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Houseguests

You know the story of the Princess and the Pea? The queen wants to find a true princess for her adorable son so she puts a pea under a stack of 20 mattresses and invites all the most beautiful young ladies to come spend the night at their house—sort of like President Clinton did—but non of them discovered the pea. One cold, dark rainy night a bedraggled young woman comes to the door and begs a room and the queen, completely worn out from houseguests, says, “Oh just let here stay in the Pea Room.” The next morning the young woman comes down to breakfast and she’s exhausted. “I tossed all night long, madam. There were boulders in that mattress!” And the queen knew that she had found the true princess and that her son would have someone who whould nag him to death after she was gone. Is this a houseguest, or what? In our little haven away from the world, to continue the fairy tale theme, there are two people the mommy and the daddy, better known as, respectively, the happy cheerful, lovin...
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Winning Christmas

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This is the year I was going to win Christmas. Our house would be just like my aunt’s house in Mississippi when I was growing up.   The house where you were afraid to touch anything.  That’s what good taste means to me—the ability to make everyone else feel that they’ve done everything wrong.  The feeling that you’re only supposed to whisper.   As a grandparent, thats just what I wanted. Just one year in my life, I wanted our house to be so fancy it made kids scared. With awe.   Except now I realize that the reason I used to decorate the house like crazy is the kids.  After waiting years and years and years to finally get rid of the kids, it turns out they were of some use at Christmas.  I decorated for them.  Basically I didn’t care what the neighbors thought of our house—I cared what the kids thought!  Who Knew?   Unfortunately, decorating is one of those housewife things that I feel competitive about. Just once I wanted to...
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Halloween

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We drag our fire pit out to the front porch and wait like spiders for small children to come to us.  At least, that's what it feels like at our house for Halloween.   This year Clay helped pick out our Halloween candy.  As many wives of retired husbands find, having dad come with to Walmart is an alien experience.  It's losing control, it's having someone pay attention to something you've had to do most of your life that everyone just assumed you would take care of.  The biggest compliment was from Billy at 15 or so: "Mom, I just noticed we never run out of toilet paper."  So sweet, so thoughtful.   Having a husband with opinions in a grocery store is like meeting someone from a foreign country and finding out you both have a few ideas in common.  Like chocolate being the only real candy choice.  I've always felt a little guilty about picking out only chocolate because it's not the cheapest.  I think I've probably felt g...
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