Two weeks ago last Sunday, Mama and I played Scrabble!

We turned off the TV, put Dean Martin's greatest hits in the CD player and spent a great couple of hours together. I'm resigned to the fact that more often than not, Mama beats the stew outta me--or most any other opponent--but it's still fun. She won the first game by a couple of points, and we played a second one.

What you see in the picture above is the board at the end of the second game, a momentous game--you'll find out why in a few more sentences.

In the background, see those sugary orange slices--what are they made out of, desiccated Jello? We store them in a zipped bag to keep out the ants. Let me tell you, those are some determined ants, climbing to the 4th floor to get to whatever excites their olfactory nerves. I don't even want to try to figure out the energy expended by the little suckers. Anyway, Mama gets addicted to orange slices every so often--I'll eat one or two, but I'm more of a chocolate lover.

Next to the candy, the purple shape with the gold stripe is a Crown Royal flannel bag. We keep the letters in it and draw them from it, too. I imagine that bag is from my brother's youth, once he came of age, of course. But even though this is a 1948 edition of Scrabble, as you can see in the photo below, it's not from my youth.

I don't mind telling that I was born in 1947, but Mama's pretty sure she didn't buy the game until the early 1960s. We both are certain that Daddy never, ever played Scrabble with her or anybody, which is further proof that she didn't buy the game until we'd settled in Jackson in the late 1950s. She and Daddy played canasta with their trailer park and/or work friends during the days we traveled the country for Daddy's job. However, we both remember her playing with the neighbor ladies (and me) on Beatrice Drive there in South Jackson, between Cooper Road and Woody Drive--those were our good ol' days. Now we're in our good new days!

Here's the score pad, right beside my empty wooden-letter-stand-holder. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to get up and go dig out the game from the cabinet to get the exact word, even if it might be in the instructions on the inside of the box lid--can you even believe that I won't do it? Y'all know how detail-oriented I am. But.

My get-up-and-go is all gone. I'm downhearted and depressed because Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn't make the chase for the Nextel NASCAR championship. Like all these commentators on ESPN on ABC and on Speed keep saying, "Junior drove his guts out." He was running 2nd and 3rd at Richmond in the last 100 laps, but with seven laps to go, his engine failed. I dreamed last night that I was in the infield at a race track, and Junior pulled to a stop across the track, in a white car. He got out and walked over to me to tell me something. The race must have been over because no cars roared by as he walked towards me, his red hair shining in the lights. I woke up before we got to talk. Drat. I guess he was gonna tell me it just wasn't meant to be. He did drive a white car tonight, a tribute car for Elvis. Eerie.

Thanks for letting me share that. I feel better already.

It's the score pad that explains why I labeled the second game momentous.

Take a look at the close-up. That's my score in the next-to-the-last column at the bottom-right corner of the tablet. I beat the stew outta Mama, for a change.