Susan Reinhardt - a Cracked Southern Belle

I’ve avoided blogs like a male dog and the neutering den.
Maybe it’s the word, blog. Sounds like rich, fertile soil or some monster that rises from the kitchen sink and grows into an enormity that swallows entire cities.
I work for the Asheville Citizen-Times, a Gannett paper, as a columnist and features reporter. We have staff bloggers.
I’m the only one who Fears the Blog, and does crazy podcasts instead. Karin Gillespie is kind and persuasive. How do you tell her you’re in therapy because you’re scared of blogging and the very word gets caught in your throat like phlegm. That’s what blog sounds like – an oozing chest cold.
Why would anyone want to read someone else’s “diary,” and ramblings? Instead of telling you I have three books and the status of their publication and Amazon ranking (yes, I check the numbers 12 times a day and am on medication to stop the Amazon obsession), I’ll just write about the crazy people in my life.
There are many. And they’re all in my books, “Not Tonight Honey Wait ‘Til I’m a Size 6, which I haven’t been since the fetal days, along with “Don’t Sleep With a Bubba,” which I fought the publisher to change the title. They didn’t and I got stuck with the Bubba title, though I wanted to name the book, “Chimes from a Cracked Southern Belle.”
This title sums up my entire existence on the planet, so that’s really all you need to know about me. The rest of this blog will pertain to wacky stories or those that I consider inspiring
For me, writing is all about characters. I’m lucky in that characters find me the way baby sea turtles find the water. Or is it land?
Benevolently insane characters cling to me like jellybeans in my teeth. I chew them and enjoy their many flavors. I thank God for giving me the weirdo microchip, so these freaks, geeks, phenomenons and unclaimed blessings will latch onto me like starving infants.
Not that Mama’s a freak. I’m with her this weekend. And my sister, the rich one in the family who married a man with so much money he absolutely doesn’t know how and where to spend it all. When he lost all his hair, he flew to LA to get a Ted Danson wiglety thing that made him look like Elvis’s kid brother after smoking a few doobs.
She dumped him – or rather he dumped her for Mrs. Iowa and her 36DD silicone sisters – and Sister Sandy up and went to christiansingles.com or some such Baptist-approved website and found another man. Same name. David. So there’s David I, we call Daddy Warbucks or Wig Man Dave, and then David II, who I call ID – Internet Dave. My sister married him faster than you can say “No Time for a Background Check,” and we met at a funeral. My grandmother’s.
“Oh, my goodness,” everyone said as they approached the family with condolences. “Jessie has never looked better.”
I peered in the coffin, and Lord it was true. My stocky, shot-put looking, field-and-hockey-player shaped grandmother was thin and gorgeous, her face unlined. She appeared 30 years younger.
“Someone grab a camera,” shouted Aunt June, Granny’s only daughter. “Mother has never been so breathtaking.”
Well, she doesn’t have a breath, I wanted to say. Someone took that away.
“Jessie is simply regal,” another visitor said, bowing over the coffin and wondering how the mortician worked such magic no plastic surgeon could have pulled off.
Finally, my sister’s new David spoke up.
“Who is in the world is Jessie?”
“Uh. That would be the lady in the coffin. Our grandmother.”
He turned the color of a cat’s tongue. “Sandy, I told it wasn’t a good idea for me to meet the kin at a funeral. This is no kind of wedding reception.”
“There’s food, people and nice furniture. Seems like as good a place as any for a reception. Just shake hands and smile,” she said. And as the people would approach her and say how sorry they were and how gorgeous Granny looked, sister Sandy would cup their hand between her two and say, “Yes, it’s a tragedy. But on the bright side, have you met my new husband?”
They're still together, God love them both.
I guess that’s enough for now. I have a book signing in Athens, Ga. and I’m bloating from eating a 12-inch sub and full octane Lays. My breath smells like a Pier with onions. I’ll pop a few mints and hope someone shows up. You never can tell with book signings.
I once drove 5 hours for one and only two people came. I never even saw them. Seems they showed up the only time I got out of my seat, which was to walk across the hot, strip mall parking lot to put four quarters in the Food Lion drink machine.
Wonder who’ll turn up tonight?
Susan Reinhardt is author of "Not Tonight Honey Wait Til I'm a Size 6," and "Don't Sleep with a Bubba." She's a syndicated columnist with Gannett newspapers and lives in Asheville, North Carolina with her jazz musician husband and two lively children. She has a couple more books coming out soon and aspires to teach hot yoga.