Mix your mimosa and settle into your hammock, the lazy days of summer have arrived.
June is once again upon us, and this sleepy Magic City slips slowly into its annual summer coma like the quiet summer rain on our rooftop as darkness falls. Awaiting the advent of football season, we slumber in our hammocks, up to our eyeballs in homemade peach cobbler, while visions of quarterbacks dance in our heads.
Your very own Scarlet, not being from the South, but always anxious to follow proper southern etiquette, had to consult a regional expert in southern matters yet again to handle the increasingly complex dilemmas that continue to vex and perplex her, as her very own life (according to an ex beau) is the “vortex of every hurricane” and never seems to fully calm to the summer’s more languid pace. If only I had taken up cross-stitching.
I realized this anomaly most recently at an area junior league tea, in which my casual references to my meetings with the FBI, dexterity with my scalpel in the UAB human cadaver lab, and near brush with death when an un-named gunman, dressed as a peanut, fired sniper blogshots at me from a rooftop as I was walking through the front door of the Birmingham Weekly last week drew looks of sheer horror from a gaggle of well coiffed ladies and elicited a pained “Now, Scarlet—exactly where are y’all FROM????” The horrified silence was immediately broken, thankfully, when Minnie May Moneysuckle exclaimed, “Lila Lou-I missed Sunday School this week, but I saw Bucky putting on his seersucker suit for church while I was looking through your window…has he lost weight?” Relief immediately ensued, and the tea party resumed with its animated, vacuous dribble.
Fully cognizant and dismayed that I lacked the necessary conversation skills required to participate appropriately in this non Mensa-sponsored community event, I marched straight into a local bookstore like any good southern girl and marched straight out with the following books to dutifully begin my summer reading in earnest:
“Mindless, Vacuous Dribble for Beginners”, “Mile High Cobbler Recipes:
Ensuring Your Family Has Diabetes for Generations to Come”, and “Football. Football. Football”.
Alas, if only the commotion outside my window would quiet down at night and an earnest southern belle in training could get some summer reading done! You see, dear readers, it is normally quite tranquil and sublime in the Villa where I now reside, but where Scarlet goes….commotion ensues, apparently. In fact, I believe that the Fabulous La Donna of the Manor is calling me now…
LaDonna: “Scarlet! Do you hear that noise? It sounds like gunfire.” Scarlet: “Oh, dear God. Is he dressed like a peanut?” DF: “No, I don’t believe so…” Scarlet: “Is he short and screaming in German?” LaDonna: “No.” Scarlet:” Is he tall and screaming in Italian?” LaDonna: “No. Scarlet :” Is it my divorce attorney with his U Haul carrying my bill?” LaDonna: “No…..wait- it is someone climbing up the fig tree with a bottle of Torreon de Paredes Carmenere Reserva Privada…trying to get inside a window….” Scarlet: “ Oh…. That’s just Anonymous. Let him in.”
And so the sun sets once again in our sleepy Magic City over the magnolia trees…where the tea is sweeter…where some things simply never change…
And we like it that way.
Until next time, Scarlet
Ask Scarlet a question, and she will tell you how to navigate those stormy waters. Send your questions to scarlet.bhamweekly@gmail.com. Or go to www.bhamweekly.com and comment on her articles. In case you missed some before she was as popular in Birmingham as she was in high school, with many disappointed suitors, try these on for size:
bhamweekly/2012/03/09/#?article=1542342 bhamweekly/2012/05/03/#?article=1576777 Or just go to www.bhamweekly.com and search for author Scarlet.
