A Ladylee Weekend, Part II

Post #99…

Blogger has been bi-yotchy for a minute, but I think we got it together now.

But now, I can continue now, even though it is the middle of the week.


The State of the Hood. Things aren’t all that great in the hood right now. I have been notified by the Infamous Hen-Dog and the hood vagrant Bin Laden, that my mayor, the local crackhead, Snake, has been locked up on drug charges. Seems that the feds caught him going into a house under construction that was being used by the local dope boys for stashing drugs. So he is locked up.

Dang Snake! Now I gotta watch my stuff like a hawk!! The last time he was locked up, last Christmas, my brother’s truck was stolen. (I will detail that in a later post.)

Doggonit. And who’s gonna wash our cars? Who's going to give me weekly commentary on the state of our neighborhood? Ugggggghhhh!!!


Hanging with LadyTee. On Friday, LadyTee, who’d been vacationing in Hilton Head all week, called me up, drove down to my job and picked me up for lunch. I was glad to see her, because I hadn’t talked to her all week long, which is MUCH too long.


She looked quite restful after her yearly vacation.

“I want some soul food, Lee.”
I smiled, showing all thirty-two of my teeth. “Get on the interstate, and get off on Lakewood. I know just the place.”

You know me. We headed to my new favorite soul food spot, on the corner of Lakewood and Jonesboro road, hood deep: "Something Special".

Yeah, baby… My favorite place for contracting that “itis”!!!

That day there was a sweet little Asian woman behind the counter.

“What chu like, Sweetie?”

Apparently she’d been hanging with the black folks that worked in the kitchen. She had a hood accent and everything. We ordered up our food. Of course, I got an oxtail dinner. Ladytee got a fried fish dinner. We grabbed our Styrofoam containers and headed for her Buick.

“Dang girl, I thought this place was black owned!”
“No Lee, the Asians got it on lock, baby. This is the hood!”
"I guess you're right, Tee."

We headed over to my house, sat at the dining room table and ate our food. It was so good!!

LadyTee caught the “itis” first.

“Lee, I gotta go lay down for a minute. I’m full, my cycle is on, and … I just gotta go lay down!"

“Girl, you gotta take me back to work! I gotta go back to work!” I yelled.

"Just a few minutes, Lee, please. It’s hot as hell outside, cool in here, and I need to lay down."

We chilled for ten minutes, then headed back to work. I was no good for the rest of the day.

“You shoulda just called me, Ladylee,” Hen-Dog said. “I would have brought your things to you.”

“No, Shorty. You know I can’t sneak out like that. Management watch me like a hawk, even though I’m the least likely to steal time around here."

I just came on back to work, and sat there….

With a terrible case of the “itis".

Buttons, buttons, and more Buttons. My favorite author, Tayari Jones, sent me some buttons and cards in the mail, per my request. They were leftover trinkets from her release party for the paperback version of her book, The Untelling.


Thanks, T!!! You know I appreciate it. Really though. Nothin’ but love for ya.

But come on, Tayari. You could’ve signed those buttons, LIKE I ASKED! All you had to do was scratch out a “T” on the back. I told you that I wanted to sell those on eBay just in case you become world famous, like that Da.Vinci code dude, or something. And I could've made mad cash selling them bootleg out front to the people in line at the Oprah show studios, when it was your day to discuss one of your books for her bookclub.

Next time, don’t be a busta. Follow directions. I’m trying to pay off a house here!!


By the way, I’m going to continue lobbying for a look at the first 100 pages of the manuscript that you're working on. I thought it was pretty cool that you went and got your hair straightened for story research purposes….

But I had a question… I saw the picture on another site, of you in a furry pink coat, holding a red purse, yacking on a cell phone, standing in front of a diner… or a truckstop or something…

That pink fur coat was special...

Umm.... Just what were you researching when you were out there like that, "after the party"?

Hmm, how can I put this nicely… any "Ladies of the Night" in that new book, Tayari?

Holla at your girl!! Send me a few hundred pages of that manuscript. And thanks for the buttons!

Raymond's Daughters. There’s nothing like curling up on the sofa on a Saturday morning, all cozy under my favorite crocheted blanket, absorbed in a darn good book.

That darn good book was Michele Matthew’s Raymond’s Daughters.

Damn. That book was sooo good. Chele has an amazing writing style. I was totally absorbed. I mean, she wrote it parts of it in first person, parts of it in third person…. I am a big fan of flashback, and man, the carefully placed flashback in this book was…

*Blog fam cupping hands to mouth*

“Get off of Chele’s jock, LadyLee!!”

The book won't even close right. It’s all dog-eared now. Man, I got chitlin’ and oxtail juice on that book. I spilled some sweet tea on it. When I was relaxing in the Jacuzzi, I almost dropped it in the hot water… caught it before it fell in the water, and wiped the suds off… I was walking down the male hustler strip near my job, reading and walking, not looking where I was going, and almost ran into a male hustler leaning against a pole… Oh my.

That book has been through some things…

*Blog fam raising bullhorns to mouth*

"Stop jocking Chele, LadyLee!"

Shut up! She’s a Platinum Plus card carryin’ Original Oldgirl… She is a heck of a writer, and she will always have my support. She could rewrite “Mary had a Little Lamb” and it would be the bomb, because she would put her own special foot stomp and twist to it!! If I could figure out how to review it without the review being ten pages long, I would!

And I still might do that!

Good book, Chele! You go, Oldgirl!

Cooking failure. My sister Kay made mash potatoes Friday night. I didn't have any dinner, due to the severe case of the "itis" I contracted earlier that day after lunch. I sat and watched her make them from scratch.

On Saturday morning, I had the bright idea of making some potato cakes. I hadn't had any in years. My grandma use to make them for me in the '70's.

Apparently, I did something wrong, because they were nasty as hell. Maybe I shouldn't have added that egg... I don't know. Yo Auntie, I know you are reading this. You know how to cook everything! Give me a call! I don't want to talk to Grandma about this... you know how long-winded she gets! Call me up this weekend and let me know what I did wrong!

Flower Power. Finally, I am still on a flower kick. I’ve been dabbling in white flowers, because I have no sense of color. So I stretched it a bit and bought some yellow flowers. I had them in my bathroom, but I didn’t like them. So I put them in my sister’s Kay bathroom.

Cute, but not all that great. I think I will go buy a book on flowers, and educate myself on them. This Oldgirl is going to make it a goal to figure the flower thing out!

That’s it for my weekend. Stay tuned for my 100th post…

The excessively long “100 things about Ladylee!”