The "haunted" gym, taken from the lobby area, looking toward the locker room.
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Haunted Gym Haunts Others Too

This is the fifth and last true ghost tale until further freaky things
happen to me.

The Cuba High School gym affected two other coaches as well.
Coach "Stew" was the girls' basketball coach, and I was his
assistant. We came back from a tournament one night in the middle
of a little snowstorm. The bus pulled up in front of the gym lobby.
Coach Stew said he would walk around to the girls' locker room
and come through the gym to unlock the lobby doors and let us
in. This was back in the day when the players dressed up a little
bit for the games. They didn't want to go through the snow.

We gave him a few minutes, then went to wait by the glass lobby
doors for him to unlock the chain. I saw Coach Stew come out
of the gym door. He looked odd, a bit flustered. His eyes were
wide, and his hair kind of looked like it was standing up. I figured
it was the wind when he walked around. We went in. He wasn't
acting like himself, so I asked:

"What's the matter?"

"I'll tell you later. Let these girls get a ride."

Coach Stew paced around the lobby while the girls used the
payphone and left one by one. With only a couple girls left
down the hall by the phone, Coach Stew said:

"Come here." He pulled me off to the side, out of the girls' sight.
"Who did you let follow me through the locker room?"

"No one."

"Come on, I'm not mad. Was it "Shelley?"

"No. No one followed you. Those girls aren't going to walk
through snow in those shoes. We all stood by the doors waiting
for you to let us in. What's going on?"

"Are you sure? I walked out into that gym, and when I got about
halfway across, I heard someone following me. I thought it was
one of the girls trying to scare me. I stopped. They stopped. I
went on, and I heard it again. I felt a hand on my shoulder. I
threw my arm out and said 'Get out of here!' and swatted behind
me. There was no one there! Then I started running until I got to
the bleachers, and walked out here like nothing was going on. I
didn't want to scare the girls."

"I don't want to go through there."

"I don't want to go back through by myself. We've got to lock
this chain again after they leave."

"I'll stay and go with you, but we're going through together. And
I'm holding on to you!"

All the girls got picked up. Stew locked the chain, and we linked
elbows and entered the dark gym. We both kept talking and
walked as fast as we could with our arms linked. We made it
to the locker room, where it was not so creepy.

The next day, we told "Mark", the baseball coach, about the
incident.

"Hey, I've got one too. I come in here every morning to run laps
for an hour. I get here about 6:00, turn on the lights for my half
the gym, and run half-court laps. The other morning I saw "Leland"
(maintenance guy) up in the bleachers. He was going from one
end to the other, sweeping them off. I finished my workout around
7:00. Leland had been gone for about a half-hour. I walked around
a minute to cool down, and I saw him go by out in the hall. I walked
over to the door and yelled 'Hey, Lee, what were you doing here
so early?' And he said, 'Huh? I just got here.'"

That now concludes Hillbilly Mom's tales of the supernatural.

Do You Want Meth With That?

Check this out. It seems that the McDonalds here in Redneckland
offers just a little bit more to the customers than other Mcdonalds.

Here's my haunted gym. The shadows are from the camera flash. Those light brown doors are my storage room, and that girl is standing by my locker room. The "haunted" storage room is not visible. It's across from where the picture-taker was standing.
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Haunted Gym?

This is the fourth installment of my true ghost tales.

Many years ago, I coached volleyball in Cuba, Missouri. We
could start volleyball 2 weeks before school started in August,
which was the hottest time of year. For that reason, I had practice
from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.

At the end of practice on Friday of the first week, I told the
girls to run sprints, and then we would be done. They left,
and I pushed the volleyball rack in the storage room, and hung
up the net bag full of extra balls. Then I walked across the gym
and turned off the lights at that end. I walked down that side
and opened the light box at the other end, and heard a "click."

Movement to my right caught my eye, and I turned to see the
double metal doors across the gym slowly swing open. They
opened simultaneously, about half-way. I looked for a minute,
and saw something white in there, about 3 feet high. I couldn't
see very well, because it was dark in that room, and half the
gym lights were already out. My logical mind thought: oh,
one of the girls stayed behind to scare me. I waited for them
to say something, but they didn't. So I said:

"OK, you scared me. Come on out."

Nothing.

"Ha, ha. Very funny. Come on."

Nothing.

By now, I felt dumb. Maybe it wasn't a girl in a white T-shirt
crouching in a closet to scare me. Another logical explanation
came to mind: it was the deflated, rolled-up, white canvas
high-jump pit on its rolling cart. That lasted about 15 seconds,
until I thought: I just stepped over that cart in the other storage
room when I hung up the volleyballs. Now it was getting creepy.
I had to turn out the lights, which would leave me in total darkness
to make my way across the gym. All I would have to guide me
was the strip of light beneath my locker room door at the other
end of the gym. And there were the volleyball net and guide wires
holding it up that I had to avoid.

I turned off the switches to the lights. Total darkness, except for
my quarter-inch crack of light. As with the other nights, I headed
across the gym to the wall, then I could follow it to the locker room.
But tonight I was scared. It took forever. I slammed into the wall,
hands outstretched. I ran along the wall until I was "safe" in the
lighted locker room. I gathered up my stuff, went out the back
door to my car, locking the back locker room door. That was the
only way in and out at night. The main doors to the school were
chained and padlocked from the inside.

I drove home, about 4 blocks away. I was really getting scared
now. I had planned to drive to Springfield the next day, where
I had been taking graduate classes that summer. I was going to
pack things up from my sublet apartment. Now I got to thinking:
what was that white thing? What if it followed me? (I know, I'm
nuts). So I was going to drive down to Springfield that night. Just
as I was putting stuff in the car, another thought hit me: I didn't
turn off the exhaust fans in the gym. They were the big fans up
in the wall at the end where the thing was in the storage room.

I did not want to go back into that building. But if I didn't,
and those fans overheated and burned the school down over
the weekend, I would be in big trouble. I went back into the
house and got a flashlight. My mind kept telling me: no no no
don't go back in there! But I had to. I was a responsible adult.

By now it was around 10:15 p.m. I drove back to school. On
the way, I told myself: if it was a girl in there trying to scare me,
she would have to come out the back locker room door. And
if so, that door would be unlocked now, because it takes a key
to lock it from the outside. I almost had myself believing this,
until I tried the door, and it was locked just as I had left it.

I went in and turned on the locker room lights. I had one doorstop
to prop open one of the double doors to the gym. That didn't
give me much more light than the strip I had before. I turned on
the flashlight. This was kind of creepy, my flashlight in a big dark
gym. I ducked under the net, and took a diagonal path to the
light box.

Before I turned off the fans, I was thought: are those doors still
open? Is that white thing still in there? I wanted to look, but I
didn't want to look. I turned the flashlight that way, and the doors
were still open, but the white thing was gone! Eeeeeee! I turned
off the exhaust fans. Then the gym was dead silent. I could hear
my breathing, and I swear I could hear my heart. I pointed my
flashlight back toward the locker room, and took off running.
This was back in the day of the slick parachute-pants style of
sweatsuit. SWISH SWISH SWISH in the silent gym. I wanted
to scream. I felt like something was in the gym with me. I got
out of that building as fast as I could, and high-tailed it back to
Springfield that night. I got there around 1:00 a.m. and just about
gave my roommate a heart attack.

"You scared me!"

"You think you're scared? Listen to this!"

I could not sleep the rest of the night. The next week of practice,
I told the girls that the last one to finish sprints had to stay and
help me close up the gym. I held the other locker room door
open so a path of light sprayed out into the gym. The girl turned
off the lights. At the end of the season party, I told them the
whole story.

"You made us do it because you were scared?"

"I sure did."

They forgave me. But the next year, they ran those sprints a
lot faster.

Tomorrow, I will conclude my true ghost story series with two
tales from other coaches haunted by the Cuba gym.

Smells, Sounds, and Night-Time Visitors

The third true ghost story in my series is not really a ghost story
for me. I was not at all frightened by this set of phenomena. Most
of it happened the year my father died.

Dad died April 19 of that year. I had not been a big believer in
people communicating from beyond the grave. At this point, I'd
had a scary incident happen at a school, but that was it.

The first thing that happened was a lot of hang-up phone calls.
The phone rang, but nobody was there. The caller ID said
"Unknown name." I was not working anywhere at the time, having
taken a year off to have #2 son. I knew it wasn't any students
prank-calling. I assumed it was telemarketing. This happened
4 or 5 times a day, for about two months.

Second thing: #2 son lost his nook. That was his pacifier that they
gave him at the hospital, the big ugly brown thing. He couldn't live
without it. He lost it once before, and after hours of searching, we
were relieved to find it under my husband's nightstand. #2 had a
habit of grabbing the ring part and flipping the nook out of his
mouth. He was inconsolable without it. This time it had been gone
for 2 days. He cried all the time. No other pacifier would do. We
tore the house apart. We searched every room, even where he
never went. Closets, laundry room, bathrooms, basement. No nook.
Then I got up one morning and walked through the laundry room
to go outside and feed the dog, and there it was. Right in the middle
of the tile floor. I almost stepped on it. It had not been there the
previous two days. I only did laundry on the weekends, and had
been there each morning to go out to feed the dog.

Third thing: just after the nook-finding incident, we had an epidemic
of coin-finding. In the house, it was dimes. They were in the kitchen
and laundry room, mainly. Out of the house, it was pennies. We
found some coin about every other day for a couple of weeks.
Then it stopped.

Fourth thing: shorly after the funeral, we had a night where the house
would not be quiet. I stayed up late in the living room every night,
because #2 son was 2 months old, and I could hear him cry better
from the living room. The house popped and cracked, about every
3-5 seconds. It came from the stairs, the kitchen, the living room,
the basement. It had not done this before, and didn't do it after.
At the time, I thought the house was settling. We had built it over
the summer and moved in during November, and it was now late
April. I could not even doze off in the recliner, because these pops
and cracks were loud. Then I heard something in the basement.
"Errrr.....errrrr.......errrr." I went down to check. It was #1 son's
remote control dump truck driving itself. The power switch had
been left on.

The next morning, my mom called, as she did every morning. I
told her I hardly got any sleep. She said, "Me neither. I went to
the cemetery yesterday evening, because the people called and
said they put in your dad's headstone. When I got there, I couldn't
find it. I looked around, and they had put it on the wrong grave.
I have been worried about that all night. I couldn't sleep. I am
going to call them as soon as they're open so they can fix it."

Fifth thing: It was the middle of August, my first day to report
to school for my new teaching job. I put #2 son on his changing
table to get him ready. #1 son was tagging along behind me. We
smelled pipe tobacco. It was what my dad had smoked--a blend
of Kentucky Club and some cherry stuff that he mixed up. I had
gotten that job because at my dad's funeral, I talked to someone
who worked at the school who said, "We have a science opening.
You should apply."

We smelled this pipe tobacco another time in the car, about 2-3
months later. I also smelled coffee and cigarettes in the living room
one morning, neither of which we have in our house, both of which
my dad used to start the day.

Sixth thing: after #2 had graduated from crib to bed, I would go
in to check on him at night and to cover him. He was always
twisted up in the blanket, or had it kicked off the side of his
little car bed. Some nights, the blanket would be spread in a
perfect rectangle. Not a crease or wrinkle, picture perfect. How
did he do that, I would wonder. Then #2 started telling me his
grandpa came to his room at night. He didn't even know his
grandpa...he was only two months old when he died. I asked
him what he did at night. "Nuffin'. He is here to see if everything
is OK."

Seventh thing: a couple years later, I was sitting in the living room
one morning, and heard one of the boys get up for the bathroom.
I heard the seat go up, peeing, then the toilet flush. I thought it was a
little strange, since neither one ever lifted the seat, and neither one
liked to flush. I got up to go see which boy did it, to praise him for
the flushing and seat-lifting. They were both sound asleep in their
beds. Hubby had been gone to work for hours.

Eighth thing: I was in the living room watching TV one afternoon.
Hubby had taken the boys to town. I heard the kitchen door
slam, and footsteps halfway through the kitchen. I got up to see
it they had forgotten something, since they had only been gone
about 20 minutes. No one was there. The truck was gone. It
was just me in the house.

Ninth thing: in December the year Dad died, I was at my mom's
house wrapping gifts until about 11:00 p.m. I had #2 son with me.
I said goodbye, and pulled out on the highway that would take
me by the back of Mom's house. Just as I pulled out, a blue-green
sphere of light about the size of a softball came across the sky,
over my car, and went over her house, landing in the side yard.
The best way to describe it is a ball of light like comes out of
a roman candle, only bigger. This was before I had a cell phone,
so I called her as soon as I got home. "You'd better check your
side yard. I saw a ball of fire go over your house. It might have
been a meteor or something." She looked, but nothing was there.

Now here's two things that happened to my mom right after
Dad died. His alarm went off every morning at the time he
used to get up. What's odd about that? They had not even
slept upstairs for a two weeks, and hadn't used the alarms.
He'd been in a hospital bed in the family room. She said it
scared her the first time. She went to turn it off. They each
had an old-fashioned plug-in alarm clock on their side of
the bed. It was his going off. She said, "Well, I thought that
when I walked around to get clothes I might have jarred
the floor, and that made the alarm set itself." After a few
days of it going off, she unplugged it.

Mom took the truck and both cars to get them inspected
so she could get the licenses. It was an all-day project for
her. Dad usually did it. When she got home with the last
one, the porchlights on the outside of the garage went off
and came back on as she pulled into the driveway. She
said it was like a wink. The lights had not done that before,
or since then.

Now that you think I am completely nuts...I will prove it
to you tomorrow, with the tale of the haunted gym.

Mr. Chest O. Drawers that I blame for some strange happenings in my hillbilly haunted mansion.
Posted by Hello

Here's the bad bad light bulb in the unfinished ceiling of our finished basement. This is not the actual bulb, but a new kind of twisty bulb. I know these reflections are the lamp and the camera flash. They're not ghostly.
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Haunted Basement?

For my second true ghost story, I will take you to our basement.
It is a finished basement (mostly), with TV, couch, pool table, kids'
games, computers, pinball machine, air hockey, slot machine, etc.

Hubby decided to rearrange #1 son's room. He had bought the
boy a large chest of drawers soon after we moved into the house.
We all went to pick it out at a second-hand furniture store. It
did not fit with the new layout of the bedroom, so Hubby took
it to the basement and we stored out-of-season clothes in it.

I don't know how soon odd things began to happen, because
I did not make a connection with this furniture until a couple of
years after it was moved. I was reading an old book called
Haunted Heartland by Beth Scott and Michael Norman, and
there was a story about a table that made knocking sounds.
It creeped me out, to think someone could be so attached to
furniture that he would hang around it after death. It doesn't
seem possible in my logical world.

So...#1 son's room had stopped being cold. The basement
was cold, but all basements are, so that didn't seem odd to
me. Here are some things that happened in the basement:

One light bulb would go out and then on again. No, this was
not a bulb burning out. No pop or sizzling sound. One minute
it was on, then it was off. Only one bulb. The first time, I told
Hubby we blew a light bulb. Being Hubby, it took him about
3 days to put one in. After 2 days, the light came back on. I
told him not to bother. "How can it be blown and come back
on?" he said. It was on a couple days, then did it again. Hubby
put a new one in. "Must be a bad bulb." The new one lasted
about a day. Same thing. On for a while, then off for a few
hours or days. Hubby put in a third one. It worked about a
week. Then...

One night around 11:30 p.m., I was done watching TV and
walked toward the steps to go up to bed. You know how
you get those creepy feelings that something isn't right? I
had one. I thought, "Oh, don't you dare go out now, you
stupid light." And it did. It went right out. The hair on the
back of my neck stood up, and I ran up those steps and
turned out all the basement lights. Creepy creepy creepy.
The next morning it came on, and it stayed on.

Two other odd things happened. #1 son took a picture
of our new fake electric fireplace with his digital camera.
He showed me the picture, and I said, "What's that?"
He said, "I don't know. It wasn't there in the preview."
It was a purple sphere of light in the fireplace, between
the fake logs and the glass. I thought it must be a reflection.
"Mom, I had the flash turned off." That creeped us out, too.
He lost that picture when his computer crashed, or I would
post it.

Now here's the big deal. I saw a man in the basement.
Another late night. I only had the lamp on, not the overhead
lights. As my usual routine, I turned off the TV, then the lamp,
then used the dim light from the TV upstairs to climb the steps.
I had just enough light to see to walk around the furniture, and
where the bottom steps started. As I was walking to the steps,
there was a man in front of me. Not directly, but about a
two-o'clock position. I was startled, and sidestepped to avoid
running into him. He was shorter than me, and had no head.
He was wearing an old-time kind of black suit, with a white
shirt with an old-time kind of collar that sticks up and doesn't
flap over. There were black buttons down the white shirt. No
tie. He looked solid, not see-through. He didn't move or say
anything. Then, after about 3 seconds, he faded away. Of
course I ran upstairs, because I don't like to see thingies in my
basement.

The next day I started harping at Hubby to put in a light switch
downstairs, too, not just at the top of the steps. So he did. Now
I make sure to turn on the overhead lights, then turn off the lamp
and TV. Then I can turn the other lights off when I get upstairs.
Not taking any chances of seeing my man again.

The chest of drawers had been moved across the room in another
furniture moving session about a year before I saw the man. The
light had stopped going off. Hubby has since put in a different
kind of light bulbs. They have all remained on. Nothing creepy
has happened for about a year now. And #1 son sleeps on
the couch in the basement. Is he nuts? I wouldn't do that for
a hundred bucks. He does, though. No night lights or anything.

Was it the furniture? Am I just nuts? Why do these things happen
to me?

Tomorrow....Smells, sounds, and night-time visitors.

Hillbilly Mom Movie Challenge V 2.0

If you want to play, post your answers in the comments. The
winner will be announced on Wednesday, June 8. What do you
win? Your name in my blog! All right, settle down now. You only
need the name of the movie. If there is a tie, I'll post a tie-breaker
on Wednesday. Your chances are good to win. Last week only
4 people entered. And now for this week's bad movie trivia....

1. "I've got the most scathingly brilliant idea!"

2. "Your aorta is in your neck."
"Good to know."

3. "You girls watch out for those weirdos."
"We are the weirdos, mister."

4. "I'm surprised you don't just chuck it all and start your own
think tank."

5. "...is an ex-kindergarten teacher and a former nun who just
escaped from the convent, and is tired of being the only virgin
in New York City."

6. "Now, Debra, don't be bitter. Certainly with your growing
collection of flesh-mutilating silver appendages and your brand
new Neo-Nazi boot camp make-over, the boys will come
a-runnin'."

7. "Tess, this is business. Let's just bury the hatchet, OK?"
"You know where you can put your hatchet? Now get your
bony @## out of my sight!"

8. "Time to join Mrs. Earthworm...if she's still alive in there."

9. "You are just like all the other girls. This is your defense?
Your puny faith?"
"No. My keen fashion sense."

10. "I knowed that woman all my life and I ain't never stood
outside her house. She'd let a wolf in if it knocked at her door."

Haunted Bedroom?

Here is the first tale of my haunted hillbilly mansion. I will tell one
each day until I run out of my true horror stories.

We built our house and moved in when #1 son was almost 3.
There was no #2 son yet. #1 was playing in his bedroom one
day, chattering away. I hollered from the kitchen, "Who you
talking to?" #1 came out and said, "Oh, just Tony, that little boy
I play with sometimes." I tried to act like that was perfectly
normal, but the hair on my neck stood up. #1 went back to his
room and resumed playing.

I thought, maybe he just has an imaginary friend. At supper
that night, I said, "How about some for Tony?" #1 looked at
me like I was crazy. "He's not here." Ohhh..kaaay.

#1 never talked about Tony, only to him. And only in his room.
Another day he came out of his room talking about 'George Henson.'
"Who do you mean, George Henson? I don't know anybody
with that name." "You know, Mom, that bad guy that burned
up all those people in that hotel." WHAT? "No, honey, I don't
know about that." Where was he getting this stuff?

#1 refused to sleep in his bedroom. This didn't surprise me,
because even in our old house he wanted to sleep on the couch
every night. One thing I noticed about his new bedroom: it was
always cold. We moved in during November, so I asked Hubby
to adjust the vents to get more heat to that room and less to
some others. Didn't work. In the summer, it was still cold. The
room faces west, just like our living room. We could be sweltering
from the afternoon sun in the living room, but #1's room was chilly.
Again, Hubby adjusted the vents. Again, no change.

#1's bedroom did finally stop being cold. When? When we moved
a certain piece of second-hand furniture from his bedroom to the
basement right under his room. Then some funny things started to
happen in the basement.

That will be tomorrow's story.

And we will still be having the Hillbilly Mom Movie Challenge.

The Redneckville Horror?
Posted by Hello

Hillbilly Mom's Tales of the Supernatural

I admit that I like to watch shows like Ghost Hunters, or Weird
Travels, or Montel with psychic Sylvia Browne. So as you might
expect, I believe there are things that can't be explained by the
laws of nature. Having been a science teacher, I doubt I would
believe in these things if I hadn't seen them for myself. I don't
even watch David Blaine without trying to explain how he does
things. And be warned, Mr. Blaine, I am onto your silverware
bending tricks. I figured that one out watching the last rerun of
your shows about a month ago.

Something has been happening in my house. This was a new
house. We built it ourselves. Nobody died in it, which is the first
thing people ask me. No, I don't know if it's built on an Indian
(Native American) burial ground. No, I don't drink. Now that
we have all that out of the way....

Here are some things that have happened in my purty little
hillbilly home:

Son talking to people who don't exist.

Bedroom 10 degrees colder than any other room in winter and
summer, even after vents and shades have been adjusted.

Smells that don't belong.

Slamming door.

Popping and cracking every 5 seconds over a 12- hour period.

Light bulb with a will of its own.

Toy that drove itself.

Appearance in plain sight of object we spent 2 days looking for.

Self-flushing toilet.

Son being covered up in middle of night.

Son saying Grandpa (deceased) comes to visit him at night.

Appearance of a man in a suit, no head.

Now that you know I must be crazy, here are some other
things I've seen or heard (but not in this house):

Blue-green orb

Someone walking upstairs. Several times per week.

Metal doors in a gym open by themselves.

White "entity" in a storage closet.

All right, now before you send the men with a straightjacket
to pick me up for a little vacation, hear me out.

I have not seen and heard these things everywhere I lived.
Other people have also experienced these things at the same
places I have. So don't think I'm a wacko until you've heard
the whole story. Ooops! This post is too long.

Maybe I can tell you tomorrow.

Redneck Courtin' Rituals

I met my husband at the pool of my apartment complex after
the owner put in a new building. I had lived there for a year
already, and then some "fresh blood" (as my friend called them)
moved in. For a while, there were 4 of us that hung out.

The day the "dating" started was kind of weird. Future Hubby
walked over to my apartment and asked if I'd like to go for a
ride. I said "OK." I thought the other guy and girl might be
going too. But when I went to the car, it was just me. That
was fine. I didn't think anything of it.

Future Hubby's car was kind of falling apart. The headliner
sagged down on my head. He said, "I need to get some glue
and stick that back up." He drove me way down in the middle
of nowhere to see his parents' graves. That was kind of odd.
It was a church cemetery. There were cows in the road, and
we had to wait for them to move. There were no people, and
we didn't pass many cars, either.

We had left around 10:00 a.m., and it was now getting to be
2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon. We had not stopped anywhere
other than the cemetery. No bathroom breaks, no gas, no
getting something to eat or drink. I got to thinking..."Nobody
knows where I am. I don't know where I am. He could just
kill me and throw out the body and who knows how long it
would take for someone to find me."

FH kept driving and talking. I could not tell if we were headed
back, or deeper into nowhere. Finally, I said, "I need to be
getting back. Do you think we could stop for a soda or
something?" He said, "Sure," and stopped at a gas station
and got me a soda. Then we went home.

Now it's not that he was cheap. I guess it just never entered his
mind that I would want to do anything but ride for hours and
listen to him talk. It's not that he was socially backward--he had
been married and had two kids, so he had been able to capture
a woman besides me. I didn't even think of this as a date. He
started coming over to visit. I went to the park to walk every night,
and he started coming with me. Then my friend said, "Why didn't
you tell me you were dating?" I said, "I didn't know I was."
Apparently FH had told his guy friend he was dating me. This
probably just meant "hands off" to him, since I went walking on
the State Park Bike Trail with the buddy, because he could walk
farther than FH. When a hometown guy I knew from college
came to visit, there would be FH ringing my doorbell and trying
to include himself in what we were doing.

I invited FH over for supper one night. I cooked 4 pork chops
and some green beans and Stove Top Stuffing. (OK, so we've
established that I'm no cook.) The point is that I ate a pork chop,
and FH ate a pork chop. Then he had another pork chop. That's
fine. But then he got up, tore off a piece of foil, grabbed the last
pork chop, and said, "I'll take this to work for my lunch tomorrow."
That was not OK! Hey! I had lunch needs too. Who did he think
he was, helping himself to my leftovers!

After about 4 months, he asked me to marry him. I had to think
that over for a while. I bought a house. He worked on it for me.
We bought 10 acres together. He built a barn on it. His kids
liked me better that they liked him. He taught me how to shoot
his guns. About a year after he asked, we got married.

In all that time, we only went on one "real" date. That was to
St. Louis to the Funny Bone with a couple that I worked with.
No movies, no dinners, no dancing, no bars, no tractor pulls.
Nothing other than hanging out at my place, his place, or his
friends' houses.

Now Hubby wants to go out and do things, but I don't. And
I especially do not want to go for a ride.

Too Much Time...Cont.

Here are the results from my May 28 Hillbilly Mom Movie Challenge:
Drumroll, please....and the winner is: Rebecca (with 7 and 1/2 correct).
How she managed to watch the same bad movies I do is a mystery
to me. I will have to give 2nd place to DeadpanAnn, 3rd place to
Alexandrialeigh, and Miss Congeniality to Karbonkountymoos.
We will have another challenge on Saturday. Here are the answers:

1. "Lets face it girls...I'm older and I have more insurance."
Kathy Bates to some annoying young things, in Fried Green Tomatoes.

2. "It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again."
Ted Levine, the nutcase, to that poor kidnapped girl he was planning
to make a skin suit out of, in Silence of the Lambs.

3. "I'm gonna change you from a rooster to a hen with one shot!"
Dolly Parton to Dabney Coleman, in 9 to 5.

4. "Zip it, Old Man River, or I'll break your hip."
Adam Sandler to his girlfriend Vanessa's wrinkly old boyfriend, in
Big Daddy.

5. "Well, if that's what a beautician does, then I'll take mine rare."
Kurt Russell to Meryl Streep, referring to Cher's girlfriend, whose
job was to put make-up on corpses, in Silkwood.

6. "What are you doing with that blade?"
The guy about to get killed by Billy Bob Thornton, in Sling Blade.

7. "Is there anything I can do?"
"Is there anything you can do?"
"I can drive that loader over there."
Sigourney Weaver and Al Matthews, in Aliens.

8. "I can see your dirty-pillows."
Piper Laurie to Sissy Spacek, using her crazy religious fanatic's
word for "breasts" as Carrie was getting ready for prom, in Carrie.

9. "I shot off his upper lip."
"What were you aimin' at?"
"His lower lip."
John Wayne and Glen Campbell in True Grit. (You were close,
Rebecca, but The Shootist was the sequel, and Rooster Cogburn
was the character. My apologies if it was released under another
title over there.)

10. "I thought you were dead."
"I get that a lot."
Ron Perlman (?) to Sigourney Weaver, in Alien Resurrection.
(I forget which character said this to her. Of course it refers
to her character, Ripley, dying in Alien 3.)

I Feel Like I'm Coming Down With a Meme

Well, well, well. Seems as if DeadpanAnn has infected me with
the book meme. Since I have not had my book meme vaccination
yet, I guess it will just have to run its course.

1. Total number of books I've owned.
Heavens to Betsy! I don't have that many fingers and toes. A
rough guesstimate would be over 2000. I have a whole wall
in my office that's a bookshelf, plus a bookcase by the pool
table, a bookcase in the living room, a bookcase at my mom's
house, milk crates in the barn, and 3 boxes ready to give away.

2. Last book I bought.
That would be a 4-way tie. I just bought them at Goodwill
yesterday. (Be careful what you buy, you might have to tell
about it in a meme.)

Sein Language Jerry Seinfeld
(Not that there's anything wrong with that!)

Postcards From the Edge Carrie Fisher
(Got home and saw that I already had it. $0.75 wasted!)

A Circle of Friends Maeve Binchy
(Never saw the movie, never read it. Looked interesting.)

Where the Red Fern Grows Wilson Rawls
(10 yr old son said, "I want it, but I'm not paying!")

3. Last book I read.
Josie and Jack: A Novel Kelly Braffet
A little bit V.C. Andrewish, in the style of Flowers in
the Attic, but it kept me turning the pages.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me.
Don't look for the classics here, people. These are the books
I like to read over and over. And if they happen to have been
on Oprah's list...deal with it!

The Stand Stephen King
I love it. On all levels.

A Map of the World Jane Hamilton
She dares to say what many of us think. Sometimes,
wouldn't you like to be locked up with nothing to do
but read, and let Hubby take care of the house and kids?

Dream Dictionary: An A to Z Guide to Understanding Your
Unconscious Mind Tony Crisp
The reason why I don't tell people my dreams--they might have
this book. I've read other dream books that were a lot of hooey,
but this one is always dead-on for what I have had on my mind
when I dream them.

Kick Me: Adventures in Adolescence Paul Feig
I laughed till I cried. This is the guy whose so-called life
the TV show Freaks and Geeks was based on.

House of Sand and Fog Andre Dubus III
Loved the book, hated the movie. I like it because both
people are right, yet no solution can be reached.

5. People I'll infect with this book meme:
Rebecca
Vavoom
Misha
Hey guys, maybe you've been vaccinated and you're immune...
maybe not!

6. DeadpanAnn's extra question:
Books I've thrown across the room because they sucked that bad:

The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty Kitty Kelley
Meeeoooow? No, me-snoooorrrre. I gave it up on page 43 of 705.
I agree with the point she is making, but get on with it already!

I Am Charlotte Simmons Tom Wolfe
A wolf in boring clothing. I hit the wall at page 23 of 676,
because I'm really just not that into it.