Summary

Step into the wacky world of womanless wedding fund-raisers, in which Bubbas wear boas. Meet two sisters who fight rural boredom by washing Budweiser cans and cutting them to pieces to make clothing. Learn why the word snow sends any right-thinking Southerner careening to the Food Lion for extra loaves of bread and little else. Humor columnist and slightly crazed belle-by-birth Celia Rivenbark tackles these and other lard-laden subjects in Bless Your Heart, Tramp, a no-holds-barred look at all things sassy, sensational, and southern.

Author Biography

Celia Rivenbark is the bestselling author of We’re Just Like You, Only Prettier. She writes a weekly column called “From the Belle Tower” for Myrtle Beach’s Sun News and lives in North Carolina with her husband and daughter. Her forthcoming collection is entitled Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank.

Acknowledgments

xiii

Preface

PART ONE AT HOME

A Mom Looks at Forty

(3)

Happy-Meal Hostage

(3)

Fifties Home Economics Advice

(3)

Home-Depot Blues

(3)

Mama Celia's Marriage Tips

(3)

Lady Viagra

(3)

If He's So Sick, Why Am I So Tired?

(3)

Revenge of the Amish Friendship Bread

(3)

Total Woman This

(3)

Lazy Men

(3)

A Caveman Weekend

(3)

Fighting Still Bad for Relationships

(3)

Fad Diets—Great 'Til You Explode

(3)

The High School Reunion

(4)

Fleeing Floyd

(3)

Big Fake Breasts

(3)

When Did Redbook Get Trashy?

(3)

Working at Home—Sort Of

(4)

House Painting: "If You Want It Done Right"

(4)

I Can Quit Anytime I Like

(4)

Cat Toothbrushing or Me-oww!!

(3)

Box Queen

(3)

Time to Reclaim My Funny Skin?

(6)

PART TWO THE SOUTH

Bless Your Heart, Tramp

(4)

Where Men Are Men—and Sometimes Women

(4)

That's Mizzeriz to You, Kiddo!

(4)

Southerners vs. Snow

(3)

Southern Measurements: A Dab or a Teense?

(3)

Liddy Dole Doesn't Snort

(3)

Hurricane Forecasting for Fun and Hysteria

100

(3)

Lard Is Good, Lard Is Great

103

(4)

Tales of the Redneck Woman

107

(3)

The Grits Gonna Rise Again

110

(2)

This Beer Was Made for Wearin'

112

(4)

Bridal Moms from Hell

116

(3)

Obituary Madness

119

(3)

Dear Losers: A Christmas Letter from Myra Sue

122

(3)

Carlos and Ruby

125

(6)

PART THREE AND EVERYWHERE ELSE

Fake Dog Testicles

131

(3)

Mozart Means Absolutely Nuthin'

134

(3)

How to Marry a Multimillionaire (Doofus)

137

(3)

ATM Silliness Revealed

140

(3)

Mars Lander Woes

143

(3)

Fools for Fashion

146

(3)

I've Scanned, So Where's My Check?

149

(3)

Tofu Shrinks Your Brain

152

(3)

Designer Kitty Litter

155

(3)

Clams, Flying, Batman, and Me

158

(3)

Card Shopping for My Gay Friend's Dog

161

(3)

Congestion in the Cold Aisle

164

(3)

Fun with Realtors

167

(3)

Home-shopping Blues

170

(3)

Drowning in the Jury Pool

173

(2)

Stupid Bumper Stickers

175

(2)

Wrestlemania

177

(3)

Who's Hinckley Gonna Visit?

180

(2)

A History Quiz for Our Young

182

(4)

Subarus and Lesbians

186

(3)

Commercial Appeal?

189

(3)

Barbie the Telemarketer

192

(3)

Negativity in the Workplace

195

(3)

Calling Mom from the Train Tracks

198

(3)

Al Gore in Campaign 2000: Too Sexy for Himself?

201

(3)

Fashion Takes a Holiday

204

(2)

Is That a Penis in the Petunias?

206

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Excerpts

Chapter One

A Mom Looks at Forty

Having a baby at age forty, or any age for that matter, is a whopping life-changer. We went from impetuous, “What? A new martini and cigar lounge opens tonight? We are there!” kinda folks to the couple who spends Saturday night at K&W begging our twenty-month-old to please stop spitting creamed corn on our sweatpants.

You go from buying pricey bags of mesclun greens to eating iceberg because it’s thirty-nine cents a head this week with your VIC card. Fish sticks find their way into your freezer although nobody, including the kid, can stand them.

I spent twenty-two years writing for newspapers, but my palms never got soggy and my heart never beat too fast when I was interviewing folks like Jay Leno, Nick Nolte, or Jimmy Carter. You don’t know nervous until you’re sitting in a pediatrician’s office wondering why you have to wait your stupid turn behind the football physicals when your toddler’s fever is so high she’s speaking in tongues and thinks everybody else in the room is Franklin the turtle.

You go from wearing little chocolate-colored business suits to wearing chocolate. You now wear your Regulation Issue Mommy Uniform, the one they hand you in the delivery room: leggings that are pilly on the inner thighs and whichever of your husband’s T-shirts just came out of the dryer and—hooray!—is still long enough to cover your ass.

You trade in your briefcase for a diaper bag, but because you’re what my obstetrician once called “a geriatric mom” (notice he only said that once), you do manage to take back the ten or so you got at the shower with lambs and dancing lollipops on them, and you use the cash to buy a nice, understated one from L.L. Bean. It has your monogram on it, but the letters don’t look right because, for now and maybe always, the only thing you’ll be known as is M.O.M.

And that is just fine.

You feel stupid times infinity for all the things you used to tell your friends who had children. “I’d NEVER let my children eat french fries or drink soda!” Right. That little rule got broken after the first screaming-so-loud-they’re-going-to-call-Child-Protective-Services hissy fit at Target.

Hons, I was cramming Mr. Pibb and Pringles into that baby faster than you could say “redneck mom with Sun Drop in the bottle on Aisle 7.”

And of course there was the laughably naive statement I made to a new mom friend of mine a few years ago: “I’d NEVER let my baby sleep in the bed with my husband and me.”

Technically, that still holds true around here. She doesn’t sleep in the bed with us because, by four a.m., having grown tired of being kicked in the McNuggets for hours, my husband is usually snoozing peacefully in the spare bedroom.

I used to think that nothing could beat the adrenaline rush that comes with beating the competition on a big news story.

Wrong again. A fireside chat with Saddam or Fidel couldn’t top being the first mommy in the play group to announce successful potty training.

The fresh-faced mom at the playground (who wore the Mommy Uniform favored by the twentysomethings—Gap khakis and a white T-shirt topped with an oversized Banana Republic sweater) told me that her son, Ian or Liam or Ethan, I forget which, was potty-trained at eighteen months!

I threw her perky little body to the ground and planted my knee in her chest ’til she cried for mercy.

Okay, so that only happened in one of my Ally McEat-something fantasies, but it could happen. Anything could happen. That’s the point. There aren’t any headlines or scoops anymore, and happy hour is the one when Dad comes through that front door and I can finally pee, but this is the best assignment I’ve ever had.

Honest.

Copyright © 2000 by Celia Rivenbark

Excerpted from Bless Your Heart, Tramp: And Other Southern Endearments by Celia Rivenbark
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.