Good Ol' Tom!

As you all know, I really like to go all out with my birthday cards.

Here is one I sent last month to my book club sista, Meta.

Getting that border on that card was hellacious! They, along with that butterfly and that other bug, were a part of a "rub-on" sticker set. But they didn't want to rub on. Took me a good half hour to transfer them from the slick paper backing. UGH. It's pretty, but uh-rah, we're going to have to leave that there alone.

One thing about Meta: she loves the color purple. Whenever I see her, she's dressed in purple from head to toe. Purple purse, purple hat, purple outfit... Purple, purple, purple.

Prince ain't got NOTHING on her. She might be some kin to him, She probably took him to the side when he was a kid and said "Hon, let me teach you about this here color purple."

LOL!

So i had to get a purple (well, lavender) card for her. Nothing else would do.


Meta makes me smile, in that she always hits me with the "Hey Sista!" whenever I see her. (She told me one day, long ago, that she didn't know my name, lol).

But Meta and I are in a journal writing group together, and since we live close by to each other, I sometimes catch a ride with her when we have meetings waaaaay the hell out in the suburbs.

So, she arrived at my house one beautiful Sunday afternoon, and I jump in her car (ladened down with cookies and my journal and whatever crochet project I'm working on), and she has one of these:


Meta was cheesing down. "That's that Tom-Tom right there!"

I didn't know what she was talking about. On our way to our destination, I learned that it was one of those new GPS gadgets. The small screen displayed our route, and gave us our directions as we drove.

"Turn left 400 yards."
"Turn right 100 yards."

I found this to be rather interesting. Meta REALLY loved hers. Her whole family loved theirs.

"Girl, my aunts love their Tom-Tom. When they get ready to go somewhere, they say 'We got Tom? Don't forget Tom! Go get Tom!'"

LOL.

So, we were going out to "Aunt Ray-Ray's" house, waaaay out in the Sticks, waaaay up in the middle of nowhere.

Meta continued to cheese down over her Tom-Tom. Man, you would think she is their public relations specialist.

We finally get to Aunt Ray-Ray's neighborhood. I was definitely impressed with the GPS gadget, to the point where I was thinking about buying one in the near future. It would be interesting to have, even though I don't go anywhere where I would need one.

Tom made a final announcement:

"You have arrived at your destination."

We look around, and we are at a house.

But it's NOT Aunt Ray Ray's house.

We sat there a moment. All was quiet. There were no cars parked in the driveway. The grass needed to be cut.

We looked at each other, then back at the house. I had a strange thought of someone coming out of that house with a baseball bat. We were not suppose to be there. That was not our "destination".

"This ain't Aunt Ray-Ray's house!" I said.

"No, it isn't," Meta replied, her voice low. She grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and peered out the window.

"Man, back this car up and let's go."

Meta laughed. "Ol' Tom done messed us up!"

"Let's go, Meta! Don't get out the car. Don't open the door! I ain't trying to get shot!"

(I am so scary, lol).

Meta laughs hard.

"I am not getting out of this car, Meta."

Meta backed out of the driveway.

Luckily, I had a hard copy of the directions in my purse. We were in the right neighborhood, but were on the wrong side of the neighborhood. We laughed hard about that at our meeting.

So much for GPS. I guess I will hold off on that.

Meta, I'll let you keep rolling with ol' Tom.

And I hope you had a VERY Happy Birthday (you and ol' Tom)!