I’m sitting on my own couch right now. And I just pulled a fresh batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies out of the oven. If it weren’t for the fact that I’m wearing a ten year old pair of hot pink velour sweatpants with bleach stains on the front, I’d be just like Martha Stewart.
Caroline and I got home from the travel portion of our Spring Break around 5 p.m. on Wednesday. And even though a cold front had blown through town causing temps to plummet to a frigid 65 degrees, it finally feels like Spring. The first thing I noticed after I pulled into our driveway and walked towards the back door was the smell of all our trees blooming. The sweet, spicy smell of the plum tree and the grape soda scent of the Mountain Laurels. It’s almost enough to make me want to break out my self-tanner. Well, the scent of Spring and the new shorts I ordered from Gap that had arrived when I got home and caused me to gasp audibly when I tried them on. There is nothing as disconcerting as seeing your winter white legs in the mirror after they’ve been covered for months. It is very literally like seeing a ghost. A ghost that would never make pottery pieces with Demi Moore.
So when I last left off on our tale of Spring Break adventures, I’d taken the kids to play air hockey at Aggieland Outfitters and you could hear the cries of “Not fair!” and feel the envy of children everywhere.
Later that evening Honey hosted a family birthday party for Big. Everyone came over and we ate strawberry cake and told stories and just generally had a great time. Then the next morning it was time for Caroline and me to drive to Houston to see Mimi and Bops.
We hit the road around noon. I really wanted to get away earlier than that but the Daylight Saving Time has me all thrown off. Gulley and I had an entire conversation about being relieved that it fell during Spring Break, yet slightly dismayed that it throws off our sleeping late plan because sleeping in until 9:30 or 10 feels acceptable but the time change turns that into 10:30 or 11 which becomes perilously close to loser territory.
Anyway, Caroline and I headed to Houston and weren’t at Mimi and Bops’s house for longer than thirty minutes before we left for the Galleria to do a little shopping. Caroline had declared her two goals for Spring Break were to shop at the Galleria and shoot a pig. I really hoped she didn’t mean for them to take place at the same time.
We walked around and she even tried on a few things, but we ended up leaving a place with easily over 1,000 stores with only one shirt. I don’t even understand. And I feel certain I could have found all manner of things for myself, but other than a quick glance around the Free People store, I didn’t let myself look. Partly because I don’t really need anything right now and partly because I always make myself clean out my closet before I bring home anything new for the upcoming season.
(Are you asleep yet? Good night at all the boring over explaining.)
After Caroline declared she was tired of shopping, we went back to the house and she looked for lizards in the yard until it was time to leave for dinner. We opted for Italian food at Collina’s, Paciugo for dessert and then watched the original Escape to Witch Mountain from 1975. I hadn’t seen it since sometime around 1979 and (SPOILER ALERT) totally forgot that they ended up being aliens at the end. However, I did remember that my best friend in elementary school named her pet chihuahua Tia after Kim Richard’s character and that Tia used to terrorize me by chasing me through their house.
Oh sure. You may think it silly that I was frightened by a chihuahua, but I think that might be because you’ve never experienced that particular horror.
(Also that same friend had a real jukebox in her house, Atari, and bunk beds which is why I continued to subject myself to the reign of chihuahua terror.)
Caroline and I drove home to San Antonio on Wednesday afternoon after a quick stop at Starbucks because I wasn’t going to make it without an extra dose of caffeine. It is seriously so good that this time change didn’t take place during normal school days because I feel like P might find me passed out on the countertop midway through packing Caroline’s ham sandwich in her lunchbox.
We made it home a little bit before P got home from work and I immediately unpacked both of our suitcases and started a load of laundry because I cannot stand to have a packed suitcase in my home after a trip. P cooked us a delicious dinner of fried quail and we sat outside on the back patio while we ate and just enjoyed being back together.
And the best part is we still have the last half of Spring Break to go.
Which is good since Caroline didn’t end up shooting a pig at the Galleria and probably is going to need a trip to the ranch to fulfill that particular goal.
Unless of course our neighborhood has become overrun with pigs in her absence.
Which, frankly, I’d take that over a pack of chihuahuas.