A Prude on Hold

Did you notice The Prude has been less-than-faithful with her posts?
That won't end for a bit.
For some reason Google won't let me publish any more photos.
You know how I love to publish photos.

So, I'll be on hiatus until I get kinks worked out, or until
I can sweet-talk someone who knows what they are doing
to get me unkinked.

Thanks to everyone who has read The Prude and encouraged me
with kind words and funny remarks.
Without readers, writers live in a sad and lonely vacuum with
fruitless words whirling about their ears.

Hope to be back soon!

A picture, a poem and pleasure for your palate.

It’s a catch-all day here at the Prude’s.
First comes a recent favorite photo.
In the middle? My umpteenth time sharing a favorite poem with you.
And at the end my new favorite recipe for candy so simple even your dog (were he blessed with opposable thumbs) could make, and so delicious that Edmund would have chosen it over Turkish Delight.


First the photo. I never have my camera handy when Something is happening. But when I heard the geese calling overhead, and remembered the moon was lingering in the morning sky, I managed to get off a shot before the geese disappeared.

Here is my favorite poem, by Dixie Wilson. I know. I know. I put this on my blog last November and the November before that. Lord willing I’ll do it again next November.
Blogger’s prerogative.

The Mist and All

I like the fall,
the mist and all
I like the night owl’s
lonely call

and wailing sound
of wind around.

I like the gray
November day,

and bare dead boughs
that coldly sway
against my pane.
I like the rain.

I like to sit
and laugh at it
and tend my cozy
fire a bit

I like the fall
the mist and all.



And finally. A treat. Have you had those chocolate covered caramels sprinkled with sea salt? Did you love them, but hate the calories? Oh my friend. Just buy some dried apricots. Dip them in melted dark chocolate. Sprinkle with that sea salt. And delight in every healthy, tasty morsel.

Duck, Duck, Noose

My husband is in the throes of a hissy-fit.
He’s ready to string up A&E network. They refuse to rerun one particular episode of ‘Duck Dynasty’.
The one where–wait a minute.
You know about Duck Dynasty, right?

Half a year or so back I didn’t know what it was. Maybe I had seen advertisements and assumed it was another frightful reality show. The chaotic sort with a prescribed number of cuss words, bleeps, tantrums, breakdowns, fisticuffs, and flying furniture in each episode.

But my sane, moral, possibly-a-prude friend Susan told me she and her husband loved it. She challenged me to watch. (Raspberry Filling Women are not beyond wild and crazy dares.)

I watched. I loved. I dared my husband to watch. He watched. He loved.

So now we try to figure out the pandemonium that passes for program schedules on cable TV. Remember when we were young? We knew ‘The Partridge Family’ would air Friday evenings at 7.
 New episodes began in the fall.  Cable seasons, however, are determined by tipsy executives throwing darts at a calendar. Programs are shot out of a pellet gun and peppered throughout the week. Sometimes all the pellets hit one day and we could watch 24 hours of ‘Duck Dynasty’ and then spend another fortnight trying to find where the next episode landed. Woe betide the viewer without interactive TV guidance. We now keep a wary eye on A&E, afraid to blink.

One night I returned home from someplace-or-other and found a jubilant spouse. He handed me the remote (which refuses to interactivate for him) and said, “I watched the greatest episode of Duck Dynasty tonight! Show me the episodes coming up next. Maybe they will repeat it.”

That was a week ago. My poor husband, hope fading, has spent every evening we are together handing me the channel changer.
“Was it ‘Samuri Si?” I ask.
“No”  “Plan Bee?” “No” “Redneck Roadtrip? Daddy’s Got a Gun?  The Grass and the Furious?” “No, No, NO!”
He is in despair. Maybe it was too funny. Too redneck. Maybe they pulled it, and it will never see the light of day again.
I look online for previous episodes. There is only one I haven’t seen.
“Was it ‘Frog in One’, where Willie and Jase skip out of Career Day at their kids’ school to go golfing? And they find frogs on the golf course? And hunt them at night and tangle with security?”
My husband is grabbing his head, rocking back and forth and moaning.
“Stop!” he begs. “Now you know everything that is going to happen and it won’t be fun for you. But it doesn’t matter. It’s never going to air again. I just know it.”
**********
Dear Santa,
Please send my husband episode 4, Season One, of ‘Duck Dynasty’. Until you do I am a prisoner chained to a remote and a television.

40 lashes. More or less.

21st Century lashes gone mad

I learned last week that eyelashes are a recent development in mankind’s history.
I have photographic evidence.

Look at this lady.

Nice jewelry. I wouldn’t mind a necklace like that. But if I had to choose between it and eyelashes, I’d go with eyelashes every time.

Or this woman. 

 Such a pleasant face. In spite of the fact that her eyes are apparently killing her, trying to keep all the 17th century dust out of her eyes. Because she has no lashes.

Here is a pretty young lady. Look at that hairstyle. 

Just think what she could have done with a nice fringe of lashes. Even just a top set.

This poor little girl. 

Feeling all pensive that she is lashless. She is wishing on a handkerchief bunny rabbit. Please, please little hanky bunny. Bring me some lashes for my birthday.

By the 19th century things were looking up.
See this wedding procession?

Hardly anyone is smiling. Especially the young women who aren’t the bride.

Now look at a close-up of the groom’s face.

 He is looking smug, sort of like, “Oh yeah. I got me one with those new-fangled lashes.”
 
When my son was born I, the concerned mother, asked the nurse if it was normal that he had no eyelashes. She promised me they would come in and they did. How nice that he could have been born in the 20th century. 400 years earlier the nurse would have just looked at me and asked in puzzlement, ‘What’s an eyelash?”

Raspberry Filling Women: To Tea or Not to Tea

Sure, it looks pretty now. But wait till it is filled with tea.

I don’t like tea. I like the notion of tea. Not the beverage. At intervals of my life
I’ve given tea a fair shot.
 
-My coffee-guzzling parents, for some odd reason, served tea post-Sunday afternoon nap, pre-evening worship service. They drank their coffee black, but loaded up their tea cups with cream and sugar. So did I. We all dunked our Rippin’ Good cookies in the tea. We all looked morosely into our half-filled cups of sugary, milky, sodden-cookie crumbed tea. And then my father would say, “Time to get ready for church!” and we would dump the tepid messes down the sink. And then we would do it all over again the next week.

-My best friend in 8th grade gave me a box of Bigelow’s Assorted Teas all wrapped up in fancy paper for my birthday one year, along with a little teacup. I was captivated. It was the prettiest wrapped gift I’d ever gotten. Its beauty, and my loyalty to our friendship, sustained me through the entire box of tea. When it was gone my mother asked if I would like to put more tea on my Christmas list. I burst into tears.

-Several college friends from New Jersey were attached to their tea routines by an Orange Pekoe and Earl Grey lifeline. I learned that I could be a quite fabulous actress when my East Coast Cool Factor was at stake. I sat through numerous dorm room tea gatherings, smiling and agreeing to second cups, which I swigged with a hatred usually reserved for rodents and algebra.

And now I am an adult. A coffee-loving adult at peace with her tea enmity. An aficionado who clips articles about the health benefits of coffee. A coffee patriot who has tried to ignore all the raves about how women my age should drink green tea, or ginseng tea, or chamomile or hibiscus or lily of the valley tea. They promise me youth, vitality, and an efficient digestive system.

Once again I make my wistful way past the coffee delights and slump in front of the tea display.
Thirty minutes and thirty dollars later I have a tea to fight colds, one to reduce blood pressure, one to increase antioxidants, and one to make me relax.
Exhausted, I head home, and put on a pot of coffee.

Captions United Against Sandy

Hurricane relief will (hopefully) pour into the east coast.
This may be the only called CUAS (Captions United Against Sandy) 
Here's how it works. Below are photos of The Prude's dog.
YOU come up with a caption (or just a comment)
for one of the first 2 photos of Bonny.
(The third one was already brilliantly captioned by my middle son)

For every caption (or even comment) that is made here, on Facebook or Google Plus
The Prude will donate a dollar to the hurricane relief on the east coast.

Designate your caption for
-the lip photo
-the ear photo

Seeing the devastation and frustration and no-end-in-sight misery in New York
and New Jersey makes us grateful for our blessings, realize the next natural cataclysm could be in our town, and leads us to wish we could do more to help.

And it gives me another chance to share pictures of my ridiculously cute, zero-dignity dog.

LIP PHOTO

EAR PHOTO

THE MIDDLE SON'S WINNER

ARE YOU MY MOTHER?

Can't wait to read these!

Raspberry Filling Women and the 40 Winks

Want to see a twinkle in the eye of a lady on the plus side of 50?
Brawny-chested men won’t put it there.
Chocolate? Possibly, but there is a more immediate craving.
Jewels? Vacations? A lifetime supply of Oil of Olay Deep Wrinkle Remover?  Is that the best you have?
Fuzzy slippers, an afghan and a recliner?
Oooooohhhh.
Now you are talking.
We don’t always want our pulses to race, our taste buds to quiver or our social status to elevate.

We want a nap.

Not a long one. Enough to release stress but not so long that we forget what year it is. Or which millennium.
Our sleep should be deep enough for little cherubs to do a happy dance in the corners of our mind, but not so deep that the cherubs metamorphasize into winged dust globules with digestive issues.

A satisfying nap will do a Raspberry Filling Woman more good than a shot of Botox, a shot of 5 Hour Energy or a Valium shot. It will give her brain a chance to clear, her creativity and energy a chance to recharge and those funny little wrinkles along her top lip a chance to relax.

We’ve been storing away missed nap opportunities for years and now, with kids a bit older, or some time off from work, we want to cash in on all the naps we pined for during our education years, our child-rearing years, our career building years.

The nap helps build stamina. It is good for our hearts. It helps make up for sleep lost at night because of demented hormones, a snoring spouse or a barking dog.

Ladies. Throw off the shackles of guilt, the fear that we’ll be labelled as lazy and libeled as slugs.
Stonewall Jackson, Ronald Reagan, Winston Churchill, Thomas Edison, JFK, and Napoleon Bonaparte all benefitted from naps. They achieved greatness. And they are all men. This, my friends, is why women our age do not get the notice we deserve. We aren’t famous because we’re behind on our naps.

Let’s change all that, starting about 1pm today. Cuddle down, cover up, and snooze. Rise up, go forth, and change the world. A grateful nation may name an airport for you. Or at the very least, a dessert.