit rhyming words. If Mama Don't Laugh will have spouses spontaneously reading out loud to each other while laughing until stuff comes out of their noses:

Tuck Your Skirt in Your Panties and Run chronicles the mayhem, mishaps, misjudgments, miscalculations and maladaptations of an ordinary day gone off the chain. You can run with Reba who's naked at the garden gate and sample Mama's bar-b-cue and Brunswick stew that doesn't come with slaw. Attend a pig roast with the communists and stroll down the aisle with a 40 year-old bridesmaid as she tries to convince herself that she's still beautiful. Adventures into and out of embarrassing situations abound:



Order from Amazon.com by clicking on the book titles or covers above.

Or make it an extra special gift by purchasing signed copies from the IfMama.com shop. For personalization, send me an email after placing your order. Your email should include your order ID, the name of the person receiving the gift, and two sentences about why you think this is the perfect gift for him or her. I'll mail your books within two days of payment.

Christmas shopping doesn't get any easier than that.

Say What You Mean

I was just about to submit my Thanksgiving newspaper column last Friday, when that little voice of reason inside my head said, "WAIT!" Then it explained, "Sorry for yelling, but don't you think someone else ought to read it before it's in print on the most thankful day of the year?"

"Well, okay, I guess. Maybe. Sure," I relented, and recruited my soul mate to do me the honor of proofreading, even though I had reread it thoroughly myself. As a reward for indulging me I gave him a peck on the cheek, a squeeze of the shoulders and went upstairs to fold his clean clothes.

Suddenly, "OH MY GOSH! YOU CANNOT PRINT THIS," rang out. "LUCY! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING? HOOKERS ? FOR THANKSGIVING? YOU WON"T HAVE ANY READERS LEFT!"

Naturally, I boot-scooted down the stairs and skid into the dining room where my computer was set up on the table. "I won't?" I asked surprised. Then I went into defense mode and argued, "But I let the readers off the hook, uh, no pun meant in that, and reveal that the lady of the night marks his place to turn."

Again, my husband squinted at the computer and mumbled as he read through the paragraph once more:

Every year I wait for someone to lower the boom. What I would give for one of my brothers to bust out with, “I’m thankful for the hooker on the corner of Jackson Avenue and Stewart Street.” Then add, after everyone has either thought, Yeah, I’m thankful for her, too, or I can’t believe he said that in front of his mother, “When she’s not there, I miss my turn.” It would sure shut-up mopy cousin Molly, who, every year, sighs heavily and says self- absorbedly that she can’t think of anything.

After finishing, he looked at me and said, "I know I'm not the only one who will read it this way. What you meant and what you wrote are two very different things. What I read is that your brother is sad when she's not there because he misses his turn with her."

Oh my! Happy Thanksgiving. Be careful what you say for your annual thankful moment in the spotlight. You might spend all of Christmas regretting it.

Vegan Thanksgiving?

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and those turkeys are up to tricks again. They've gone and disguised themselves as pumpkins.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Count your blessings that you're not a turkey.

Bad Mama

I dug my dinging cell phone out of my pocket and glanced at the number on the screen. Though I didn’t recognize it, fate compelled me to answer, “Hello, this is Lucy.”

“Mama,” came a gasp rising over the wireless horizon, “Where are you?”

My legs stiffened. My lungs labored to draw in a fresh breath. A haze descended as I wrestled with how to answer my 12 year-old son’s question. At long last I casually whispered, “At the liquor store. We took your brother to meet up with his friends before the football game and then we came to the…” My voice grew weak again as I accidentally circled back around to having to say, “liquor store.” Whispering it, of course, didn’t change the matter or make me unseen by the Baptists and Methodists shopping the aisles on a Friday night along with me.

Earlier in the day, I huddled by my space heater flipping through one of my favorite cookbooks, Peterson’s Holiday Helper. When I stopped the flapping pages, I had landed right on a drool evoking recipe. Tonight, I decided. I’ll make dinner tonight. But I didn’t have a single one of the three ingredients on hand: Cherry brandy, cherry liqueur, chocolate liqueur.

“Where are you,” I exclaimed, both to change the subject and because it at last occurred to me that my child was probably not at home where I thought I had left him.

He told me the sad, sad tale of a boy who looked out of the front window of his house to see his mother and father and another child getting into the car. Immediately he suspected that we were headed to the football game without him, so he ran out the front door and down the walkway desperately pleading for us to stop.

When we did not, the lad sprinted down the street, chasing our tail lights into the dark. He ran as fast as he could make his short legs go, like beating a dying race horse. After arriving at our usual parking spot and seeing that neither we nor our car were there, the despondent child borrowed a phone to called me, his mother, the woman he has depended on and put his faith in since birth.

He thought we had mistaken, Mick, the neighbor kid from down the street for him and thus taken Mick to the game instead of our own son.

“Honey,” I scolded, once he completed his story, “How could you think that? I haven't even made dinner yet!”