She's Bossy

"You don't have to love me. You don't even have to like me, but you will respect me. And you wanna know why? Cuz I'm a boss!" -Kelis

Apparently nobody smacked my mouth nor washed it out with soap when I was a defiant child proclaiming “YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!” In fact, it might have been an expression they found ‘cute’ coming out of the mouth of a three-year-old. At age 25, however, it’s not cute anymore when I let friends and family know, “I’m the boss of this!” It now comes across as witchy… or something along those lines.

Join me in traveling down ‘poor, pitiful me’ road. Since 1984, I’ve assumed I was born with the inherent personality trait of ‘plum bossy.’ For non east Texas readers, the term ‘plum’ is defined “utterly and completely, with no room for question.” It wasn’t until a fateful , summer project day that I learned the truth about who I really am; a sweet, soft spoken, innocent little girl who has been corrupted by the headstrong, outspoken, bossiness of the one and only… ANNA!

She’s molded me into the monster you know, and done such an impeccable job of doing so that I have NEVER been accused of being sweet, soft spoken, nor innocent. Bummer, oh well! You know what they say, “well behaved women rarely make history.” And so two misbehaving ladies, Anna and me, set out to make history in the form of homemade jelly.

One thing leads to another, that’s how this jelly project came about.
The lovely Sister Cannon at church made some blackberry jelly and shared it with Anna. I was fascinated that people actually make jelly. I think many of the jewels of yesteryear are being lost in my generation. I have a great appreciation for ‘old’ things. My good friend Jeremy teases that my living room feels like walking into an old granny’s home. It’s clad in antique furniture and old black and white photos of my relatives who have passed away. I’d like to preserve the past as best I can, especially the parts that mean something to me like family heirlooms and things of the such. I’m 25, and I can tell you that my girlfriends and I have never sat around and canned fresh vegetables, made jellies, nor baked bread from scratch. Sad, but true. Thanks to Sister Cannon, I decided I too could be a maker of delicious jellies.

That’s really how this summer project idea came about. On a sheet of scratch paper, I quickly scribbled “Summer to-do’s: Make jelly.” As said above, one thing leads to another, and now I’ve made over 20 new recipes this summer. Early in the summer, I spent some good, quality time with Sister Bossy, I mean Anna and made jars upon jars of three different flavors of fruit jellies. Anna hand picked the wild plums, we searched high and low throughout east Texas for fresh blackberries (stopping at the peach orchard for homemade peach ice cream), and I’ll admit we had to buy the mass amounts of strawberries from Wal-Mart. I hand crushed fruit for so long that I suffer from arthritis in the elbow, but we’re left with wonderful memories together and the best jelly this side of the new millennium.

Lesson learned: Do NOT, under any circumstance, try to dip sugar out of the original bag at Anna’s house. Pour it into a big bowl first, then measure it out to the T and scrape the excess sugar off the top with a knife. Don’t think I’m kidding. She will blow a gasket.