Mama Don't Play When It's Hallmark Movie Time

So I got up this morning, not much of an agenda, just a nice day ahead to enjoy. Tried to log onto Facebook. There was no internet service. That was really neat. An hour-and-a-half later, no internet service. This digital joke was no joke at this point. To top it off, I could not find my iphone 6s Plus, you know, the one with the light pink Otterbox that should be seen for miles from whatever resting place it landed during my ADD housekeeping? That phone. Then it hit me. I'm cut off from the outside world. I got nothing in the way of communication.

If you are a constant communicator, as I am, that's some deadly bidness ("business" for those of you from north of the Mason-Dixon line). At some point I found my phone and headed on out to meet someone for a book discussion. After leaving her house, I made my way to Wal-Mart. I know some of you are far too fancy to enter the place, but I went in with bargains on my mind. I wanted, most specifically, some of those seasonal mini-flags. Of course they weren't where they had been over the summer. Of course not. I gathered a few groceries and headed home, a pumpkin-pie-flavored poptart hanging out of my mouth and three bags of mini-pumpkins from the produce department in my trunk (for a table arrangement) as I peeled out of the parking lot. I was going to grab myself some fall one way or the other, despite the stuffy summer-like air.

Back in the land of "gone-out," aka my dwelling, I got on the horn (pink one) with Charter, my cable company. They couldn't figure out what was wrong with my internet service but, since right in the middle of our struggles it popped back on like magic, we aborted the mission. The woman sent me over to the cable division, since I had a  cable box I arrogantly insisted "DOES NOT WORK." Cue the sad music. Suburban housewife can't get cable to one of her four televisions. That's so sad. Look away.  I patiently explained to the nice gentleman on the other end that I am an SEC widow and that, owing to the fact that two of the televisions are in my sons' bedrooms, I only really have two for myself and my husband and that I would be edged out every weekend during football season if he did not do something, and fast, about this dead box in the upstairs den off my bedroom. We had a Hallmark channel/On Demand movie emergency on our hands and I don't play when it comes to that type of thing. He immediately understood the gravity of the situation and began to send a series of signals to this errant box. No dice. He had me turn it on and off, something he referred to in very professional terms, something along the lines of reboot or refresh. In my world it was mashing the on/off button. No dice. This very nice young man made an appointment for a technician to ring my bell between 1 and 2 pm. I was very appreciative and had timed my Wal-Mart trip very precisely to allow for me to be intellectually refreshed by a new pot of coffee when the technician arrived, just in case he needed my help with further button mashing.

He was in my upstairs den for around ten seconds when he discovered that I had plugged something into the wrong spot on my box. That television suddenly sprang to life with a force that surged through the room like sun on a summer day! I would be making Christmas cards with Hallmark Christmas movies rolling in the background JUST LIKE A BOSS this fall! I would be stamping and watercolor pencilling and cross stitching like a pro while Fox News ran rampant during the election! I would be crying and hollering my way through one sad chick flick after the next from On Demand before I knew what was happening! It was like the movie calvary had come to rescue me from my own stupidity.

As Madea would say (please don't sue me, Tyler Perry. I'm just a pudgy housewife in Knoxville) "Halleluyer"!!!!

Flip Flops and Fine China

I toured the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina yesterday. This is not just some Southern mansion with columns calling to mind women in antebellum dresses, fanning themselves under giant hats. It's a house with over 175,000 square feet designed by a New York architect in the European chateau style. When you round the bend in the bumping trolley van, if you have a heart in you at all, it skips a beat at the sight of this massive residence, front lawn spreading wider than a football field, allowing for ample imposition of the house upon the sense of sight. It's flat-out amazing. You expect the dad-blamed queen of England to come prancing out of those main doors, paparazzi shooting away and screaming her name. Instead, you'll find (if you go during Labor Day weekend like I did) the sweating hordes of visitors eager to stream through the parts of the home that are open to the public. Just appreciating the architecture and the grandeur of the home would be enough, but the place is a trove of international treasures, from rare tapestries to family portraits painted by John Singer Sargent (can you even imagine)! My favorite thing in the house is Napoleon's chess set, which is set up in the library. George Washington Vanderbilt II, the young man who built the house for himself and his even younger wife Edith, owned Napoleon Bonaparte's chess set. Let that level of wealth (and influence) sink in for a moment. As I passed through all of that opulence, mindlessly flooding Facebook with images of my tour, a tea set (see photo) caught my eye. It was a slice of elegant, refined living in minature. It had even been staged with real cookies! I wanted to yank the rope down and play house with the set! Just kidding. An upstairs room connecting Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt's room was, according to my tour booklet, the place where they met with the head housekeeper to plan the day's events. That's where my desire to have lived her life went straight out the window. I would want to be on horseback, flying though the gorgeous, forested property! Let someone else plan the dern meals! Then I could return to the library and read the night away in front of the massive fireplace after eating FAR too much in that massive dining room, where I would regale my guests with stories of my wildlife encounters while on horseback that day! I'd have them laughing!

We went back to our hotel to rest before dinner, my head spinning with all I had seen and experienced at the Biltmore Estate. The images of such refined, elegant living were so soothing! When we stepped out onto a terrace, the sweeping view of the mountains took my breath away. I could not even begin to imagine living in such a heavenly residence. How would it be possible for the massive fireplaces, the exquisite oil paintings, the hand-carved furnishings, the coffered ceilings to become commonplace over time, even invisible to the daily resident? I'm sure, on some level, they did. When their only daughter had her first crush, or cried herself to sleep, or fell ill, the Vanderbilts wouldn't have been comforted by all of that velvety excellence in decorating. They were people just like the rest of us.

Last night, as we left our hotel room for the very posh restaurant downstairs, I realized that all I had in the room with me in the way of footwear was the cushy pair of flip flops I'd toured the house in. Of course, since my car had been valet-parked, I shrugged my shoulders and flapped my way to the restaurant. I was hungry.

I guess the waiter did not notice my pool shoes, because he schmoozed for a tip, declaring with arched eyebrows that every single thing we ordered was EXCELLENT and HIS FAVORITE. I was waiting for him to come back with the water pitcher and declare that it was the best plain water he had ever heard tell of.

This story has absolutely no moral, except that I'm now considering beginning an antique tea cup collection. Seriously. I'll sit at my formal dining room table barefoot and drink coffee out of them. I sure will.