You Can’t Drink All Day if You Don’t Start in the Morning

by Celia Rivenbark

  Baby steps, y’all.

  Cat whisperers are paid all this money to read the cat’s minds and you don’t even have to leave the comfort of your own home! You could be one of those freaky 740-pound women who pays the misfit neighbor kid to bring her pizza every hour on the hour and still make money at this. Hey, it beats the living hell out of working the fourth-meal nightshift at Taco Bell, am I right?

  I’ve had cats all my life, so I’m just as qualified to “whisper” as the next person. Plus, I believe we’ve all established that, unless I want to keep dividing entrees and cutting my own bangs, I’m going to have to generate some extra scratch.

  I just this minute did a little test run on my own two fur “slippers” still curled around my feet and snoring loudly.

  “Do you think a human can read your mind?” I whispered.

  One yawned and stretched and the other, uh, yawned and stretched. I think they’re saying they’re “tired.”

  I got the gift! Let the whisperin’ begin.

  Here’s a budget-conscious recipe for the current economic climate that Duh and the Princess just love. Added benefit: You can give the drained tuna juice to the cats and they’ll whisper loving thoughts back to you. I swear.

  “YOU AIN’T TOO GOOD TO EAT THIS” TUNA NOODLE CASSEROLE

  1 large can tuna (drain and pour juice into cat’s bowl)

  ½ cup each chopped celery and onion, sautéed ’til translucent

  2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

  1 can cream of celery soup

  ½ cup mayonnaise

  ½ cup milk

  8–12 ounces wide or curly egg noodles, cooked

  Mix all that together and pour into a greased casserole dish that’s big enough to hold it all. Sprinkle with bread crumbs. (Make your own from Wonder Bread; your fancy-ass Panko crumb days are over.) Bake at 350 degrees ’til bubbly, about 30 minutes. Serve with hopes for a brighter future.

  26

  Mamas, Don’t Let Your Sons Grow Up to Be Cheaters

  My pick for the best quote of the year comes from the Australian woman Anna Warrick, who was asked to comment on one little town in the Outback’s attempt to boost the female population by, essentially, recruiting ugly women.

  The mayor of Mount Isa got in deep roo-doo after telling the newspaper that women of the, er, homely persuasion should consider moving to his town because Mount Isa men aren’t all that picky.

  There was also a ham-handed reference to just how grateful these women appear to be once given the attentions of a Mount Isa man.

  But it was Anna Warrick who noted that there aren’t a lot of gems to be found among the town’s men, either: “We have a saying up here that the odds are good, but the goods are odd.”

  Amen, sistah.

  Perhaps the oddest is Hizzoner John Molony, who told the newspaper, “May I suggest if there are five blokes to every girl, we should find out where there are beauty-disadvantaged women and ask them to proceed to Mount Isa.”

  Recruit ugly women, in other words. ’Cause we all know how grateful they are.

  Unable to stop himself, Mayor McCheese added his personal observation that, “Quite often you will see walking down the street a lass who is not so attractive with a wide smile on her face. Whether it is recollection of something previous or anticipation for the next evening, there is a degree of happiness.”

  That’s right. Mae-Jean’s gon’ get some on her—at least that’s the way it sounded.

  The mayor is like the clueless husband who buys his wife a steam iron for her birthday and then wonders why she spends the day weeping behind a locked bedroom door.

  Because Google is a wonderful thing, I was able to satisfy my own curiosity as to what this mayor looked like, this man who would judge other people’s beauty with such confidence.

  Would he have the rugged good looks of Mel Gibson? Or would he more closely resemble the talented and handsome Heath Ledger, who left us way too soon? Or would the mayor possess the more sensitive, even delicate, features of that cerebral Aussie country singer Keith Urban?

  Nope. He’s pretty much Fred Flintstone. The goods are, well, odd, just as Anna said.

  The mayor had to start backpedaling when his comments got out and he had to apologize for dishing up a big bowl of wrong to the women of Mount Isa. The next time he encounters “a lass who is not so attractive with a wide smile on her face” I’d bet that smile has nothing to do with her envisioning that night’s steamy encounter in the sack with one of Mount Isa’s menfolk, but instead she’s probably picturing tossing the mayor into the eager jowls of a wild dingo.

  What is it with men, anyway?

  Hons, I have to tell you that I was crushed at the revelation that my former political crush, John Edwards, had strayed.

  My attractive, single friend Susie quipped over a glass of wine when the news leaked that she was upset about Edwards’ cheating heart for two reasons.

  “On the one hand, it’s just so horribly disappointing that he’s that kind of man,” she said, “but on the other hand, I’m upset because all this time I didn’t know he was available.”

  Awful, but funny, right? Edwards was my U.S. senator when I bumped into him at the post office and was too star-struck to even manage a “howdy.”

  His impossibly boyish good looks and earnest antipoverty speeches were as intoxicating as a Limoncello mojito, which they drink a lot of in Beverly Hills, where John Edwards visited his mistress and their “love baby,” if the National Enquirer can be believed. Which, I think, it can.

  Mainstream media: You snoozed and loozed while the Edwards scandal was broken by the same supermarket tabloid that reported that Barack Obama’s stepmother likes to talk to the ghost of Elvis (as if he were really dead) and, doing the math here, that exercise-addicted Kelly Ripa now officially weighs less than my left thigh.

  I miss reading the Enquirer at the beauty parlor because now it’s gone upscale and calls itself a “sah-lon” and took away the Enquirer and even Weekly World News, with its interviews with wolf-faced little girls and whatnot. Now it’s all chichi with French Vogue and a bunch of other high-fashion stuff that doesn’t tell me a damn thing about the important events unfolding in the world, like Edwards’ dalliance or how a cat walked across the country three thousand miles to reunite with its owner. French Vogue wouldn’t know a good story if it bit its entire editorial staff on the ass, but then I’m guessing it would be almost impossible to find any ass on those models and their handlers.

  Time was, I wouldn’t have believed anything in the Enquirer. Sure, it was fun to read; who can honestly resist a good story about a child who is born half boy and half bat or somesuch. No one I ever want to know, that’s who.

  But exposing my former favorite millworker’s son as a womanizer bedding a rather horse-faced hoochie while his wife battled cancer has changed all that.

  Now I am, to use poker parlance, “all in” with the Enquirer.

  Sure, they pay their sources and their sources are often anonymous and perhaps spend their days walking outdoors behind shopping carts, but even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then.

  This time the nut was Edwards, who must’ve been nervously pulling out the very $400 coiffure I had defended to the point of needing bed rest, as he wondered just how the hell his forty-four-year-old girlfriend got pregnant.

  I mean, I know how she got pregnant, it’s just that, don’t you imagine Edwards thought that was one thing he didn’t have to think about? (She said she was forty, she looked like she was forty-eight. . . .)

  Having supported Edwards’ various campaigns on state and national levels for years, I just hoped that he was the real deal. I ate up that “two Americas” stuff like a plate of cinnamon pancakes at the IHOP.

  Which, now that I think about, might be as close as Edwards ever gets to international involvement for a while.

  The one positive is to realize that, now that the Enquirer has broken a real story, I no longer have to feel the least
bit self-conscious about reading anything in the little tabloid newspaper that has ads in the back for “removing evil spirit curses.” I repeat: all in.

  Edwards was just the most recent bad boy. Men are simple creatures and easily distracted by the new and bleached.

  Because in my muddled noggin all roads lead back to TV at some point, it makes me remember the Trading Spaces fiasco when the network suits fired perky Paige Davis.

  Discarded by her corporate “boyfriends,” Paige made ’em crawl back to her by doing nothing more than watching them fall flat without her.

  After a couple of seasons of low ratings, even the suits admitted they’d been jerks.

  “We felt like the bad boyfriend who had dumped her at the prom and now we’re asking for a second chance,” said one.

  To fire Paige, they had even used that tired old excuse: “We just felt that we needed to go in a different direction.”

  How many times you heard that one, sistahs?

  TV Guide coyly noted that the search for a new direction was answered when the show went “straight down the ratings tubes.”

  Oh, yes, they also “needed space.” It was “not you, it’s us.” Whatever they said, it meant that loyal Paige, whose skill at using really big and dangerous power tools should’ve caused them some concern, was tossed like a used paint-tray liner.

  But that was then and this is now and the scummy ex-boyfriend begged pitifully for a second chance.

  While I personally think Paige should’ve let them twist in the wind, like Frank’s homemade kitty-cat chimes, a bit longer, she’s just too damn nice and perky for that, bless her heart.

  So she said, “OK” and only asked that her best designer-friends (Hildi, Frank, Laurie, and Doug) be given the spotlight, too.

  Paige has scored a win for all of us who have been, at some point in life, cast aside by the one we were loyal to in the search for someone “prettier” or “thinner” or “smarter” or “less-likely-to-stab-you-in-the-retina-if-you-cheat-on-her.”

  The good girl won when the bad boys who dumped her showed up—nervously twisting the latest lousy Nielsen ratings in their sweaty hands—and said they were sorry and would do anything to get her back.

  Anything, that is, except letting Hildi plant grass on their office walls. Everybody’s got limits, y’all.

  Has your heart been broken or maybe just bent up a little? The ultimate indulgent comfort dessert is close at hand. Like all my favorite go-to recipes, this one is ridiculously easy but doesn’t taste that way.

  “YOU BROKE MY HEART SO I BUSTED YOUR JAW” APPLE ENCHILADAS

  1 (21-ounce) can apple pie filling

  6 (8-inch) flour tortillas

  1 teaspoon cinnamon

  1 stick butter

  ½ cup sugar

  ½ cup light brown sugar

  1 pint vanilla ice cream (I prefer Ben & Jerry’s)

  Spoon pie filling evenly down the center of each tortilla. Sprinkle with cinnamon; roll up, placing seam side down in lightly greased 9 × 13–inch baking dish.

  Bring butter, sugars, and ½ cup water to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring constantly, for about 3 minutes. Pour over enchiladas. Let stand at least 30 minutes so it can soak in good. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Serve hot, topped with a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream. Cheers up six despondent gal pals.

  Epilogue

  The Future Is Bloody Well Decided—Or Is It?

  I had just finished the book tour for the hardcover edition of Belle Weather: Mostly Sunny with a Chance of Scattered Hissy Fits, when it hit me: Vampires sell. Every store was full of promotional posters and displays of bestselling vampire lit. I could’ve sworn the salesclerk at Barnes & Noble said, “Neck, please.” Face it: You can’t sling a cat without hitting a vampire book these days.

  The bad news is that I don’t write about vampires. But, hons, that’s all about to change. Maybe.

  I got the idea from the Princess, who joined me for a road trip to Richmond, Virginia, the last stop on the Belle Weather tour. Her eleven-year-old nose was buried in the book for most of our five-hour drive.

  Oh, not my book. Noooooo. She was reading something called New Moon, which is the second book in a vampire series called Twilight.

  “I thought you were going to read my book,” I said, biting my lower lip and sounding utterly peevish.

  “I am,” she said, still not looking up. “And really soon. But I just can’t put this thing down.”

  “Gimme that,” I said, reaching out to grab the silly vampire book out of her hands and careening a little off the highway in the process.

  “Hmmm,” I said, scanning the jacket copy. This sounded pretty good. Mousy high school student Bella falls for dashing and devoted classmate Edward. What could go wrong?

  Oh. He’s a vampire. Well, that sucks.

  The Twilight series has sold in the millions, mostly to preteen and teenage girls and their moms, who love them because the devout Mormon author makes it clear that Bella and Edward are saving themselves for marriage.

  These moms are addicted to the vampire series, apparently because they don’t understand that humorous nonfiction is what can really make their lives more fulfilling and interesting. No, what I meant to say is that they are giddy at the books’ chaste message. It’s almost as if they wouldn’t mind it so much if their daughters would turn eighteen and, like Bella, get engaged to the supernice vampire boy from down the street.

  The notion that any eighteen-year-old is thinking about marriage is scarier than a roomful of thirsty you-know-whats to me, but I can’t fight it any longer: Vampires sell and I want in.

  Sure, it’ll be a little difficult at first because I write Southern-style humor, but I’m sure I can get the hang of it. Hell, how hard can it be?

  So here’s the plan: I’ll create a main character, Bubba Bloodworth, a dashing, bib-overall-wearing vampire who brings a whole new meaning to the word “redneck.”

  Bubba’s victims will be recruited as he cruises local tractor pulls, chicken bogs, and monster truck rallies, looking for, ahem, blood relations.

  Beautiful women will willingly offer up their necks, unable to resist Bubba Bloodworth’s signature pickup line: “Are you from Tennessee, ’cause you’re the only ten I see.”

  Are you hooked yet? See, it’ll be a whole subgenre, as we say in the publishing biz, the irresistible bumpkin-vampire who uses his considerable charms to lure women to his (corn) crib.

  “Girl, you’re hotter’n fish grease,” Bubba Bloodworth will whisper seductively into his Southern belle victim’s ear, causing her to giggle and squeal, “Oh, Bubba! You are just a vampire caution!”

  If the vampire thing doesn’t work out, I will go to Plan B which, based again on my tour of many bookstores throughout several states, is to write a book about a cat who lives in a library. And yes, of course, I know that’s been done, but imitation is the sincerest form of plagiarism and mine would be a vampire cat if need be.

  I told all this to the Princess on the drive home from Richmond but she didn’t bite, so to speak.

  “Mommie, you gotta stay true to yourself,” she said. “You can’t just suddenly start writing about vampires, even ones named Bubba.”

  “Vampire pussycat?”

  “That doesn’t even make any sense.”

  I pretended to agree with her, the same way I didn’t argue when she said that Joe Jonas was the cutest of the Jonas Brothers. Any wise parent knows that, particularly at this tender cusp-of-teendom age, it’s important to pick one’s battles carefully.

  “We’ll see,” I said, turning off I-95 as the sun set over an especially breathtaking field of cotton and we headed toward home. “We’ll just see about that.”

  Acknowledgments

  I am deeply grateful to these editors who have offered solid advice, unflagging support, gentle correction, and a steady paycheck over the years: Sammie Carter, Martie Proffitt, Bobby Parker, Dave Ennis, and Gwen Fowler from newspaperland, and
the divine Jennifer Enderlin at St. Martin’s Press.

  I’m also grateful to my simply smashing literary agent, Jenny Bent. I am now, and always will be, Lana-Turner-discovered-at-the-soda-fountain lucky that she found me.

  Thanks also to David High, a very brave and very funny Southern gentleman who knows all about “Crusmus sweatahs.”

  And, finally, long overdue and heartfelt thanks to Trey Wyatt, my former personal trainer, current comic inspiration, and one of the five people I hope to meet in heaven. Just not any time real soon.