cheese grits

My mama's favorite thing for Sunday brunch is eggs and grits with cheese on top. It's a poor substitute for the real deal which is a garlic cheese egg combination baked in the oven. To die for, ya'll. My grandmother used to make it for Christmas breakfast, and we always have it as well. It's an excellent side dish for most any meat, particularly shrimp or pork. Our new breakfast spot hasn't been doing full breakfast very long so they didn't have the microwave kind and had to cook the ones in the pan that takes 20 minutes. And then he burned 'em! Thank goodness there were four of us there to keep the conversation flowing so that Daddy didn't die of starvation pitch a fit to leave. He told us about how Ms. Mary Lou used to run the Coffee Cup restaurant next door. He planted cotton in the flower bed up front because it was a hangout for he and his coffee drinking buddies. She and her sons have fed several generations around here.

It's been a whirlwind of a weekend with swimming, breakfasting and swinging by to see a couple of old friends. One is having an open house to showcase the work of the people who transformed her old house into a fairyland, a la Oprah or Extreme Makeover. It is beautiful beyond words and I'm so proud for her. I told her if it was me I'd park it on one of those beautiful new sofas and watch some serious TV. After that I dropped by to see some friends at the funeral home and ran into some others I'd forgotten were friends. That's always nice, and it always seems to happen at the funeral home, ya know? To me, a visit to the funeral home or house to pay respects is something that a true friend will try to do just because you've shared parts of your life together.

My brother has informed me that there's new AC in the works so hopefully the utility bills this summer won't put me under like the last two years. When the utilities cost as much as the rent, it's time to do something. My next request will be paint and window repair. And gutter cleaning. There are honest to goodness little trees growing in my gutters. Sheesh. The corn and cotton are green again after a brief rain yesterday. It's cloudy still, so it's not blazing hot for a change. It will be back though. After all....this is summer in the south.

I read an inspirational article this morning about a man who was doing cleanup duty at Ground Zero and pulled a flag out of the rubble. He kept it in his shed for many years until running across it again. When he found it, he began a mission to visit other places of destruction and at each destination, the people of the community added patches of some sort to the tattered flag. It is a true work of art that typifies the strength of the American spirit during hard times. I've got a feeling we're gonna need that for a long while. When I think about all the affluence and waste that I have seen in my lifetime, most of it in the name of getting more "things", it makes me terribly ashamed that I didn't become more environmentally aware earlier. I'm sure I'm not the only one who weeps.

We are facing important family matters every day now, but I try to look at most of it as time spent with my parents, knowing that I will miss them terribly when they're gone. In many ways I admire their tough spirits for hanging onto the homestead as long as they have. They are remarkable people, and a tribute to what the post WWII generation is all about. Their code of honor and belief in what this country stands for has remained steadfast, even as the government that they believed in crumbled into financial ruin and became owned by world banks. Sound familiar?

I love the wastefulness of Sunday afternoons. Reckon it's time I got up and did something self indulgent like a hot epsom salt soak. ^j^