Friday, October 21, 2011
the MOB dress!
Well. Sunday, October 16, 2011, my oldest daughter Sydnee married her childhood sweetheart James Leroy Epperson III, better known as Trey! Now you know I worried about this wedding. I wanted everything to be perfect, the timing, the sound, the food, the cake, the band, etc. etc. I also wanted the mother of the bride, ME, to look nice. You know I can't wear high heels or any dress shoe comfortably because I'm handicapped. So, with that in mind, I decided to buy myself a nice dress at a boutique in Marietta. You always need a good reason to justify buying an expensive dress and I HAD ONE! The boutique had nothing in the store that I liked so I mail ordered a dress out of a catalog from New York City! No joke! I really did. It took about 6 weeks to get it because it was made when it was ordered.
On my way to the boutique for the first try-on, I was getting anxious. I had worked hard to lose 12 pounds and obviously wanted people to notice it! When I put the dress on, I looked like a scaly whale or an oompa loompa on the downswing of singing Dippity Do! You know, the point where they are their shortest, bobbing up and down to the beat of the music. For a good laugh, check out the pic below. And yes, after I looked at it once, I couldn't look at it again, I closed my eyes shut.....tightly!
On my way to the boutique for the first try-on, I was getting anxious. I had worked hard to lose 12 pounds and obviously wanted people to notice it! When I put the dress on, I looked like a scaly whale or an oompa loompa on the downswing of singing Dippity Do! You know, the point where they are their shortest, bobbing up and down to the beat of the music. For a good laugh, check out the pic below. And yes, after I looked at it once, I couldn't look at it again, I closed my eyes shut.....tightly!
If you could have seen the look on my Mom's face when I walked out of the dressing room in that dress! Despite the fact that I looked like I had gained 45 pounds, all she could talk about was covering up my cleavage which was the only thing that DID look good in my mind! I left the shop shaking my head wondering how in the world could the seamstress and the shop owner tell me I looked good in that dress? Because they sold it to me, that's how! My Mom kept right on trying to convince me "It didn't look that bad" she said and "I wish I had paid more attention to the dress you ordered. I could have told you those pleats would make you look big"! I said, "Mom, you are not helping and I am not wearing that dress. I refuse to pay $!X%#@ for a wedding and arrive at it looking like a hog ready for slaughter!" Anyway, I went to Macy's that same afternoon and found the dress I wore to Sydnee and Trey's wedding. I was very happy with it. I looked the way I had imagined and we took it home. Feast your eyes on this one!
Quite the difference! Now there was only one other thing wrong. The overlay of the dress was so sheer that my Mom's sewing machine would not hem it without pulling the material. I took it to the cleaners in Chatsworth to see if they could hem it and he said he couldn't do it, material too sheer. I asked if he knew who could and he said "Not in this town". So, I decided to just cut off the dress and not hem it and pray it wouldn't ravel. I took the attitude of "If anybody notices it's not hemmed, they shouldn't be looking that closely". It did ravel a bit and Can you believe I had two people that day tell me my dress was coming unhemmed? One woman and yes, one man! Unbelievable. The bride was gorgeous, the weather was beautiful, the band was amazing, the food was great, and so on but they were interested in my dress hem!
The moral of this story is (1) Never, ever buy a dress from a catalog that you haven't tried on, (2) People will notice if your dress is not hemmed and (3) the Mother of the Bride (MOB) has to look skinny no matter what!
Unraveled and hemmed in,
Tammy
The Happy Handicap
Monday, September 19, 2011
Falling and Feelings
Aaahhh Fall! That's what most people think. My daughters love Fall and my husband just loves living period, doesn't voice a particular feelings about any season. Fall is beautiful but it is just that, a fall. We are falling into winter, which sometimes feels like a dark chasm to me. The trees become bare, the grass dies, the ground doesn't produce for several months and the corner of the world we are in is dark more than it is light. God knew winter needed some Light, he sent Jesus in December! We experience the shortest, darkest day of the year in December. Thank God for Christmas, that great Christmas feeling lasts, for me, right up until we are Springing into Summer!
Enough about feelings, nothing more than feelings, trying to forget my feelings of.........have you ever read someone breaking out in song? For you old timers, you will remember that popular song, "Feelings". The rest of you should youtube-it for quite the treat! Anyways, my mom's dog hates me! She's a white pomeranian with orange highlights and her name is Peachie. She looks like a peach, fuzzy all over. Click in the video bar at the left, on the second video right above the YouTube logo and you can see Peachie in action!
Peachie is a great daughter to my mom and dad, a great auntie to my daughters, a nice sister-in-law to Steve, but she is not a good sista to me. My mom lovingly says she doesn't like my scent, what?? I don't like Peachie's scent either but I don't try to bite her! I think she discriminates against handicapped people and it's my limp she doesn't like! She's prejudice to the core. My Mom rescued her from the pound. Her former owners were a hispanic family. I think it may be my dark hair and dark features she doesn't like and most hispanics are short! You can see from the video that she really doesn't like me. This is a video when mom first adopted her, she's over a year old now and she will almost peel my skin back biting me these days!
My daddy calls her Peaches which drives my mom up a wall but, he calls my dog Shorty and his name is Hermie! I call his dog Cookie and her name is Candy! My mom likes the dog because she is pretty! I asked her if she would have sent me back if I had been uglier. What am I thinking? She almost didn't bring me home from the hospital! lol I love joking around about my family and our pets. I love all our pets and all of them are so loving to me except Peachie. She better watch out for me, I wonder if Taco Bell is needing any meat? I'm just not feelin' her!
Just kidding,
Tammy, The Happy Handicap
Enough about feelings, nothing more than feelings, trying to forget my feelings of.........have you ever read someone breaking out in song? For you old timers, you will remember that popular song, "Feelings". The rest of you should youtube-it for quite the treat! Anyways, my mom's dog hates me! She's a white pomeranian with orange highlights and her name is Peachie. She looks like a peach, fuzzy all over. Click in the video bar at the left, on the second video right above the YouTube logo and you can see Peachie in action!
Peachie is a great daughter to my mom and dad, a great auntie to my daughters, a nice sister-in-law to Steve, but she is not a good sista to me. My mom lovingly says she doesn't like my scent, what?? I don't like Peachie's scent either but I don't try to bite her! I think she discriminates against handicapped people and it's my limp she doesn't like! She's prejudice to the core. My Mom rescued her from the pound. Her former owners were a hispanic family. I think it may be my dark hair and dark features she doesn't like and most hispanics are short! You can see from the video that she really doesn't like me. This is a video when mom first adopted her, she's over a year old now and she will almost peel my skin back biting me these days!
My daddy calls her Peaches which drives my mom up a wall but, he calls my dog Shorty and his name is Hermie! I call his dog Cookie and her name is Candy! My mom likes the dog because she is pretty! I asked her if she would have sent me back if I had been uglier. What am I thinking? She almost didn't bring me home from the hospital! lol I love joking around about my family and our pets. I love all our pets and all of them are so loving to me except Peachie. She better watch out for me, I wonder if Taco Bell is needing any meat? I'm just not feelin' her!
Just kidding,
Tammy, The Happy Handicap
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Throwing my Hands Up!
Have you ever watched that movie "The Emperor's New Groove"? I feel like Yzma when her and Kronk were riding the roller coaster to the lab and he said "Yzma, put your hands in the air"! My hands are in the air, throwin them up, and saying go figure. But, don't go figure because it will never add up, not in real life or in your head. Below are some things I find strange today:
1. Why are you told to eat fiber when you get older? The fiber may move your insides but it can't move your outsides any faster! Hands up, figuring on how to get to the bathroom more quickly!
2. Why does Steve invite me to pick worms off the tomatoes and then gather them when every time I make homemade salsa for him, he carries the PACE to the table? Hands up, figuring maybe he just overlooked the big bowl of bright, beautiful, red stuff with the tortilla chips sitting right next to it!
3. Why do people still use the word crippled when being politically correct is so popular? Two hands way up and figuring it's so 2008 and they're so 2000 and late!
4. Why do people think I don't notice them staring at my feet? Wishing I could fly away with two hands and arms in the air and figuring I am just too interesting not to stare at!
5. Why do people get bad attitudes as they get older? Hoping to get on a roller coaster and get my hands high in the air and figuring I'll just go to Disney World and ride in a hoveround!
I love Disney World and I think everyone should see it snow on Main Street USA at least once in their lifetime!
Dreaming of Fantasyland,
Tammy, the Happy Handicap
1. Why are you told to eat fiber when you get older? The fiber may move your insides but it can't move your outsides any faster! Hands up, figuring on how to get to the bathroom more quickly!
2. Why does Steve invite me to pick worms off the tomatoes and then gather them when every time I make homemade salsa for him, he carries the PACE to the table? Hands up, figuring maybe he just overlooked the big bowl of bright, beautiful, red stuff with the tortilla chips sitting right next to it!
3. Why do people still use the word crippled when being politically correct is so popular? Two hands way up and figuring it's so 2008 and they're so 2000 and late!
4. Why do people think I don't notice them staring at my feet? Wishing I could fly away with two hands and arms in the air and figuring I am just too interesting not to stare at!
5. Why do people get bad attitudes as they get older? Hoping to get on a roller coaster and get my hands high in the air and figuring I'll just go to Disney World and ride in a hoveround!
I love Disney World and I think everyone should see it snow on Main Street USA at least once in their lifetime!
Dreaming of Fantasyland,
Tammy, the Happy Handicap
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Ahhh! A Night and Day in Savannah
our trip to savannah to check my air conditioning started at 4:00 pm when steve got home from work on a tuesday afternoon. we went by college and picked up sloane because the trip held more than just a check of my a/c but i've signed a contract and obligated myself not to tell. after we picked up sloane, the adventure began straight through downtown atlanta. i was driving so fast until i hit that downtown traffic stop that my a/c was working perfectly. remember, it works when i'm going fast but not when i'm going slow. steve kept telling me to watch this car and watch that car until i had to crank the a/c on frigid because i was so nervous and perspiring. sloane said "don't worry dad, she won't hit them, they are not parked". sloane is so smart because she is right. my car has this uncanny tendency to gravitate toward parked cars and smash right into them.
we rode right on down south and at some unknown point decided to stop and eat at cracker barrel. we all like to eat at cracker barrel because they always have a chair waiting for you on their porch and a BIG checkerboard with BIG checkers. i reckon they like handicap people because they save me a parking spot right at the door and then greet me sometimes by opening the door. what makes cracker barrel special to me is they don't discriminate against short people with handicaps! have you ever noticed they keep them adult-size rockers and the handicap-size rockers both on the porch right next to one another?
once inside, i was headed to the hostess station to put down our name. there was a woman standing in front of me pickin at the candy display, pickin up every kind of candy on the shelf, examining it and puttin it back down. the hostess looked up, caught my attention and i said, 3 please! steve, being his usual kind self, proceeded to tell me that sloane and i had jumped right in front of that woman fiddlin with the candy and he openly told the woman to excuse us that we were rude. i started to tell him and her that she didn't need to be fiddlin with the candy that if she would go on and get a table they would feed her real food but i didn't want to be rude twice. the hostess seated the woman and then came back and asked me how many? i simply replied "two rude and one nice"!
when we got seated, sloane noticed something white on her dad's shirt. she said "dad, what's that on your shirt?" he looked at it and hurriedly brushed it off. she said "what is it, dandruff?" and he said "NO! it's pieces of skin falling out of my nose". we started laughing so hard because he was so embarrassed. he said "shhhhh, don't tell everyone they will be staring at my nose". we didn't care much and kept right on laughing because we were thinking it served him right for saying we were rude when we really weren't. steve has a terrible case of eczema and it causes skin to fall off of him in several places. sometimes i think i'm married to a reptile because of the skin he leaves laying around, long and round pieces that i'm not sure where they came from.
i saw the cutest plate in cracker barrel that said gobble till you wobble and i thought since i already wobble without the gobble that i would adapt this as my new fall saying.....gobble when you wobble! i think i will add a real turkey gobble to it when i say it (at least as close to a turkey as i can sound). i think it will be a funny addition to our fall activities! with this cool weather coming on, the decision on my air conditioning is that i think it can wait until next summer to repair. i'm startin to like riding with my windows down. it accomplishes several things at one time, 1) gives me a new hairdo, 2) cools me down a bit and 3) the humidity hydrates my skin! i've included a pic below. steve says this is what i look like after we take a trip!
feeling fallish,
tammy, the happy handicap
we rode right on down south and at some unknown point decided to stop and eat at cracker barrel. we all like to eat at cracker barrel because they always have a chair waiting for you on their porch and a BIG checkerboard with BIG checkers. i reckon they like handicap people because they save me a parking spot right at the door and then greet me sometimes by opening the door. what makes cracker barrel special to me is they don't discriminate against short people with handicaps! have you ever noticed they keep them adult-size rockers and the handicap-size rockers both on the porch right next to one another?
once inside, i was headed to the hostess station to put down our name. there was a woman standing in front of me pickin at the candy display, pickin up every kind of candy on the shelf, examining it and puttin it back down. the hostess looked up, caught my attention and i said, 3 please! steve, being his usual kind self, proceeded to tell me that sloane and i had jumped right in front of that woman fiddlin with the candy and he openly told the woman to excuse us that we were rude. i started to tell him and her that she didn't need to be fiddlin with the candy that if she would go on and get a table they would feed her real food but i didn't want to be rude twice. the hostess seated the woman and then came back and asked me how many? i simply replied "two rude and one nice"!
when we got seated, sloane noticed something white on her dad's shirt. she said "dad, what's that on your shirt?" he looked at it and hurriedly brushed it off. she said "what is it, dandruff?" and he said "NO! it's pieces of skin falling out of my nose". we started laughing so hard because he was so embarrassed. he said "shhhhh, don't tell everyone they will be staring at my nose". we didn't care much and kept right on laughing because we were thinking it served him right for saying we were rude when we really weren't. steve has a terrible case of eczema and it causes skin to fall off of him in several places. sometimes i think i'm married to a reptile because of the skin he leaves laying around, long and round pieces that i'm not sure where they came from.
i saw the cutest plate in cracker barrel that said gobble till you wobble and i thought since i already wobble without the gobble that i would adapt this as my new fall saying.....gobble when you wobble! i think i will add a real turkey gobble to it when i say it (at least as close to a turkey as i can sound). i think it will be a funny addition to our fall activities! with this cool weather coming on, the decision on my air conditioning is that i think it can wait until next summer to repair. i'm startin to like riding with my windows down. it accomplishes several things at one time, 1) gives me a new hairdo, 2) cools me down a bit and 3) the humidity hydrates my skin! i've included a pic below. steve says this is what i look like after we take a trip!
feeling fallish,
tammy, the happy handicap
Brad called! He wants his sexy back!
Saturday, August 20, 2011
what a weekend!
last sunday, steve and i had the opportunity to entertain three guys from l.a., that's los angeles, california not lower alabamie! they were here doing a music video for our future son-in-law, trey's band and trey asked me to cook breakfast for them. now since these californians didn't know me and know that i am a happy handicap, i thought i might present myself in something that would make them think i'm just "normal" little me. i told sydnee and sloane that i was gonna wear my long dress instead of my normal pair of shorts so they couldn't see my fine legs and maybe, just maybe they wouldn't notice i limp! (i included a pic of me in my dress below)
well, the breakfast went great. i made biscuits (from the freezer) but they thought they were homemade and since they didn't ask me directly, i didn't tell them no different. i had never made that much gravy to feed 11 people so my girls and me said a prayer over it while i was puttin it together. it was the best gravy i have ever made, no joke! i had cream cheese danish with some fruit that sydnee fixed in a pretty plate all fancy-like and scrambled eggs. one of the guys from l.a. said that everything is fresher in georgia. he said the milk tastes fresher and he told me my eggs were the best he had ever eaten, no fibbing. he asked me how i got them so fresh and i told him it was because i had just gone outside that morning and lifted the chicken off of them, brought them in and put them in the pan while they were still warm from the hen's feathers. his eyes got really big and wide and wanted to go see the chickens. at that point, i had to come clean and tell him, nah, i got them from the grocery store like everybody else and i couldn't figure why my eggs were any better than anyone else's! i started to tell them my theory of my being short helps me cook better because i am so close to the stove and the pans, it's like having a birds eye view and I don't over stir!
the conversation at breakfast went smoothly and just about the time the guys were about to leave, steve turns to them and says "Guys, y'all don't know anyone in l.a. that works with silicone, do you?" and i thought, oh no! yep, he continued right on to say, well, tammy's handicapped and she wears custom silicone prosthetics and i was wondering if you knew anybody in the movie business that works with silicone that might tell us how to make her some feet! they didn't know anybody and i just acted like i didn't even notice he said anything. i decided right then and there that if i was ever gonna try and mask my handicap again, i would definitely let steve in on the plot! i love him because i know he always has my best interest at heart and was trying to help me get my feet cheaper where he could buy me more pairs of them. the la guys didn't blink an eye so i'm pretty sure they had already noticed i limp.
after our guests left, steve invited me out to our small garden to help him look for worms and pick them off the tomato plants. i don't particularly like to do this exercise but steve loves it and he says it gives us some together time and increases our tomato harvest. i think it just makes me hot and my feet hurt and he's much more interested in the worms than he is being with me. i don't know about yours but our tomato plants have about quit bearing and i told steve just let the worms eat the plants and the tomatoes too if they want them!
next week i'll tell you about our trip to savannah to test out my air conditioning. you won't want to miss that post! talk to you then...
well, the breakfast went great. i made biscuits (from the freezer) but they thought they were homemade and since they didn't ask me directly, i didn't tell them no different. i had never made that much gravy to feed 11 people so my girls and me said a prayer over it while i was puttin it together. it was the best gravy i have ever made, no joke! i had cream cheese danish with some fruit that sydnee fixed in a pretty plate all fancy-like and scrambled eggs. one of the guys from l.a. said that everything is fresher in georgia. he said the milk tastes fresher and he told me my eggs were the best he had ever eaten, no fibbing. he asked me how i got them so fresh and i told him it was because i had just gone outside that morning and lifted the chicken off of them, brought them in and put them in the pan while they were still warm from the hen's feathers. his eyes got really big and wide and wanted to go see the chickens. at that point, i had to come clean and tell him, nah, i got them from the grocery store like everybody else and i couldn't figure why my eggs were any better than anyone else's! i started to tell them my theory of my being short helps me cook better because i am so close to the stove and the pans, it's like having a birds eye view and I don't over stir!
the conversation at breakfast went smoothly and just about the time the guys were about to leave, steve turns to them and says "Guys, y'all don't know anyone in l.a. that works with silicone, do you?" and i thought, oh no! yep, he continued right on to say, well, tammy's handicapped and she wears custom silicone prosthetics and i was wondering if you knew anybody in the movie business that works with silicone that might tell us how to make her some feet! they didn't know anybody and i just acted like i didn't even notice he said anything. i decided right then and there that if i was ever gonna try and mask my handicap again, i would definitely let steve in on the plot! i love him because i know he always has my best interest at heart and was trying to help me get my feet cheaper where he could buy me more pairs of them. the la guys didn't blink an eye so i'm pretty sure they had already noticed i limp.
after our guests left, steve invited me out to our small garden to help him look for worms and pick them off the tomato plants. i don't particularly like to do this exercise but steve loves it and he says it gives us some together time and increases our tomato harvest. i think it just makes me hot and my feet hurt and he's much more interested in the worms than he is being with me. i don't know about yours but our tomato plants have about quit bearing and i told steve just let the worms eat the plants and the tomatoes too if they want them!
next week i'll tell you about our trip to savannah to test out my air conditioning. you won't want to miss that post! talk to you then...
bye now,
Tammy, the happy handicap
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