And I thought the crackhead running through the yard and apologizing was interesting

I was standing on the deck, minding my own business, when I saw something out of sorts. So I called 911.

Me to the operator: I know this is gonna sound crazy, but there's a coyote in my neighbor's yard.

Operator to me, assuming voice she was probably trained to use with mental calls: And what did the dog look like?

After she assured me someone would come out to take a look, I started to doubt myself. Like I always do when I doubt myself, I got on the interweb. I googled "coyotes" "Raleigh" and found this.

I'm not crazy!!!

Crazy Cat Lady Chronicles, Vol. XIV

My friend called in a panic because she had an early morning doctor appointment and needed someone to take her 3- and 1-year-old littles to preschool. I brushed my teeth, threw on a hat and some comfy sweats and went over.

Since their school is only four blocks away downtown (and car seats are a level of engineering I have never needed to master), I put them in the stroller and walked them there. No problem.

But as I was pushing the empty stroller back down Blount Street at morning rush hour, I was actually HOPING someone I knew would see me, figure I'd finally lost my mind and ask what I was doing, because I had the PERFECT response:

"Eudora jumped out and I can't find her."



(photo Geoff Wood)

That's funny, I don't care who you are...

My Good Ol' Boy Daddy's birthday was coming up. Before I bought his surprise present, I called my Sainted Southern Mother to arrange getting him up here to the RBC Center three weeks later for a show.

We made the arrangements for them to get here and get a hotel room, as the show would end at 11 p.m., well after both their bedtimes.

"Now will Steve be going with him?" my SSM asked.

"I was planning to," I responded.

"Thank God!" she shrieked. "When you said two tickets, I thought you were going to make me go with him."

I got my Daddy and me tickets to the Blue Collar Comedy Tour.

For his actual birthday surprise, I sent my SSM my confirmation e-mail. I asked her to print it out and give it to him when I called to wish him a happy birthday.

"Hang on," he said, after I sang the birthday song over the phone, "your mama's shoving papers in my face." I listened as he read aloud, "Bill Engvall, Jeff Foxworthy and LARRY!" (emphasis his)

"Hey, hey," he chuckled, "this is awesome!"

Last night, after three weeks of anticipation, it was show night. My parents came to Raleigh and had dinner with Steve and me. After dinner, Steve and my SSM breathed collective sighs of relief as my daddy and I set off for the show, rubbing our hands in glee.

We got to the RBC Center, paid $10 to park, got out and looked around for signs to let us know what lot we were in so we could find the car on the way out. There were none. We agreed to remember that Carter-Finley Stadium, where our beloved Wolfpack loses football games (Daddy said it, not me, and he went to State) was at the left and we should just keep walking a long way when we got out.

I gave Pops his ticket and walked in before him. After I walked through the metal detector I said something to him, wondered why he didn't respond, and turned around. There was my Pops, being held up by security over his pocket knife he's had in his pocket for 50 years.

"C'mon, man," he said to the security guy. And they waved him in.

We made our way to our eighth-row, unobstructed seats. "Check it out, Daddy," I said, "We can both see!" "Pfft," Daddy replied, "last time I was here, I had a floor seat." We whiled away the minutes seeing who could read the most names on the retired State jerseys in the rafters. Daddy had Lasik and I just graduated to bifocals. He got two and I got one.

At last, the show started. Watching my daddy laugh until he couldn't catch his breath over Jeff Foxworthy's story about a shotgun wedding where Grandma got so mad she threw her beer on the ground was a moment I want to keep memorized forever. Seeing him do the same thing over one of Larry the Cable Guy's sex jokes will take a lot of therapy to erase.

But it was a blast. I didn't think twice about being the only person in the RBC Center with pink hair. Spending 25 minutes trying to get out of the parking lot in the only car with an Obama/Biden sticker, on the other hand...

It was probably worse for my Pops, being seen in a car with a lib'rul bumper sticker.

Oh, let me tell you what happened at Wal-Mart!

I called my Sainted Southern Mother this morning for a chit-chat. We shot the breeze for a while before she said, "Oh, let me tell you what happened at Wal-Mart. It's a blog story!"

-----------------

Last Sunday after church, my SSM told my Good Ol' Boy Daddy she was popping out to Wal-Mart and asked if he needed anything. "I'd sure like some merlot," he replied. My SSM doesn't drink, and her alcohol purchases are probably limited to a bottle of rum for seven years' worth of Christmas rum balls and what was supposed to be a virgin pina colada at a restaurant in Asheville once (my sister Jill witnessed that one).

I'm pretty sure my Pops was not expecting her to bring him a bottle of wine, but she decided to surprise him.

The Super Wal-Mart in Shallotte is the size of a city block, and the wine section is discreetly tucked away in the back corner. On her way in, my SSM ran into "every Baptist and Methodist in Shallotte talking about the sermon." And every one of them stopped her to hug her neck and talk about the sermon.

Miss Popularity made her way, little by little, to the wine section. She looked around to make sure nobody was looking and grabbed the first bottle labeled "merlot" she saw.

And she stuck it under her coat. Yes, she stuck it under her coat so the church people wouldn't see it. No, it did not occur to her that security cameras probably zoomed in on her as a potential shoplifter.

My dear SSM is recovering from hip surgery, so she took a shopping cart to lean on as she walked through the massive store to buy two things, but she shed the cumbersome object and concentrated on just getting the wine and getting out of there as quickly as possible. With her left hand, she secreted the wine stash and with her right, she used the heck out of her cane while her pocketbook dangled from her elbow "like a little old lady's."

She got a quarter of the way back to the registers when she looked down and saw that the neck of the bottle was sticking out of her coat. So she fished a Kleenex out of her pocketbook and covered it before making a beeline to the closest register to the door, paying for her contraband and sneaking it through the parking lot.

She proudly presented my Pops with a bottle of Wal-Mart merlot and told him the story. "Good lord, Birdie! You could have been arrested!" he exclaimed. The thought never occurred to her.

"Mama!" I said after catching my breath from laughing about her coming close to showing up in the court docket of my hometown weekly, "Those Baptists and Methodists were probably making small talk so you would leave and they could buy their wine!"

"Your sister said the same thing," she replied.