Well, Bless Your Heart

As far as I know I’m one of very few southerns blogging these days. I know of many bloggers from the New England states, and some in the mid-west. I have a friend in the central part of the country and several on the west coast but not many others here in the south. And I know several from other countries. But I felt I was in a good position to answer this question.

I was happy to get an email from a good friend the other day. She was asking about the phrase, ‘Bless your heart.’ My daughter-in-law says it's a Southern thing and it is not sincere.  But I never doubt your sincerity when you say it to me.  What's the deal with this expression?  We never used it in where I came from.  My DIL was the first person who ever said it to me and she had to tell me it was a snide remark.  

 

I was delighted by her “bless your heart” question. I’m guessing she isn’t the only one confused. It must be instinctive in southern women because any southern woman (well, any female over the age of two) know which way ‘bless your heart’ is intended. It’s like understanding that ‘y’all’ is singular and ‘all y’all’ is plural.

There are three basic ways bless your heart is used. The first is absolutely sincerely. If you say it to someone face to face, or in a text or an email we are truly asking God to bless you. You say this to friends and loved ones who might be going through a hard time, large or small. Anything from a dinged fender to the death of a pet and it’s meant as a comfort to a person you care about. 

The second use of bless your heart is probably used the most often. It’s way of negating something insulting you’ve said about someone. Southern women are taught to be polite. So if you say something unkind about someone you can use the all covering, ‘bless their heart.’

 

 

Examples:  She’s as ugly as homemade sin, bless her heart. 

 

That boy’s dumber than a box of rocks, bless his heart.

 

That school choir sounds like somebody trying to baptize a cat, bless their hearts.

 

You see, it’s not insulting if you bless them afterwards.

 

And then there is the angry ‘bless your heart.’ Suppose a friend tell you she overheard another friend saying your baby is ugly. Your response might be a steely eyed stare and, “Did she now? Well bless her heart.” Which translated for non-southerns would read, “She said what? Well she can kiss my fu*kin’ ass!” Remember one must be polite at all times.

 

I hope this lesson is a unique southernism has helped. It was fun to try and explain. And just as a bonus lesson - 

Trippin'

I’m tired of writing about being sick. I’m kinda tired of being sick too, but I do think I’m getting better. So as long as I’m getting better, I’m going to do something with this impending good health. I’m going visiting. I’m hopping on a plane and going to see Sunny, you remember Sunny … from Aimless Rambling.

Sunny and I met in person may years ago. We decided to meet up in Las Vegas. Mollie was not thrilled that I was heading off by myself to meet up with someone she assured me was probably an axe murderer. But actually, it turns out Sunny was not an axe murderer after all and we’ve taken several trips together over the years. I even got to meet her husband Ray on one of these trips.

 

This time I’m heading to her home. We talked yesterday morning. I don’t know what we’ll be doing so I was asking what kind of clothes to bring. Ray said I’d for sure need some formal wear, but Sunny assured me that a tiara would be optional. And Ray did indicate that he probably wouldn’t be wearing his tux.

Maybe something like this.

I hope that they’ll be about to cope with me wearing shorts and T- shirts and such. Maybe I’ll grab a pair of capris for a ‘formal’ evening. It they want to go somewhere really fancy they can leave me home with the cat. I’m really easy to please. I just hope I can get rid of this cough so she won’t make me sleep outside.

Still around

This is one lousy cold! Do colds get worse as we get older? I know when I was teaching, if I had a cold, too bad. Suck it up and go to work. But I don’t think I could have worked through this one.

Wednesday was the worse day. I got up and came to the living room before I took my first nap, about 8:00 AM. I never really felt awake all day. And the coughing is horrible, it makes my whole chest sore. But I got through Wednesday in a fog and ended up sleeping pretty well that night. 

 

Thursday morning I woke up feeling a little better. I was congested and coughing, but I still felt better. I decided to put a little Vicks under my nose, they say that can help. Opened my little jar of Vicks and … nothing, no odor at all. 

Now you know you can smell Vicks from the next room without trying. But I was getting nothing. Not being able to smell was screaming Covid at me. So I tried something else. I detest peanut butter and I can smell it a mile away in cookies or candy or anything. I practically stuck my nose in the jar, but again I could smell nothing.

I decided it was time for another Covid test and too one. It still said negative. I had my sense of taste, but not smell. I called my doctor who sent me to an urgent care for another test. This third test said negative also! Thank goodness. The PA feels it’s just a bad cold combined with the ridiculously high pollen count. She said this combination could block your sense of smell – maybe, but it’s never happened to me before.

This is where I stand on my fight with this cold. Feeling some better, taking three over the counter meds that the PA suggested, and still napping often. Just checking to make sure the Vicks smelled as it should I gave Nick a whiff. His head jerked back and he asked, “You can’t smell that?” I’m guessing the Vicks still smells. I can get the faintest odor now, it’s like the jar has been empty a couple of years but just the tiniest odor remains. Hopefully my next post can tell you I’m completely back to normal… well, normal for me.

COLD

No, not outside, in my head and chest. I’ve tested negative for Covid – it’s a cold. But I haven’t had a cold since 2015 or 2016, since way before I retired. I was hoping my streak would go a little longer. I forgot how crummy a cold can make you feel.

 

I’m planning to spend this week coughing, sneezing, trying to breath and working on getting rid of a headache. If I think of something to write about, I will. But don’t expect much.

Well trained

No, not me, that ship has sailed. It’s my son. Maybe it's not training so much as the fact that he is very considerate of me. I’m sure some of you are sick of hearing about my kids but… you keep coming back knowing what you’re likely to get so there’s fair warning.

 

I turn off the TV pretty early each morning and Tuesday I’d heard nothing about the shooting in NYC. But around ten that morning I got the following text from LJ, Hey, you may see something about the subway this morning. Not near me or Collin. I knew something bad had happened, so I went looking and found the news stories.

Bless his heart for texting me, he knows I worry. They do live in Brooklyn and, of course, ride the subway daily. I would have been frantic when I heard the news. What took about ten seconds of his time saved me hours of anxiety and I appreciated it.

 

We text later in the day and I told him I knew his city had Ubers and Cabs if he wanted to use them, to which he replied, Who am I, Rockefeller? He has always told me NY is safe, and for him it has been. Sadly, finding a ‘safe’ place these days is getting harder and harder.

 

I’m grateful my boys are safe for the moment and I pray for all those directly affected by the shooting.

All in a day's teaching

Mollie was hoping for a good year now that she could teach in person. It hasn’t been her best. She has twenty kids. Four are on anti-psychotic drugs another one should be. Five are on medication for ADHD, four more have been diagnosed but the parents have chosen not to medicate them. I think I shared that earlier in the year one of her students broke both his arms on the playground. There is a grandmother raising one of her students whose hobby is getting teachers and administrators fired. She’s making Mollie more and more nervous. Then a couple of weeks ago…

 

A little girl in her class said that she felt really sick. Mollie sent her to the nurse and they called the parent of the day – mother, aunt, grandmother the child has no one steady in her life, to come get her. The adult refused saying the child was faking and if she wasn’t throwing up or running a fever she wasn’t coming.

The next morning a cafeteria worker called to Mollie’s classroom before school got started and said one of her kids looked so sick, so pale she was white. When the girl got to Mollie’s class she begged her not to call her aunt saying she’d just get mad and not come any way. There is a large walk-in closet in the pod and Mollie got the girl a pillow and blanket and just told her to rest. She slept for four hours. When she woke Mollie sent her to the nurse who called home and told them that if they didn’t take the child to the doctor that they would call social services. They came and got her but no one knows if they saw a doctor that evening or not.

 

The next morning they couldn’t wake the child and took her to the ER. Her sugar was reading just over five hundred and they transferred her to a children’s hospital an hour away. The child will eventually get a pump, but for now she needs to learn how to give herself insulin with Mollie overseeing each dose. You have to go to the cafeteria chart, check to see how many carbs in whatever she eats for breakfast or lunch, calculate the amount insulin in units and inject the insulin. And of course, keep records. 

Mollie didn’t seem as frazzled by this as I would have been, but last Friday was a bad day. Many things had gone wrong. One child had taken a swing at Mollie, the vicious grandmother had been texting her, and there were a few other minor things. She made sure the child insulin packet, that she has to carry home each night, because the parents won’t pay for two, was in the girl’s book bag as she led them out to car riders. Five minutes later Mollie sees the girl eating candy. She rushed over to see what was going on and the kids says, “Don’t worry I gave myself some insulin.” My poor daughter is freaking, the kid has given herself too much. She gets with the nurse and they tell the mother what’s going on and how many carbs she need to eat now… And the mother responds, “Oh, that’s all right. It doesn’t matter.” 

 

Mollie breaks down into tears – something she doesn’t do – as the mother drives away. She wasn’t only scared at what had just happened, she was also worried that no one will be caring for the child over the weekend. Mollie’s principal and the nurse comfort her. The principal, a really nice lady, give her a hug and asks, “You are coming back Monday, aren’t you?” She was only partial kidding. Many teachers these days are simply walking out. And I can’t really blame them. But Monday was a better day. And she has her eye on Thursday. After that she has a ten-day break. That’s going to help a lot! 

 

If you have kids or grandkids in school, please know that most of the teachers are doing the absolute best that they can. Maybe send a note, a kind word goes a long way.

Off to the theater - VERY carefully!

Many years ago, they turned my old elementary school into a multiply purpose building – there are various stores, rooms that can be used by different groups and there is a large auditorium where they have community theater. I love these performances; I usually know several of the cast members. They also have a nice dinner, so this dinner theater is a real treat for me and many of my friends. I nearly always go with my old teaching partner.

 

I mentioned her in a post way back in January, when she fell and broke her neck. A very scary time, but she is doing well. She is still in a neck brace. She hasn’t had it off for a minute since the break and will have it on through May. I got a call from her Monday evening. I assumed she was checking to make sure I had the tickets and to check what time I was picking her up. 

 

Nope, that wasn’t it. She called to tell me that she had fallen again and had broken her arm. Her left arm, and of course, she’s left-handed. “So that present a problem for the play Thursday night.” I could see that, and I was wondering if I could find someone who wanted her ticket. But that wasn’t the problem. Her only concern was… “Would you be able to carry my plate to the table for me?” Good grief! 

 

Yes! I can carry her durn plate, but who’s going to carry her? I’m just about scared to take her. I want a wheelchair to take her from the car to the building. What if she trips again? I told her I was going to treat her like a little old lady and hover over her. She said if I do she’ll hit me with her new purple cast. Sigh… we’re going, but I am going to hover. Let’s hope I can dodge the cast.

Speaking of lesbian vampire cowboy shifters...

I met a group of interesting women this weekend. They were individuals, all living within hour and a half of one another, who write. None of us had ever met before but somehow we all knew someone who knew someone and we decided to get together and talk.

I used to be a little uncomfortable talking with other writers like this. I always wondered what they would think of what I write. Trust me I no longer care. In my opinion what they wrote was kinda out there too. 

One was writing about cowboys in space, because she like science fiction. She said it took a lot less research than writing about real cowboys – not a bad point.

 

Another wrote about lesbian vampires. Might not be my thing to write about but she was fun to talk to. And the last lady also wrote about shape shifters – bears, not wolves. 

So while I was still the ‘odd man out’ I didn’t feel very odd at all. And they didn’t bat an eye when I told them my genre.

 

 It was fun talking with other writers. Just meeting brand new people and having a nice conversation over lunch seemed amazing after the world’s being shut down for so long. We’re going to try to get together again next month. I have to get out of the house sometime. Maybe a conversation about lesbian vampire, space cowboys and shifting into bears is just the new normal.

Discussing spanking with a vanilla, part 2

If you didn’t read yesterday’s post, you might want to do that. You can find it here. I enjoyed talking with Eddie. I certainly had no desire to try and change his mind. But I did enjoy trying to explain a little of what we do, what we want. I didn’t really go in depth in my explanation, I just tried to show our side of the paddle, so to speak. It was a good discussion.

PK, I hope you don’t think I would have had a ugly reaction if you had told me about your enjoyment of spankings. That is totally up to you and what goes on behind closed doors is none of my business. I hope I didn’t give you the wrong ideal about my reaction to your book. 

I still feel that using spanking to control one life is not my cup of tea. Often in your book you referred to this as punishment for activities that had taking place and those activities were about a person choice of action. To me there is a difference between something you enjoy and perhaps part of your sexual activity and something giving as punishment and controlling. 

I love your Cassie character, strong, sassy, and independent women. But to put it somewhat in your book, you should not be completely controlling all the things I want to do. At least at the end Tom said if you can’t beat them, join them. That made me see him looking at Cassie’s side. 

I guess one reason I’m very sensitive to this is my wife was slap, beaten, had a gun held to her head, and who knows what else took place. It took me years to get her to understand herself worth and what she had to offer to the world. This makes any kind of controlling seem bad to me. I do enjoy reading your books. I certainly do not consider what takes place between you and your husband any of my business. Forgive my writing skills, I was a PE and Social Studies major, not creative writing as you can tell. Best of luck on your future writing. 

 

 

Eddie, you are one of the kindest most understanding men I know. Though I would have never discussed it with you back in the day it wouldn't have been because I would have expected an ugly reaction. I guess I worries more from it being found out and everyone thinking – teacher/spanking... It could have been a very bad reaction from parents. I'm just so much more relaxed about it now that I'm retired. Though I still cringe when I come across a teacher/student spanking story - not for me!

 

It's easy to explain spanking as a slap and tickle foreplay idea. It’s much more complicated when you add in the ‘discipline’ side of it. That’s what they call my genre – domestic discipline. Some women are born craving this. Some just felt the urge after reading 50 Shades of Grey, but many, like me were born with this desire. I began making up stories in my head of this nature when I was about four. But I also grew up knowing instinctively that this desire would not be understood by others. So people like me stayed in the closet. As a child I was spanked occasionally, hated it! I always knew what I was thinking about was something totally different.

 

Most of my friends didn’t come out to their husbands until we were middle aged. We had to know that we could handle everything ourselves. I was doing it. Teaching full time, caring for my parents, looking after Nick and the kids and the house, working in the church and on and on. I knew I could do it all. What I wanted was a safe place to land – to have someone who would look after me, protect me, care for me, tell me what to do in some cases so I didn’t have to decide myself. And yes, someone who cared enough to use spanking when I didn’t listen at times. It’s certainly not for every woman, but it was what I’d wanted all my life.

 

When I did come out to Nick it was like magic – I actually had teachers on my hall ask me what I was on! One said they couldn’t have slapped the smile off my face with a 2x4. Of course, I never told her what was causing my joy. But while Nick was willing to try, he’s more like you. He was willing to play around with it, if that was what I wanted, but he could not get into it for real. And that’s been a disappoint for me. I’m not disappointed in him. It’s just that the lifestyle I dreamed of never happened.

 

The book that I’ve written that is the closest to me is Returning to Us that’s where I really let out all my frustrations. It’s just that my ending was different from the book.

 

I do understand your sensitive. Most of us knew at least a little of what your lovely wife went through before you. All of us who view ourselves as ‘spankos’ are well aware that many would view what we enjoy as abuse. It’s not – we believe in 100% consensual spanking in a loving relationship. Of course, in fiction the consent may seem dubious at times, but it’s there.

 

I have thoroughly enjoyed our exchange today! I am happy to see that you like and enjoy my books and that we have different views about an interesting topic, as friends often have!