grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

I pray Alec Baldwin NEVER runs for office.

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Alec Baldwin will be appearing Friday night in Dallas at the AT&T Performing Arts Center. For one night and one night only, if he makes his flight. The event is being advertised as “An Intimate Evening with Alec Baldwin”. What pray tell will he be doing? Reenacting love scenes from It’s Complicated? Ranting about American Airline flight attendants? I wonder what airline he flies now?Should he once again find himself ejected from his flight for whatever reason, completely missing the intimate evening, my husband could stand in for him. He is often mistaken for Baldwin.

Aloha!
Alec











People frequently approach John to tell him he looks just like Alec Baldwin. It happened last weekend at Uncle Julio’s, as we stuffed our pie holes with fajitas. A lady walked up, seemed a bit shy and embarrassed, but just had to speak to John. “Oh I bet you get that all the time, don’t you?” she giggled, this grown woman. “My husband thought I should come over and tell you.” He waved from across the restaurant. Evidently she really thought he was Alec. I thought she might join us for margaritas. John has paparazzi. 

After the real Alec Baldwin was punted from his flight in December, I felt people glare at us at Northpark as we shopped for Christmas gifts. They studied our shopping bags to see which stores Alec visited. Was he cheap? Did he buy expensive gifts? People wondered why he was in Dallas. Was he filming a movie? The Dallas area has become a hot spot for movie production, you know. And it’s not that unusual to see actors and singers in Dallas. I saw Jessica Simpson at PF Chang’s –  not that she’s much of an actor or singer. 
John flies quite often on business – so far he hasn’t been booted from any flights, but he doesn’t play Words with Friends yet. I hear its addictive.
?
Baldwin or Boerner?

talya

Musical Pairings:

Alison Krauss, “When You Say Nothing At All”
Keith Urban, “Somebody Like You”

Give it up for Lent!

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I’ve been thinking a lot about what to give up for Lent. In prior years, I’ve given up meat and cheese – not at the same time. Kelsey gave up meat for Lent one year in junior high and never ate it again. And NO, it doesn’t count if you give up something you hate, like liver or abdominal crunches. And you can’t give up something you don’t do anyway, such as ironing. I do not iron – not very often anyway. I don’t see the need. 
 
You may not observe Lent – not everyone does. Or you may choose to simply ignore Lent. But you can’t give up Lent for Lent. The purpose is sacrifice and self-denial. According to the Gospels, Jesus spent forty days and forty nights fasting somewhere in the desert near the Jordan River, where he was tempted by Satan – beginning right after Fat Tuesday and ending on the Holy Thursday before Easter Sunday. Regardless what you believe or don’t believe, it likely wouldn’t hurt most of us to fast for a while, especially after all that King Cake, which followed all that Valentine’s candy, which followed all that Christmas candy, which followed all that Halloween candy…
 
Some people take something on for Lent – like volunteering or meditating or picking up trash in the neighborhood. I suppose I could take on ironing?
 
After careful consideration, I’ve decided to give up sweets. Desserts of all kinds. This will be difficult. It won’t be that hard for forty days, but the forty nights will be killer. Forty nights of television with not even a spoonful of Cherry Garcia or Chunky Monkey… What will happen to my box of Blue Bell ice cream sandwiches? Will they still be good on Good Friday? Or will John have eaten them by then? There is a big bowl of Hershey Kisses on the piano that I walk by forty times a day. And, I love to bake. No baking for forty days. 
 
I have 8 boxes of girl scout cookies to eat tonight.
 
Happy Extra-Fat Tuesday!
Grace Grits and Gardening
Musical Pairing:
Louis Armstrong, When The Saints Go Marching In
 

mirror mirror

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Things work out just as they should. To paraphrase verses from King James on this Sunday evening before the Lenten Season, the Lord works in mysterious ways.  It’s actually a good thing that my up-close vision is blurry. I don’t really want to see the stray random hairs apparently growing on my upper lip. I don’t see them at all unless I’m in Arkansas in my mother’s bedroom where for some unknown reason she has a magnifying telescope mirror making even brainwaves visible. I avoid that mirror. It’s a crazy fun house mirror exposing future flaws and skin damage not yet visible to the normal naked eye. She loves that mirror. 


When I was at the nail salon a few weeks ago, Na asked, “You want wax?” “No, my eyebrows are fine.” These people are the absolute best at cross-selling. They have no shame whatsoever. If someone peeps inside the salon, but decides the wait looks too long and turns around to leave, the owner will run the customer down in the parking lot, dragging her back inside. “Only one minute you wait! Only one minute! You sit there,” then they all begin to chatter and point at each other, forcing the trapped customer into a huge lazyboy-like spa chair where she will sit in shock for at least another 20 minutes. These nail people make me feel guilty if I don’t spring for the callous cream – an extra buck – like the whole pedicure is a total waste without it.  “Những phụ nữ da trắng có giá rẻ!” Hmmmm. I don’t need the callous cream. And I don’t need an eyebrow wax. 


Na glanced at my eyebrows which were totally hidden by my bangs anyway, and continued, “What about you mustache? You want wax?” “No! I don’t have a mustache!” Do I? This was all a ploy to make whatever baby-fine, invisible blonde hairs I might have grow thicker and darker forcing me into a mustache waxing routine. I knew that trick. Or maybe I just couldn’t see it – maybe I did have a mustache? I would not start waxing my lip no matter what crop starts growing there. Not unless Kelsey tells me I need to, of course. 

Why on earth would a woman ever marry a younger man? Demi Moore, for instance, is 15 years older than Ashton. Is it an ego boost? forbidden fruit? someone to boss around? to make Bruce Willis jealous? or true love? Regardless, what incredible pressure that must have been for Demi all those years! She must secretively be relieved that relationship is over. She had to know it was only a matter of time. He can clearly see her recently sprouted mustache, she cannot, he’s moving on. Good riddance – he’s grody anyway – I can still see well enough at any distance to know that. Wouldn’t she rather be with someone who was actually alive when she appeared on General Hospital and St. Elmo’s Fire?

According to an article in the journal Demography, a woman who marries a younger man (by at least 7 years) has a 20% greater mortality rate than if she were with a man the same age. It’s all that stress from waxing. Just say NO!

talya

Musical Pairings:

Frankie Avalon, “Beauty School Drop-Out”
John Parr, “St. Elmo’s Fire”

“This mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.” Albus Dumbledore 

Food. Farm. Garden. Life.

THANKS FOR READING!