The Crab Chronicles

The Winners!

Michael and his friend Munoz won Best Original Dish in the Men Who Can Cook competition today! Munoz is the Sous Chef at Kindred and an incredibly creative chef and Michael has learned a lot from him, even though they don't work together any more. They are still friends. Several people asked Michael for his number and said they would love for him to cook for them! I told him he needs to start a catering business!

 

I told Michael it's ironic that the dish that won [Vietnamese Hot Wings] was invented by a guy originally from Mexico, and a guy originally from Kazakhstan!

The most important things are that Michael learned a bit about how to cook outdoors, and had fun, and all the proceeds went to charity.

 

Mike and I made a Peach Brandy Pound Cake also, and Mike said the slices sold out very fast.

 

The Courage to Love

Control is a funny thing. The more we try to hang onto it, to maintain it, to bend it to our will, the more we learn the price of that way of living.

I have a very close friend and a family member who are highly intelligent, creative, fascinating guys. They are also alone, and that's what they say they want, but I don't think it is, not really.

My friend Andrew (not his real name) is gay. (That's only germane because I don't want to have to switch pronouns.) Brilliant, articulate, funny, handsome, fit -- he seems to have it all. Yet, he has only had one serious relationship in his life. Years ago he was living in Europe and he met a guy and fell in love. As a result, when the guy got a job here in the states, Andrew quit his job and moved back to the states to be with his boyfriend. They set up housekeeping together and Andrew didn't find a job right away. He found himself making dinner and waiting for his guy to get home every night, but that often didn't happen. Boyfriend saw no need to call and say he was going to be late, or eat out with friends, and that infuriated Andrew. After only a few weeks, he packed his things and moved back home to live (temporarily) with his parents. When he told me about it much later I asked why he didn't just get some counseling, try to work through the issues, and Andrew -- normally a very calm, rational person -- got really upset and yelled "I was NOT going to be treated like a housewife!"

Much later, I realized the issue was that for the first time in his adult life, Andrew was in a situation he couldn't control. He couldn't force his boyfriend to be more attentive and considerate. Andrew had gambled a lot, turned his life completely upside down, and his lover wasn't appropriately grateful. That was more than twenty-five years ago and Andrew hasn't had a serious relationship since then.

My relative's situation isn't too different. Let's call him Joe. At age 25, Joe was far from home, working a job in a town where he knew nobody, and met a young lady. She was smart and articulate and she grew up not far from where he did. They got married. For the first year things were fine. Then Joe started to notice peculiar things in his wife's behavior. She would go grocery shopping every day rather than making a list and going weekly. She would feed the cat out of a crystal bowl they got for a wedding present rather than buy a cat dish. Sometimes she would stay in her pajamas all day, staring at the TV, totally non-functional. Joe had decided when he married he would never get divorced, so he just tried to ignore her weird behavior, and "walk it off" which is what guys are taught to do about pain. They weren't successful at getting pregnant but Joe's wife refused to consider infertility treatments or adoption. Finally, after 15 years of marriage, she left. Joe had tried to get her to see a psychologist, or at least go to marital counseling with him, and she refused to even consider she might be bipolar or any other serious malady, so she walked out.

That was more than twenty years ago. Joe has had a number of serious relationships since then but he refuses to consider marrying again. He told me not long ago he was planning to spend the rest of his life living alone and die alone. Complicating matters is the fact that Joe is a heavy drinker and he refuses to get sober.

I love both these guys. They have been part of my life for years. Both are handsome, brilliant, personable, kind -- everything most people look for in a partner. Yet they are both alone.

I think they are actually very fearful of love, and I've tried to analyze that, see if there were something I could say or do to get them to stop being fearful and start taking the huge risk of loving someone.

“The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It’s our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows.” -- Brene Brown

Brene Brown teaches and lectures a lot about vulnerability. I have watched her TED talks several times and each time I come away with a better understanding of what it takes to really live an authentic life, to surrender control, and be brave enough to risk getting hurt.

I wish I could get Andrew and Joe to get some counseling, let a professional help them deal with the fear that is holding them back from finding a loving partner. I pray for them both, often. Being vulnerable is scary stuff. I get it. However, we are all getting older, and neither Andrew or Joe have anyone to look after them when they get old and sick -- which is inevitable, no matter how health conscious one is.

I can't spell out a neat conclusion here, but I want to point out that the "guy code" that says it's somehow unacceptable to seek professional help when you have a difficult problem, that code isn't absolute. However, it's actually quite brave to admit you can't control everything in life, and you're willing to take a risk on a relationship. Risking may mean losing, but it's the only way to [eventually] get the loving partner you seek.

I keep praying my guys will only day find their courage, and find someone to love. I love them both very much...

Check out my latest novel, The Wedding Conspiracy, on Amazon.

Working Hard

As a child, I was bad about blurting out inappropriate or odd things at inopportune moments. Sometimes it was funny. Oftentimes, it was not. I liked to push the envelope and was often accused of "talking back" -- in other words, saying rude and/or disrespectful things. My parents had a very low threshold of tolerance for backtalk from me and my brother. I was thinking of that recently while listening to an audiotape of a long-ago Hasty family get-together. My 8 year old voice can clearly be heard saying to my grandmother "But you all were rich Memaw, Mommy said you were rich growing up!"

My grandmother, Wilma Butler Hasty, ignored me and went on with what she was saying. When I heard myself years later I cringed, because I could imagine the awkwardness of how my beloved grandmother must have felt. She grew up in a wealthy family, yes, but in the 1920's her family lost their money. My grandfather lost his major league baseball job in 1924 and went out west and played for minor league teams for years, before coming back east, and then in 1929 everyone lost everything.

We can all complain now about inflation and high prices but the Great Depression was far worse.

At that point in my life I had no idea what the Great Depression was, or how hard my grandmother had to work, for years, first to keep food on the table when times were tough, then to put her children through college. Finally, in her 60's, she stopped working a regular job but she worked hard as a seamstress, sewing dresses for me and my mother, and other family members. Memaw made all of my school clothes, for years. Little girls had to wear dresses back then, and children's clothing wasn't cheap. Memaw had 5 granddaughters, 2 daughters-in-law, and many siblings and nieces, nephews, etc.

I was blessed that Mom told me many stories about the remarkable lady I called "Memaw." She was an amazing person. Smart, funny, energetic.

I wanted to share three anecdotes about my grandmother, that made a big impression on me.

When I was  about 7, Memaw said to me: "Always do your VERY BEST, every day, Dee. Always. Then at the end of the day, FORGET IT. Then you can sleep." She was right. If you always give every task 100%, you don't have to worry about regrets. I'm sure there were things in life she regretted, but she didn't dwell on them. She just did her best and got on with it.

VERY valuable life lesson, there.

Memaw may have grown up rich, but she lived through The Great Depression of 1929-39 and she had three kids to feed and a husband who restlessly changed jobs about every year. They didn't always live in places with indoor plumbing. There wasn't always any family around to help.

During the Great Depression, Mom told me, hobos [homeless men] would often come to the back door of the house asking for a handout. Memaw never just gave them handouts. She would ask them to do something, and then give them some food before sending them on their way. The chore might be pulling weeds, or sweeping the porch, or whatever they could do, but she never turned anyone away hungry. Of course, most of those men were just out of work, not alcoholics or mentally ill. They were usually just good people who were trying not to starve. Mom said the hobos would carve symbols or numbers into a tree or fence or somewhere in front of the house to signal that it was a place with kind people who might give a person a meal.

When Mom was small, at one place where they lived, there was a tiny school but there was no cafeteria. Every day at noon the kids were given an hour to walk home and eat lunch and walk back. A lot of those kids had no lunch waiting for them at home. Memaw got together with other mothers and worked out a plan so each mother would take a turn every week or two, and bring food to the school and serve it to the kids. It might be only a sandwich and an apple, or a plate of beans and cornbread, but each child [in the entire school] got fed, each day of the school year.

My mother was a wonderful storyteller, and I was so lucky that she told me many stories about Memaw. I am thankful I knew her, and she spent a lot of time with me when I was a child.

Memaw worked hard, but she also laughed a lot, and she raised her children to be hard workers, but also to hold onto their sense of humor and to not dwell on past mistakes or misfortunes.

Most importantly, she had an abiding faith in God, and she passed that along to us all. She didn't just talk the talk, though. She was kind and generous to everyone, and although she could be a bit demanding in restaurants she was never rude, and I never heard her raise her voice.

The older I get the more I appreciate her profound influence on me. I wish I could have a visit with her. I have an audio clip of her telling a funny story and occasionally I listen to it, just to hear her voice. I played it for Michael yesterday and he listened thoughtfully and said "She sounds a little bit like Granny." So true. The apple didn't fall far from the tree.

I still talk back, and still occasionally put my foot in my mouth, but I apologize and I don't lose sleep over it.

The Teacher That Changed My Life

Have you ever thought about the adult who most influenced you when you were a kid, who wasn't actually related to you? [I'm not talking about parents, siblings, grandparents, etc.] In the years since I walked out of Cedar Bluff Middle School for the last time in June of 1976 I have often thought about Catherine Gettys.

It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that the most memorable teacher I ever had was an English teacher. She was my homeroom teacher in 5th grade, and the English teacher on my team in 6th and 8th grades. About 90% of what I know about English Grammar, punctuation and spelling I learned from Miss Gettys. Of course, nobody called it "English" - it was "Language Arts."

Cedar Bluff Middle School in Knoxville in 1972 when I started 5th grade was very different than school is today. There were no computers anywhere. Girls being allowed to wear pants to school was a very new thing! Proper clothing for kids was strictly enforced. All grades [5th through 8th] went out to recess at least once a day. Parents were never asked to spend hundreds of dollars on school supplies. I usually got a new notebook and some pencils at the start of every year, and maybe a new lunchbox. We had Art and Music classes every week. We had PE classes several times a week, and for that we had to "dress out" - wear shorts and tee shirts, not our good "school clothes." Big treats were being able to watch movies once in a while, or field trips. Sometimes Drama students from the nearby University of Tennessee would do plays for us in the gym, and I loved that. I sang in Chorus every year, and loved "Mini Labs" -- fun classes like Fun Foods and Chess and Sign Language. I went there to Cedar Bluff Middle for four years, 5th through 8th grades, 1972-76. I was taunted about being fat and there were some boys who sometimes verbally bullied me, but otherwise those years were good.

There were teams of four teachers for each grade. We learned Math, Science, Social Studies, and Language Arts. Teams had 5th and 6th graders or 7th and 8th graders.

Things didn't start well with Miss Gettys. I was in 5th grade and it was her first year teaching. She had 35 rambunctious, intelligent fifth graders, and we were not shy or quiet. She was usually even-tempered but every so often she got so frustrated at our inability to be quiet that she was screamed at us. Sometimes other teachers had to come in and make us "quiet down." We were told by Miss Gettys as well as other teachers that we were the worst-behaved class in the entire school -- which I found mortifying. I was a shy bookworm and I didn't misbehave. I told my mother my frustrations but she couldn't do anything to help. Her wise counsel was always to mind my own business, do my work, and be respectful. My mother had been a teacher before she had kids.

I admired Miss Gettys. I liked her handwriting and copied it until mine looked like hers. I admired her for her appearance. She had a trim figure and curly reddish-brown hair. Her face still showed freckles. She wore a lot of jumpsuits, which were very popular then, cute jewelry, and occasionally a colorful scarf. Daily, she looked fashionable. I also always remember her with a large cup of coffee in her hand.

Miss Gettys' main contributions to my life were twofold. One, she taught me everything I know about how to write a proper, grammatical sentence. We diagrammed sentences for hours, on the board. Subject verb agreement was important. Commas were wielded appropriately. Paragraphs were built solidly and God help you if they were weak. I rarely cracked open my Harbrace because when I read the rules of grammar and punctuation they usually mystified me. I learned how to spot a bad sentence a mile away, though. It helped that I read voraciously and was always several years ahead in reading ability.

In 6th grade, her classroom was chock full of photos and drawings, and we could earn extra credit by writing paragraphs or stories describing what was depicted. I loved doing that. It taught me how to analyze an image, and how to think creatively. We didn't have letter grades but the good grades were "EP" (excellent progress) and "SP" (superior progress). I always made EPs or SPs in her class.

In 7th grade I had the misfortune to be in the homeroom of a Language Arts teacher who was a nice man but very ineffective as a teacher, Mr. McCormick. Worse, the 7th graders were divided up at the beginning of the year and classified as either being smart or dumb -- of course those terms weren't used but it was obvious. Math was my weakness and because I was terrible at it I got put in the dumb class. It was humiliating and I was miserable. I don't think I learned anything in any classroom that year because the kids were so awful the teachers made no real effort. Lesson plans were ignored by most of the kids and classrooms were zoo-like.

I was on a different team in 8th grade and I was much happier. Over that summer, all the kids grew, and I went from being freakishly taller and bigger than anyone else to being among the shortest in class, at 5'3. We had a good group of girls and we all got to be friends. They were a lot of slumber parties that year.

Once again, Miss Gettys was my English teacher.

In 8th grade I started calling her "Catherine" instead of Miss Gettys. I don't know why I did it and I don't know why she put up with it. I remember tedious classes in grammar and punctuation, and more sentence diagramming, but also chances to write creatively.

Every year, each team awarded prizes for every subject. You could either win Most Improved or Best Student. In 8th grade I wanted to Win Best Student in Language Arts. I worked hard all year and Made SPs every quarter. A poem I had sent in to Read Magazine was actually published! It was a national magazine for kids. Another one of my poems was published in a collection of children's poetry by the University of Tennessee. I was chosen to be on the newspaper staff at Farragut High School while still in 8th grade, which thrilled me. I had been a writer for my team magazines in 7th and 8th grades. I felt like I deserved to be acknowledged as the best English student on my team.

The day came for the awards to be handed out. I remember sitting on the floor of the gym and hearing all the names called out. Finally, they got to the Language Arts awards for our team. I won! I was furious though because I was named Most Improved in English, not the Best.

I remember stomping angrily up to take my award from Miss Gettys, not looking at her, so terribly upset that I went home and cried. My parents couldn't console me. The boy who won was a smug jerk that I couldn't stand. [I think today he is a car salesman.]

[above left, me in 5th grade, and right me in 7th grade]

It was really childish but I was angry at Miss Gettys for years. I held a major grudge. I never got over that Most Improved prize humiliation. I think it fueled my desire to write because I wanted to prove to Miss Gettys that she was wrong to give me that "most improved" award. I published a memoir about my daughter's adoption in 2009 and I sent a promotional postcard to the school after seeing online that Miss Gettys was still teaching there. I wanted her to see me as a published author, not some pitiful chubby kid who never amounted to anything. I addressed the card to her.

She probably never imagined that I would eventually become a published writer with an extensive portfolio, or that I would publish novels on Amazon. I also utilize my writing skills daily in my job as a litigation paralegal and I've written a sourcebook for paralegals, Paralegal 411.

I Googled Miss Gettys a few years ago and she was still teaching at Cedar Bluff Middle School but she had switched to teaching Social Studies. Her students loved her. I long ago forgave her for not giving me the prize I had felt I deserved. She gave two things far more valuable -- the ability to proofread and edit like a pro, and a love of creative writing that caused me to get an MA in Creative Writing and to eventually become a novelist.

If I can find her on social media I'd like to send a link to Miss Gettys, to show her that she had a huge influence on my life, and to thank her for everything. I don't think she ever had children of her own but her impact on her students was profound.

We need more teachers like her. Below, my 5th grade class. I am not in the picture because I was sick that day.

Check out my latest novel Dancing in the Wreckage.

My Scary Weird Bucket List

There's a great movie called The Bucket List and before I saw that (years ago) I only had a vague idea of what a "bucket list" is, and although it's a terrific movie it didn't make me want to run out and write a bucket list.

Most bucket lists have things like "travel to Europe" or "skydive" or "meet the pope," etc. 

My bucket list is completely different. First of all, travel is not all it's cracked up to be. I cannot imagine anything that would entice me to sit on an airplane for hours, stuck in a big metal tube in the sky, in close proximity to a hundred strangers, exposed to their coughs and farts and sharing a tiny bathroom with all of them. BTDT when I went to Russia 4 times and Kazakhstan 2 times between 2003 and 2007. I am not scared to fly, but I hate flying because I hate crowds.

For the record, I hated crowds before Covid but I now utterly loathe crowds and I will never willingly expose myself to them. No game, concert, or church service will ever entice me to be around crowds.I am a homebody, and that's not uncommon for folks my age.

My son and I had a very late lunch yesterday at Honeybaked Ham and there were no other people in the store as customers, and just 2 guys behind the counter. It was lovely.

I will never willingly skydive. Somebody very big and strong, holding a gun, would be necessary before I would jump out of an airborne airplane and even then I would hesitate. I fear no diaper would save me from the dire consequences of that jump, because unlike lighter people my fat ass would plummet me straight to the ground long before the parachute would open. The mess would be terrible, unless I was dropped into the ocean.

No, my bucket list will likely have to wait for some scientific breakthroughs or a resurgence of elemental magic before it will ever be possible, any of it. It's below, in no particular order.

1) time travel to 1978 and leave a note for my high school self saying "give up all carbs forever and join a gym asap and workout every.single.day"

2) have a nice long lunch with Tom Hanks

3) move into my own house which has a screened-in back porch and sits on at least two acres

4) spend the day with all of my Thompson first cousins and their families, just eating and chilling out and visiting

5) spend the day with all of my Hasty first cousins and their families, just eating and chilling out and visiting

6) eat a big piece of chocolate cheesecake with no gastric consequences

7) spend a week at the beach, slightly off season like maybe in September, with my kids and my best friends, all in one big house with a pool

8) have a weekend visit with my only sibling, who hasn't visited me in years

9) time travel back to 1957, to just after my parents get married, and tell my parents to get some counseling

10) time travel back to 1970 so I can talk to my grandfather (Bob Hasty) and ask him to tell me about the scandal that cost him his major league baseball career. [I tried to write a book about it, a novel, Return to Marietta, but it didn't sell]

11) eat a nice long lunch with my favorite singer, Mary Chapin Carpenter

12) have some private lessons with the Dalai Llama on meditation and inner peace

13) write a bestselling novel

14) spend a few days in the mountains of East Tennessee during the Fall, with one of my friends and no crowds [this is the most farfetched of all my list items!]

15) travel across Canada, through the Canadian Rockies, by train

 

I just re-read my list and realized a lot of the items have to do with spending time with family and friends. I think at the end of my life that's what I will regret most, not spending more time with family and friends.

#weirdbucketlist, #postcovidbucketlist, #timetravelshouldbereal, #ihatecrowds, #canadianrockiesrock, #writinglifewoes, #regretsinlife, #timetravelisreal, #magicsolveseverything

 

The Best First Line

I have long been fascinated by the first lines of bestselling novels because most people will not keep reading unless that first line grabs them, and then it's up to the author to carry the good momentum to the first paragraph and the first chapter. Below are a few famous first lines, just for reference:

 

"Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were." Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

"While I was still in Amsterdam, I dreamed about my mother for the first time in years." The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt

"She is twelve years old, and she will be married in the morning." The Covenant of Water, by Abraham Verghese

"First, I got myself born." Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize)

"It wasn't a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first glance." Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

 

So I am trying to come up with an idea for my next novel, and I am taking my time because I want it to be my best book yet. I have an unpublished manuscript I am shopping around to agents but without much luck, so it occurred to be that I need to do a better job of coming up with the first line of my next book. Once I have the first line, I generally will be able to come up with the gist of the book's plot and from there and outline will shake out eventually.

Below are some first lines I like, but I'd like to know which one you like best. Drop me a comment and let me know.

1) DNA doesn't lie, but Ann still couldn't believe what she was seeing on her computer screen because the truth of it made everything in her life completely false and hollow.

2) Jayne stared at the soaking wet, naked man with long tangled blonde hair lying on the floor and tried to understand the events that had led to his appearance in her life -- and from there she hoped to be able to harness the mysterious power she had been unaware of just one minute ago.

3) "When you believe in yourself, really believe, other people will too," Skyler's father told her sternly, hoping she would believe his words, that she would listen.

4) There are places in the world like Greystone Georgia where the past and the present exist simultaneously, with just the thinnest of membranes separating them, but Charlie Bay could see that membrane clearly, despite the migraine.

5) It's time to tell you the truth about your daddy, and what happened the night you were born -- but don't be thinking you'll have the right to hate me then because you won't.

6) Camellia Gardenia Crow was named after two famous Southern flowers because she had to be named after her two grandmothers, according to a family tradition she hated -- but as a result she spent her childhood stomping in every mud puddle she encountered, loudly hollering whenever possible, and determined to be as ill-mannered and obnoxious as a child could be. 

Check out my newest novel, Dancing in the Wreckage, on Amazon.

bestfirstlinesofbooks, #firstlinesthatmakeyouwanttoreadthebook, #firstlineofanewbestseller

above, me in London, 1988

Stopping a Child's Tantrum

Not long before she died my mother and I had a very illuminating talk and she reminded me of something she did when I was a small child that had lasting repercussions in my life. I was telling her about something I'd read about the best way to deal with a child who was having a meltdown, putting them into "time in" instead of "time out" and she listened very thoughtfully. "I did that with you," she remarked.

"What? I don't remember that." Then she reminded me of her tantrum strategy.

I was the baby of the entire family. All my Thompson cousins were 5-10 years older. All my Hasty cousins were 2-12 years older. Often I was the youngest child in the neighborhood.

When we lived at our wonderful old house on Heard Avenue in Augusta I was 1-5 years old. It's the first house I remember. It was built in the early 20th century and had a big front porch, with a swing. Sitting out there, watching the bees and butterflies in the flowers, was peaceful and lovely.

I always wanted to play with the bigger kids, play on an equal basis with them. My two best playmates were my brother Bruce, 2 1/2 years older than me, and my BFF and next door neighbor Joanne, about 18 months older. So often, though, I couldn't keep up with them intellectually or physically.

I would get frustrated and have screaming temper tantrums. I could throw quite a tantrum. I've always had a BIG voice, even as a little kid, not to mention a flare for the dramatic.

Mom developed a strategy born of desperation, I'm sure. She did what would now be called a "therapeutic hold" - a controversial technique but one that works.

When I launched into a tantrum, she would pick me up and go out to the front porch, getting me away from the older kids, and sit down on the porch swing. There, she would quietly hold me and swing, while rubbing my back. I can remember that very well.

I was a fighter. I always wanted to fight, and beat my enemies. [Good preparation for spending decades as a litigation paralegal, now that I think of it!] The older kids became "enemies" when they excluded me, intentionally or unintentionally. Bruce and Joanne loved me but I know at times they viewed me as a nuisance.

Anyway, when I threw a fit Mom got me away from the other kids and that was a blessing. I thought of her as a huge, strong person, and I was astonished to grow up and see she was petite [5'4] and not very strong, actually.

Once we were seated on the porch swing, I could not get down, off of her lap, until I went through several steps.

1. I had to un-clench my entire body and stop crying.
2. I had to get my breathing back to normal. Sometimes I had to endure Mom wiping off my face with a cold wet washcloth.
3. I had to listen to Mom telling me not to let the other kids bother me -- or her explanation of why the tantrum was the wrong response to whatever was bothering me.
4. I had to just sit quietly for at least 5 minutes, while Mom rocked. Sometimes we would sing, or she would sing to me.
5. I had to laugh. Mom made a sort of puppet with her hand, sticking her thumb between her index and middle finger, and did the funny voice of Thumb-bum. I had to listen to Thumb-bum tease me or say funny things until I laughed.
6. Finally, I had to promise to behave myself before I was allowed to get off her lap and go back to playing.

Now, I didn't know as a small child that my mother was unusual. I didn't know she had taken many classes in psychology, including child psychology. I didn't know that she found her two children endlessly fascinating and she studied how to help us to have as happy and stress-free a childhood as possible. I'm sure there was fierce protectiveness because she knew there would never be more children. She had wanted four kids but fibroid tumors in her ovaries made it really difficult for her to get pregnant and led to a hysterectomy when I was still small.

She was a brilliant person and I know at times she found it really difficult to be a stay at home mom, stuck in a house all day with two small children. Dad was very tight with money so there was little extra for fun activities. I feel very lucky that she was able to be at home with us, though. She essentially taught me how to calm myself down, and not let the bigger kids destroy my peace of mind.

To all you young parents out there, God Bless You. If you find yourself dealing with tantrums, try a loving "time in" plus therapeutic hold, and see how that works. It will eventually get better. If you're lucky, you might wind up with a child who can calm themselves down effectively even when you aren't with them.

#thebestwaytocalmachild, #dealingwithchildhoodtantrums, #therapeuticholds, #timeinforkids

Employment Law and Fairness

I rarely ever write about my life as a paralegal here because this is my personal space and I tend to keep my personal and professional lives separate. I knew when I started this blog that if I wrote about my paralegal jobs or cases I've worked on it would be the end of my legal career and I didn't want that. My legal career pays the bills. My writing gigs are mostly just for fun.

Plus, attorney/client privilege is a real thing. Clients should not have to worry about someone in their lawyer's office writing about them publicly, so I don't.

So this blog isn't about cases I've worked on, or attorneys I've worked for, or clients of the law firms where I've worked.

It's about fairness.

I started a new job last week working for a wonderful plaintiff's employment law firm here in Atlanta, Beal Sutherland Berlin & Brown. As I've been reading through cases and researching issues I've been reminded so many times of why employment law is my favorite area of law, and why I like it so much.

It started with my mother.

I was blessed to have a mother who was an incredible storyteller and my best friend.

Mom was born in 1933. She was a young woman in the 1950's when women were told basically that they could have a career OR a husband and children but not both. My mother was brilliant and she should not have had to make that choice. She was told so many things in her life that were blatantly unfair, and when she told me about them years later I was angry and indignant, on her behalf.

Mom started working as a sales clerk at the old Sears store in Ponce de Leon when she was 16 years old. She had to wear high heels all day and she was on her feet for her entire shift, not allowed to sit down. Years later she had a lot of circulation problems in her legs and we figured it started then. After working there for years and with a spotless performance record, she knew the store intimately. She applied for the management training program when she was almost finished with college and was told "You won't ever be admitted because you're a woman. We only train men to be managers because they have to support a family."

She thought she might like to go to law school. She made excellent grades in college and excelled at public speaking. Her uncle, a lawyer in Macon, said "There's no reason for you to go to law school. You'll just get married and quit."

Another dream was to be a professional singer and she had a wonderful voice. She sang professionally, all over Atlanta, and for the USO. When she married my dad in 1957 that ended. He didn't want her to even sing at church, because rehearsals took her away from him and later her children. Like most men of that time, Dad expected his house clean, his children behaved, and dinner on the table every night. [To be fair, though, he was a very hands-on father and they were a real team when it came to parenting.]

When she and Dad had been married a few years, she was teaching school and when she got pregnant with my brother the school forced her to quit. No visibly pregnant woman was allowed to teach in South Carolina in 1959. She was so upset she told me she cried for a week because it was the middle of the school year and she missed the children so much.

So hearing about all those experiences made me aware of the fact that women of my mother's generation often didn't get treated fairly in the workplace, or in society in general.Fortunately, things have gotten better in recent years.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the first major piece of legislation to try and make the workplace more fair for everyone. If you really want to understand it, you can go here, to the EEOC website, but the part that most interests me is this:

It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer -

(1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or

(2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

Mom contributed a lot to my awareness of the injustices women faced in her day -- and still face now, in some instances -- but my father also helped me to understand that employment fairness is critical. He ran the trust department of a large bank for 35 year. He championed a young black man to be the manager of one of the bank's branches in the mid 1970's when appointing a person of color to a managerial job was unheard of. Dad knew he would do a great job and he went to bat for him. Dad also hired a young woman to work in his department who was black, and until then I don't think there had ever been any non-white people in the trust department. Dad didn't judge people based on race.

When it came to race, my family was unusual. I actually wrote about that here. Unlike many southern families, you never heard the N word in my house when I was growing up. My parents made it clear we were never to use that word or we would be spanked, and I have never used it. Just in my lifetime, so many things have changed. Unlike so many people in past generations, I adopted mixed-race children. I have dear friends who are black. My children have both dated African Americans, with my blessing. My gay friends and family members can now live openly and marry their partners. Most churches in Atlanta welcome people from the LGBTQ community. The South today is not the South of generations past, thanks be to God.

Women still face employment discrimination, though, and non-white people still face employment discrimination. A recent poll found that 91% of those surveyed had faced workplace discrimination. People over 40 often face age discrimination; I have dealt with that. My son has lost out on jobs because he is an amputee. Workplace retaliation happens every day -- for example an employee files an EEOC complaint and then is quickly terminated for no good reason. Whistleblowers often lose their jobs. People who are overweight or not white still don't get hired.Women who have children don't get the same opportunities for advancement. And so on.

I hope and pray one day we will have a better world, but until that happens I feel like I fight on the side of the angels.This new job is more than just a job. What I do matters. I work for brilliant, kind, wonderful attorneys who genuinely want to help their clients. I love that.

If you've experienced discrimination -- because you're a woman, a person of color, over 40, disabled, gay or trans, or for any reason -- call an attorney in your city. You might have a case. You will never know until you explore your options.If you are in Atlanta, call Beal Sutherland Berlin & Brown. You will get a fair assessment of your case. You might even get to know me as a paralegal.

#atlantaemploymentattorneys, #atlantadiscriminationcases, #understandingyourrights, #ineedtofileaneeoccomplaint, #suinganemployer

Traveling Then and Now

As a child, I used to wonder why my mother never set off on a trip without a really big straw basket filled with kitchen supplies and snacks. I went through that basket one day after my mom and I moved in together and it still held coffee, Vienna sausages, straws, wet wipes, Woolite, paper napkins, salt and pepper, a jar of nuts, plastic cutlery, and I don't recall what else. I asked Mom why she had always carried all that on trips and she looked puzzled and said well her mother had carried the same basket on all trips, plus blankets, and it made a lot of sense.

My grandmother Memaw Hasty was the greatest grandmother a future paralegal could ever have. She was meticulous about being prepared for any situation. Travel by car was seen by her and my grandfather as a grand adventure. Of course, cars back then were prone to flat tires and they might sit on the side of the road for hours if there was no spare, or the jack didn't work, etc. Restaurants were not always available, even if you'd been traveling for hours and were ravenously hungry. My memaw's travel basket meant if she and her fellow travelers were stranded they could survive on the side of the road for hours or even a day or two, if necessary.

While researching for my book Return to Marietta, Mom told me that when her oldest brother Bobby was a baby, Memaw missed her family terribly and a couple of times she drove by herself with infant Bobby from California to Georgia to see the family. She packed the travel basket and blankets and canteens of water, and of course a loaded pistol.

I had forgotten about canteens. They were small tin water bottles carried by soldiers. Before bottled water, one carried a canteen of water. We always had one around the house, though Mom was more fond of a thermos.

I thought I would reminisce a little about how much travel has changed in the last hundred years or so, since the summer is when most of us take long car trips. [below, my mother and grandparents, sometime around 1942 or thereabouts, on a trip]

This is from my mother's memoir, Singing to the Cows:

"Fast food as we know it now did not exist until less than 50 years ago. There were no expressways. We drove on two lane roads, through small towns or through big cities glutted with traffic. So if a family was traveling, they might find something to eat or drink at a gas station – or maybe nothing but a soda and package of peanuts at best. My mother always carried snacks, water to drink, wet wash cloths, first aid supplies, etc. Most often, we had a thermos of sweet tea mixed with fruit juices. For a longer trip, there would be a full meal. Back then, the food was certainly better and cheaper and no waiting in line. I carried big beach towels because they could serve as tablecloths, wraps, etc."

I remember my dad packing the station wagon for us to take on trips and getting all the suitcases in the car, and then his look of consternation when Mom came out carrying the travel basket for him to put in the car. "We don't need all this stuff!" he would fuss.

Sometimes the trips were much shorter - basically day trips. My grandparents loved to picnic. Nowadays people don't picnic that much, probably because of the proliferation of fast food places. Even as a child [1960's] I remember driving back and forth to Atlanta and there was a little restaurant somewhere on Highway 78 where we always stopped and ate, but it was a regular restaurant and there was nothing fast about it.

Anyway, here are some of Mom's picnic memories.

"My parents, as well as the rest of the family, just loved going on picnics. They had a system of what to carry and just how to pack it. This was mostly before Tupperware, Styrofoam, canned drinks, and lots of convenience items. We did have a large thermos jug which would be filled with a combination of sweet tea and fruit juices - delicious! Also, there was no plastic wrap or foil – but waxed paper was fine. The food was about what one would expect: fried chicken, potato salad, ham, fruit salad, slaw, cold biscuits, usually a pot of green beans with ham hock, and someone always brought a wonderful home baked cake, and cobblers, and pies. They kept the old tablecloths for picnics. We always met at the Atlanta area parks that had nice picnic tables, most often with thatched appearing roofs, or a pavilion. The adults would sit around and visit and the young folks would take long walks around the park, after the meal."

I remember Mom sometimes persuading my dad to take picnic foods on trips so we didn't have to eat fast foods, but he was always impatient and grouchy with the whole idea. Standing outside and eating sandwiches out of the trunk while cars whizzed by and Dad grumbled was not fun, at all. (Maybe that's why I have never understood tailgating. Eating out of the trunk of the car just doesn't appeal to me.)

Even just in my lifetime, taking a trip has changed dramatically. I can remember driving for hours without a gas station in sight, and my dad pulling the car over so I could squat and pee, with the car door and Mom hiding me from the sight of anyone coming down the road. We always carried paper napkins and/or toilet paper in the travel basket, for potty emergencies.

My dad taught me how to change a tire when I was 18. I was amazed to learn later that not all girls could change a tire, or check a car's oil, or add water to a car, or use cables to jump start a car. Dad wanted me to be prepared.

Here's what prompted me to write this blog.

My son Michael was asked by a friend, a chef, to drive to SC this weekend and help with the cooking for his niece's quinceañera. Michael had never driven 2.5 hours alone before and I tried not to freak out. I was driving 6 hours back and forth to college at the age of 19, but Michael has just never needed to drive anywhere alone before. I asked him if he wanted to take cold drinks, a flashlight, etc. but he stopped me before I recited a long list of stuff and said "Mom, if I need anything I will just stop and get it?!" like DUH, Mom.

He called me when he reached his destination, as I had asked.

Even today, when I travel I take my version of the travel basket, for emergencies. I advise y'all to do so also. Picnics are nice, too.

#travelinglongago, #twentiethcenturytraveltips, #familypicnictips, #familypicnics, #packingfortrips, #cartripslongago, #cartripsofyesteryear

Kitchen Hacks and Food Hacks

I realized today that there are some kitchen hacks that I’ve used for many years that not everyone knows about, which is amazing to me. Then again, I’ve been cooking and cleaning up since I was about 5 years old, so that’s more than half a century of experience!

I was also a busy working mom for years so I had to learn some new kitchen hacks..

I’ve been making my son batches of chicken salad recently because it makes a great and healthy snack. The recipe is simple – cold diced chicken, mayo, diced seedless grapes, diced pecans, chopped onion, and diced celery. There are three hacks here. One, take a fresh lime and halve it and use lots of fresh lime juice. It’s also great on tuna salad. Lime juice is sweeter and has no seeds so I like it much better than lemon juice. Two, take a paring knife and strip the strings off the celery, and it’s much easier to chew. In terms of seasonings, I go in heavy with onion powder, garlic powder, celery salt, and powdered curry seasoning by McCormick.

Cutting cakes and brownies: put Pam on the knife blade to prevent it from getting gunked up.

Peeling hardboiled eggs: hold the egg under running water while you peel it.

Easy Pie: Do you need to take something to a potluck but you don’t cook or bake and you are tired of buying paper plates/cups or ice? Take an ice cream pie! Buy a graham cracker piecrust at the store, and a 1.5 quart tub of ice cream [we are partial to Mayfield] and let it soften on the kitchen counter for 30 minutes. Spoon it into the piecrust and smooth it out. Pop it back into the freezer until it’s time to leave. If you want to get fancy, buy a plain Hershey bar and smash it up, and sprinkle it on top of the pie, or buy chocolate syrup and drizzle it on top before freezing.

Most people will love this Green Bean Salad. My kids loved it. Buy some Del Monte canned green beans – 4 or 5 regular-sized cans. Drain them in a colander, then put them in a bowl. Cut up an onion and add it. Add some diced cucumber if you like, and some original Ranch dressing, onion powder, and lots of dill weed. Leave out the raw onion if your kids won’t eat it - onion powder is easier anyway.

Do you want your kids to eat veggies and find them resistant? Boil that cauliflower or broccoli until really soft. Not mush, but not at all crunchy, either. Pop it into a mixing bowl and take a hand blender and puree it and add: mayo and mustard / real butter and garlic salt / cream of mushroom soup and mayo. Any one of these combos is improved with grated cheese. Don’t sweat the cholesterol in real butter and mayo, unless your child has high cholesterol, which is rare. Call it creamed cauliflower or creamed broccoli and serve it in little dishes topped with cheese and paprika so it looks “partyfied.”

Potatoes are great, cheap and filling and they can make an easy dinner. Scrub your large spuds and wipe them dry, then poke holes in them with a fork, grease them with oil, and sprinkle salt all over them. Wrap them in foil and bake them at 400 for 45-60 minutes. Bake ten at a time and stick them in the fridge to pull out for meals later. When it’s time for dinner, pull them out and open them up and top them with cheese, bacon bits, butter, sour cream, broccoli, chili, etc. Run them under the broiler for a few minutes or just microwave them.

Beef Roast: buy a bottle of decent Sherry or red wine, and add 1-2 cups of it, along with lots of soy sauce and fresh garlic. I like to use bought beef stock, too [see photo]. Soy sauce and liquor always make beef better. In fact, if you have a crock pot, throw in your beef roast, wine, broth, garlic and soy sauce along with a couple of cans of potatoes and a package of baby carrots and cook on high for 6-8 hours and you have a one dish dinner. Prep time is 5-10 minutes. If you leave your meat on the kitchen counter for an hour before popping it in the crock pot it will be much more tender.

Super Easy Chili dinner: My crock pot chili is a super easy one dish meal. I use 1-2 lbs. of ground beef, 2-4 cans of Bush’s chili beans, chopped onion, a can of Rotel, several cans of tomato puree, and a can of pumpkin. Yes, pumpkin! It absorbs the chili flavors and nobody knows they are eating pumpkin. If you hate chopping onion, use lots of onion powder. / I made this chili years ago for a party, and of course bought Fritos and grated cheese because those make chili much better. One of my son’s friends who was a super picky eater ate a huge bowl of it. His mother called me the next day and said he had raved about how much he loved Dee’s chili. I rattled off the ingredients. His mom is a great cook herself. She was astonished he had not noticed the pumpkin. I asked her what she put in her chili. She said grated carrots! No wonder the kid didn’t like it.

Cleaning scrubby pads and brushes: rinse them off and then put them in the dishwasher and run them through.

Cleaning any pot or pan: if there are baked-on glops of food or food residue, put in a cup or two of water and heat the pan on the stove for a few minutes. The warmed water will loosen the gunk so you can scrape it off.

Cleaning the microwave: put water into a sturdy [think, Pyrex] cup and heat it for 5 minutes. Go in with a dry paper towel to get big stuff, then a wet paper towel for the final pass.

Cleaning the counter: Do you have some sticky mess on your kitchen counter? Boil some water and put a dollop on the mess and wait a couple of minutes. It should come off really easily then.

Want more recipes and/or tips? A couple of years ago I wrote a little cookbook, What's for Dinner, Mom? and it's available on Amazon. My mother's memoir, Singing to the Cows, also has a lot of recipes and more cooking tips.