How Old AM I ? It's Starting to Scare Me

Tonight at work Barbara (the owner) was talking to our young bartender and I happened to walk by. She asked if I remembered Green Stamps and I immediately asked "S&H Green Stamps"? Barbara told Anna, the bartender "Back in the olden days we had Green Stamps." I told Barbara it wasn't the "Olden Days...it was my CHILDHOOD!" The bartender asked "Was it kind of like reward points?" JEEZ..I AM getting OLD!

When I was a kid S&H Green Stamps were a big, big deal. They gave them away with purchases at the A&P grocery store my Mother shopped at and my grandmother saved them for us as well. Actually my grandmother even saved us her Raleigh cigarette stamps too. I'm not sure if we ever got anything with the "Smokes Stamps" but she sure saved us a lot of them!

S&H was where I used to get all my Christmas presents. There was actually a redemption store on Sylvan Road we used to frequent.

My grandfather smoked King Edward cigars and gave us his empty boxes to save our S&H Green Stamps in.

Of course this was back when my Mother would drive me to the store and at the age of six send me inside the store to purchase her a carton of Kool Milds.

It bothered me that Barbara called it "The Olden Days."

Then I realized that to kids in their early twenties...those WERE the olden days! I guess being over fifty makes me an antique!

I picked Massey up from school today and told her Elizabeth Taylor died. Massey said "Who's that"? I told her it was the actress from Giant and Cleopatra to which she replied "Never seen emt".

Guess what movies I am renting for us to watch when she gets home from competition this weekend?

When I was a kid you went to the gas station and never even got out of the car. They would clean your windshield and some even vacuum out your car while the gas was pumping . They checked under your hood and if you were at a Gulf station gave you free dishes with a fill up. I still have some of the white octagon shaped plates and bowls that my Mother got filling up our fake wood paneled station wagon.

Some laundry detergents even had dishes inside or a dish towel attached to the side of the box...Barb reminded me of that one!

Seems like we got a LOT more for a lot LESS when I was a kid.

Massey leaves for Nashville tomorrow for a Guard competition. She has her ipod packed along with her cell phone and both chargers.

When I was a kid I had a string with a can on each end that ran from my bedroom window to the window of my friend that lived next door.

I am not kidding!

Of course we could have just hollered to each other but it was so cool to have our own little system of communication.

Cans on a string and a transistor radio were all you needed to stay in touch with the world when I was a kid.

Guess I AM getting old!

How much string would it take from Newnan to Nashville and how big would the cans have to be ?

Guess it's a good thing I paid the cell phone bill.

Kids are so spoiled these days. When I was a kid we thought you were spoiled if your house had a push button phone instead of rotary dial (which WE didn't until the seventies) or if your car had seat belts...which we didn't have either, but survived. When we got a car with air conditioning I thought we must be millionaires or at least really rich.

I grew up in a blue collar family.

I grew up in a house filled with love, laughter and clothes all sewn by my Mother. Thank God she was an excellent seamstress... she could sew clothes that looked just like they had come off the rack at "Lerner's" .

What scares me even more is what the FUTURE holds and how much THAT is going to cost!

Til next time..."Cave Woman Cotton"

Talk To The Hand...

Here's a pic of me trying to give my big bro a kiss.

I SHOULD call him my "Hebro."
  Not only is he my brother and my biggest critic ( with his sharp wit) but my hero.

He picks on me relentlessly when we are all together but it reminds me of what I tell my fellow co workers: "I only pick on the people that I like."

I consider myself a pretty funny person.

 I consider my brother the funniest guy on the planet and he obviously loves me to pieces.

He has been  good to not only me and my sister but to both of our families...especially after our only remaining parent died in 2002. Our Mom died in 1977 unexpectedly and our Diddy died in 2002 from West Nile Virus.

Poor (wealthy compared to us) Chris has been saddled with his two sisters ever since and like the good sisters we are,  have hoisted our own problems and some of our kid's right onto his big broad shoulders.

 Thank goodness he grew out of that skinny stage he was in for  over 30 years and ended up being a big broad man who thankfully had shoulder surgery a couple of years back...gotta take care of those shoulders, they have a heavy load to bear!

He has taken over for my Mama and Diddy. He has been our salvation more times than I care to keep track of and 'keeps on giving.' Granted he rags me all the time, but who am I to talk about ragging people? It is one of my best qualities...finding humor in any given situation.

If you can't laugh at life...you'll end up crying WAY too often and it doesn't help anything, especially gray hair and wrinkles.

My brother used to read my blog. He probably quit about a year ago when things started going south for us. He thought "I'll just wait for the text or phone call...it'll be a lot less painful when I make out my check."

When I finally make it as a published author (and I swear I will) I have so many people to pay back and actually have a record to go by. My sis and "Hebro" are tops on my list  followed by MANY friends and relatives .

I was goofing around on my blog page tonight before posting and came across some facts that amazed my tiny mind.

Over the past few months  I  had 7,552 views from people in the United States. I   had 110 from people in Canada. From Denmark there have been 76. Russia...48. From the UK I had 35. From China I had 33 and from South Korea I had 31. Japan gave me 29 hits and believe it or not Slovenia came in with 28. Mexico brought up the rear with 17 views but it all totally blew me away!

Come on "Amigos" GET ON BOARD!! (Or Abroad)

Once my life settles down a bit and I can focus more on my desires instead of my demands and commitments, I truly think I can make something of my writing.

 I am never at a loss for the written word (or the spoken one for that matter.)

Putting feelings and emotions into words that other people can read and FEEL is something that has always made me happy and also gives me a hard copy of my life, my journey and how I felt every step of the way.

I  kept a journal all of my life...the first one I have is from when I was nine. I stopped the actual writing in books after Massey was born.

I picked up again when technology came along and made it so much easier for me.

I have so many things to be thankful for. I have so many things to complain about. I have so many causes to fight for (other than my family surviving.)

I think people like to read my posts. I think I write a lot of things that people only think about in secret parts of their minds.

You know what I think?

I think  life is a journey and if you don't write it all down somewhere..."How will they possibly be able to remember you decades and generations from now?"

Hoping to be remembered and hoping to be a person that people will WANT to remember.

Til next time...COTTON

Facebook..."MY" New Frontier

How do you make a 49 year old woman look stupid?

Invite her to join Facebook.

First of all I had to get my daughter to set up my account.

Then I found out you could upload pictures....requiring another consult with my daughter.

It took me a week just to learn to navigate around the site, took another week to figure out the difference between the homepage and the profile page.

After that, a friend sent me an email telling me I needed to set my site to PRIVATE. (I have a cyber stalker out there ya know)

That only took me an hour and three different tries.

Then they start throwing "hugs" and inviting you to "pillow fights" nominating you as "nicest person"..(yeah, RIGHT!) asking to fill out inane surveys, "sending chocolates"...the list goes on and on and on.

I finally found out that all of these things somehow raise money for children's charities. If I could figure out how to help I would, but just giving someone a "poke" was hard for me to understand....(Thanks again Massey).

On one hand I love the concept...have renewed many old friendships and made a few new ones.

On the other hand...after finally feeling pretty secure in logging onto the site...they change the entire setup.

It took me three days to find the groups that I had joined, still can't figure out how to copy a pic from my site and post it on one of my groups (Massey has pretty much dissed my desire for additional help) so I am left to flounder all around the site, hoping to hit the right button, app, key or status.

I guess that young people all around the globe are laughing at me responding to my own posts when I mean to be posting on other's posts, posting double copies of pics because I never know if the first one posted and are all wondering why I am refusing to help children charities.

Ya know, ten years ago...who had a cell phone except Donald Trump and drug dealers?

Now my KIDS have cell phones, ipods, laptops, PS3, WII, the list goes on and on.

My parents are most likely rolling over in their graves...wishing THEY had a cell phone to call me and say "STOP THE MADNESS".

It is just a sign of the times unfortunately...we are a wired nation.

Whereas a kid used to be glued to your hip...now they are wired to the entire world and reaching people, places and search engines that I couldn't have dreamed of... even watching "The Jetsons" as a kid.

The only thing I am missing is "ROSIE" the robot maid...maybe SHE could help me out with my technological attempts at keeping up.

What in the world will MY grandkids be doing one day??? Jetting over in their Hovercraft that they got for high school graduation to visit me in the ole folks home to help change my "Virtual Depends"??


I think that I am scared...really scared...is there an app on FB for that?