Caroline went back to school yesterday morning for the first time since last Tuesday. And, I’m not going to lie, it was a little rough to get back in the routine of getting up and heating up a bowl of instant oatmeal. Then I started to look around the kitchen for her lunchbox and couldn’t find it.

That’s when it dawned on me that she probably left it at school six days ago.

And so when I thought the worst part of my day was going to Starbucks and discovering all the good chairs were taken and the electrical outlet by my table didn’t work? I was wrong.

The worst part of my day was when I had to empty out the thermos full of cottage cheese that I’d packed for Caroline’s lunch last Tuesday.

I just dry-heaved at the memory of it.

Cottage cheese is henceforth dead to me.

Anyway, I didn’t mention yesterday that Gulley’s boys ended up staying with us this weekend. Nena (Gulley’s grandmother for those of you who might be new) had a heart attack on Thursday night and Gulley drove to go see her in the hospital. And I volunteered to keep the boys because I knew it would be better than Christmas morning for Caroline to get to have a sleepover with her peeps.

So we spent Saturday night eating cheeseburgers and playing Wii and watching G-Force. Then P cooked pancakes for everyone on Sunday morning and we went to see Journey 2: The Mysterious Island later that afternoon. Which was actually pretty good.

Even though I am a little disgruntled because I have determined that this whole 3-D movie thing is a scam. A SCAM I TELL YOU. Because when I looked at movie times, there was only one showing that was in normal 2-D like the good old days and four showings in 3-D.

I picked the 3-D showing because it was the most convenient (all part of their dastardly plan) and became even more irritated when I bought our tickets and realized kids’ ticket prices are only FIFTY CENTS less than an adult ticket. It’s a total racket.

And I’m not even going to get into all my thoughts on Titanic being re-released in 3-D. Do we really need to see that ship go down and all those people drown in 3-D?

Maybe it’s just me. I don’t enjoy wearing plastic glasses while I watch a movie. They make my head hurt. And after the movie was over, Jackson said he didn’t think the graphics were very good. But I hated to tell him I didn’t think it was a production error as much as the fact that I saw him eat handfuls of greasy popcorn and then put his fingers all over the lenses of his 3-D glasses.

But enough about that.

Let’s talk about Nena.

She had a mild heart attack Thursday night. And Gulley said she was like Scarlett O’Hara in a crisis. She had the presence of mind to take an aspirin and then push the call button in her apartment for help. They ran a bunch of tests at the hospital and determined it was a heart attack. And they knew she was feeling better when she asked for her lipstick before the doctor came in to see her.

But after a heart cath yesterday, they determined she needs to have a quadruple bypass. By the time most of you are reading this, she’ll be in surgery. And she’s 88 years old.

Gulley left town again yesterday afternoon so she could be there for the surgery. And she packed the pair of jeans that Nena once declared looked like something that should be thrown in the trash. Gulley said she’ll know Nena is going to be okay when she wakes up and starts complaining about how bad those jeans look.

So if you think about it, I’d sure appreciate your prayers for Nena’s surgery and recovery. She means a lot to me. And more than that, she means the world to some of my very favorite people.

And if you want to know more about Nena, here are two of my favorite Nena posts. You can read them here and here.

Thanks, y’all.

A little over a week ago, I drove out to Nordstrom to meet my friend Leah for coffee. I didn’t even realize that Nordstrom had a coffee shop that opened before the store because I lead a sheltered life and rarely venture outside my neighborhood Starbucks. But Leah suggested Nordstrom and I threw caution to the wind and drove outside my normal bubble to meet her.

And the Nordstrom coffee was delicious. I was kind of worried it would disappoint because I’m so used to Starbucks but it was a nice change. And I say that like I’m a real coffee connoisseur but I assure you that in reality a fancy restaurant could replace their normal coffee with Folgers and I’d be hard pressed (I so want to say french-pressed right there.) to know the difference.

Anyway, as I was making the long twenty minute journey to see Leah, I decided to call my friend Jamie and say hi because she is really the reason I know Leah. But since Jamie lives in Dallas she couldn’t meet us for coffee and I wanted her to know she would be missed.

On a side note that has nothing to do with anything, Jamie and I call each other Evelyn. Or sometimes just Ev for short. This started over ten years ago when she lived here in town and we’d get together and trade magazines every week. Gulley said we were like two little old ladies with our obsessive magazine swapping and so we began to call each other Evelyn. This was back in the days before Pinterest made home decor magazines irrelevant.

Evelyn and I did a quick catch up on life and then she mentioned that she and her husband were taking a trip with their boys over Spring Break and made the comment that it was a good time to do it since they were all healthy and you never know what the future holds.

And honestly? I thought it was kind of a depressing thought. It’s not that I didn’t agree with her, but I just don’t spend a lot of time thinking about those things. I prefer a little strategy I call denial.

About that time I arrived at Nordstrom so we hung up and promised to talk soon. Then Leah and I spent the next two hours laughing over coffee and having a lengthy discussion about what types of jeans are appropriate for forty-year-old men. Because we have reached a point in life where we are married to forty-year-old men.

Then Leah left for a haircut appointment and I spent the rest of the afternoon shopping until it was time to go pick Caroline up from school. Caroline and I made our way home and I was going through her backpack looking for notes and soggy graham crackers left over from the snack I’d packed that morning (because she is fundamentally opposed to actually putting the remains of snack back in a Ziploc baggie) when I heard my phone ring. And then I heard it beep with a text coming through. It was Jamie and she said to call her as soon as I could. Which I immediately thought was weird because we’d just talked earlier.

So I called her back. And that’s when she told me she’d just talked to our friend Jen and that Jen found out that afternoon she has breast cancer and asked Jamie to call our other close friends to let us know.

Jen.

One of my oldest and dearest friends. My college roommate. The person Gulley and I sat on the couch with one night when we were all twenty years old while we belted out a very bad version of “The Wind Beneath My Wings” until we were crying. The person who used to wake me up at 8:00 a.m. just because she didn’t feel like I should sleep the morning away and once declared that she thought it might be socially unacceptable to order a chicken-fried steak in a restaurant right after I’d ordered a chicken-fried steak in a restaurant.

Jen got me to go to Breakaway Bible study because she knew I was lost and searching. Jen has encouraged me more times than I can count and makes me laugh until my stomach hurts.

Jen, who just got married a little less than two years ago and has the most darling eight-month-old boy. Jen, my friend that showed up last September to surprise me after I called her with the news that I’d signed a contract for my first book.

And had her baby boy dressed in a homemade onesie that she painted herself.

It says “I love my Aunt Mel. Fabulous and Forty and Soon to be Famous.”

At least the forty part is true. But see what love does?

After I hung up with Jamie, I called Jen. We talked for just a little bit and she was good. Upbeat and optimistic, talking about the pink scarves she plans to wear after she loses her hair because “pink is my signature color”. Her prognosis looks good, but she has a rough road ahead.

And then I hung up the phone and cried.

Because it’s hard when one of your people has a hard road ahead.

That’s why I’ve spent the last week crying at times that catch me by surprise, like in the drive through line at the bank or at the grocery store when I notice that candy conversation hearts are on sale and remember they’re her favorite. I don’t want her to be at the doctor’s office having tests. I don’t want her life to involve surgery and chemo and a million insurance documents.

I want her to be lying on a blanket in the sunshine next to her baby boy, blowing bubbles and listening to him laugh.

I realize people get bad news every day. And I realize that there are all kinds of things that each of us have on our plate. But there are times it hits really close to home and this is one of those times for me.

And here’s the thing. God has surrounded Jen with the most amazing community. She has people that will go out of their way to help her in any way they can because she’s spent years doing the same thing for them. She has a heart that loves God and trusts Him to a point that humbles me. This is what she said in an email the other day, “Our God’s gone before us in so many very visible ways to remind us that though it’s a shock to us it’s NOT a surprise to Him! He’s paved the way in precious and gracious ways. He knew this was coming in 2012 and He surprised me with Scott in 2010 then surprised us with Linc in 2011. So the surprise of cancer is so graciously buffered by those other surprise gifts of grace. My heart is overwhelmed with gratitude. And He’s granted a peace that surpasses understanding. He’s got this! And us!”

Today is Jen’s fortieth birthday.

Happy Birthday, Jen! I love you so big.

Before I can even commence with this post I have to share that I noticed in my list of site stats that someone actually googled “Big Mama chicken on the outside” and “Big Mama Blog raw chicken” yesterday. Which makes me feel like somewhere, someone was talking about me (maybe contemplating giving me some sort of important assignment or task) and then thought to themselves WAIT. I THINK SHE HAS ISSUES WITH CHICKEN. And then my blog confirmed it and that was the end of my possible career in the CIA.

Or maybe it’s possible it wasn’t nearly anything that exciting.

So this past weekend was the magical weekend of the year that Gulley and I spend the entire weekend both child and husband-free while we complete all our Christmas shopping and wrap all our presents and drink one or four bottles of wine. It is always one of my favorite weekends of the year and I’m so glad that we established this tradition over twenty years ago. Even while I’m baffled that two twenty-year-old college girls who actually once basically hitchhiked to Oklahoma (true story) had the foresight and wisdom to come up with such a brilliant idea.

The only real problem with the whole thing is we need to come up with a way to stretch it to three days of shopping instead of just two. Not that two days isn’t enough time to get our Christmas shopping done. It just doesn’t allow enough time to try on multiple pairs of Frye boots in Nordstrom for reasons that have nothing to do with Christmas and the spirit of giving.

We began our shopping weekend ‘o fun at 9:30 Friday morning when I picked Gulley up from her house. After a quick stop at Starbucks for caffeine nourishment, we drove straight out to The Shops at La Cantera because we actually employ a strategy and we figured it would be a zoo on Saturday so we should finish our bisness (I really meant to type “business” but I accidentally typed “bisness” and so I’m keeping it. Like we were two gangsta shoppers finishing our bizness because we are just that hip and cool.) there on Friday.

(Actually I just remembered our first stop was Hobby Lobby. I should remember this because it’s where I started to gripe to Gulley about all the logistics of Caroline’s third grade class party and might have been stressing out about the chocolate fountain when Gulley looked at me and said, “I think you need to hashtag this conversation #FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS”. And then we laughed until we cried because what elementary school party has a chocolate fountain? Except for my daughter’s?)

Technically our first stop should have been Toys ‘R Us but we were mistakenly under the impression that we would be able to avoid Toys ‘R Us entirely this year and so we made a strategic error. Sadly, it was around 5:00 p.m. on Friday when we realized that, YES VIRGINIA, we would have to go to the place that makes Santa want to die, but acknowledged that neither of us could handle it on a Friday night and decided to save it for first thing Saturday morning.

But we managed to find several gifts at La Cantera and TJ Maxx Homegoods. Then we ventured to Target for a few things and ended up at Cost Plus World Market in search of various odds and ends.

Finally, we made a quick stop by my house to unload our packages and then treated ourselves to a delicious Italian dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. Then we came home, watched five episodes of Friends and went to sleep.

First thing Saturday morning turned out to be 11:00 by the time we woke up and got dressed, but what’s the point of having an empty house with no kids if you don’t sleep late and enjoy it? Gulley also asked me if I would use the You Curl on her hair so she could see if she might want one for Christmas.

And so I You Curled. And I’m here to tell you that Gulley had to fight a stronghold of hair pride the rest of the day. She said she hadn’t liked her hair this much since the night of her Junior Prom in 1989. I can only imagine how much she would have loved herself if she’d been able to wear that same peach lame’ dress with shoes dyed to match.

But I do have to say her hair pride was warranted because it POURED DOWN RAIN all day Saturday and her hair was still standing strong when we got back to the house that night.

It was like a hair miracle. Like the fishes and loaves that fed the multitudes but with hair and styling spray.

By the time we got home on Saturday night we were soaked from the rain, exhausted, and cold. But we rebounded after I got a fire going in the fireplace (SHOUT OUT TO LIGHTER FLUID) and put on our pajamas. That’s when the wrapping party began.

Each of us has a pile of presents that need to be wrapped and evaluated and sorted. Then we eat some cheese and crackers and possibly some chocolate chip cookie dough and get to wrapping while we watch girl movies. We started with When Harry Met Sally which led to a hilarious conversation about our worst dates ever. Sadly, I cannot share all that information here but sufficed to say that I once set Gulley up with a guy who didn’t order any food at dinner because he was “on a diet” and then proceeded to eat her entire plate of cheese enchiladas when they arrived.

Nice.

There was also a time we went on a double date in college with two guys that had us drive out to their “house” that turned out to be a single-wide trailer surrounded by so many random dogs that I finally just stopped my car in the middle of the road for fear of running one of them over. The dogs, not the dates. Just wanted to clarify.

Needless to say, it didn’t work out for us. But we did end up having a nice night at the Bellville County Fair where our dates bought us each our own turkey leg.

And speaking of single-wide trailers, we watched Urban Cowboy next. We both admitted there was a time we dreamed of having our wedding receptions at Gilley’s and dancing to “Can I Have This Dance?” while wearing white cowboy boots and maybe remarking “Mama, my legs are sweatin’.”

Of course I don’t know what’s more disturbing. That we ever dreamed of those things or that we both saw the movie while we were still in elementary school?

But like Gulley said, “It was a different time back then.” Yes. A time when someone cast John Travolta to play a cowboy.

We stayed up until around 2:00 a.m., but finally every present was wrapped (except for the two I forgot about until the next day) and we went to bed. On Sunday morning we faced the sad realization that another Christmas shopping weekend had come and gone all too soon.

But on the bright side, Gulley’s hair was still curled.

And that’s more than Sissy could say by the end of her wedding reception at Gilley’s.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011