Month: July 2007

  • File this under “mommy has friends from the computer”

    Earlier today, I had a chance to meet up with Grafted Branch from Restoring the Years. However, seeing as how we have now met in real life, I can call her GB.

    We had emailed back and forth over the last few months and knew we lived in the same city. Eventually, we decided each of us was who we claimed to be, and made plans to meet for lunch with our girls. And where else do mamas meet for lunch, but McDonalds? Only the Play Place can afford any real conversational opportunities. Otherwise, it would have just been an opportunity for GB to meet me and listen to me say, “Caroline, quit playing with the sugar packets. Caroline, quit squirting the ketchup on your plate. What? You have to go to the bathroom now? Seriously, now?”

    And as much fun as that would have been, McDonalds seemed like the best option. We had so much fun discussing various aspects of blogging and assorted other topics related to life, love, faith, and raising girls. She was witty and just a little sarcastic, which, needless to say, is a quality I like in a person.

    I think Caroline summed it up best when we were driving out of the parking lot and exclaimed, “Oh Mama, those girls were SO MUCH FUN!”

    She couldn’t be more right.

  • It takes some effort to look like this

    Since I seem to have some deep, compelling need to confess every beauty blunder, I have a confession to make about my latest case of bad beauty judgement. I have no idea why I feel the need to tell y’all every detail of how I am, apparently, trying to make myself less attractive. Let’s just call it Beauty Gone Bad starring Big Mama.

    And last month when I shared my other major beauty faux pas of the summer, it warmed my heart to know that many of you have also suffered at the table of bangs. Sometimes a girl just needs to know she’s not alone.

    On a completely different side note, can I just tell y’all that I used my new WordPress search feature to find all the posts where I’ve mentioned my beauty mishaps and by just entering the word “mustache”, it pulled up like 15 different posts. I think I have some serious issues.

    Anyway, about a month ago, I mentioned that I was in the process of getting laser hair removal treatments. It was a long, sad tale of woe with much whining and crying about the pain. The terrible pain. The unendurable, heat of 1,000 suns pain. Compelling stuff, really.

    Anyway, after that treatment I asked Laser Girl if there was anything I could do, besides taking 14 shots of Jose Cuervo, to lessen the pain. She told me that I could purchase a tube of Dermacaine for the bargain basement price of $40.00. I immediately decided it would be the best $40.00 I’d spend all year, or at least for that week.

    Hook me up with the Dermacaine, Laser Girl.

    She handed me my tube of miracle cream with instructions to apply the cream 1 hour before my next treatment. Honestly, my upper lip and underarms were burning so badly, the prospect of the Dermacaine was the only reason I made another appointment.

    Fast forward to last week.

    I obsessively waited until 1 hour and 10 minutes prior to my hair removal appointment. At just the right moment, I opened up the miracle in a tube and began to apply it to all areas that would be experiencing the torture. And then, I just sat and waited for it to take effect.

    After a short while, I began to feel some tingling on my upper lip. Good sign. Very good sign. Who says no pain, no gain? I am totally going to beat this whole pain thing. Ha Ha, I am so clever and wise. I am so glad I spent the $40.00 because now that laser will feel like the whisper of 1,000 fairies.

    And then, because I am an idiot, I licked my lips. Immediately, my tongue went numb.

    I don’t know why I licked my lips. They weren’t dry. I hadn’t eaten anything. It was just a reflex. A dumb reflex. And just as I was realizing that I could no longer feel my tongue, I realized I could no longer feel my throat. All my internal organs were completely numb.

    I was dead inside.

    I drove to my appointment and called Gulley on my cell phone. I could barely talk for all the not feeling of my tongue and internal organs. I honestly think even my teeth were numb.

    I arrived at Laser Girl’s office and she looked confused to see me, or maybe she was just staring at the drool running down my chin due to the fact that I couldn’t feel anything. I said, “Heyth, I hath appotmet dith mownin”, and she looked at her calendar and I wasn’t on the schedule. She explained she was on her way out the door for a mammogram because she was having surgery, and asked if I could reschedule.

    And here is where I’d like to write phonetically how it sounded as I explained to her that I was all strung out on the Dermacaine and I hated to waste part of my $40.00 investment in pain relief and I’d driven 30 minutes to get to her office. But I’m not going to, because I am very busy contemplating other ways to make myself hideous. Anyway, she took pity on me, or more likely, wanted to get my drooling, mumbling presence out of the waiting room filled with only beautiful things and perfect, cosmetic miracles of modern medicine. She said she had time to go ahead with the appointment.

    She also confessed that her mammogram and impending surgery were purely cosmetic in nature, thus relieving me of my guilt in begging her to wait a few more minutes for her mammogram. I wish she and her 2 new friends many happy years together.

    I walked into the procedure room, put on my laser goggles, so as not to sear my corneas, and was perfectly at peace knowing I would feel nothing. Ahhh, it’ll be like a few minutes at the spa.

    Or a few minutes of pure, unmitigated torture.

    Curse you, Dermacaine. Curse you. You and your faulty pharmacodynamics.

    How is it possible to make my small intestine numb, but yet my underarms retained all feeling despite being slathered in Dermacaine?

    And the best part?

    I still have 2 treatments left.

    Next time I’m bringing in my bottle of Wild Turkey.

  • Bedazzled by the dazzle

    One of the great things about being a kid, and one of the things kids don’t appreciate, is they pretty much require a new wardrobe to begin each new season. For the most part, Caroline has outgrown all of her clothes from last fall and winter and thus, will require new fall and winter clothes.

    I’m more than a little envious.

    However, if I were to outgrow my clothes from last season, it would be due to entirely different reasons. Very unpleasant reasons involving strawberry butter, cheese biscuits and three chocolate cookies. So, I guess I should be thankful that all my clothes still seem to fit.

    Anyway, I’ve slowly started buying things for Caroline’s back to school wardrobe here and there. It doesn’t get cold here until around November, so I can find some cute things on sale that will work through most of the fall. The thing I didn’t anticipate is that she’s reached the age where I can’t just hang the new clothes in her closet for safekeeping until back to school time arrives. Oh no, she has become a clotheshorse and, in all fairness, she comes by it naturally.

    She seems to have a sixth sense that detects any new clothing that has entered our home. She can sense the presence of a Nordstroms shopping bag from 3 rooms away. I have never been more proud.

    The problem is she wants to wear these new clothes immediately. And I have always said I am going to choose my battles, so I don’t really want to fight over the new clothing, which is why I gave in when she walked into the living room the other night wearing a new long sleeve t-shirt in lieu of a pajama top. It looked pretty cute and she had actually coordinated it with some Gap pajama bottoms with stars on them. I had to admire her fashion acumen. She won me over on style points, so I let her wear it to bed.

    ?

    The other day I bought her two new pairs of pjs at Old Navy, and then stopped by a local boutique and found a cute hot pink outfit with bedazzled rhinestone hearts on the shirt and on the leg of the knit pants. I am normally not a fan of anything that appears to have been bedazzled, but it was more than a little sassy and I felt like it fit her personality, so I bought it. When I got home I pulled the pajamas out of the bag and she was really excited, but then she said, “I feel that there is something else in there.”

    She sensed that she was in the presence of fashion.

    So, I pulled out the bedazzled apparel and it was love at first rhinestone. She begged and pleaded to put it on and I finally acquiesced, with the stipulation that she could only wear it around the house. A few seconds later she was decked out and sitting next to me on the couch in her new little outfit. I noticed her doing something out of the corner of my eye, so I looked to see what was going on. She was kissing the rhinestone heart on her shirt, then she kissed the rhinestone heart on the pants. And then, she licked both of them.

    Apparently, the outfit was good enough to eat.

    And in a way, I understood. It’s how I felt in 5th grade, the first time I ever wore Jordache jeans. Okay, honestly, it’s how I feel about the jeans I bought last week.

    The difference is I didn’t actually eat my jeans.

    I had to make a statement that prior to motherhood I never dreamed of, “Caroline, don’t lick your clothes.”

    A little while later it was time for rest time, so I put her in bed. About an hour later, she came out of her room and I noticed the front of her shirt was wet. Then, I noticed that a few of the bedazzles were missing.

    “Caroline, what happened to your shirt? What did you do?”

    “I ate those shiny, beady things.”

    “What, you did what?” (Why do I always ask when I already know the answer?)

    “It had too many of those shiny, beady things, so I ate some.”

    “If you eat your clothes, Mama’s not going to buy you new ones.”

    Words to live by, my friends. Words to live by.

  • I hate to admit that I may have been curled up in the fetal position

    I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this, but I am not a fan of change. And when I say not a fan, what I mean is that change tends to make me panic and hyperventilate.? Like I always tell P, it’s not that I’m high maintenance, I just like things the way I like them.

    I mean I am a woman who spent days after I brought Caroline home from the hospital crying because I was just so homesick for the hospital. After all, in the hospital I knew how to be a mama, but to have a baby at home was an entirely different experience. I didn’t know how to be a mama within the confines of my own home.? Of course, the hospital also had the bonus feature of an around the clock nursing staff who were far more competent than me AND they changed diapers filled with a tar-like substance.? But of course, hospitals tend to frown on people taking up permanent residence, not to mention the insurance companies, so I had to learn how to be a mama at home.

    And I survived.

    So, it would make sense that in spite of all the issues I was having with Blogger, and especially Haloscan, that I am feeling a little uncomfortable here in my new home at WordPress, even though I know it’s bigger and better.? Everytime I push a button or click on a link, I just know I’m about to erase my entire blog or post something that looks like this ald;jlkhiopehoi? because I’m so busy trying to learn all the features and have no idea what I’m doing.

    I’m very computer savvy.

    Anyway, for those of y’all who have mentioned that you’ve had trouble subscribing or adding a link, I’m pretty sure it’s a temporary glitch in Bloglines. I was able to subscribe to the new feed on Bloglines, Google Reader and iGoogle. I also know several readers who have had no problem putting the new link on their blogroll, and IT WORKS.? So, the right link is http://thebigmamablog.com/? for your blogrolls, and if that doesn’t work for the feedreaders try http://thebigmamablog.com/feed/. And if all that fails, or you want to do it the easiest way possible, look on my sidebar at the end of my blogroll and click on either of the subscribe icons and they’ll hook you up.

    If y’all get the chance in your busy weekends, I’d appreciate it if you’d give it a whirl so I’ll know it’s all working. I’m going to keep double posting over at the Blogger site for the next week just to make sure something is showing up in Bloglines and to give y’all time to make the switch.

    Thanks for your patience while I sit here at my desk and hyperventilate.

  • I can’t believe I’ve finally worked Milli Vanilli into a post

    Don’t panic. You’re in the right place. This is the new home of Big Mama, although there is still some work that needs to be done. This template is temporary, while Laura at Swank Designs works on a whole new look for me. So, if y’all see something you don’t like, don’t worry, it’s probably going to change anyway.

    And just one housekeeping note before all the fun of today’s post ensues, if you have me on your blogroll or subscribe to me on Bloglines or Google Reader or whatever, please change the url to www.bigmama1.com . Thanks y’all. Hopefully we’ll all be very happy over here at WordPress.

    So, it’s Friday and y’all know what that means, time for a list. Not that I always do lists on Fridays, but there’s always a good chance I will because honestly, how much can one person come up with in a week? And really, after writing about bowling yesterday, there is just no where to go but down. Plus, some of y’all asked me some questions which gives me the perfect opportunity to answer them and appear to be writing a post all at the same time.

    1.? My new jeans. Yes, Gulley liked the new jeans, but how could she not? Especially considering that they are named “The Rocker”. I mean at this stage of life we’ll take our rockstar status where we can get it.

    2.? Black tights. According to the Neiman Marcus website and their fall trends, black tights will be in for Fall. This brings me no small amount of joy because I do love the black tight.? It hasn’t really been acceptable for the last several years and I have missed it. Granted, the last time they were in I was still young enough to wear them with short skirts and that day may have since passed me by.

    In fact, right after P and I got married, I received my first bonus check as a pharmaceutical rep. It was more money than I’d ever made at one time (which isn’t saying much) and I bought myself this suit at Ann Taylor. It was the most expensive outfit I’d ever purchased and I was giddy with the fashion buying power. It was a cranberry red wool suit with a belted pea coat jacket and a short matching skirt. I adored it and wore it for several years with black tights and cute black shoes. Then, it went out of style but I never could let it go, plus, the jacket still looked cute with jeans.

    Last fall when I was cleaning out my closet, I saw the skirt hanging there and decided to try it on. Surely it must have shrunk from being in my closet all those years because I cannot even imagine I ever wore a skirt that short. The only explanation is that the black tights made it okay.

    Welcome back, black tights. I have missed you and your miraculous leg-enhancing abilities.

    And Neimans, if you’re wrong about the black tights then you are dead to me. If you’re going to be wrong about anything, please let it be the high waisted pants.

    3. Several people asked for the recipe for the cookies I mentioned yesterday. The name of the cookies is the Three Chocolate Cookies, not the Triple Chocolate Cookies like I said. Either way, it’s a trio of chocolatey goodness and they will change your life and your waistline.

    Three Chocolate Cookies

    1 cup butter, softened
    1/2 cup vegetable shortening (I’d like to make a joke about the use of butter and shortening but I can’t because I’m too distracted by the sound of my arteries closing up)
    3/4 cup sugar
    1 3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
    3 large eggs
    1 tsp. vanilla extract
    3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
    2 tsp baking soda
    1 tsp salt
    1 (12 ounce) package semisweet chocolate morsels
    1 cup milk chocolate morsels
    3 (1-ounce) squares bittersweet chocolate, chopped (or you can just buy dark chocolate chips)
    1 cup almond brickle chips (basically chopped up Heath bar, which you can buy in a bag)

    Preheat oven to 375.? Lightly grease baking sheets.

    With an electric mixer, beat butter and shortening at medium speed until creamy; gradually add sugars, beating until fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla, beating well.

    In a small bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt; gradually add to butter mixture, beating until blended.? Stir in chocolate morsels and almond brickle chips. Drop cookies by 1/4 cupfuls about 3-inches apart onto prepared baking sheets (this is assuming you have any dough left after eating as much of it as you can fit in your mouth at one time).? Bake for 11-12 minutes, or until lightly browned.? Let cool.

    Gulley makes the best chocolate chip cookies in the world. They are legendary, but these run a close second and that is saying something. Paula knows how to make a cookie, y’all. Not that there was ever any doubt.

    4.? To counterbalance the Three Chocolate Cookies, I’m going to give y’all the recipe for what I cooked for dinner last night. It’s from the July issue of Cooking Light and it was DEE-LICIOUS. P even liked it, and AJ came over for dinner and she liked it too. It was a hit and it’s healthy, which means that you can eat as many cookies as you want for dessert.

    Chicken Chilaquiles

    2 cups shredded skinless, boneless chicken breasts (I used rotisserie because chicken on the bone or in it’s raw form grosses me out to no end.? I have issues.)
    1/2 cup chopped green onions
    1/2 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese with jalapeno peppers
    2 tbs grated parmesan cheese
    1 tsp chili powder
    1/4 tsp salt
    1/4 tsp black pepper
    3/4 cup low fat milk
    1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro (this is totally optional and I opted out because, in my opinion, cilantro is more disgusting than chicken on the bone)
    1 (11 ounce) can tomatillos, drained
    1 (4.5 ounce) can chopped green chilies ( I used extra spicy because I am a Rocker)
    12 corn tortillas

    Preheat oven to 375.? Combine chicken, green onions, Mont. Jack cheese, parmesan, chili powder, salt and pepper in a medium bowl. Place milk and next 3 ingredients in a food processor and process until smooth. Pour 1/2 of tomatillo mixture into bottom of an 11 x 7 inch baking dish sprayed with cooking spray. Arrange 1/2 of cut up tortillas on top of tomatillo mixture and top with chicken. Repeat layer with tomatillo sauce, then tortillas, then chicken. Sprinkle top with Monterey Jack cheese. Bake at 375 for 20 minutes or until bubbly.

    Honestly, this was the best recipe I’ve tried in my new Cooking Light initiative. Of course, I served it with chips and guacamole which probably made it a little less healthy, but a lot more fun. The best part was it was so easy.

    5. I realize I have now posted three recipes for the week. I don’t want y’all to start feeling like I’ve gone all “Ladies Home Journal” on you, but it just seems like I’ve done a lot of cooking this week. It’s because of the rain. And in the immortal words of Milli Vanilli, “blame it on the rain”.

    Y’all have a great weekend!

  • And as I washed the smell of bowling alley out of my hair, I knew it had been a good day

    Guess what it did here yesterday? Seriously. Guess.

    IT RAINED.

    And here is where I’d like to make some stupid joke about animals walking down our street being led two-by-two by an elderly gentleman with a long beard, but at this point it just seems like a cliche.

    Caroline got in bed with us at around 5 a.m. when she claimed that thunder had woken her up. The rule at our house, that we enforce with semi-regularity, is that she can only get in our bed if she’s sick or if it’s thundering outside. I’m not sure that it was actually thunder that she heard at 5 a.m., but I was too tired to debate it and honestly, it could have been because that’s all it ever does anymore. It thunders and it rains. Rinse. Repeat.

    I asked, “Are you sure it was thunder?” She said, “Yes, it was thunder and I know because my ears are very sensitive.” I wasn’t convinced, but she won me over with the claim of her sensitive ears and and so I let her get in our bed. We fell back asleep and woke up around 8 a.m. to the sound of legitimate thunder and raining.

    Gulley called around 8:45 because we had planned to take the kids to the free Wednesday movie at the theater, but we decided we didn’t feel like driving across town in the driving rain to go see “Clifford’s Really Big Movie”, otherwise known as parental torture in the form of a large, red canine. So, we ruled out the movie and Gulley asked, “What are we going to do all day in this rain?” And I said, “We’re going to pack us a sack lunch and come spend the entire day at your house.”

    And that’s exactly what we did. Except we didn’t pack a sack lunch.

    However, I did pack several of our DVD’s including “Muppets in Space” and also my new jeans so that I could show them to Gulley and she could try them on to see if she needed a pair for herself. Oh, and I brought my laptop, but never could figure out how to get it connected to the wireless interweb at Gulley’s, so I spent the whole day away from the computer and, other than some mild twitching around noon, I survived.

    The kids all ran back to the playroom to play and we attempted to have a conversation, but kept getting interrupted because, apparently, the gang felt they needed to “ice skate” in the living room. So, because the rain has driven us to desperation, we went and got in Gulley’s bed, turned Food Network on the T.V., and let the children take over the entire house. Did I mention we were both wearing the same clothes we’d had on the night before? Clothes that are really one step away from pajamas, but if you call them “yoga pants” they become totally acceptable, if not attractive.

    Every now and then one of the kids would come in and ask us for some juice or something and we’d say, “Why can’t you people leave us alone? Don’t you know we’re trying to figure out if black tights are really going to be in for the fall? This is serious, serious stuff.”

    At some point we realized it was probably time to feed everyone lunch and when we emerged from the safe haven of Gulley’s room, this is what we saw.

    They had torn the place apart. And we didn’t care.

    We debated for awhile about what to do for lunch, the age old dilemma of McDonalds versus hot dogs. Delicious and nutritious either way. While we debated lunch, the kids started playing with a whoopee cushion. I’d like to say that Gulley and I were above it, but we weren’t. We gave in to the whoopee cushion and all took turns seeing who could give the most realistic portrayal of intestinal distress, loudly applauding all the dramatic efforts. It was all fun and games until Jackson got a little too enthusiastic and popped the whoopee cushion. He was pretty upset about it, but Gulley told him to just go get the other one out of the playroom. It was a proud moment for me to realize that my best friend is a two-whoopee cushion family. I mean anyone can have one whoopee cushion, but to have a spare? That’s just dedication to a lost art form.

    We decided we could all probably use to get out for a little bit, seeing as how we were down to our last whoopee cushion, so we loaded them up in the Trailblazer and drove through the pouring rain to pick up McDonald’s Happy Meals. We got home, ate our Happy Meals and had a little rest time. Gulley and I could have easily reverted back to our college days and taken a four hour nap, but the kids wouldn’t even sit still for a movie. We finally gave up after an hour of repeated demands for popsicles and Chex Mix, and decided to let them bake cookies.

    Gulley helped the kids make Paula Deen’s Triple Chocolate Chip cookies and oh my word, they are better than strawberry butter. I’m not even going to talk about how many spoonfuls of dough I ate because it’s just shameful. Here’s a batch fresh out of the oven.

    So, we’d played, we’d talked, we’d eaten, we’d baked and we’d eaten some more. It was 3:00 p.m.

    What to do? How do we fill these hours with meaningful, purposeful, perhaps even educational, activity?

    We bowl, my friends. We bowl.

    And please tell me that I am not the only one who is envisioning the entire bowling alley scene from Grease II right now. “We’re gonna scooooore tonight. We’re gonna scooooore tonight.” I actually thought they were just talking about bowling.

    Anyway, we hit the lanes. We laced up our bowling shoes, grabbed the lightest bowling balls we could find and had ourselves a little tournament. Check out this style and form.

    We discussed taking them to the museum, but decided to show them some real culture instead, to teach them a skill that will serve them well throughout the rest of their lives. And a great time was had by all, even though none of us broke 100 in spite of the bumpers in the gutters. Gulley should be ashamed of herself because she took bowling for kinesiology credit at A&M and really didn’t play up to her potential.

    Eventually, everyone got a little bowled out.

    We headed home, proud that we had turned what could have been a dreary, boring day into a day of fun and adventure. And I’m not even talking about the adventure that comes when you visit a bowling alley in a sketchy area of town.

    If it keeps raining, we’re going to see about opting out of our pool membership and joining a bowling league. You can’t put a price on that kind of entertainment.