Well since I last wrote I have seen Pat Benatar in concert, thus fulfilling a dream I had back in 1982. My fifth grade self would have been so thrilled for me as I listened to Shadows of the Night live and in person. Honestly, here’s what I will tell you, we should all hope to age as well as Pat Benatar.
On the other end of the spectrum, I was in College Station on Thursday night to speak at a leadership forum for mainly Texas A&M students. It had dawned on me earlier in the week that none of them were even born when I graduated from college, which may explain why I kept telling them all how cute they were. But I couldn’t help it. They were so cute and so fun. I just wanted to wrap them all in a big hug and tell them the next five to ten years might be a little rough but hang in there. And wear sunscreen.
The other speakers at the event were Teri Griege, who is a Stage 4 colon cancer patient who finished the Ironman World Championship after being diagnosed, and Christian Pinkston, who owns a hugely successful public relations firm in Washington D.C. and had his life changed after he almost drowned in the Persian Gulf.
And then there was me. One time I had to pay full price at Gap and my dry-cleaning wasn’t ready when I went to pick it up. We have all had our personal struggles. I think it was my job to let the students know that you can make a 13 on a college exam and it isn’t the end of the world. Ask me how I know.
I stayed with Big and Honey while I was there which was like a mini-vacation, complete with chicken salad from Newk’s and a strawberry tart from Cafe Eccell. Then I drove home Friday morning and we went to the rodeo with a group of friends on Friday night. That’s where we saw Pat Benatar. And she hit us with her best shot.
On Saturday we were able to have a lazy morning complete with biscuits and gravy and then Caroline had a soccer game at 2:00. It was a tough game and they had their first loss of the season. We cooked burgers that evening and then had church on Sunday morning.
I will confess that I watched very little of the Academy Awards and instead opted to just check out all the dresses online. We watched Fletch instead because we’ve only seen it 142 times before and it was the only thing on that held our interest. I really can’t explain it any better than that.
Oh! Our biggest excitement (and I am using that term so loosely and this should really be an indicator of how little is going on with us right now) was that Caroline set the house alarm off by coughing so hard on Saturday night. She’s had a cough and cold for the last week – emphasis on the cough – and the coughing was at an all-time high Saturday night. When she went into her bathroom the coughing triggered the glass break on our alarm system and if you haven’t had your house alarm go off at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night while you’re laying on the couch and reading a book, then you don’t really know what adrenaline rush means. P had already gone to bed and he came flying out of the room, certain he was about to have to fight off an intruder.
Needless to say, I gave her an extra dose of cough medicine and a warning to not cough in the bathroom.
As for Monday, I deemed it errand day and ran all the errands that haven’t gotten finished in the last week. This includes such exciting things as a trip to HEB, the mail store, the pet store, Target, and Gap. I went to Gap to return a few things I’d bought for Caroline and decided to take a quick look around and here’s what I saw: A LOT of bad pocket placement. I don’t know why Gap insists on ruining a perfectly good piece of clothing with pockets. Who are all these people who need pockets? I don’t understand. And even if I had something to put in a pocket, a cotton pocket on a cotton skirt is going to do me zero amounts of good. You can’t put a cell phone in it. And, according to my grandmother, you should never actually put your hand in a pocket because it ruins the line of the clothing. Apparently Gap never got that memo. They envision a world where we need pockets on all manner of dresses and skirts and such. Of course they also believe a flimsy piece of coordinating fabric suffices as a belt, so do with that what you will.
So to sum it all up, love and pockets and coughing are all a battlefield.
Thank you and good night.