whatfransaid-blog

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“Fashion, Style & Wardrobe”

 Fashion, Style and a wardrobe, those words separately and together are not words you would use to describe my Mother’s clothes. It’s been a certain way all her life and no matter what you say or do will change the way she dresses. I have tried to even buy her clothes and she still always reverts back to her ways. I am not blaming Kmart on this 100% because I am sure they have some nice things, but she is not buying them. I have not personally been in a Kmart since I was 12 but I’m sure if I went in there I would find something nice to wear for her. If you were to see a picture of my Mother’s body and just her body (no face) most of us would be able to guess it was her just by focusing on her mid section. No I am not calling her fat, what I am referring to is the fact that for the past 60 plus years she always tucks her shirt into her pants. EVERYTIME. We have been telling her for years that it is okay if you don’t tuck your shirt in. In between her 25 bathroom trips a day you will pull it out and she will put it back in. She LOVES it. I am not sure why but it’s like a child and their security blanket.

Another item she loves from Kmart are these famous “Chinese Slippers”, Chinese Mesh Slippers. Over the years she has probably purchased 100 pairs of these, and owns them in every color. Fran must match her outfit from head to toe. Her entire outfit must be the same color. Her favorite color is Navy Blue. Luckily denim is blue, so that is sometimes the most normal part of her outfit. So if she wears jeans that are blue she most certainly has on a navy blue top and her blue Chinese Slippers.

If she is wearing red or pink, the entire outfit is in red or pink. I am not sure about her bra and underwear because we never go that far but I am sure if I took a guess they would match as well. We have tried to tell her over and over, it is okay if you don’t match your entire outfit with the same color but she loves it.

She also changes about 14 times a day, no exaggeration. Since we moved from New York to Florida, my mother has lived in Sarasota. She moved away once about 20 miles north for a couple of short years but don’t you worry, she made it back to Fruitville Rd.  My sister, Dana and I both moved away to Tampa, me for college and Dana for work. (Tampa is only 60 miles away from Sarasota). My Mother who LOVES Sarasota and Fruitville Rd acts like driving north to Tampa is taking a road trip to North Dakota. She often references it as “Alabama” and believes it is a different time zone. She does not like to leave Sarasota. So if she does, she is bringing at least 1-2 changes of clothes for the road trip, even if she is just going up for the day.

When she arrives at your house in Tampa (1 hour later) she runs through the door and into the bathroom at lightning speed, as if she had been holding her bladder for the past 17 hours. (Brooklyn Accent) “Ohhh myyy gawdd, I have to pee!” Then she will rush out of the bathroom somehow in another outfit, it’s like she has a superpower, you aren’t even sure how it happened because you didn’t even see her bring in any other clothes. And, you look at her with that confused look on your face, and she responds (Brooklyn Accent) “I just had to get out of that outfit and into something comfortable”. As if, she just drove in a corset and stilettos. Just in one day she will have a driving outfit, a sitting in the house outfit, an after the shower outfit and a sleeping outfit. She will also rotate out her Chinese Slippers to coordinate with the wardrobe changes.

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Text Messaging

Actual text messages written by Fran Rizzo

“Let me tell u!!! It is crazy Windy here on Lido Beach Holy Cows!! I should have brought my boggie boad”

“Well actually cooking. I went to W D n bought children. I just put it in the oven with corn breach, green beans. Red neck meal. I love my new place. Its so cute. I have a full kitchen now.”

“I will call her again. I can’t come up. Hows Mr b Mr B. Is Tara

The?”

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Traveling with Fran Rizzo

“Traveling”

 If I had to pick who I would rather travel with, my 80 year old Grandmother and her blind husband or my Mother, I would pick my Grandmother 100%. Traveling with Fran is an experience that requires a lot of patience. I once traveled from Florida to New York to visit my sister, Jenna when she was living there. Most people get nervous going through TSA; just on their own and for no reason at all. I know I have nothing to hide, I know I didn’t pack anything dangerous. But traveling with my Mother, in an airport…oh my. I was worried she had packed something in her bag that wasn’t allowed but it was one of those items she felt she couldn’t live without. Also when you get to TSA you are supposed to have your liquid items in a zip lock bag, well don’t worry Mom was all over that. “No problem” she says. However she has like 15 zip lock bags and I am pretty sure there is a limit on that.

 She also doesn’t travel very often, so she had recently purchased a new suit case. When she arrived with this suitcase, she was carrying it...not sure why because it was a typical carryon luggage that most people use. However, her’s didn’t seem to have one of those pull out handles that helps you roll the bag….it had wheels and it had a strap but she couldn’t find the pull out handle so she just assumed it didn’t have one. By this point I was already stressed out waiting for her to put her zip lock bagged items back into her suitcase, put her Chinese slippers back on and still make it to the gate in time so I just couldn’t deal with her suitcase.

 Days later when we are getting ready to leave New York to go back to Florida her suitcase comes back out, in her arms as she is trying to carry it through my sister’s house. I finally go, “Let me take a look at this. I can’t believe this suitcase wouldn’t come with a handle.” So after about 15 seconds I find a little area with a zipper around it, unzip it and what do I find….the handle! It had been there the entire time. She was thrilled at that point and just starting laughing and saying holy cows, would you look at that!

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This is so true and happens 100% of the time. If you are Fran Rizzo you add a Brooklyn accent. If you are Emily Florio you remove 1-2 vowels from the ends of all words. 

Italian Speaking Mode Activated

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“Driving”

So if you dare to ask her, “How was your drive?” (Brooklyn Accent), “Holy Cows! Let me tell you something, that was some of the worst traffic ever!” And this is coming from a woman that apparently used to drive in New York City! She cannot handle driving or traffic anymore. She has no sense of direction what so ever. She is one of those people that raises both of their hands to make an “L” to confirm which one is her left hand. She has no idea after 30 years of living in Florida, that Tampa is North of Sarasota. And she will ask you over and over again, (Brooklyn Accent), “So, if I am on I-75 and it says North-Ocala should I take that? You don’t ever want to tell her that there is another way to get to Tampa because she would never get there.

One time, she was meeting my 18 year old niece for breakfast in Bradenton, another city just north of Sarasota, but still south of Tampa. They both were driving back to Tampa in separate cars and Brittany kept going straight on I-75 but my Mother doesn’t know that way, so she took her usually way of driving on I-275. My Mom freaked out when she realized Brittany was going the wrong way. My Mom continued to drive a few miles and then reached the I-275 Toll Booth are just before the Skyway Bridge. My Mom found a police officer and actually pulled off the road and went over to him. She was freaking out saying, (Brooklyn Accent) “My Granddaughter is lost!” In the meantime, Brittany was fine; she continued to drive on I-75, connect on I-4 and got home safely.

Then there was this time when she was leaving Tampa, driving back to Sarasota and there is this famous bridge, called the Howard Franklin Bridge. It’s a 7 mile long bridge that you have to take when you leave Tampa to drive through St. Petersburg. She has been on this bridge before and knows she is going the right way, until she 2nd guesses herself. She calls me, (Brooklyn Accent), “Ohh my gaawwd am I going the wrong way?? I need to turn around! So I said, “Where are you?” (Brooklyn Accent) “I am on the bridge!” So I said, “That is fine you are going the right way.” And she responds, (Brooklyn Accent) “Well I was, I already turned around once because I thought I was going the wrong way! So she drove that bridge 3 times, 21 miles just on that bridge, trying to go home…

She also has no patience when it comes to driving, a lot of it I am sure is because she is always trying to figure out where she is going and a lot of it stems from the fact that she is a New Yorker, and every New Yorker feels like they are entitled to their own road, lane and speed limit. So there she goes in her little Toyota Corolla, lost, confused and flicking off everyone who gets in her way. She loves to yell at someone who “cuts her off”, even if that very nice person put on their turn signal on and gave themselves plenty of time to change lanes; she thinks they have a vendetta on her and did it on purpose. She also isn’t afraid to show off her collection of New York Yankee hats she keeps in the car so you can see them out her back window. She wants everyone to know she is a Yankee’s fan and means business. Instead of those stickers that say Baby on Board, she needs one that says New Yorker on Board.

If you think her driving sounds bad, wait till you have her in the car as a passenger. She thinks she is a student driver teacher with her own set of breaks on her side. She loves to press the imaginary break while grabbing onto the door handle, screaming “Whoa”. You almost want to put her in the back seat and give her a sedative, anything to calm her down so she doesn’t stress you out the entire drive.

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Check out BLUE outfit! Matching from head to toe with her shirt tucked in! Classic #FranRizzo! #franisms 

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“KMART”

Let’s talk a little bit about Kmart. We all know Kmart has been around for a very long time and I guarantee to you that Fran Rizzo is Kmart’s most loyal customer. I don’t believe they have a loyalty program but if they did, they would have flown her across the world in rewards by now. I have never met anyone else in my life that loves Kmart as much as this woman does. I also have never met anyone who started a conversation with (Brooklyn Accent) “Got to go to Kmart” or (Brooklyn Accent) “I got this at Kmart”. I don’t have a lot of memories with my Mother at any place other than Kmart. I kid you not, this may be because I have a terrible memory as it is, or it’s because I spent so much time at Kmart to the point that I believe I ate most of my meals there. Who didn’t love those slurpees as a kid? Everything in our house came from Kmart, including my entire wardrobe. I was not the most fashionable child in school, that is for sure. For one, my mom was buying my clothes from Kmart and for two, my Mother was dressing me.

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Family Photo Album

When you open any of our family photo albums you will notice a ton of pictures of some very cute babies. These babies all look a little bit the same, dark hair, dark eyebrows, cute dresses and ruffled socks and white patent leather shoes. BUT the one thing you will notice in all of these photos is that these babies are all sitting on top of the dining room table. Just about every picture that my mother took of us as a child was taken on the dining room table. We have no idea why she thought that was the best location but it was almost as if she wasn’t taking a picture of us unless we were on that table. We were always alone, which is scary enough thinking about it. How many times did we fall off that table? These pictures were taken of me and my sisters, throughout our childhood. There are ones with us as babies sitting in our car seats and there are ones of us with our birthday cake when we were 3 or 4.

As you know in the 80’s Polaroid’s were all the rage. Every picture of us was taken with a Polaroid. Also on the back of every picture written in blue pen was the name of the babies in the photo, the year the photo was taken and possibly the event. This idea is where I presume Facebook and Instagram got their inspiration from. As you know these days, we don’t often print pictures and place them into a photo album, we put them on our social media accounts. And I agree, if it wasn’t for that album titled, “Club Scene” I may not remember where I was or what I was doing. But I do certainly know that person in the picture is always me. That is my favorite part about the family photo album, yes my sisters and I kind of all look alike, but I believe we are all identifiable to the point where our own Mother should know which baby is who. I am sure there are lots of other Mother’s out there that do this but...the dining room table…not sure about that one.

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Why I started a blog about Fran Rizzo

My sister’s and I often talk about our interactions with our Mother and post them on social media and everyone seems to get a kick out of the entertainment so I thought this would be a great way to share our experiences with the world.

These are the stories of Fran Rizzo because there has never been anyone else quite like my mother. She is truly her own individual person with a creative way to live her life. All her friends and family have learned to adapt to her ways and have learned that if you question why she does something a certain way, never expect an actual reason. My mother has no real explanation for the way she does things, or why she does things…they just make sense to her. If you take the time to explain a better way to do things she will just look at you with a blank stare on her face and say “right” or “no” and then continue to go back to filing her purse with 35 separate zip lock bags because it makes sense to her. I need to reference, that the most important part of this is how you read it. Fran was born in Brooklyn and it is now 40 plus years later and she still sounds like she lives there currently. She has the strongest Brooklyn accent you will ever here. When you read this if there is a line that reads,” My Mom says”, read it in the most obnoxious Brooklyn accent.