Donna Doty

When I was in high school, I had a great friend named Donna Doty. She was a hoot. I loved being around her and laughing. She came up with some of the most insane ideas.

We used to do some dumb stuff. She was especially amusing during thunderstorms. She had learned in Mr. Chumney’s science class that rubber does not conduct electricity. [That very well may have been the only thing that she retained.]

So, the minute she heard thunder or saw lightning, she’d run to her closet and fetch her rubber-soled tennis shoes. Since she slept in an iron bed, she’d sleep in her tennis shoes to protect herself from electrocution by lightning. What a kookie idea! However, she did it every time without fail. Love ya, Dote.

Reindeer Sleigh

Sometimes, I just love silly stuff. I bought a Rudolph, the Red-nosed Reindeer costume for my car and put it on last Saturday. It consists of khaki antlers attached to my back passenger windows and a big round red nose attached to the grille. Since my car is fawn colored, the costume really makes it resemble a reindeer.

I like the joy and marvel on people’s faces when they realize what they are seeing. Sometimes people point, others grin, some just shake their heads when they notice the decorations on my reindeer sleigh.

Spreading Christmas cheer is contagious and I so enjoy it.

Disappointment

Joseph Addison (1672 ~ 1719) wrote, "Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures."

We all deal with emotions in different ways and to differing depths. One of the emotions that affects me the most is disappointment. I struggle with it often.

The word disappointment is made up of DIS and APPOINTMENT. DIS means separate, apart, or asunder. So, disappointment describes a feeling of dissatisfaction or anguish, which is experienced when I am torn apart from my expected appointment with fate.

Whether the disappointment is in someone else, in myself, in a situation, or in missing an engagement, I really grapple with it. I have to break it off bit by bit, chew on it for a while, separate the digestible, and then swallow it. Each stage takes a long time to process.

Whenever I am disappointed, it seems that my past disappointments bubble to the surface. Things get stirred up, and my accompanying emotion often has more to do with the cumulative effect of my lifelong disappointments than this particular one. I tend to catastrophize and consolidate it all together into one big lump.

I often jump into action—-retaliatory or self-protective—-without gleaning the most important lessons from disappointment so I’ve decided to confront disappointment by taking one giant step back. I am going to step away from the swirl of thoughts and emotions and simply look at it in a sort of interested bystander way. It's as though I’ll have a clipboard and I’m taking note of the underlying factors, my responses, and how I follow through.

God often ministers to my hurts through other people. It is tempting to put up walls when I’m feeling especially vulnerable, but if I shut out friends and loved ones, I would be sealing off healing and hope. Thank God for those who help me survive disappointments and learn life lessons from them.

Success

To laugh often and much;

To win the respect of intelligent people

and the affection of children;

To earn the appreciation

of honest critics and

endure the betrayal of false friends;

To appreciate beauty,

to find the best in others;

To leave the world a bit better,

whether by a healthy child,

a garden patch,

or a redeemed social condition;

To know even one life has breathed easier

because you have lived.

This is to have succeeded.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882) American Essayist & Poet

Nutt House Bunch

When I was in college, I ran around with a large group of kids. My best friend and I often visited a group of cowboys who lived together in the Nutt House (literally). One of the resident’s of the Nutt House had gone to high school with us. The other four were from all over North and West Texas (Muleshoe, Plainview, Quanah, and Breckenridge).

They were your typical fun-loving countrified college kids. Because I only lived about thirty miles or so from campus, they would often come down to our house just to visit and get a home-cooked meal.

My family lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Therefore, we had lots of wildlife. Nothing excited the Nutt House Bunch more than hunting coons and rabbits.

One night when they came down for supper, we all went down to the bottom in a pickup. With two of us in the cab, the rest rode in the back with their rifles resting on the cab roof. We would zoom around Daddy’s fields spotting rabbits and they’d fire a shot. They usually hit their target.

After we tired of that, we drove over to the creek and shined for coons. Sure enough, we found some and they took aim at them, too. They never missed a shot.

Back then, coon skins were worth something. They’d retrieve them so that they could skin them and market the pelts. Rabbits, on the other hand, were not worth anything. So, the boys would take the rabbits by the tails, sling the rabbit really hard, and pop their tails off. Once the tails were free, they’d stuff them in their shirt pockets. At the end of the night, they pulled out the rabbit tails to see how many each one had. The one who had collected the most was pronounced the “winner” and won a can of snuff.

Now, that’s a redneck adventure isn’t it?

Sponge Candy

Grandmother Johnnie taught me how to make homemade candy when I was young. Every year thereafter, she and I would make candy at Christmas time. Once she got in ill health, it was up to me to make it. So, one year, my husband and I went over to my mother’s house to make a new candy recipe. The new recipe was called Sponge Candy. The recipe sounded pretty much like peanut brittle, but without the peanuts. I knew I would like it because I objected to the peanuts in the brittle anyway.

My husband, my Mom and Dad were watching TV in the den just off of the kitchen. They were within easy earshot.

I mixed up the ingredients in a heavy saucepan on the stove and cooked them to the right stage. The last step was to add baking soda (which is exactly what I do when making peanut brittle). The soda makes the sugar combination bubble up and makes little air holes in the brittle.

I expected the same from this recipe. I had prepared the jelly roll pan (notice that is singular) to pour the Sponge Candy in when it was ready.

I slowly added the soda and stirred it in. The candy began to quickly expand. I poured as much as I could fit into the prepared pan, but it continued to grow and grow and grow. I called out to my husband to grab another pan for me. He came running and quickly got another pan. I poured more into it, but the mixture still kept growing. We then called out for Mom to get another pan ready. She did---—four more times. We kind of felt like we were in an “I Love Lucy” episode. That recipe for one pan of Sponge Candy actually filled up six large baking pans.

It set up real well and was crunchy just like it was supposed to be. It did resemble a sponge, hence the name. I don’t know whether the soda was super-duper or whether the candy was just supposed to turn out that way, but we didn’t envision that much of it. It was tasty and my Dad loved it. He ate for days from that one batch.

Christmas Stress

I’ve been trying to get in the Christmas spirit for a month now. I just can’t. There’s a downer at every turn. I’ve played Christmas music non-stop. I’ve worn Christmasy clothes. Nothing helps.

In my mailbox this morning, I got a School Bus Emergency Evacuation Training meeting plopped right down on top of our annual Christmas party preparations. What is up with that? We start at 6:30. For those of us who are bringing food, 4:45 to 6:30 is not enough time to get ourselves and our food ready. Plus some of us have to decorate it.

I’m also worried about how I’m going to get everything done at Christmastime. Not getting out until December 21^st is a major stressor. I won’t have enough time to prepare my home--clean it and cook meals . Then, I must have all my Christmas shopping done (because we don’t get paid until the 21^st), wrapped, sorted, and delivered before Christmas Eve because on Christmas Eve, we start a 2-day celebration extravaganza with both sides of the family.

Imagine my frustration! I’m sure I’m not the only one. I know, I know, plan ahead. But, when I have a UIL meet and a shower on one weekend, going for an out-of-town visit another weekend, and having flare-ups in between, it’s hard to plan ahead with any confidence. On next year’s school calendar, I hope they look at giving us more time before Christmas Day. It will make the lives of those of us who prepare for Christmas’ much easier.

Thanks for letting me “vent”. Now with the weather colder, maybe Christmas Spirit will come knocking. I sure hope so. I miss him/her/it. Tomorrow will be a better day, surely.

In Our Home

We believe in living deeply,

laughing often and loving always.

We believe we were brought together

to support and care for each other.

We believe in celebrating together—our faith,

our heritage, our traditions.

We believe that everyone’s

feelings count and that the uniqueness

of each of us strengthens all of us.

We believe in the power

of forgiveness to heal

and in the power of love

to carry us through.

We believe in one another,

in this family, in this home.

Murphy's Law

Murphy’s Law. . . if anything can go wrong, it will. Sometimes I think that Murphy’s Law really does exist. Take Thanksgiving Day, for instance. Brit and I had prepared as much of the Thanksgiving meal ahead of time as we could. She had diced the onions and celery. I put the hen on to cook and baked the cornbread. The pies had been assembled. In fact, the only thing left to do was to bake the dressing.

I got up early and baked a pumpkin pie. Chad loves pumpkin pie. I noticed that the heating element in my oven was ablaze. I thought that something had probably been spilled on it and it was just burning off. Then, I noticed that the oven was losing heat. Hmmmm. Seems as if my oven had gone out. It was 10:00 a.m. Thanksgiving day.

Murphy’s Law? Yep. In force. So, I quickly thought of a plan B. I remembered a place where I could cook the dressing and one remaining pie and the yeast rolls all at one time.

By 1:00, Thanksgiving dinner was on the table. I had defeated Murphy’s Law. I never even entertained a negative thought. I always knew that things would work out perfectly. So, I think that the power of positive thinking trumps Murphy’s Law. Ha! Ha! Murphy, take your law and go.

Parenting

I used to think that raising “good” kids meant that they were sensitive, considerate, pleasant, responsible children who made good decisions. To some extent, that is true. However, society dictates that if we want them to be successful in sports and business, these qualities do not make them competitive which I learned is also very important.

Although I know people who possess those desirable qualities and who have also been successful in both athletics and business, it is not as common. Perhaps those successful people were not surrounded by negativity, but a more nurturing environment.

I may have done my children a disservice by teaching them to “turn the other cheek”. . . “grin and bear it”. . . “be nice, don’t be rude or spiteful”. . . “don’t talk back”. . . “be cooperative”. . . “don’t hit”. . . “say nice things or don’t say anything at all”. . . because those qualities were meant to make them congenial, but instead, it contributed to making their lives more difficult among their peers.

Maybe they became too sensitive. Their feelings get hurt. Maybe they are too considerate. They think about how others are affected by their actions. Maybe they are too pleasant. They typically flash broad smiles to people they meet and they converse affably. Maybe they are too responsible. They do what they say they will do when they say they will do it in the manner in which it should be done.

Naively, they expect those same things from other people.

Those qualities in young people are not found extensively today. Because they possess them, they sometimes don’t stand up for themselves and let others run over them. But if giving up those qualities means they can be successful in life, I’d not encourage them to relinquish them.

Having taught teens for nearly thirty years, I should have recognized that their generation is changing rapidly. Kids are no longer taught the old-fashioned values of integrity. Nowadays, kids will say and do just about anything. Adjustments probably should have been made, but just as they progressed through each stage of their lives, my husband and I were parents new to dealing with those stages so we had a learning curve as well.

As they have matured, they have learned life lessons about getting along in the world that I did not teach them. They were hard lessons, but necessary ones.

I still think that teaching them the right values was best because those are the ones they will hold dear as they leave adolescence and grow into adulthood.

Coon Dog Story

There was a time, long ago, when I was asked to do the impossible. The people-pleaser part of me wanted to comply. I made every effort. Try as I could, though, I could not keep Rick’s coon dog, Sandy, from killing that coon.

You see, I always tried to please Rick. I’ll never understand why. He tormented me, but I still would try.
He had this ’50 green Chevrolet step-side pickup. He built a little white platform cover for the bed out of boards. The cover only stood about an inch off of the bed and the siderails of the cover only extended upwards about two inches above the bottom of the cover. There wasn't much wood to keep things in place on the top of the bed cover.

For some reason, we were going to Lamkin to my grandmother’s house. It was about a five mile trip by dirt roads. Rick was driving, of course. He had a live coon that he wanted to take over to her house. I don’t remember why. He also wanted to take Sandy, his black and tan coon hound.

Instead of putting Sandy under the white cover into the bed of the pickup and closing the tailgate, he insisted that Sandy ride atop the white cover. He also put the coon on the top of the white cover. He was adamant that I sit slap dab in between the two and keep them apart.

He said, “Now, don’t you let Sandy get to that coon!”

Naively, I took hold of Sandy’s collar with my right hand and held him as best I could. He was a strong, muscular hound. I talked to him continually and told him to “Stay. Be still. Sit.” It was all I could do to hang on to him.

With my left hand and leg, I kept the coon at bay. Rick had him at the end of a long pole with a loop on the end. The loop went around the coon’s neck. I had to keep the pole with the coon on the end away from Sandy.

Although that may sound easy, it was not. A coon hound has only one instinct when it comes to a coon. That is to kill it. For more than four and a half miles of the five mile trip, I struggled feverishly to keep Sandy at the back of the white cover and the coon at the front.

About the time that we got to my great-grandmother Massingill’s old home place (about half a mile from grandmother Johnnie’s house), Sandy finally broke loose and took hold of that coon in his mouth. His powerful jaws crushed the life out of the coon. Blood squirted everywhere. It was all over me, the coon, Sandy, and the white cover of the pickup. It nearly made me sick.

I began to scream and cry. I pleaded with Rick not to be mad at me. I told him that I had done my very best, but that Sandy was too strong to keep away from the coon. I apologized profusely. Of course, Rick could not hide his amusement. He grinned and said, “Aw, that’s okay. He was gonna kill him after a while anyway.”

I was relieved that Rick was not mad at me. What I should have been was furious at him for putting me in that position knowing what was going to happen. Brothers!