Katy McKenna Raymond  
Personal blog of christian writer Katy McKenna Raymond in Kansas City, Missouri

Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri


Katy is represented by
Greg Johnson at
WordServe Literary

Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net

Follow Katy on Twitter

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Mama Katy’s Blog

(And now…ahem…this from guest blogger Michael O’Connor.)

OK, let’s get one thing straight right away. I’m not falling for any of this cyst-on-the-wrist or painful-zinger-on-my-ring-finger nonsense that Katy has put us through all week.

No sir.

Just like you I’ve seen the badly typed messages and stock photo hands on keyboard in short entries from her “supposed” recovery bed. I’ve got to hand it to Katy. Like an expert illusionist, those were both very nice touches of misdirection. But I’m not buying any of it.

Have we been praying for her? I expect most of us have. We’re a decent sort, we readers of Katy’s warm, homespun brand of scribbling. We show up daily at the Raymond kitchen window, smell the fresh-baked apple pie of literacy wafting through the blogosphere, and we salivate at the possibilities.

Do we grab a slice before it cools? Do we taint the experience with a deft but selfish sleight of hand? Never. We wait our turn like everyone else. We are nothing if not civilized in our covetousness of more stories.

“Won’t you come in and set a spell?” asks Mama Katy. “I’ve got some biscuits in the oven and country gravy bubbling on the stove. Won’t you come in? What would you like to hear today?”

Could we ever feel more welcome in a place not our own?

Ah, but we are fools for her cultural cuisine—every one of us willing to put off that trip to the dry cleaner’s, that organizing of the 2005 receipt-filled income tax shoebox, that list of Thank You notes we owe for the consumer gluttony we filled up on at Christmas time. For a brief moment each day we take a breath from our daily schedule, our monotonous moments of pedestrian existence.

And for what?

To find out if Jessica is going to have Thad’s baby even though she’s really in love with Thad’s brother, Skip, who himself is a closeted homosexual in deep denial and having a torrid, if dishonest, affair with Jessica’s mother, Hannah, who is not really Jessica’s mother at all but due to a remarkable sex change operation in 1987 is actually her long-lost father, Hank?

Nothing so sweaty or trivial, I’m afraid.

We approach Mama Katy’s window on the world with one simple, reverent expectation: small but ample portions of her elegantly ordinary life served up steamed, baked, broiled, poached, braised, basted, broasted, candied, roasted, carved and toasted, sesameed and fricasseed, carbonated, marinated, minced, blintzed, sliced, diced, deviled, beveled, and hickory smoked.

We are nothing if not devoted connoisseurs of her bloginary art.

And where is she today? What thanks do we get for our explicit acts of crazed devotion?

She gives us the slip, takes a week at Disneyworld, Club Med or some other exotic destination with her Marginal Manâ„¢ in tow. Would I deny our dear Katy this moment in the sun? Would I keep her chained to that splendid Macintosh keyboard of hers with no time out for spiritual rejuvenation? That would be inhumane. And totally unnecessary with the advent of satellite-savvy security ankle bracelets.

Does she level with us? Does she say, “Hey you bums, shut your ever-complaining pie-holes. Nobody pays me to produce literary diamonds day after day, week after week . . . so give me a BREAK! I’m headed to the Alps for a relaxing few days of downhill skiing. Then I’m taking in the Alito hearings and after that I’m gonna try to clear up this ‘Bush lied’ stuff once and for all. And don’t nobody try to use my cell number neither. I’m out of range. Can ya hear me NOW????”

My final point in this rant—and I can hear the sighs of relief in 37 languages—is what she does with this space in the Bermuda Triangle of her absence. Does she write 5 or 6 posts in advance and assign some low-lever Fallible lackey to hit the “send” button once a day? Does she put out a “gone fishin’” sign and simply close up shop, thereby sparing us the pain of checking in for our daily dose of disappointment?

Or does she pull a devious page from The Blogger’s Bag of Silly Tricks: How to Fool the Rubes and Keep the Traffic Coming in the Event of Physical or Emotional Meltdown?

I think all you dedicated readers who have suffered in silence this week know the answer. Katy calls in every favor she’s owed from every million-selling or Pulitzer Prize nominated author she knows personally or once cleaned carpets for. She begs us to cover her beat and promises it will be a rewarding experience. No money, she sobs, but she can offer us links. LINKS! Hey, I don’t mind getting paid in links, I just want them to come from Jimmy Dean, okay?

Yeah, sure, the writing has been brilliant, the masses lose tears faster than congressmen are shedding Jack Abramoff-related donations, and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. There’s only one problem. While all of us substitute bloggers this week are eminently fallible—none of us are Katy.

So listen. When she gets back next week from her jungle expedition through Outer Bellybuttonia and she goes into her routine of thanking everyone for filling in for her during the trying time when she could barely lift her hand to scratch her nose—let alone type a few lousy words—when she starts tap dancing like that . . . DON’T LET HER OFF THE HOOK. Tell her the truth. Tell her how miserable you’ve been all week listening to us. Let her know she made excellent choices, but who wants sardines on their Ritz when they’re used to caviar?

Accept no substitutes, people . . . or I promise you next time it’ll be a month with guest bloggers. Yell it out loud and long. Shout it from the mountain tops:

“I WANT MY MAMA KATY’S BLOG!!!!!!!!!!!”

Fallibians of the world, unite!

Thank you for your kind attention. My work here is done.

Michael is the author of Sermon On The Mound. He blogs (mcuh more often than Katy’s Marginal ManTM) at Gentlemen Prefer Blogs. He and his wife Sally also minister through song, and can be reached through their websites, Improbable People and Songs4God. More than any of these links, though, he prefers Jimmy Dean’s.

Posted by Katy on 01/13/06 at 06:45 PM
Fallible Comments...
  1. Michael: Katy also said she couldn't possibly do the dishes this week, what with water-soluble stitches and all. Come to think of it, I've been doing all the vacuuming since Katy herniated a disk in her neck. I think I need to break something quick. Especially before Katy slips another disk laughing at this hilarious post!
    Posted by draymond  on  01/13/06  at  11:37 PM
  2. Doug needs to get his medical conditions straight! I haven't vacuumed since I had a hysterectomy in 1990. I haven't carried in the groceries since I herniated TWO disks in my neck in 1997. And I haven't driven at night on the highway since I had brain surgery in 1999.

    Honestly, though, a few years back he had a hernia repaired and I tied his bloomin' shoes for FOUR DAYS!

    I am going to be VERY AFRAID to ask "just anyone" to guest blog from now on!!! I'd darn well better make sure they're the "sympathetic type" before I make my request, huh? ;)
    Posted by Katy  on  01/13/06  at  11:48 PM
  3. Very nice touch guys--arguing with each other *wink,wink* online here and supposedly at home while you are both sipping Shirley Temples on a beach in Fiji before winging your way back home Sunday. Why not open up a Fallible-cam with a "live" feed and about an hour of the Raymonds at home, zooming in and out of the shot? You could put this on an endless loop and it would be more believable than the photos from iStock.com and having a six year old type for you.

    Get your rest, Katy. Your adoring throng awaits the news that you are "back" and ready to blog.
    Posted by Michael O'Connor  on  01/14/06  at  12:08 AM
  4. OK, do you think beaches in Fiji come equipped with even a "wi," much less a "fi"? Come on, O'Connor! Just now, the Marginal Man, TM, walked through the bedroom where I sit eeking out a few painful words here and there, and said (very pitifully, I might add), "Well...I guess I'd better fix myself some dinner..." Sheesh! Are those words a woman in recovery would have to hear anywhere on the island of FIJI??? I think not...
    Posted by Katy  on  01/14/06  at  12:29 AM
  5. I must admit, when I saw you (Katy) commenting on my blog this week, I wondered at the "surgery."

    ha haa!!!! This post had me rolling. As a matter of fact, I've read it twice!
    Posted by Liz  on  01/14/06  at  04:55 AM
  6. The first time I saw Veggie Tales I had no previous knowledge of the stuff. As I watched and listened, I realized this MUST have been written by a MAN! Sure enough, saw the credits at the end . . . written by a man :)

    Same here - didn't need Michael's name at the top to know this was written by a man! hehehehehe Because, you know what? If these fingers were Michael's fingers? I doubt anyone would hear from Michael for forever!

    Oh, gosh, Michael! I've just herded you into this male stereotypical corral, and I don't even know you!!! But I do love Katy!!!!!

    Wouldn't you prefer, though, to look through the perspective that though we all adore Katy, we have discovered during her absence that she has exquisite taste in friends? :) hehehehehe
    Posted by Ame  on  01/14/06  at  04:56 AM
  7. Liz--O ye of little faith!!! ;) Glad you found Michael entertaining. I've read this post six or seven times, and I've shed quite a few hysterical tears over it, I must say...

    Ame--Oh, baby, bring on the stereotypes! And not just about Michael (though he is so deserving...). What about The Marginal Man, TM, expecting the DISHES to be washed by a woman who has stitches in her hand!

    That reminds me SO much of my dear father, dead now nearly 22 years. The night I was born, my mother knew she was in desperate, fast-moving labor. My father didn't want her to go to the hospital until she'd washed the dinner dishes!!!!! She flatly refused, and I was born within the dinner hour.

    Michael and Doug are definitely more evolved than THAT, don't you think? :)
    Posted by Katy  on  01/14/06  at  02:05 PM
  8. Katy . . . when he comes home with paper plates and plastic ware, you'll know he's figured out that the dishes are HIS responsibility!!!!! HAHAHAHAHA
    Posted by Ame  on  01/15/06  at  06:34 AM
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