Erma Does Not Live Here!

Loretta Sherri Lynn

I have a toothache. The first one I’ve had since I was about eight years old, I think. As a result, I had to go to see the devil dentist this morning.

I’m afraid of dentists. I know they say dentists are more afraid of me than I am of them, but that can’t be right. As far as I know, a dentist has never burst into tears just because he walked in my front door.

Husbands maybe. Dentists? Never.

Mr. Man nearly threw up blood when he found out I was in so much pain I was admitting I needed to go to the dentist. That’s because he has seen me in dental DEFCON 1 before. I absolutely freak the hell right on out.

“I am going to get up in the morning and actually go in to see the dentist, before you even get there” he said. “I’ll make sure all the paperwork is filled out and that they understand you are not to sit in the waiting room whatsoever.”

That’s what he did. And while he was doing that, I did what I often do when I’m very nervous. I painted my face with about 8 layers of Max Factor prime & spackle and I poofed my hair. The closer the appointment to go to the dentist got, the bigger my hair got. By the time I actually walked out of the house to get in the car, my hair was so giant and Loretta Lynnie I could have easily been Taylor Swift’s twin – if her twin was born forty years earlier than she was and looked absolutely nothing like her whatsoever.

The good news is I have what the devil dentist categorized as a “serious” infection that hurts all the way down into my chest. Woot! The better news is I have to have a root canal. Woot to the extreme!

Thankfully I was given a prescription for drugs that will help – so I’ll be in tippity top shape to go to Kitten’s this weekend and find out whether I’m going to be a Grandma or a Grandpa at the gender reveal party.  I am scared outta my ever lovin’ mind to have a root canal but honestly, it hurts so much this afternoon even WITH drugs that I might be perfectly willing to do the deal myself using a crochet hook and a potato.

Yes. A potato. I don’t even know what that means. Thank you, Darvocet.

Mother & Daddy, 1964

I remember growing up hearing my Pop say, “Time flies. It seems like just yesterday that I was a young man.” I didn’t get it. I was almost positive my Daddy was born a middle-aged man with a scowl on his face and an inexplicable desire to ground teenage girls from the phone.

No way Ralph was EVER somebody’s baby. His name alone was proof of that, frankly. Who could ever rock a tiny baby while singing sweetly, “I love you, RALPH?”

Please with that.

But today as I was gathering photos to take to my pregnant daughter, I realized that my grandchild will only ever see me as a middle-aged woman with false eyelashes and an overwhelming desire to eat chunky peanut butter out of the jar – with my fingers. How in the world can I convince her (yes, I said her) that I wasn’t born middle-aged?

It’s important that I do, you see, because I wanna be the cool Grandma. I had to be the hard Mom, always making sure my son and daughter followed the rules and chewed with their mouths closed. I had to act upset when my daughter learned to say, “son of a BITCH” at age three. I couldn’t in good conscience let my son quit school in 2nd grade when that awful Morgan girl was mean to him even though I firmly believed he was already talented enough to land a good job as a professional Matchbox car driver.

I’ve done my time as Momzilla. I’ve earned the right to be “I WANNA GO TO MAW MAW’S HOUSE OR I’LL HOLD MY BREATH UNTIL I PASS SMOOTH OUT!!!”

There will be no rules, because of my coolness and whatnot.

No teeth brushing. No saying ‘excuse me’ when she burps so loud the neighbors think I just popped open an ancient crypt in my living room. No saying please and thank you and definitely NO warnings not to stare at ugly people in the grocery store. She’s curious, my unborn grandchild. Ugly people will fascinate her.

I don’t know how I’m going to pull this off really. I don’t yet know how I’m going to make sure my grandbaby sees me as the crazy cool grandma with lovely eyelashes who serves fried M&M’s for breakfast and whose lips cannot even form the words, “It’s bedtime.”

Maybe if I form a boy band? But that’s a story for another time.

Sadie Loves a Sigma

I got scared.

A few days ago, someone I’ve never met decided that I am well worth hating. While I was on the phone with his wife (who also hates me), I could hear him screaming at me in the background.

Over and over he said my name and over and over he told me how he would make me pay. To him, I was more than an f’n bitch – which you’ll be happy to know he thinks I am. I was a C -U – next Tuesday, which of course is the Grand Supreme of all the hate laden swear words.

I kept my cool for the duration. I lowered my voice, spoke in even tones and did my best to sound all together unaffected. When I hung up the phone though, I was shaking like it was 10 below in the house and I started to sob so hard, it felt like I would lose my breath.  So afraid and shaken up, I couldn’t even form words.

This bad guy knows where I live. If he truly wanted to, he could be here in less than an hour and attempt to make good on his threats. That terrified me. It still does.

I’m trying to be a big girl.  I’m trying to stop looking behind shower curtains and under beds, and when the dogs bark, I am actually saying to myself, “It’s OK.”

I remind myself who I am pretty much hourly at this point and who I am is the granddaughter of a 90 LB bad ass mountain woman if ever there was one.

Rosie was the only girl in a family of boys, and she was tough as nails. She could climb any tree; beat any boy’s natural ass; wring a chicken’s neck and fry it it up all before her brothers got their boots on. When I was growing up if she walked outside to hang laundry and a snake had the misfortune of crossing her path, she’d chop its old head off throwing its tail in one direction and its head in the other. When there was a noise in our house, it wasn’t PawPaw that went to investigate. Off Rosie would go with a flashlight and a scowl and I shudder to think what would have happened to anyone she’d have caught fooling around the property.

If anyone had said such a thing to her as this man said to me, she might have took it and went on down the road, but she surely NEVER would have let that son of a gun get under her skin.  And God forbid anyone would have ever spoken to me in such a way and she’d have found out about it. He’d have been peeling a tiny, Southern, redneck piece of fresh hell off his skin for weeks.

So I have to toughen up now. I have to stop being a scared little girl and get back to being Sherri – Rosie’s granddaughter. If that bastard wants to come and screw with me, he best pack a lunch because despite the nosebleed hooker heels I will undoubtedly have on when we tussle, I am a hell cat and I fight dirty.

Oh. And the pretty Sigma sitting at my side doesn’t hurt any either.