Beach House in the Burbs

Best decision I've made in years was joining this band one year ago this week. The Seed and Feed is an Atlanta-based community band with only two goals: making music and having fun. After having heard them several times over the years (the band's been around since the '70s) I brushed off my alto sax that I hadn't played in more years than I want to think about and am now making music and having fun with these people every week. We dress in costumes to perform in parades, at wineries, at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, old folks' homes, neighborhood galas, weddings, bars (we love playing in bars)--really, wherever we get invited (and often paid). So, for a good time, come out and hear the Seed & Feed. Check our Calendar , it's being updated all the time with new gigs. This weekend, we'll be heralding Santa's arrival at Atlantic Station Saturday at 6:30 pm. Bring the kids and enjoy the music and fun. That's what we're all about! A special ...

Clowns, jugglers, mimes, these were all suggestions from the double-wedding committee (family friends who had been giving opinions our entire lives) 22 years ago when my sister and I were planning our wedding. People look at us funny when Susan and I talk about "our" wedding, but given the outside committee we had to deal with, the grooms didn't get to have a lot of input. On this anniversary, as I look back at pictures, there are so many things I remember I about that day. The videographer (and member of the wedding committee), the late, great Harry Watters, rendered almost invisible, just like my mother insisted. The wedding brunch. Daddy was presented with a trophy by committee chair Judy Watters for surviving (and paying for) the whole ordeal. The trophy reads, "Life's work well done; rest thee now." My dress, which had been my aunt's when she got married in 1956, hanging from the ceiling fan while guests milled around in Mom and Dad's living roo...

Over the past week the response I've gotten most often to "My dad wrecked his Harley," isn't, "How is he?" but, instead is, "Your dad has a Harley? Cool." Because he is going to be okay, I can live with this response. And it made me realize I don't know anyone else whose 71-year-old father has a Harley that he rides regularly. (Or at least used to ride regularly. He's still not sure whether it's totaled or not.) He rides it so regularly, in fact, that he owns assless chaps and a reflective, nearly glow-in-the-dark Harley vest. He chipped his sternum in the accident, a break that takes a long time to heal because there's no setting it, and he can't stop breathing to hold it still. But his doctor says he'll be fine because he works out. My father, who was a couch potato of the highest order for at least as long as my mother's known him and they were high-school sweethearts, started going to the gym after he retired. Before...

For Eli's 15th birthday we ordered up snow! It was a gorgeous, windy, cold day. My nephews, Eli the birthday boy, and his younger brother Jake, enjoying the snow. It's always such a great surprise when it actually snows--especially in March.

"A dead cat! She brought me her dead cat," Susan, my forensic anthropology professor sister, said. "Wow! Your students must really love you," I said, after a bite of chicken vegetable soup. "Yeah, they do. Next week she's bringing me her dead ferret. Will you pass the cornbread, please?"

... even the Pomeranians have broken out their winter sweaters! Fashionista the Princess Prissy Pants "Does this sweater make me look fat?"

These cakes are beautiful and weird! I can see them being served at the wedding of most any of my Redneck Tarot characters! Well, except Billy. He's having a Krispy Kreme donut cake. Almost makes me wish I could bake--almost!

This is an entirely inappropriate blog post for someone who not only voted for Barack Obama, but also is thrilled to pieces at what she has seen from him in the days since his inauguration. But I can't help it. For as genuinely happy as I am to have a Democrat back in the White House, I am almost that happy to have temporary possession of a Confederate States of America cuckoo clock. Its tacky kitschy quality speaks to the tackiest part of my Southern soul. Here's how we came to have it. Last week when my sister and I went to Huntsville, Ala., to surprise our mom for her birthday, we found a surprise ourselves. We walked into the living room, a room that has changed little since we grew up in it. A room that hosted my mother's liberal friends during all the dark years when they had to practically meet in secret due to the conservatism that permeates Huntsville. Despite its history, the room housed a CSA cuckoo clock, complete with Stonewall Jackson on a horse, Robert E. Lee...

It's just been birthday central around here lately. First Elvis , then my mother, then my nephew and Chris's is next Thursday. But I can't let Mom's get lost in the shuffle. She turned 70 on January 14, an event my sister and I decided couldn't go by without some sort of celebration, despite Mom's insistence that she didn't want a party. She got one anyway, an intimate party of four. Susan (my sister) and I drove from Atlanta to Huntsville, Alabama, on the 13th, arriving about 6:30 p.m., while Mom and Dad were at the gym. Daddy, who was in on the plot, had left the front door unlocked. We brought dinner, homemade chicken vegetable soup, angel rolls and birthday cake. Plus, we'd stopped at the Piggly Wiggly in New Hope, Alabama, and bought ice cream for coffee punch and to go with the cake. We set the table with Mom's crystal and china. Leroy, Daddy's shih tzu, let us know when they were almost home. He starts whining whenever Daddy's car reac...

In honor of Elvis’ 74th birthday, I thought I’d give you a tour of our guest bathroom, known for nearly 15 years as the Elvis bathroom. I wasn’t a huge, drooling, fawning, panty-throwing fan of Elvis. By the time I came around to liking his music, he was probably dead. Though living in the South my whole life I admit I’ve seen some folks who could have been him, but likely they were just huge, drooling, fawning fans. But then I found this shower curtain. I don’t know what drew me to it. Maybe Elvis possessed it? We had just moved into our trash heap of a house and decided that the hall bathroom had to be remodeled first. The shower curtain was the inspiration I needed. We have a lot of company. I couldn’t ask them to use the scary bathroom. Instead we asked them to bathe with Elvis. We painted the walls in jailhouse stripes, to honor that horrible movie, Jailhouse Rock . (I’m not a blind fan, though I admit to liking Viva, Las Vegas .) A friend gave us a picture of Elvis in the shower....

Nearly 10 years ago, back when we had more energy than money (Now we have no energy and no money, but that's another story.) my husband Chris bought a Jeep. Not one of those nice Grand Cherokees that the commercials show going off-road, but that you know never leave the pavement because who in their right mind would get a $40,000 car mired in the mud. No, he bought a 1984 CJ-7, a rugged, no air-conditioning, no radio, no room for sissies, real man's Jeep. In other words, he bought a hobby. For the first few months Chris' relationship with his Jeep was purely destructive. He moved my much nicer, much newer car out of the garage and pulled the Jeep in. “Only for three or four days,” he said. He spent hours over the next months taking parts off, cleaning them, oiling them, gazing at them all over the garage floor. Finally, he was ready for the next phase of his hobby, though my car wouldn’t move back into the garage for many more months. Chris did lots of work under the hood, ...

I've been too busy to blog lately, but this week I'm going to try to make up for it. Tomorrow I'm part of a blogapalooza put together by Angela Nickerson at her travel blog Just Go . Participating blogs will all have stories about a harrowing journey, just in time for Halloween. She's also got goodie bags to give away to several lucky comment-leaving Trick or Treaters. My post is about a ride on a "Donkey with a Death Wish." Check back tomorrow for that and hit Just Go for more on the goodie bags and to see who else has had a harrowing journey. On Friday, in honor of the spooky day, I'll post a true ghost story about my grandmother, called, appropriately enough, "Grandma's Ghosts."

When my nephews were little and cute, I can remember wondering if I'd still love them when they got to be big. What if they grew up and weren't any fun? What if they were mean? What if they were boring? I wasn't even going to venture into what if they became ax murderers, or worse. I was just worried about not liking them. They are now 14, 11 and 9, teetering between childhood and adulthood. When I called their house last week, Eli, the 14-year-old, answered, and because they have caller ID, he launched immediately into, "Aunt Karen, there's an air show this weekend. Don't you want to go?" Since Chris (my non-workaholic, he says, but constantly working husband) had to work, and my sister and her husband viewed this as an opportunity to ditch their offspring for a few hours, I took them on my own. The day was beautiful, sunny and warm, but not hot. We rode a shuttle bus that arrived at the show just in time for us to see the F-22 Raptor through the bus win...

Okay, it’s a stretch to tie a lovely wedding to the mess that’s all over my car, but since they both involved love and I have pictures, I thought I’d give it a shot. Sometimes you need a challenge. So, in chronological order: Attack of the love bugs, Part I I drove from my house north of Atlanta to south-central Georgia a couple of weeks ago. I write about economic development (an elusive concept these days) in various Georgia counties for Georgia Trend magazine and was headed off to learn all there was to know about Coffee County. The first thing I learned is that to get there in late September you have to drive through the mating love bugs . Not only do they swarm so disgustingly that you can hardly see to drive through them, but they dry on the car in an instant. Then it takes dynamite and a crowbar to get the nasty bits off. I fretted a little about not making a professional impression, what with my car looking like a giant had upchucked on it. But at least two out of three cars i...

Every eye in the tent was on the woman sitting on a stool on a bare wooden stage talking about how she’d have lost her virginity if only the police hadn’t interrupted at a crucial moment the carefully researched and staged event. No one gasped or tut-tutted at the indelicate subject matter. We were too busy wiping the tears of laughter that ran from our eyes. Beth Horner , the virgin under discussion, was followed by Bil Lepp , who told us about how one of his college buddies, Paul, had built a submarine in his dorm room their senior year. The sub was so big they had to blast a hole in the dorm wall to get the pig-pink contraption out. (Bil won the West Virginia State liar's contest several years running.) The National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee, which comes up the first weekend of October each year, is like sitting around the Thanksgiving table enjoying a feast of the best family stories—with 20,000 of your closest friends and assuming your family includes t...

That’s pirate speak for “Hey, y’all, it’s my grandmother’s birthday!” She’s 91 on this International Talk Like a Pirate Day. We hope she won't be walking the plank anytime soon. Here’s a picture of her (she's second from the left) and my mom and my two aunts from last year at our family reunion to celebrate her 90th. Nana's not doing great this year-—forgetting things, though she still remembers people and faces, if not names. And her body’s wearing out. Much too slowly to suit her, she says. But she’s still around at 91, which gives all of us coming up after her hope for ourselves. (Her mother lived to be 93! Shiver me timbers, but the women live a long time in my family.) Some of my best memories are of Nana young and fun. Going to her house meant liver mush for breakfast. Neese's is the best (and only) brand we'd eat. They call their liver mush liver pudding, but our family never used the pudding label. YUMMY! It’s a sausage-like dish, only so much better, sold ...

A quickie today from the Washington Post book blog Short Stack , about books people are embarrassed not to have read. I read a lot, though I've never been a huge fan of "important" fiction or the "classics." But bless my heart, the book I'm most embarrassed, as a lifelong Southerner and lover of the movie, not to have read is Gone with the Wind. I'll get to it. 'Cause tomorrow is another day! So, tell me, what are you embarrassed to admit you've never read?

Today (September 3) is my birthday. It’s not a BIG ONE, though it’s big enough to suit me. We’re not doing anything very exciting—Wednesday birthdays don’t lend themselves to much in the way of going out or partying. Though I already got one present today-- Furry Happy Monsters . Guaranteed to wake you up happy! But several years ago, when I experienced a BIG ONE, my sweet husband, Chris, threw me a surprise party that achieved its goal. I almost had a heart attack when I walked in the house (my sister, who was in on the whoop-de-do, had taken me out to lunch) to find 40 people dressed in their tropical finest, pina coladas in the blender, exotic eats and a mountain of gifts. It was great fun. My sister, Susan, who got all the baking genes in the family, made me a cake. She got a “Barbie” from the dollar store, laid her out on the cake and wrapped her in a shroud. Susan said that she’d made the cake the day before and put it in the fridge. She then had to chase my then-three-year-old n...

No, I never claimed to be a good cook. But, honestly, any idiot ought to be able to bake a potato in the microwave. Get a load of the mess that appears when a potato explodes all over the oven! I swear I poked holes in it. What the picture doesn't show is that the potato skin was completely empty. Every bit of the inside blew out, leaving a hard, crusty, empty shell. It’s a good thing Chris can cook, or we’d be living on cold cereal and restaurant fare for the rest of our lives.

I was tagged to play this game, but maybe you're headed into the witness protection program or you've been asked to star in the next superhero movie. Sounds like fun, but you can't use your own name. The folks at your day job just wouldn't understand. This meme will help get those creative naming juices flowing. 1. Your real name: Karen 2. Your Gangsta name: (first 3 letters of real name plus izzle) Karizzle 3. Your Detective name: (fave color and fave animal) Red Dog (sounds like a beer, to me!) 4. Your Soap Opera name: (your middle name and street you live on) Ann Rich (Not terribly exciting. I"ll probably be killed off or at least go into a coma in the first season!) 5. Your Star Wars name: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first name) Kenka (Are you sure this isn't the porn name?) 6. Your Superhero name: (your 2ND favorite color, and favorite drink) Pink Wine (What a weenie sounding superhero!) 7. Your Iraqi name: (2ND letter o...