I've decided to do a gossip posting each week. I've decided to call it Talking Tuesday until I decide to call it something else. Let get this party started!

This week we'll be dishing about Shannon. Yes, thats a "real" name. Where's the fun in dishing if no one knows who I'm talking about? Yep, Shannon ...

You know what immediately comes to mind when I think of all the stuff I know about Shannon? Thanksgiving. Yeah, yeah, I'm thankful she's my friend but I'm talking specifically about last Thanksgiving. The one where I had just had a baby and then my husband had an emergency appendectamy in the wee hours of the morning. When I called her, she came and drove me to the hospital. She stayed with me in the ICU waiting room until I could see him, although I told her I was OK and she could go. (And God Bless her tormented husband who was left home alone with two small children and a raw turkey facing an onslaught of relatives expecting Thanksgiving lunch. Incidentially, her husband was one of the true Christian men that didn't curse when they found out the reason they couldn't push my mini-van out of the mud was that I had the parking brake jammed down. You know, it suddendly occurs to me that he suffers a lot)

That day at the hospital she made parking things better, and she made the nurses better, and she checked out the doctor, and somehow everything got "better" after she took that little walk down the hallway by herself to talk with ex-coworkers.

And, after she left the hospital? She went back to my house and took Cassie with her for the day so it was a day Cassie remembers as the wonderful time she spent the whole day at Miss Shannon's instead of the day Daddy had to have scarey emergency surgery. Like she didn't have enough other stuff to do. She says things like "It was nothing" but lets be honest, you can only pray for that kind of "nothing" when you're in trouble and you're lucky to get it.

Another thing I like about Shannon is that she's tall. I've always wanted to be tall. *sigh* And she wears the loveliest clothes. Sometimes tall people, with a freakishly skewed view, try to make themselves invisible by wearing lots and lots of beige. Or gray. You know what I'm talking about. Shannon dresses in pretty colors that make her stand out for having great taste. I'm especially fond of that turquoise dress. Its a "true" color (meaning its not diluted with umber in the dye) which is SO hard to find in fabric. I have problems with my eyes that make staring at large lumps of brown almost painful. Thats never a problem with Shannon. She's not afraid of color.

I suppose thats what I really like about her. She's not afraid of stuff. Sure, there's stuff she doesn't do but thats because she's aware of the consequences not because she's afraid. Thats a subtle difference. She has ... nerve. In a good way. The kind of way I wish I had.

And she's clever. She could get information out of a rock, and the rock would never even know. She's wasted in her non-law-enforcement-job. She would have been the best spy ever! (Don't say tall people can't be spies. Julia Childs was a spy! She does actually kinda remind me of Julia Childs. The nice parts, not the drinking-problem parts. Meaning that Julia drank like a fish, not Shannon)

Admittedly, sometimes she's a little too clever for my own good. If you sit next to her, watch out! She'll make the cleverest funniest comments under her breath in Sunday School. Leaving the person next to her convulsing with laughter, while she looks at them all innocence-and-sunshine. That might sound like a negative, but let me tell you, she really makes any time you sit next to her interesting! Even when she thinks she's boring, she's wrong. Its just the lull in the storm before the lighting bolt.

Still, I suppose writing only charming things about Shannon will be boring to those who are here looking for tittilating excitment. Lets get on with it.

Shannon's dog looks like a rat. A mutant rat. There. Thats all I've got. Mutant rat dog. Other than that, she's a sweetie. That dog, though ... its scarey.

Coming next week: I dish the dirt on Becky. Or Stacy. Or someone else.