Getting random with the FNL matriarchs

SheKnows: What's an item you can't live without?

Louanne: Besides my family and God, hockey. Last Friday night, I was watching The Stars-Calgary game, instead of "Friday Night Lights." My husband came in and said, 'pause that game, this is the best episode ever.' Okay, I will, but I've got to see this first!

Liz: I absolutely cannot live without music. Yes, ma'am. I love music. All types of music. I sing constantly here at home, and I just started working at another club. Well, my mother was a college professor. We listened to everything. She listened to classical, jazz. I had the full gamut of music, every type of music, country included. I love music. I couldn't live without music. I could deal without ever watching TV again, probably, or a movie. But if music was taken from me, I think I'd go crazy.

SK: What is a talent you wish you had?

Louanne: (ironically) Singing. I'm not a singer. In high school I thought I was but I'm not. I would love to do musicals.

SK: What are you reading right now?

Louanne: I am reading the "Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It's the story of Abraham Lincoln's rise to the presidency. It's absolutely fabulous.

Liz: I read a lot. I've had to get glasses, ‘cause I read so much, now. But it's called "Sister Gumbo; Spicy Vignettes From Black Women on Life, Sex and Relationships," by Ursula Inga Kindred and Mirranda Guerrin-Williams. I haven't been able to put it down.

SK: What is something you've saved since you were a kid?

Louanne: I, unfortunately, have so many things. The earliest is from third grade, a notebook, one of those old-time loose-leaf notebooks and on the front I have, 'I love Hardy Waddell,' and on the back I have, 'I love Bill Bob Dunlap.' Hardy was my boyfriend and my grandmother had my third grade party there and he gave me a box of candy. When he left, I called Bill Bob over and said, 'if you kiss me I'll give you a piece of this candy' and he said, ‘no' and Hardy got the word at recess the next day. It's something I've kept all these years, though I don't know what that says about me. (laughs)

Liz: Everything, child. I'm a pack rat. I could probably go back and pull out a windowpane shirt from the seventies. You know, the little shirts that were stitched together with individual squares, it was almost like a little quilt? And I embroidered, and painted — I was always decorating and painting and rhinestone studding everything. And I have a windowpane shirt that I put Winnie the Pooh on. I painted him, and then I went over and embroidered on top of that, and then he had the rhinestone studs all around him. Oh, my windowpane shirt. There was a lot happening, but it was the seventies, you could get away with it.

SK: And the big one. Any advice for our new SheKnows moms?

Luanne: My grandmother, Mary Williams, is the one that inspired me to act, only it wasn't acting it was playing pretend. She did it by a way that I would like to role model better. She didn't try to teach me to act, that wasn't her plan. She gave me a bag of old dress-up clothes and told me I could play in the garage. I would encourage people, including me with my grandkids, to allow their children to be who they are and not try to direct it so much, not try to have so many planned activities but more time for that person to play. Let them have more time to play and learn who they really are, because she was an incredible presence in my life. Now I'm older and wiser and I'm sharing it. (laughs)

Liz: Send up that prayer. Try to center yourself every morning, and save some of yourself, for yourself. You can't take care of everybody else if you're depleted. If you're running in a negative energy, you can't be positive for everybody. So you have to take time and regroup. Even if it means you have to get up at 5 instead of 6, and sit in the bathtub, or just sit quietly and have a cup of coffee for 30 minutes by yourself. You have to center yourself, and save some of yourself for yourself, or you won't be there for anybody else.