Author: junemathews

This story originally appeared in the April 28, 2011, issue of The Trussville Tribune…

So here we are at the beginning of The Upside-Down Gardening Experiment: Year Three.

As you may recall, the experiment began two years ago when I purchased one of those “As Seen On TV” upside-down tomato planters. Inspired by dreams of growing bushels of tomatoes and using them to create mouthwatering batches of homemade salsa, I eagerly stuffed a starter plant into the potting soil and commenced to watch it grow.

And grow it did. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a plant take off like that one did. Before long, it trailed down the side of the porch to the ground several feet below. Sadly, though, the impressive length of the vine had no relation whatsoever to the amount of fruit produced. It yielded a whopping two tomatoes.

The experiment continued with last spring’s purchase of an upside-down strawberry planter. Since the strawberry planter accommodates multiple plants as opposed to the tomato planter’s one, I figured I had a fair chance of harvesting more strawberries than tomatoes. And I was right. After four strawberries, my crop was all in, and the homemade preserves I’d planned to enjoy mid-winter never materialized.

Clearly my upside-down gardening successes, if you can call them that, have been only slightly more productive than not at all. In fact, after last year’s letdown, I vowed to stop wasting time and money on what for me had become a futile effort. But despite my best intentions to forever forsake anything touted with the words “upside-down” and “planter” in the same sentence, well, here we go again…

Two weeks ago, I bought an upside-down pepper planter at an auction from a seller looking to liquidate some overstock items. When several planters went on the block, and the bid per unit failed to rise above a couple of dollars, I broke down and bought one. So in my defense, I got a screaming deal, something no true bargain-hunter can be expected to pass up.

My latest upside-down purchase isn’t exactly a thing of beauty. There’s nothing terribly attractive about these type planters in the first place, but the vinyl bag that forms the main part of my newest one is a permanently crumpled mess, probably from languishing in a hot warehouse one summer too many. I’m hoping the dead weight of wet potting soil will eventually pull all the wrinkles out, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

A few days post-purchase, Jimmie and I stopped by the garden center of our local home improvement store and scanned the pepper plant selection. For some reason, I’m always attracted to plants with people names, so when I saw a pepper plant labeled “Yellow Bill,” I knew it was the plant for me.

Then I got home and put on my reading glasses, only to discover I’d purchased a yellow BELL plant, and my enthusiasm waned. I’ve never much cared for the taste of bell peppers, but if this plant produces, I might learn to like it.

At any rate, the pepper plant is planted, and the watching and waiting has begun. So by summer’s end, will I be up to my eyeballs in yellow bell peppers? Or will my yield amount to the same paltry harvest I’ve reaped the past two years? Only time will tell.

But until I see some shiny yellow vegetables on the vine, I won’t be making any plans for stuffed bell peppers, roasted bell peppers, sautéed bell peppers or any other kind of bell peppers. I suspect my previous pre-planning with regard to salsa and strawberry preserves may have somehow jinxed my upside-down gardening efforts, and I don’t want to be disappointed again.

And by the way, if you hear about any kinds of upside-down planters I haven’t tried, I’d rather not know, so please don’t tell me. Three years of experimenting with this stuff is about all I can stand.

This story originally appeared in the April 14, 2011, issue of The Trussville Tribune…

I’m not much of a soft drink drinker. I don’t keep them around the house, and ever since kicking a mid-morning soft-drink-and-crackers habit I’d gotten into, I don’t drink them at the office anymore. The calories were catching up with me, and the carbonation kept me burping (excuse me) until lunchtime.

Sweet tea and coffee are my preferred poisons, and I can never seem to get enough of those. But soft drinks? I can take ‘em or leave ‘em, and I mostly leave ‘em. So imagine my surprise when a recent attempt to streamline the soft drink selection at the office caused an outcry akin to the ruckus caused by last year’s Gulf oil spill.

It started when the secretary designated “office grocery shopper” left the firm. With no immediate plans to hire a replacement, the bosses doled out her duties among other staff members, and stocking the break room refrigerator fell to me.

I had no problem with the arrangement. After all, what woman doesn’t like to shop – and with somebody else’s credit card, at that? Trips to the store would also allow me to escape the confines of the office on occasion, and as much as I like my work, a shopping break is never a bad thing.

So I happily launched into my new responsibility by taking inventory and making a list of things we needed. That’s when I realized the firm was not only providing a water cooler, several kinds of coffee, iced tea (sweet and artificially sweetened), hot chocolate and flavored vitamin water, but EIGHT kinds of soft drinks as well.

All that seemed excessive for an office of fifteen people, but I figured my tendency to squeeze a dollar, no matter whose dollar it is, might be driving my thoughts on the matter. So I contacted former co-workers and a couple of office managers at other firms for some outside opinions. As it turned out, every person I polled expressed astonishment at the generous amount and variety of liquid refreshment our firm provided, and several even offered to rush right over and assist with the overflow.

So I naively sent out an interoffice soft drink survey, trying to fairly determine what could be struck from the lineup. And that’s when the uproar began. You would have thought I was proposing to cut off the oxygen supply to the building instead of trying to trim the soft drink selection. Folks got downright hostile.

Some perceived the idea to be miserly on the bosses’ part. I quickly assured them I was the miserly one. Others whined, apparently believing the prospect of doing without his or her favorite soft drink while others got theirs was deprivation, not to mention employee discrimination, of the highest order.

Yet others complained because, well, they complain about everything and didn’t want to miss out on such a golden opportunity to carp. For a few days I huddled in my cubicle, unused to being cast in the role of office pariah, desperately trying to lay low until the dust settled. My people-pleasing nature had run slap up against what little business sense I possess, and the inner turmoil was upsetting, to say the least.

When all was said and done, we managed to limit the soft drink selection to a mere six kinds of soft drinks, which is still a lot, if you ask me. But the soft drink drinkers at the office obviously aren’t interested in my point of view.

And while I can now see the humor in the whole episode, I’m serious when I say I won’t be sharing my opinions on such matters in the future. Anyone who knows me knows I sometimes have a hard time keeping my mouth shut, but in this case, self-preservation is a powerful motivator. In fact, just to be on the safe side, if the subject of soft drinks ever comes up at the office again, I think I’ll just crawl under my desk and hide.

This story originally appeared in the March 31, 2011, issue of The Trussville Tribune…

Heads up, ladies! It’s that time of year again. With spring and summer weddings in the offing, the 2011 Bridal Tea Season has begun. If you haven’t already received scads of invitations in the mail, look for them to arrive soon. And if they don’t, well, you must have licked your fingers or done something equally offensive at the last bridal tea you attended, and word got around.

A Southern female tradition of the highest order, the Sunday afternoon bridal tea is a chance to see and be seen by the cream of your social crop. It’s also prime time for catching up on local gossip, checking out the latest in crock pots and china patterns, and sharpening your motor skills by juggling a dessert plate, fork, punch cup and handbag while managing to carry on a conversation and remain upright in heels at the same time.

My initiation into the world of bridal teas came at age five, when my Aunt Bibby was about to marry my to-be Uncle Doug. Since I was the eldest niece – and because the only other niece at the time was two years old and lived in California – I was appointed to collect gifts at the door.

Well, that lasted about ten minutes. I found it the most boring job imaginable, especially since the gifts were for somebody else. And who wanted a vegetable slicer or set of bath towels, anyway? I cared neither for vegetables nor baths very much in those days, so those items seemed useless to me.

Relieved of duty, I happily spent the afternoon ducking around grown-ups’ legs and crawling under the dining room table to get to the petit four side. There’s no telling how many of those things I ate, but I clearly remember suffering a terrific stomachache on the way home.

As badly as that first attempt to draw me into the world of bridal teas went, matters eventually improved. When I was growing up, Mama was always serving as a hostess at one bridal tea or another, and on occasion, she still does. So with such an example, I couldn’t help but learn the ropes at a fairly early age.

The first tea I helped with took place at our house when I was about thirteen. Dressed at the height of early 1970s fashion in a pale pink knit dress with hair teased to kingdom come, I stood for two solid hours at the south end of the dining room table behind Mama’s silver tea service. As the guests, invariably clad in pastels and pearls, teetered past the nuts, mints and petit fours, I poured coffee for all I was worth.

Yes, coffee, not tea. Nobody ever served tea at a tea in those days because nobody in the South back then drank any kind of tea that wasn’t poured over ice into a former jelly jar. It just wasn’t right. In fact, I was half-grown before I knew there was such a thing as hot tea, and even older before I knew anybody who actually drank it.

But my, how bridal teas have changed! Not only do the liquid refreshments now frequently include tea (iced and hot), the array of food is far more extensive than the cake-nuts-mints menu of my era. At a recent affair, I chowed down on tiny chicken salad-filled pastries, mini heart-shaped brownies, chocolate-dipped strawberries and spicy cheese straws dipped in salsa. If I’d known an entire meal was going to be served, I would have skipped lunch.

After a feast like that, I was tempted to lick my fingers, but the thought of what could happen helped me resist. Being struck from The Official Bridal Tea Invitation List, never to be served another heart-shaped brownie or spicy cheese straw… I’m not sure I could bear it. On the other hand, if it meant spending springtime Sunday afternoons in shorts and t-shirts as opposed to dresses and high heels, I might not mind at all.

This story originally appeared in the March 17, 2011, issue of The Trussville Tribune…

Confession, they say, is good for the soul, so in an effort to nurture my inner being, here goes: On occasion, my mouth gets away from me, and a bad word slips out.

Yes, I realize the preacher might read this and deem me unfit to ever again serve in a church-related capacity. But I hope he’ll take into consideration that I’m at least semi-repentant before he condemns me to the ranks of the Baptist benchwarmers.

I have to say, though, for some situations only a bad word will do. Like the time the edge of my thumb slipped under the thrumming needle of a sewing machine. Or the time my computer deleted an eight-page paper I’d failed to save. Or the time I was experiencing a beyond-bad hair day and gave my boss an unvarnished opinion of my Muppet-like ‘do.

“Now, June,” he deadpanned in reply. “Do you really know what Hell looks like?”

I had to admit I didn’t.

Mama says I inherited any potty mouth tendencies I might possess from Daddy’s side of the family, but that’s not entirely true. Certain individuals on her side of the family have been known to utter choice words, too.

MeeMaw Flowers, for instance, could string naughty words together with admirable ease, figuratively handing various nursing home personnel their heads on a platter every few days.

And at around age two, one of my young cousins on Mama’s side, now a minister’s wife and mother of two, plainly blurted out a cuss word while I was babysitting her one day. When I laughed, she said it again – and a couple more times for good measure. Her mother was not similarly amused.

As I recall, Mama herself even let a zinger or two fly my way when I was a teenager. (She’ll deny it, of course, so don’t even bother to ask her about it.) But parents of teenagers will quickly tell you an occasional bad word is allowed.

“You’ve got to let off steam somehow,” said a friend whose progeny were 14 and 16 when I broached the subject with her, “and letting loose with a cuss word now and then beats a murder rap.”

For weeks afterward, I prayed for the safety of her children.

As far as Daddy’s side of the family, well, I’ve heard plenty of stories about his relatives’ colorful turns of phrase. But none could quite compare to MeeMaw Harper’s style. She spelled her bad words, apparently thinking if she didn’t meld the letters into a single sound, it didn’t count as cussing. I doubt, however, that anyone ever mistook her for a spelling bee champ.

She once referred to a person who frequently got on her nerves as “that d-a-m woman,” never realizing she’d done nothing more than call the object of her wrath a water-barricading female. So I guess you could say MeeMaw Harper never really cussed; she only meant to.

But my all-time favorite family bad word tale concerns my oldest nephew, Ryan, at age six. Upon arriving home from school one day, he reported that a kid in his first grade class had been sent to the principal’s office for saying not only the D-word, but the S-word, too, and the elementary school grapevine was abuzz with the news.

Horrified, my sister-in-law nevertheless maintained the presence of mind to delve a little further into the matter before jumping to any conclusions as to what her baby’s innocent ears had heard.

“Ryan, you know those are bad words, and you’re not supposed to say them,” she said slowly. “But just this once, I want you to whisper in Mommy’s ear what you think the D-word and the S-word are.”

Dreading his response, she leaned down to hear his reply.

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “Will you tell me?”

Now in his mid-twenties, Ryan has likely since learned what those words are. But just in case he hasn’t, I certainly won’t be the one to tell him. Talk about a murder rap. His mother would kill me.

Either that, or she’d tell the preacher, and I’m probably in enough trouble with him as it is.

This story originally appeared in the March 3 issue of The Trussville Tribune…

As I write this, I’m propped up in bed with the laptop, and my two Chihuahua sidekicks are huddled under the covers at my feet. It’s early Saturday, and even though the temperature is still cool outside, the sun is shining in all its glory.

A beautiful morning like this is perfect for pulling on a light jacket and going for a walk, which I’m just liable to do before the day is over. I might even pull a couple of leashes out of the household critters’ storage cabinet and take the sidekicks along.

In the meantime, though, I’m staying put. Hiding, actually. Laying low.

Jimmie, you see, is outside, cleaning up the most recent round of debris dropped on our front yard by Mother Nature and five oak trees. I, quite frankly, had rather be writing than raking, and I know if I so much as set foot on the front porch, Jimmie will stick some kind of gardening implement in my hand and expect me to use it.

When he cheerfully bounded out of bed and announced his plans to spend the morning raking out flowerbeds and bagging leaves, I suspected those plans somehow included me. So I quickly pulled the laptop onto the bed, mumbled something about a Monday deadline and fell into my “busy writer” routine.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I’m anti-yard work. I like a clean yard as much as the next person. I just like it better when somebody else is doing the cleaning. Lawnmowers are noisy, and in my hands, hedge clippers spell trouble for the boxwoods. And if you’ve ever stepped on an upturned rake and bonked yourself in the face or slashed an ankle with the business end of a weed eater, you understand me when I say yard work is a pain.

Rest assured, however, I’m more than willing to get involved on the supervising end. I can tell Jimmie what grass needs cutting, what tree needs trimming or what weed needs eating all day long. I’m sure he appreciates my help in that regard (about as much as I appreciate him telling me his mother made better meatloaf than I do). But for the most part, I avoid the actual doing of yard work – except, that is, when it comes to planting flowers. Then it’s a different game altogether.

First of all, the tools for planting flowers are much smaller, more manageable and, therefore, less dangerous than those sharp-edged, gas-powered or battery-operated gadgets required for doing yard work these days. Secondly, flowers are pretty. And thirdly, I get a huge kick out of watching something I poked in the ground a few weeks earlier – or in the case of bulbs, maybe years earlier – thrive and grow.

And harking back to my childhood days, when I could sling together the meanest mud pie on the block in a chicken potpie tin saved from supper the evening before, I love getting my hands dirty. Gardening gloves be hanged. There’s nothing like digging in the dirt barehanded and squishing the mud between my fingers. I’m sure the earthworms don’t like it, but that’s the risk they take when they choose to settle in my territory.

Of course that explains the usual state of my manicure – or rather, I guess, the lack thereof. I always manage to scrape the dirt out from under my fingernails so I’ll at least look presentable, but that’s about as good as it gets throughout the spring and early summer.

But until it’s time to put in some springtime bedding plants, I’ll continue to make my lame excuses and hunker in the house whenever Jimmie is working in the yard. After all, it’s for his own good. I wouldn’t want to pose a threat to him or any of the neighbors with those dangerous yard tools. And if he needs me to supervise, well, I’ll cross that bridge if it happens. But I’d probably I’d come out of hiding for that.

This story originally appeared in the February 17 issue of The Trussville Tribune.

Along with every other patriotic football fan in the country, I cringed when Christina Aguilera botched the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner” during the Super Bowl earlier this month. As soon as it happened, I knew she was in for some unwelcome media attention. You don’t goof up like that in a packed stadium, not to mention in front of millions of TV viewers, without paying some kind of price.

But in my opinion, she got what she deserved. With a little forethought, the whole mangled mess could have easily been avoided. I mean, good grief, if you’re going to sing for a crowd that size, at least have the good sense to use a teleprompter or write the words on your hand. Didn’t the girl learn how to cheat on a test like everybody else who ever went to grammar school?

On the other hand, I’ve got to admit that Christina was in a tough spot. No matter how seasoned a performer may be, the Super Bowl would have to rank right up there with a starving lion’s den at suppertime as one of the most intimidating venues ever. So I’ll give her that much. But that’s even more reason to spend a little time and effort preparing not to fail. Just sayin’.

But I was no more horrified with Christina’s faux pas than I was when I tried to recall the correct order of the phrases in the national anthem and encountered a memory lapse of my own. So what’s up with that? I’ve known and cherished those words since second grade, and to suddenly forget how they all fit together was a little unnerving.

I hate to say this out loud, so I’m going to whisper it very quietly: Could this and other periodic brain glitches I’ve been experiencing lately be (gasp!) senior moments?

I fear it may be true. The signs are all there. I’ve begun hunting reading glasses perched on my head and car keys I’m holding in my hand. I’ll put important things away in special places and can never find them again. I’ll wash a load of clothes and forget to throw them in the dryer before mildew sets in, and I have to wash them again.

The short-term memory is fading fast, which doesn’t explain why I’d forget the lyrics to a song I’ve known since I was a kid. So it looks like the long-term memory isn’t in such good shape, either. But I can remember the name of a substitute teacher in my first-grade class, while I can’t remember the date of a hair appointment I made yesterday.

I’m reminded of the Sunday afternoons Mama and I used to visit Meemaw Flowers in the nursing home. Well into her eighties, my grandmother could readily spin tales of her childhood, once describing in great detail and with perfect clarity a tulip tree in her parents’ backyard. But she couldn’t remember our visit two weeks before – or that she’d told the same story and described the same tree to us then.

Thankfully, though, my “Star-Spangled” moment was brief. I managed to remember the song by singing it through a couple of times, causing the parrot to set up an ear-splitting ruckus and the Chihuahuas to perk up their ears and tilt their heads as if to say, “What’s all that racket you’re making? And can you please make it stop?” At least Christina has a decent singing voice, even if she has to make up the lyrics as she goes along. (I could make a mean crack about blondes here, but I won’t. This time.)

The backlash from my memory lapse was minimal, nothing compared to the media frenzy Christina suffered through. In my case, once the parrot stopped squawking and the dogs settled down, the incident was pretty much forgotten.

But alas, in Christina’s case, the bungled words won’t be forgotten until the next time somebody famous botches “The Star-Spangled Banner” on national TV. Given the difficulty of the tune and the phrasing that nobody truly understands, I predict that won’t be very long at all.

This story first appeared in the February 3, 2011, issue of The Trussville Tribune…

Wow, who knew? All these years I thought I was a brunette, and come to find out, I’m a blonde. At least that’s what the hair color people say, and they ought to know.

One evening last week, I washed some of the gray highlights out of my hair with the contents of a bottle labeled “Dark Blonde.” I was pleased with the result and later commented to Jimmie that the color came as close to my natural color as I’d ever been able to find.

“The funny thing is,” I said, “I’ve never considered my natural color to be anywhere near blonde.”

“Huh,” he said, giving my refurbished tresses barely a glance before turning his attention back to the TV. He’s evidently so accustomed to the color of my hair changing from time to time that yet another shade is barely worth noting.

I once longed to be a blonde bombshell but never had enough nerve to go the bleaching route. I frankly doubted light-colored hair would do much for my complexion, plus I feared winding up with a head full of over-processed straw.

There was that one summer, though – I must have been sixteen or so – when I spent a lot of time poolside with friends Sonja and Melanie at Sonja’s daddy’s country club. Between the chlorine in the pool and spritzes of lemon juice on our hair, we were summer blondes as long as the season lasted. And I think the lighter color probably suited me just fine. But then, all those hours in the sun guaranteed I had enough of a tan to carry it off.

I again experimented with a somewhat lighter color the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college. Mama and Daddy left my younger brother and me home alone one weekend while they went on a trip with Daddy’s boss and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Martin. Craving some excitement but low on funds, I ran to the drugstore and plopped down my last few bucks for a bottle of hair color labeled “Golden Halo,” or something like that.

The writing on the box promised the magic formula inside would render my hair a shiny brown with golden highlights and body to spare. Furthermore, my hair would be thicker, more manageable and infinitely attractive to every handsome and well-to-do college-age male for miles around. Okay, so maybe I read a little more into the advertising copy than was actually there…

In reality, the stuff turned my hair a horrible brassy red, and I had no sooner finished drying it when Mr. Martin’s Cadillac turned into the driveway. The parents were home, and there I was, looking for all the world like an Irish Setter on a bad hair day.

Worse, I had never met Mrs. Martin before, and her first impression of me was bound to be less than favorable. But I figured I might as well get it over with. So I bravely stepped outside to help Mama and Daddy with their bags.

The look on my parents’ faces was priceless.

“Your daughter is lovely,” Mrs. Martin sweetly gushed to my mother, trying really hard to sound sincere. “But where did she get that red hair?”

“I’m guessing from a bottle,” Mama deadpanned, giving me the maternal evil eye.

“Oh…” Mrs. Martin giggled nervously, sensing she’d stuck her foot in the middle of what was about to become a family issue. She hastily retreated to the car and urged her husband to do likewise.

My current hairstylist, Cindy, recently advised me that any hair color with “golden” in its name would turn brown hair red. No kidding. Too bad somebody didn’t share that little tidbit with me thirty-five years ago. It might have saved me some trouble.

But now learning that I’m actually a blonde, and that I apparently have been all along, gives me a whole new perspective on life. Remember the old commercial that posed the question, “Is it true blondes have more fun?” Well, I intend to find out. And if that’s indeed the case, I’ll be spending the next few years catching up on all those good times I’ve been missing.

This story originally appeared in the January 20, 2011, issue of The Trussville Tribune.

For those of you who have heard Jimmie’s and my critter stories, our current situation is just another chapter in a continuing saga. Over the past couple of years, we’ve been plagued with a series of incidents that have left us wondering if our house has been designated a wildlife refuge, and nobody told us.

Two Christmases ago, our gift to each another was payment for the removal of a possum from a dead space left by the builder between the master bath and a hall closet. The unfortunate creature tumbled there from a cozy bed she’d made for herself in our attic, and she couldn’t climb back up.

Ms. Possum was quite unhappy about her predicament, but I can assure you, she was no unhappier about it than we were. We first learned of her presence when she fell. The noise of her descent and subsequent efforts to scale the inner walls of the house threw the Chihuahuas into a yapping fit, which, in turn, set the parrot to screeching.

Amid the pandemonium, Jimmie called the critter control people, who came the next day and actually had to cut a hole in the closet wall through which to pull the furious rodent out. Two hundred bucks later, we were the proud, albeit poorer, owners of a possum-free home.

Not too many months after that, we came home from a Saturday breakfast out with friends to find a dead squirrel reposing on our den sofa. It took us while to think things through, but we finally figured the poor fellow had likely been ambushed and killed by the cat next door and later discovered by the Chihuahuas.

My little rocket scientists evidently considered the squirrel one heck of a fuzzy dog toy and brought him home. Our guess is they dragged him into the house when we let them out for a potty break, leaving the door ajar for them to run in and out until time for us to go. While we were gone, they laid their prize out on the sofa. It was one of the more peculiar things to ever happen around here, but one that was easily overcome by disposing of the carcass.

Our current problem, however, is about to get the best of us. Raccoons have invaded our attic, and they’ve made it perfectly clear they don’t intend to depart willingly. They created an entrance by prying a vent cover from an eave over the sunroom, which could easily be remedied. But until the area is guaranteed raccoon-free, Jimmie doesn’t want to risk confining an animal in the attic by replacing the cover too quickly.

In the meantime, he’s setting a live trap baited with sardines every few days and has actually managed to capture three of our masked squatters. Each time he catches one, Jimmie relocates his prey to an undisclosed location across town. But a day or so later, we’ll again hear a raccoon rambling around in the attic. Either the woods around here are teeming with raccoons, or the ones Jimmie hauls off are following him back home.

Downside of the live trap thing is, other animals are attracted, too. Last week, the neighbor’s cat caught a whiff of the sardine bait and suddenly found herself in confined quarters for the day. Talk about a mad cat. Jimmie was afraid to let her out.

And so it goes. But at least we can take pride in one thing: Word has apparently spread among the raccoon population that we offer five-star accommodations here. If we could only charge them accordingly, I’d install cable TV in the attic, set out some clean towels, roll out the red carpet and turn on the Vacancy sign.

This story originally appeared in the January 6, 2011, issue of The Trussville Tribune.

So here it is, the beginning of another year and as usual, I’ve made nary a New Year’s resolution. I learned a long time ago that for me, making resolutions is generally a waste of time and brainpower, both of which I have little enough to spare already.

Back when I did make resolutions, they’d be strictly followed the first two weeks of January, vaguely recalled by February and altogether forgotten by March. So I finally figured, why bother? But if I were to make any resolutions this year, here’s what they’d be…

Resolution No. 1: To shave my legs more than once this winter. If the length of the hair on my legs right now is any indication, I should have been born a sheepdog. But I rarely wear dresses anymore, especially during cold weather, so whenever the temperature outside drops below 65 degrees, leg shaving drops way down on the personal grooming list. (Guys, I know this is probably too much information for you, but believe me, the girls totally understand where I’m coming from.)

Last winter, I shaved my legs in February so I could wear a dress to a neighbor’s wedding without embarrassing myself. This winter? Well so far, we haven’t been invited to any weddings.

Resolution No. 2: To stop playing mind-numbing computer games. During the holidays, I stumbled upon an addictive Christmas-themed game, where the click of a mouse causes snowmen, gift boxes and trees to violently crash into one another then vanish from the screen.

The first time I played it, I was captivated by the power granted me to seek and destroy tiny Christmas ornaments. (I obviously harbor some unresolved aggression issues.) Before I knew it, I’d wasted an hour, but that didn’t stop me from playing a few more rounds and many more since.

As I mentioned earlier, time is not an unlimited commodity around here, so do I really want to waste it in a technology-induced trance? Maybe.

Resolution No. 3: To drink more water and less tea/coffee/soft drinks. This should be easy for me, and here’s why: A few weeks ago, I saw a Dr. Oz segment in which he gave tips for weight control. One of them was, “Don’t drink your calories,” meaning one should drink water, rather then all those high-caloric liquids I love so much. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that having a water cooler at the office would encourage me in such an endeavor.

Now my bosses are the best, always on the lookout for ways to make life better for their employees and rarely turning down a request for anything that might make our office an even more pleasant place to work. But for some reason, they’d always balked at the idea of a water cooler.

They happily supplied all the bottled water we could ever want, so it’s not like we did without. But several of us had long dreamed of filling our own larger containers with good drinking water, minimizing our carbon footprint by using fewer disposable bottles, and doing away with the onerous task of hauling in heavy cases of bottled water from the discount store across the street. Newly inspired by Dr. Oz, I felt compelled to somehow make that water cooler happen.

Long story short, the water cooler was installed in the break room last week. And all it took on my part was helping the bosses see that despite their initial reservations, they actually wanted a water cooler. If you call that being manipulative, well, you could be right. But hey, it worked. And that brings us to…

Resolution No. 4: To be less manipulative. Like that’s gonna happen.

So there they are, my resolutions for 2011. But remember, these are resolutions I’d make if I were going to make any – which I’m not – so I guess you could call these non-binding non-resolutions. Call them what you like; I call them forgotten.

Now if you’ll excuse me, my hairy legs and I are going to pour ourselves a big glass of sweet tea and play some computer games for a while.

This story first appeared in the December 23 issue of The Trussville Tribune…

There’s no situation more volatile and potentially dangerous to those involved than a roomful of women playing Dirty Santa. I should know. I play Dirty Santa on at least one occasion every Christmas season, and I always do my level best to help matters along – especially when it comes to getting my hands on something I really, really want.

For those of you unfamiliar with Dirty Santa, it’s a takeaway game played at countless Christmas parties every year. Each player brings a wrapped gift and places it in a pile with the other players’ gifts. Then everybody draws numbers to determine their turn.

The game begins when the person with the lowest number chooses a gift and opens it. Each subsequent player can either open a gift from the pile or steal a gift unwrapped by a previous player. If a gift is stolen, the person forced to give it up can either steal a gift from someone else or open a gift from the pile. Whenever the last gift in the pile is opened, the game ends.

Sounds simple, huh? But in reality, it’s usually anything but. In every game, there are always two or three gifts that several people really, really want and will go to any length to acquire. I’ve seen women play tug-of-war over everything from tree ornaments to holiday toilet lid covers, and I once even heard profanities exchanged by two players who had been the best of buddies only ten minutes before – and all for the sake of a matching scarf and glove set from your local discount store.

Friendship be hanged. Dirty Santa is serious stuff.

The funniest Dirty Santa incident I ever saw was when a fellow player finally managed to get her hands on a box of chocolate-covered cherries she’d been eyeballing since the beginning of the game. Bounty secured, she promptly ripped open the package and chowed down on the candy, rendering it instantly unattractive to the other players. Needless to say, nobody tried to steal it from her.

Dirty Santa has rules about stealing and giving up gifts, but try enforcing them with a woman who’s convinced that a pair of gold-trimmed votives are the finishing touch she needs for the decorations on her fireplace mantel. And try wresting that precious set of holiday cheese spreaders from the clutches of a woman hosting a Christmas party in her home three days hence. It ain’t gonna happen, sister.

Being a successful Dirty Santa player requires a fair measure of selfishness and a little bit of heartlessness. It takes quashing any tendencies toward generosity and ignoring anyone who begs you not to steal their gift – even if they say they want to pass it along to their dying grandmother who’s always wanted the very thing you’re striving to possess. Don’t fall for it. It’s a lie.

I can always count on an – ahem – interesting round of Dirty Santa at the annual Christmas party of a ladies’ class I’m affiliated with at church. You’d think a bunch of sweet church ladies would be pushovers in a game that encourages the use of sinful tactics for selfish gain. But that’s far from being the case. With so much practice over the years, they’ve gotten pretty good at being sinful. And along with them, so have I.

Used to be, I was timid about claiming anything I really wanted, allowing my natural inclination to let others have the best gifts prevail. But no more. If I see something I want, I go after it. And if I have to break somebody’s arm in the process, so be it. Consider yourself forewarned.

Come to think of it, maybe a better name for the game would be Violent Santa or Psychotic Santa or Nasty Lowdown Santa. I bet more men would participate if it were changed to one of those.

On the other hand, I can’t imagine guys getting excited enough over snowman doormats or silver metallic billfolds to stage a rumble, so we should probably just leave the name as is. We don’t, after all, want to end up playing Boring Santa.