Red Head! or Green Thing!

Today has been great or better said, "It ended up being a great day after all." This morning I slept in and had no regrets, because I stayed up, until 1:00, reading Marie Bostwick's fabulous (can't put it down) book The Promise Sisters. 

Talk about a fun book to read, oh my goodness—Marie's fictional characters were so real to me and they were so very quirky, so as you can guess I loved each one of them, especially Avery—the part-time, professional mermaid.

And even their mother Minerva was a true piece of work. Anyway the time flew by, because I was having so much fun reading this marvelous book. But, when I looked up, at our new, awesome, La Crosse Atomic Clock I made myself quit reading, with only one chapter left for me to read.

So this morning I climbed out of bed just a little bit before 9:00 and I had two adorable Chihuahuas under my arms—yawning. So my day started out fine, but only for a few hours, even though it was a full moon last night. Actually, it was a full Worm Moon and also a Blue Moon on top of that.

While I was trying to wake up and talking to Tony, I calmly said, "I think our cabin is haunted." Tone gave me a funny look that wasn't funny.

"No it's not. Why do you say that?" he asked.

"Because every night it only happens after you've gone to bed."

"Nance, our cabin is not haunted. I promise. What happens?"

"Every night, after 10:30, it starts and it only happens at night. It sounds like someone is outside chunking big rocks on our roof. Seriously, it is so loud it even startled Belle, Henry and Big Al(ice). It's scary." Tony stared at me and said nothing, then he went outside to work on clearing away some of the stuff, on our front porch. So I took a shower and got dressed.

Around 1:00, right before we took off for Kerrville, Tony walked into the kitchen wearing a red and black plaid, flannel shirt. "Oh," I said, because I realized that I was wearing my matching red and black plaid, flannel shirt.

"Oh what?" Tony asked.

"Oh, it's nothing," I replied, because he was obviously unaware that we were dressed alike, again. Then we took off, for Kerrville, to run a few errands, because tomorrow we are going to Austin, because Ronnie & Nita's daughter is getting married.

Our first stop was at the Post Office. Our next stop was, almost across the street, at a big box store, so I could make my monthly credit card payment and to also buy a brand new pair of Levis 501 jeans for the wedding. And that is when things started going haywire for me.

After I paid a friendly cashier, I went to the Levis jean department and grabbed a pair of jeans and when I walked up to the counter to pay for them a young, woman cashier said, "Did you find everything, sir?" Then she looked up at me/he and she told me the amount and I paid it.

Her remark embarrassed me, so as soon as she sacked up my "wedding pants" I walked as fast as I could to get out of that department store. But as luck would have it, as soon as I opened the door to exit the building, an alarm and buzzers went off, and a male voice, over the intercom loudly said, "Stop. Do not leave. You must return. Go to a checkout station..." or it was something like that.

Now truly embarrassed, for the second time, with a lot of shoppers staring at me, I marched to the nearest checkout counter, the Shoe Department and I turned myself in. Where minutes earlier I had made a payment on my credit card, before going to buy my jeans.

The cashier was very nice, because I guess he could see my red head. Seriously it was not just my face that was red. "May I please see your bag?" he asked politely, in a sympathetic kind of way.

I handed over my "stolen" goods. As he went through my shopping bag, I was standing there imagining a mall cop showing up next and putting handcuffs on me, so the real police could come and haul me off to jail.

Then as I was imaging how embarrassed and mad Ronnie & Nita would be about me stealing a pair of Levis to wear at their daughter's wedding, this kind man said, "I'm sorry. Whoever sold you these jeans forgot to remove the tag. Everything is fine. It will only take me a second for me to remove it...." I let out a big sigh of relief and those shoppers that had been staring at me went back to shopping or shoplifting.

When I returned to the truck and got in, Tony says, "Our satellite radio just quit for no reason. I was listening to Johnny Cash singing Folsom Prison Blues..."

"Yeah, and I was just living it," I shot back, because I was now in a pretty bad mood, because my head was still red.

On our way over to Wolfmueller's Books, I grabbed my iPhone and called the satellite radio's phone number to get them to refresh our signal. It should have only taken three or four minutes to accomplish this, but instead it took us over twenty minutes, as we sat outside Sandy & Jon's fabulous bookstore. And after much frustration we gave up on it and hung up on the tech.

I am so glad we went to Wolfmueller's Books, because when we walked inside, we were greeted by Sandy & Jon, Jon's sweet sister, Jean and Sandy & Jon's dear friend Brook.

When we walked up to the checkout counter, we greeted everyone and then Tony sat down in a chair and I sat down on a stool. Then the fun and laughter began, thank goodness, because it was exactly what I needed to get out of my bad mood.

But before I started laughing, I dumped on our friends and told them about my jeans and what happened to me at the department store. They were all sympathetic especially Jean.

She walked over to me, and said, "Hey, I've got something that will help cheer you up." Then Jean handed me this green thing. And I didn't know what to say, because I didn't know what it was.

"Thanks Jean," I said and then I lied to her wearing a straight face, "Gosh, I love this and I will hang it up, on the wall, right next to our pretty, pink potholder." Then I looked over at Tony and he was trying not to laugh. Which of course made me laugh out loud.

"Did you make this?" I asked trying to be nice, while praying to myself not to burst out laughing as I said it. Even though my shoulders were shaking trying to contain my laughter. 

"Oh no," she softly replied. "I found it this morning, on the street and it was free." And I am thinking thank goodness she didn't pay anything for this weird-looking green thing. I can't hang this goofy-looking thing up, in The Cabin. Our friends will think that were totally crazy.

Then Sandy or Jon said, "Hey, I like y'all's matching red shirts that you're wearing." 

We all laughed except for Tony, because he was too busy discovering that once again we had dressed alike. Something that he truly hates for us to do—especially out in Public. So now it was his turn to be the red head.

Tony and I had a total blast visiting with Jean, Brook and Sandy & Jon and with some of their friendly customers. We laughed and talked about New Mexico, Terlingua and West Texas in general.

Then Brook and I discovered that we had a lot in common. Such as: we are both Libras, love New Mexico and Terlingua, we both play guitars, banjos and mandolins, enjoy drawing and painting, etc. In fact, she joked, "We are soul sisters!"

Then Jean asked to take Tony's and my picture (dressed alike for laughs—I'm sure). And then she took a picture of Sandy, Brook and me. And later on Jean e-mailed me these two pictures. "Thank you, Jean."

Before we left Wolfmuellers and our friends, we remembered why we had actually come by the bookstore in the first place. "Sandy, I am sorry that we can't make y'all's book signing for Elizabeth Crook tomorrow afternoon from 3-5 PM, because we will be at the wedding. We want to buy a copy of Elizabeth Crook's book The Which Way Tree and could you please ask her to sign it to us?"

"Sure. Not a problem, Nancy," Sandy said. And a few minutes later Tony and I adios-ed our dear friends.

Tone and I ran a few more errands and by the time we got back to our Big Foot Ranch, we were happy once again and listening to our favorite satellite radio stations.

P.S. Later on Tony told me that it is Chinaberries hitting our roof top—not ghosts, but I am still not sure. And next week, after the wedding I am going to do some kind of a contest and the winner will be awarded "The Green Thing." So stay tuned.

Y'all have a great evening and keep on laughing!