You Know You’re From Okieland

Adapted from Wikipedia’s OK county maps by Seth Ilys. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Swiped this from Cheryl Brown’s Facebook page. I went to her FB page to check on her mama, who’s in the hospital. We’re praying for Janyce and we’re trusting God.

Found this and couldn’t help but share. And I had to comment, too, so I put mine in red. 😛

You might be an OKIE if:
1. You can properly pronounce Eufaula, Gotebo, Okemah, and Chickasha .
2. You think that people who complain about the wind in their states are sissies.

3. A tornado warning siren is your signal to go out in the yard and look for a funnel. I know they do that in Kansas. My Wichita BIL went out once and videoed one.
4. Your idea of a traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a tractor on the highway.
5. You’ve ever had to switch from “heat” to “A/C” in the same day. Well, duh. Don’t they do that in other states?
6. You know that the true value of a parking space is not determined by the distance to the door, but by the availability of shade. You know it if you’ve ever worn shorts to drive in!
7. Stores don’t have bags, they have sacks.
8. You see people wear bib overalls at funerals. And weddings. 🙂
9. You think everyone from a bigger city has an accent. And they think we have one! G-Man, who grew up ten miles north of me, told me I had an accent when we got married. Got over it, though. 
10. You measure distance in minutes. (“I’m about 5 minutes away.”) They do that in NYC. “Just walk that direction for five minutes.”
11. You refer to the capital of Oklahoma as “The City.”
12. It doesn’t bother you to use an airport named for a man who died in an airplane crash. Your point is???
13. Little smokies are something you serve only for special occasions.
14. You go to the lake because you think it is like going to the ocean. Not sure I get this one. Can anyone help me with it?
15. You listen to the weather forecast before picking out an outfit.
16. You know cow-pies are not made of beef.
17. Someone you know has used a football schedule to plan their wedding date. LOL! Yeah, but it was funny then, too.
18. You have known someone who has had one belt buckle bigger than your fist. Doesn’t everyone?
19. A bad traffic jam involves two cars staring each other at a four- way stop, each determined to be the most polite and let the other go first. 😛
20. You know in which state “Miam-uh” is and in which state “Miam-ee” is.
21. You aren’t surprised to find movie rental, ammunition, and bait all in the same store.
22. Your “place at the lake” has wheels under it.
23. A Mercedes Benz is not a status symbol. A Ford F350 4×4 is.
24. You know everything goes better with Ranch. Well, yeah.
25. You learned how to shoot a gun before you learned how to multiply.
26. You actually get these jokes and are “fixin” to send them to your friends. Nope. Share ’em on my blog. 🙂
27. Finally, you are 100% Oklahoman if you have ever heard this conversation:
“You wanna Coke?”

“Yeah.”

“What kind?”
“Dr. Pepper.”

Actually, I’ve never heard #27. I think that’s a Texas thing. Here we ask, “Want a pop?

“Yeah.”

“What kind?”

“DIET Dr. Pepper.”

Happy, Happy Birthday, #4!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, #4!

It seems like just last year I told you the same thing. 🙂 Time flies when you’re having fun, doesn’t it?

I have a little test to see if you’re losing your mind from living in that foreign country (Kansas Country.)

• Who got shut up in the clothes dryer?
• Who dreamed a witch was cutting off her leg?
• Who crawled the day she came home from the hospital?
• Who was the STAR! of her first grade play?
• Who was number four in a line of girls, so she sparkled plenty to get attention?
• Who could run faster and jump higher than anyone else, just because Mama wanted her to be a good basketball player?
• Who took care of her older sister when the mean girls picked on her?
• Who was Grandmother’s favorite noodle unroller?
• Who named all her dolls Deara?
• Who “saved” her oldest sister in life saving?
• Who is so claustrophobic she nearly couldn’t get baptised?
• Who was so tender headed, Mama called her Grandma Reeves?
• Who got lost when she looked in the barrel marked, “For men only”
• Who loves you the mostest?

Happy birthday, #4. Love you and miss you!!!

Secrets

I love writing. It’s one of my favorite things to do. 🙂

I figure it stems from all those years of pretend when I was a kid. I never was a big one for games. Although I played, and enjoyed, a lot of them, I could live without them.

But not without “play like”. It just wasn’t in me. If I climbed a tree with a bunch of kids, I was ready to turn that tree into apartments and make up a story about living there. If we played in a car, we were taking a road trip to California. (I still have never been there, although I’d love to go sometime.)

As an adult during lulls in life, I often find myself making up stories–either about the people around me or my destination.

Once when my man and I lived in Punkin Center, we went to eat at a restaurant several miles out of town, nearly to the Kansas border. While we were eating, I noticed a table of three people, a man and two women.

Maybe it was the location of the restaurant (there was nothing else around for miles but farm land) or the different ethnicity of those three, but I had quite a story made up in my head about them. Talk about exciting! (Drug trafficking? International spy ring?)

When we got up to leave one of the women, who was very pretty and slender with her hair cut in the latest style, started shout-whispering my husband’s name. “Gary! Gary!”

Poor guy didn’t hear a thing, but I did. “I think someone is talking to you.”

Turns out, sadly, she was a girl he went to high school with, who’d moved to PC to work at a large oil company. My story for her life was a lot more fun. LOL.

As much as I like to write, I like reading even better!

I love books–the ones made of paper AND the digital ones. I get so excited when a new book by an author I enjoy comes out.

And one of those authors is Marilyn Pappano, who writes for Harlequin. Her most recent book was called, “Copper Lake Secrets” and with me it’s a big hit!

   From Amazon

Marilyn has a writing style that’s unique. Her words flow as smooth as honey, and while she’s pouring visions into your head, she smacks you with emotions that will make you laugh out loud, cry real tears or want to punch the guy in the book. Hard!

Unlike some authors, Marilyn doesn’t start this hero and heroine out disliking each other. The conflict in the story comes from within the character (like real life!) and, for most of the book, seems insurmountable.

There is a ghost in the book, but I view it as a tool Marilyn uses to give her book an interesting twist.

If you haven’t read “Secrets” order it now. It’s a fantastic read from a wonderful author and a darn nice lady.

Twister Tales

Image via Wikipedia

The rash of earthquakes and the tornado (or two) Okie-Land had a few weeks ago brought comments from people in other states. “I’d rather deal with an earthquake than a tornado.”

Really? At least, in a tornado if you have warning, there are places you can go where you’re safe.

Of course, we don’t like them.  We’d give all our twisters to a sister state, if she’d take them. (Hey, Kansas? How about you?)

But until Big K steps up to take the killer twirls from us, we’re stuck with them.

Tornadoes and their warnings are dark shadows in most Okies’ memories. One of my first was the night of the circus that the Williams family went to with our fam. You can read about it here.

Another time, the warning siren woke us in the middle of the night. Mom sort of panicked, which gave at least one of my sisters a real fear of storms. Even thunder storms give her the jitters.

(I kind of enjoy them as long as I’m not driving.)

The spring after my middle son was born, we lived in a house about a mile west of C-Town. Because north-east Oklahoma has a high water table, and that makes it hard to have a cellar or basement that doesn’t have a foot or two of water in it, I’ve never owned a hidey-hole. That spring, I was sorry I didn’t have one.

It seems that every week, I got a phone call from one of my sibs, telling me the siren was blowing. The entryway of my house, where the stairway was, had several large windows on both sides. I didn’t want to navigate those stairs with glass crashing all around and a five-year-old as well as an infant in tow, so we’d sleep in the family room, right next to the under-the-stairs closet. (We figured it was the safest place in the house.)

A tornado cut a swath next to highway 412 near C-Town once. It started somewhere to the west of where I live right now, and plowed a path through the trees and houses built around the lake.

One family, who’d all built houses near each other, had a cellar they shared. While the twister damaged their homes, they were snug and safe underground–until a car got rolled on top of their cellar and the gasoline inside it drain into the cellar with them.

They were lucky enough that nothing sparked and set off the fumes.

Just about every house on the block where I live now was damaged or destroyed by that same tornado. When things cleared, my mom and dad loaded up their car with things people might be able to use and drove to the lake to help their neighbors clean up and dig out.

Like the good Samaritan, we learn being able to give is much more blessed than needing to receive, don’t we?

So what do Okies do when a tornado heads our way? Most of us go for cover and prayer. Emphasis on prayer.

Header Know How

I’ve been playing with headers this morning. (That picture at the top.) Playing is the operative word here. Mostly I stumble and fumble until I get something that isn’t too awful. LOL.

I’ve had several up there today. A pair of toy flamingos, a herd of cattle, an old house. Right now these yellow buildings are winning. They’re all pictures I took while in Kansas last week.

One started out looking like this–

The header was just the buildings.

Not a lot of difference.

But this–

Well, I can’t get it to crop to show you here, so I’ll make it the header and show you. I know there are lots of people who can do this and make it look fantastic. Maybe one of them will teach me how one of these days. 🙂