I always felt a little out of place in my family and now most of the time I look out of place too. Sure my dad wears blue jeans but my mother and sister look like they spend most of their time shopping at Saks. In comparison when I walk into a room my mother just shakes her head. I never think twice about what to wear it’s always what is at the top of the drawer but sometimes I make mistakes.  I never seem to notice but I am constantly wearing my clothes inside out, tags and seams out for all the world to see, maybe it’s a new trend. The other thing I have been doing recently is putting on my exercise pants backwards.  I don’t notice, they are spandex anyway, but my mother’s pointer finger makes an appearance at some point during the day,

“You know those slits, go in the back.”

“Oh”

“Go in the bathroom and put your pants back on the right way.”

“No.”

Backwards, forwards, does it really matter? It matters to my mother. Maybe I am adopted.

This morning feeling inspired I put on a “brand new” top. It’s designer. When I went into wake up Eva she said,

“Why are you wearing that?”

“It is Mommy’s new shirt.”

“What happened to the other one?”

“It’s dirty.”

Does she think I only have one shirt? Maybe. I think my mother would like my new top, until she finds out I got it second hand from my dog walker. Someone died and their clothes made a detour by my house, but its designer!

When I went to college we used to shop at Thrift City in New Orleans, I used to get so excited when I found something interesting in the pockets of my “new” clothes even though that meant they probably hadn’t been washed. I used to make up stories about the people who had worn them before, the people who had probably died before having their wardrobe cleared out by a relative. My mother would love to do that to my wardrobe but I am still alive.

My sister and mother give me hand-me-downs now too, as well as my dog walker. I must really look like I need help.  My recent hand me down from my mother was a Longchamp bag, hey its designer! She got fed up with my old purse, which was so grungy it looked like it had barely survived the first two years of a toddler’s life, kind of like the toddler’s mother.

Lets just say I always felt like a bit of a black sheep who shops at thrift stores, who watches movie marathons while my siblings are out running real marathons. I would not be caught dead trying to run 26 miles unless it was on horseback.

Since I was little, I felt intuitively that it was extremely important for me to know how to ride a horse.  In high school I was on the riding team, which was a bit of a joke because technically I was useless, but they kept me on the team because I could get over any jump without falling off.  They gave me all the donation horses to break in because I was the only one who could stay on. I remember my favorite horse, Cinnamon. Don’t be deceived by the name, she used to tear ass around the ring kicking any horse that came near her and when I asked her to canter she would try to buck me off. It was in this struggle that we gained a mutual respect for one another. She was my first bucking bronco and I loved it; it was in my blood.

When I see the word Rodeo I think of Cinnamon and the real rodeos I watched in Montana.

But when my mother and sister see the word: Rodeo they see this in their mind:

My point is that I have always been a little bit country despite my upbringing. In college my favorite beer was Schlitz and I never tried more than one Cosmopolitan.

My daughter Eva seems to be cut from the same cloth, or saddle we might say in this situation as since she saw her first horse she has been in love, and she even holds the record for the youngest donkey rider at Docker Park Farm in Lancashire, U.K.  Here she is on a horse at age 18 months.  Her new nickname is Eva “giddiup” Worsick.

I should not have been surprised then when looking through my grandparents belongings I found a video message from my grandfather’s extended family in the southern U.S. and out west, the same VHS tape from 1985 I talked about in a previous post.  I never remembered seeing this video when it was made, but then again maybe he purposely didn’t share it with us. I always wondered where my country, came from, and here it was on VHS: my answer:

I gave my life to Jesus and thats how I met my husband?

Country Living

I like to Crochet and Dance!

(I will be posting more entertaining clips from this video in future posts.)

After the VHS popped out of the machine I was in total acceptance of my country roots, but I wondered if my mother would accept it, after all she was one generation closer to that side of the family. I was pondering this as she sauntered in from the spa in fresh makeup with her new line of fashion purchases.  I wasn’t too sure she came from that side of the family, until I opened the fridge door and found a bucket of KFC with a tell tale shade of Guerlain Voilette de Madame smudged on a chicken wing. We must be birds of a feather after all.

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NB: My mother finally read my blog last weekend. She says she did not use the word “hell” when she said “Why the hell do you want to be part of the DAR?” so this is hereby a retraction of the word “hell.”

My father who was a witness said she said “hell” with her tone of voice. I wonder what her tone of voice will have to say about today’s blog installment.

I have asked her to become a guest blogger, “Derelict Grandmama.”

Xxx Derelict Mom.