Reflections of a Highbrow Hillbilly

 

Out of the infirmary and at home healing (home and healing...contradiction in terms???) and I think I can get more rest in the hospital than I can at home with 4 year old twins, and we all know there is NO rest in the hospital.  My orders were to go home, lie flat on by back and do NOTHING for myself for at least two weeks.  Ok cool, this mean I can still go on doing everything for everyone else?

Well it’s just wrong as rain to make a woman who had just had her tummy cut open and her uterus fileted like a fish laugh hysterically. I looked at my very hot doctor through the haze of more medicine than should be legally allowed for a 90 pound woman. Got your attention didn’t I, yeah I am a tad bit over 90 pounds but its my story so I will tell it any damn way I want. The part that is true is that I was on enough medicine to anesthetize a damn whale and he was barking orders at me and telling me what he did in my surgery. I said doc, you can stop right there because you could tell me you pulled a family of 5, along with 4 college students out of my gut but unless they wrote down all the crap you are saying chances are I won’t remember it. But that don’t do anything for yourself statement, brilliant Dr Feelgood, I won’t long forget that one! I bet your wife says to herself the same thing I say at least once a day. “Man I wish I had a wife like me.”

Seriously, you are all doped up and the day of discharge, at least one representative from every practice that even looked at your chart comes by to talk to you. Your eyes are crossed to the point that when they water, it runs down your back and you haven’t felt your feet since they put those cute little circulation socks on you…. And they actually offer to let you take them home with you when you go???? No thanks, the goal here is to NEVER have another period but I WOULD like to continue to get laid on a regular basis and if I continue to wear these little goodies, I won’t want to screw myself! I’m just sayin So the insurgence of physicians commences. I stop paying attention after my hot doctor leaves, primarily because Nurse Ratchet rolls in with the last dose of drool juice and after that, does anything else matter? I think doctor’s should all go (one at a time of course because time is money) into one of those little sterile rooms and video tape whatever it is they have to say…like, what they did, what they found and how to go forward. Put it on a DVD to send home with you…. You know like a parting gift since they no longer stock the travel sizes of baby powder and no wet shampoo. You can go home and once off the happy pills you can pop that puppy into the machine and learn all about it. Then you can pummel them questions that freakin make sense. I guess there is no real way for them to make money off this and getting insurance to cover the cost of all the shit it takes to make the DVD means it ain't never gonna happen…so on we move.

So anyway, still recovering and the doorbell begins to ring (and doesn’t stop for days) and in comes a barrage of southern women (and a few of their husbands) bearing casseroles. This is one of the beautiful things about being southern. We have friends, family, churches and co-workers that know exactly what to do without being summoned or even told. Now you don’t have to be southern for friends and loved ones to bring sundries to you while you convalesce but they great thing southerners do, Is cook it themselves! No boxes of chicken, store bought potato salad, bottles of coke or pies from a bakery. It is all done by the faithful hands of the southern dropper off-err. Now times have changed and some do pick up items from the store (I do it when I have to…Emily Post doesn’t give a shit and that old hag is dead anyway so she is off the hook) …we are all busy, and I am not complaining about a thing. I am just sayin I can’t help but get all warm and fuzzy inside, (which doesn’t happen often but you can bet your sweet ass when it does it will be over food!) when I think about all the people who I have cooked for and who have cooked for me over the years for reasons such as birth's, death's weddings, sicknesses, surgeries and for just movin into the neighborhood. You are not really dug into the south until someone has cooked for you in your time of need, this is what keeps all you yanks from heading back over the Mason Dixon line to reside. We may drive slowly but I have never had a transplant turn a meal at my house down! You can tell a real pro by the look of use on the casserole dish ( it will be stained yellow and brown from butter and oil) and then by the piece of masking tape that is permanently stuck to the bottom said dish. It may or may not have a family name on it but that doesn’t matter because there is a designated note pad (usually by the phone) for writing dishes and descriptions of dishes, along with the name of the darlin that dropped it off. A southern woman cannot fall short in her thank you notes or she just may find herself dropped off the next sick list rotation, bless her heart.  Brings me to another topic of southern cuisine.

Pimento Cheese…. God Save the Queen that is some good stuff.  Slap your momma good stuff and close the kitchen door so the dogs don't whine for it good!  A friend just told me recently of someone getting their masters in the art of being southern (and trust me it is not just an art, it is a god given geographical anointing! And if you are gonna be it, be it well…because we talk about ya!  She was writing about pimento cheese and just how southern this makes you.  I am sure I messed up her curriculum as well as her thesis and such just a bit but paraphrasing is allowed in my world.  I do not know of her writing and have never read anything by her so I will simply state MY opinion on pimento cheese and the art there in.  Every southern woman (with exception of those who don’t eat mayonnaise) knows how to make her family version of this spreadable delight.  She is also smart enough NOT to share the recipe because it is handed down from generation to generation, right along with the recipe for the red velvet cake.  It is believed that telling these recipe’s to friends, or obtaining it before someone wills it to you, will make grandmother’s all over the south turn over in their graves and put a spell on you so bad that every pie you make from then on will not set up and every cake you bake will fall!  No shit we really think that and if you have ever had a cake fall you believe it with all your heart.  I will go on record as saying that I make my own but IF it is purchased…it better meet the following criteria.  1. You are in a huge hurry and just do not have time to make it and allow it to steep the necessary amount of time, so you purchase it.  2.  IF PURCHASING, It better be Stan’s (that Ruth’s or Star’s shit should be taken off the market because its gross and contains miracle whip and processed cheese spread).  3. Finally, It had better be from the Fresh Market.  Anything else is just bad form.  You can eat it on crackers, bread, toast, burgers, stuff it in celery or with a spoon right out of the tupperware you store it in.   

Now I must run, as I have thank you notes to write and some pimento cheese to eat…because someone brought me some of the homemade kind and it has been on the counter waiting to get to the right temperature to put on two slices of white wonder bread, yep the kind that sticks to your teeth!

Peace out y'all!