I love to tell stories...

I was reading a friend's blog, thanks TootieD, and she tells good stories.

It reminded me of a story from my 14 year old days.

We had come to Oklahoma City from Farmersville, to celebrate the holidays and see friends and family. During one of our days here, Mom decided we would all go see Mrs. Pace in Elk City.

Mrs. Pace was a dear, elderly woman who had known my mother since her teen days when they worked together at the Children's Center in Bethany. We had grown up visiting Mrs. Pace in her little house where the candy dish always held lemon drops and it always smelled of hand lotion and face powder. We would sit, listen to the grown-ups talk, hear the stories and the news updates and eat lemon drops. Mrs. Pace would always tell me how pretty I was and remark on how much I'd grown. She was a sweet lady and even as kids, we didn't mind the visits. Did I mention the lemon drops? :-)

Anyway, on our trip to Elk City this one winter day, we loaded up the 56 Ford with all three dogs, 2 parents, 2 kids and we headed out. But not before we had prettied ourselves up right. We all put on our Sunday finest, I remember my outfit well. I was 14 after all. SO, I had on my jeans and a lovely blue sweater. I had on my best copper and blue eye shadow and my brand new rabbit fur coat. (Didn't know the details of rabbit fur coats at the time, all I can say is I'm sorry little rabbits I didn't know.) And we set out.

As always, the dogs were excited to be traveling. Jenny and I were in the back seat with Brenda, our little black furry mutt, Snoopy, our cartoon dog look a like and not the brightest dog we'd ever had and Maggie, mom's soul mate and our half shepherd/half chow family guardian.

As if Maggie knew a storm was coming, she roused and jumped to the front seat with mom. About that same time, Snoopy started to whimper. Then he started spewing and not from his mouth. POOP! shooting everywhere on everything. It didn't last long but the coverage was significant. Once it stopped, Snoopy was happy. Wagging his tail, running back and forth...yes, you can imagine. Dad pulled over as quickly as possible and we all bailed out. Discovering the extent of the damage, we did the best we could with the towels we had on hand and finished our journey to Elk City.

Mom was the only one in the car unscathed by the explosion, so we dropped her off at the nursing home and the rest of us went to the nearest carwash. This was my dad's solution. So in December in Oklahoma if you had passed the carwash that day you would have seen 1 child, 1 teenager, 1 man, 3 dogs and one car all bathing in the carwash. My rabbit fur coat...well, it was never the same. Snoopy got that high colonic he'd been craving. We all got a good power wash. We were only slightly damp when we returned to visit Mrs. Pace.

She didn't seem to notice and even in the nursing home, she still had lemon drops. We had a nice visit, we listened to stories and heard the news, and we enjoyed the lemon drops.

peace.