Erma Does Not Live Here!

Dear Ry & KK,

I leave at o’dark-thirty in the morning for the trek of tears back to Kansas. Mr. Man has a bucket full of drugs; Darla the car is raring to go; and I have what I believe to be a lucky rabbit’s foot.

I think it’s a rabbit’s foot. I found it when I was downtown today. At the restaurant. In my seafood platter.

I’m scared. I’ll admit it.

I’m scared Mr. Man won’t fold up properly so that I might stow him in the back seat. I’m scared I’ll get lost without his navigational wisdom, or worse yet, that I’ll listen to him when he says turn right and we’ll drive off the end of the Earth. That’s how it happens you know. A druggie offers directions and there you go.

I’m scared I’ll fall asleep at the wheel once my banana pudding fueled energy crashes and die a horrible death but I won’t know it because of being asleep and what not and I’ll wake up in the afterlife and it’ll be awkward.

At any rate, I have to do it because short of the stork picking this man up and delivering him back to Kansas, there is no other way and believe me when I say I thought of EVERY other way possible. to include an airplane and shooting him out of a cannon.

Say a prayer for me if you pray. If not, say a rhyming poem for me. I like things that rhyme. I would have wanted it that way.

Mr. Man

Mr. Man thinks his back problem is all about him.

“MY back hurts.”

“MY spine feels like it’s broken in ten places.”

“MY God kill me now to make the pain stop.”

He is so self absorbed. Anyone with eyes can see his excrutiating back pain is nothing compared to my inconvenience.

Question to those of you who scored highly on your SATs:

If you have one 6′2″ man weighing approximately equal to a full grown VW Beetle who cannot bend at the waist without crying like a 7 year old girl, how many narcotic drugs do you have to hide in his oatmeal in order to fold him neatly into a 3′ 5″ man so that you may stuff him into the back seat of your mid-size car and drive 1000 miles?

I’m not sure, but I think the correct answer is an ass load.

I swear, of all my husbands, he is the most selfish. He’s living in his own little world and to Hell with his precious wife. So what if she doesn’t like to drive through Nashville? Who cares if she gets sick of listening to him cry out in agony?  It’s not HIS problem that she can’t eat junk food while trying to navigate through Paducah.

I’m so gonna divorce him – but only if I can find a husband on the way back to Kansas. I saw three or four good possibilities in Arkansas in that gas station that sold fish feed and Slurpies. They looked as though they had strong backs and wouldn’t mind being my chaffeur. I’m just not sure they’d have an interest in me since I’m not related.

Gotta run. The bedtime banana pudding ritual is about to begin.

Ry & KK,

I don’t have any Rhondas on hand, but if I did, I would ask for their help. Because I need help. In a big way. And as everyone knows thanks to the Beach Boys, Rhonda is the only one who can help.

Mr. Man is broken. AGAIN. This time though he’s broken here, at Point A, and we have to get him to there, Point B.  I’m saying if he hadn’t spent the better years of his life having circus sex with women who were not me – because he didn’t know me – his back wouldn’t have turned into what I have every reason to believe is uncooked spaghetti noodles.

He’s pitiful. He is curled up in a fetal position from the pain.

I, too, am pitiful. I am curled up in a fetal position as well from the realization that now I know I”m NEVER GETTIN’ ANY.

But I digress. His Kansas physician has called in prescriptions that I could sell on the street for many dollars, so at the present moment, he is stoned. That’s good for everyone. The bad news is one of the meds they have to put him on when this happens, makes him virtually Satan-like. Within a day or two, he will begin to ask me why I have brown eyes and then he’ll recount all the ways brown eyes make me less valuable as a human than people with blue eyes.

The worse news is that Friday morning I am going to drag him to the back seat of Darla the car, throw him in, and drive with him all the way back to Kansas. It will be twenty hours of good natured banter about how badly he hurts and how much he wishes my mother would have paid some back alley doctor the sum of $100 to abort me.  I’m not kidding you. He gets so mean that the last time, he barely spoke to me for a week other than to growl at me, simply because I looked at my watch. “What’s that new thing you’re doing? Always looking at your watch? What the hell? You got somewhere you need to be all the time now?”

I nearly shoved my Timex up his assex.

Pray for Mr. Man to get better soon. More than that though, pray that if I kill him, it’s in one of the states between here and home that does not have the death penalty.

I gots to go. It’s banana pudding time. Again.

Shurry Lynn

Shurry & her prettier sister, Connie Suey.

Aunt Shurry and another niece - Carlee.

Help me baby Jesus. Help me Cheeto Mary.

I am lying in North Carolina next to a man who is snoring as though he is trying to snort cocaine from the neighbor’s bathroom. It is 9:23 PM and I have been in bed since 9:01 PM.

It might be sorta OK to lie in bed next to a man in North Carolina at this hour, but sadly the man is my legal husband. For now. Because his jacked up back has at some point in this trek become even jacked uppier, he is sucking back pain pills and Gatorade the way I’m sucking back Moonpies and fried okra. They make him loopy, sleepy and unsociable. They make me want to kill him with sweet tea.

I’m not sure how to do it yet, but I do know death by sweet tea in this state is still legal. Thank you Delta Burke. (I know. I don’t know why I said her name either.)

There have been various relatives here virtually every waking moment. That’s good. It limits the free time my Father has to ask me if I meant to have my eyebrows look this way and remind me that when I was 17 I got drunk on Tom Collins’ and the whole next day when I was throwing up, he made me paint things outside.

Dear Pop – here’s a newsflash. The whole painting thing didn’t take. It just made me drink smarter and by smarter I mean in a more stealthy way. No more leaving the bottles in the trash for me.

My nieces and nephews are insanely beautiful and I want them all to come home to Kansas with me. I love them so much and the only time I wish for two minutes I still lived here is when I get to see them. If I can figure out how to slip them each a mickey and put them in my trunk, I’m going to haul their pretty asses back to the land of flat nothingness with me.

I also need to figure out what a mickey actually is and make sure it’s something that will blend well into banana pudding ’cause these people eats them some banana pudding. Every five minutes it’s like a banana pudding alarm sounds and someone will pipe up and say, “I’m gonna get me a little bite of banana pudding. Anybody else want a little bite of banana pudding?” And then everyone piles in the kitchen and descends onto that stuff like buzzards picking apart a roadkill banana pudding.

I’ve only seen one sister so far and that’s OK because it’s hard enough to have to be near one sister who is prettier than me. Two at a time and I might drive to the top of a mountain and jump off.

No I wouldn’t. But I’d drive up there by God.

My brother Chad has been here a lot and I love that a big bunch. He made me get on his motorcycle. I screamed. He said don’t scream. I said well then stop trying to kill me. He said I’m only going 5 miles per hour. I said our Mother never wanted you and tried to sell you but because of your big ole water head, nobody wanted you. He said get off my motorcycle.

And then we ate some banana pudding.

I’m exhausted, and my potassium is through the damn roof.

Shurry Lynn

I am writing to you from a Holiday Inn Express in Cookeville, Tennessee. We left Kansas this morning at o’dark thirty AKA 5:00 AM. We drove fourteen hours and tomorrow we have another 5 or 6 until we are at the old homeplace in North Carolina.

I have to say the one thing I missed so much today was Jeremy in Houston – the precious driver KK had pick me up. I liked Jeremy a lot, but I was mostly a big fan of his driving while I did nothing. Today I was Jeremy and the two giant males in the vehicle were me – only smellier and far more aggravating. I do not recall ever once telling Jeremy to turn the air conditioner down and Blue Collar Comedy on Sirius up, much less 897689987 times.

There has been an issue with finding suitable restroom facilities. We stopped in a place in Arkansas where they sold fish bait, t-shirts, gas, tractor parts and coffee. Every single man in the joint was in overalls except Mr. Man and my son and every woman had yellow hair, black roots and a voice that sounded like gravel. Even without make-up and my Sunday go to meetin’ eyelashes, I felt myself to be a goddess by comparison. I’m positve I could have gotten married, but frankly I was worried they’d want me to have sex with them and given the dead animals in the backs of their trucks and the large amount of chew in their bottom lips, I was unwilling to point my heels to Jesus – even though that meant passing up a quickie wedding.

I love and miss you both and hope you miss me, too. When I come home I’m getting rich and famous so I can get me a Jeremy. Driving has lost it’s appeal for me.

I should try and sleep now so my family has only to comment on my hair, my clothes, my lifestyle and my financial state- I don’t think dark bags under eyes should be a freebie.

xoxoxoxo

Shurry Lynn

(That’s my Southern name.)