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The Yellow Meal

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Today I joined the CFS Club for lunch. What was on the menu? CFS of course, chicken fried steak. Although I am very familiar with chicken fried steak, I had never eaten it until today.

I saw discussion about it twitter and when I asked about it, Andrea Myers (who is Queen of the CFS Club) told me the group gets together to enjoy CFS in all of the BEST places in Tulsa. She told me that I didn’t even need to order CFS if I didn’t want to, that it wasn’t required. I would, however, have to have an announcement to share that could be about anything.

Since one of my goals is to meet everyone in Oklahoma, I love meeting up with people whom I have already “met” on twitter. I thought it would be fun to meet this new group of people and very nice not to have to decide what I wanted to eat. I am a Libra and cannot make a decision, especially on menus loaded with lots of options. So I headed to Tulsa excited to meet new people but with trepidation about trying the food that many consider to be comfort food that they have been eating their whole lives.

David has been eating CFS ever since I have known him, over 30 years now. I refer to it as his yellow meal. CFS, gravy, mashed potatoes, and corn comprise the typical yellow fare I have seen him eat. Today included two other yellow items: a biscuit and butter. Yum.

Apparently the CFS at the Tulsa Press Club normally comes with carrots but today, as if in my honor, it came with corn on the cob. I was amazed at the hunormous plate of food that was set in front of me. The photo I took doesn’t even begin to do justice to the actual size of the meal. I wasn’t able to eat it all but I did taste everything, except for the corn. I was just too full.

We didn’t eat fried foods when I was growing up and we don’t eat much that is fried now either so while I found the experience interesting, I’m not sure that I will eat it again. But I enjoyed the company of the gathered CFS aficionados and can now say that I have partaken, at least once, of CFS. Does that make me a real Oklahoman? 🙂

She thinks my tractor’s sexy. Huh?

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I am NOT a fan of country music. I have just never liked it. Something about the whining “oh my cat got caught in the blender” and “my wife left me” themes that just seem sort of negative to me. Give me a hard driving rock beat any day. Or even a toe tapping, spirit lifting, Karma Chameleon. But, as ELO said, don’t bring me down.

We were driving back to Bartlesville from Lawton last night, a good four hour drive. It was Monday night and we have Sirius radio in the car. I fully expected to listen the the football game but no dice. The two men occupying the front seat chose, instead, to keep us on the Country Highway.

Suggesting did no good. Asking, pleading, begging, and still I was listening to how she was rocking a beer gut. Say what???

After four hours of being imprisoned in a mobile hoedown, I thought I might have lost my mind but today is a new day. As Boston says, don’t look back. And I won’t. And I don’t think a tractor’s sexy either. 😉

All’s fair. Or is it?

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Fair. It should be my middle name. And that’s why I was feeling so unjustly treated on Tuesday as we drove home from Illinois for the third time in a month.

It seems as though everyone speeds. Except me. Even my aunt and uncle who are in their 70’s go “just five miles over”. So this is the thought that was in my mind as I watched car after car pass me on I-44.

After lunch, I decided that I, too, would go five mph over the speed limit. I still wasn’t anywhere close to being the fastest car out there and was nearly run over by a mostly out of control U-Haul truck that was pulling a car on a trailer and was all over the road. But I desperately wanted to get home and thought if we could get there a little faster it would be awesome.

Less than 30 minutes later, Mr. Missouri State Trooper pulled me over. “The speed limit is 70 miles per hour,” he said “and we don’t speed in Missouri.”

Wow. I couldn’t believe it. Other vehicles were flying by me as if I were standing still but “we don’t speed in Missouri”.

He asked me for my license and insurance card. Our insurance year begins on August 1 and in the confusion surrounding our multiple trips to Illinois, that card he wanted was lying in the envelope it came in on my desk at home. I did have every single card back to 1998 which obviously earned me points because Mr. MO Trooper told me to just be sure to put the new one in the car when I got home.

He didn’t give me a ticket and for that I am grateful. I did the crime, I am guilty. But after he pulled us over, and we drove along in the right lane like a foreign concept, I watched as every manner of vehicle passed us – cars, trucks, farm implements – and was so frustrated at the injustice of it all.

People always ask me why I don’t speed and I tell them, because I will be the one who gets caught. And there it was, the proof that I am right.

So what did I learn? I learned that we don’t speed in Missouri if we are Lauri Rottmayer because we will be pulled over. And I am starting to get a strong feeling that speed limits were made just for me. Now THAT makes me feel special 😉

My presidential dream

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I had a crazy dream about President Obama last night. For starters we were friends. Although we are both from Chicago, the fact that he’s a Sox fan and I’m a Cubs fan would probably keep that from ever happening. But it was a dream and dreams don’t often make much sense.

So the president was my friend and it was his birthday. I got him a great present which I took special care to gift wrap artistically. I included in the wrapping one of those little hand held flags. You know, the kind that realtors go through town on the 4th of July and stick in peoples lawns with their business cards.

I have no idea what the gift was that I gave him but he love, love, loved that flag. Maybe he never had one as a kid or the local realtor never stuck one in his lawn. But he loved that flag and he started taking it every where he went. I thought “Wow, he’s a patriot after all!”.

Mmmm silly and ridiculous, I know, but obviously riveting enough to keep me asleep until the alarm went off. 😉

OMG Rochelle!

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I have been looking for her for years. She finally finds me and emails via my website form but doesn’t leave an email address to return her email. Yikes!!!!

Even if she is bragging about having grandkids when I don’t, I am still beyond excited to hear from her. She said she has been searching for me in Clearwater, FL and finally found me. Well, I have been searching for her, too. I am the one and only Lauri Rottmayer, though, and I’m not sure if her name has been changed to protect the innocent. 😉

We were room mothers together back when the kids were in 2nd grade. Our kids share a birthday. They will be 26 at the end of the month. GAG. LOL! And we had so much FUN together! The last time we saw her and Candis was in Baltimore. I’m going to say the boys were in 9th and 10th grades but I could be off. So much has gone on in the in between days. I’d love to catch up.

Rochelle, if you are reading this, email me at lauri@laurirottmayer.com or call me . I have been eternally frustrated at how ungoogleable you are but am so glad you finally found me! Love you!

The Man with the Mixed Up Mind

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When I was 6, we lived in Rockford, IL. My sister, Julie, and I had to walk back and forth to school every day in the morning and afternoon as well as at lunchtime since there was no cafeteria in the school. About 2 blocks away from our house, on our path to school, lived a man who would wear his winter coat in the summer time amongst other unusual things. It’s obvious to me as an adult that he was disabled in some way but we didn’t have the words in our young vocabulary and we referred to him as the Man with the Mixed Up Mind.
He wasn’t harmful or even scary to us; just strange. We would make sure to always walk by his house on the other side of the street so that we didn’t get in his way.

Now, some 40 years later, there is another man who lives about the same distance away from our house here who I think of in pretty much the same terms. Only this man is SCARY. Probably because he’s bigger than me and very intimidating.
One day, a year or so ago, I was walking Rabi past his house. Rabi’s favorite thing to do is sniff. The man had been working in his yards and was getting ready to lay some mulch around the trees that are on the public property that is between the public sidewalk and the street. Rabi decided to stop and smell the bag of mulch and then we continued on around the corner where the man came barrelling out of the backyard, red faced and screaming at me about not letting my dog do his business on his trees. I stopped and told him he had it wrong and he kept ranting at me about how my dog should do his business in our yard and not his. But Rabi hadn’t done anything. From then on, I have always crossed the street to walk by his house so that he doesn’t come and attack me like that again.
Another day when I was coming around the next block over towards his house, some kids were coming down the public sidewalk next to his house on skateboards. Once again, the man came tearing out of his yard screaming at the kids that he would kill them. Wow! I should have called the police and reported it and to this day I can’t think why I didn’t. One poor little kid was running so fast I swear his feet weren’t even touching the ground, his face covered in a look of sheer terror saying “I didn’t do anything!”. And he didn’t. They didn’t. I saw the entire thing transpire.
The man’s yard is always beautiful. The plantings are gorgeous and well tended. We just got back from a walk and he has spent today putting up his Christmas decorations. It looks just like a TOYLAND! Awesome and wonderful and something a child would definitely want to stop and investigate. But beware! I fear it’s like the witch’s cottage in Hansel and Gretel and that the outcome of such investigation might come to no good.
Here are a couple of photos I risked life and limb to take last night. Unfortunately, they don’t adquately show just how MAGICAL the yard is.

I feel sorry for this man. I have never seen anyone at his house except for him and his two dogs. I don’t know why he is so miserable but I pray that he will find peace in the beauty that he surrounds himself with and stop scaring the heck out of the neighbors!