This morning my cell phone rang around 9 a.m. and it was my friend AJ calling me. Since AJ is in her early 20’s and childless, 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning is pretty early for her and really why, WHY?? would anyone be up that early on a Saturday if they didn’t have a 3 foot tall person with the demeanor of a belligerent taxi driver telling them to get up?
Anyway, I answered the phone because I knew AJ had been out of town and thought she might be back and looking for something to do that might involve entertaining my child. Nope. She was at the lake with one of my best friends from college, Jen.
Now, AJ and Jen met last summer in what is just one of those weird, small world kind of things. Jen was on a mission trip in Africa for Family Legacy Missions and AJ had been hired as the photographer for the trip (and as a result is doing a very cool project called “Lahema’s Legacy” ). They were sitting next to each other on a bus, driving through Africa, and making small talk. AJ mentioned that she was from San Antonio. Jen said, “I know this is a random question, but do you know Big Mama and P? (because that’s really how everyone refers to us) And AJ said, “How do you know them? Big Mama was my Bible study leader all through high school and we are great friends!” Jen told her that we were college roommates and they marveled at what a small world it is and then linked arms and sang “Kumbaya”.
Or probably not.
Anyway, it is a really small world kind of thing and now AJ is great friends with Jen and she goes to Dallas to visit her and spend long weekends having fun and just hanging out at Starbucks, because did I mention that AJ is in her early 20’s and childless? She can travel at the spur of the moment and be all devil may care and go eat at restaurants that have cloth napkins.
So, AJ calls this morning for two reasons. First, Jen was making Monkey Bread for breakfast, which is a recipe I gave her years ago, but she wasn’t making it in a bundt pan, which made me very nervous. If the recipe says it needs a bundt pan then, PLEASE, use a bundt pan. Don’t take those kind of risks with 3 cans of biscuits rolled in cinnamon and sugar and covered in 8 cups of butter. But, WHATEVER, it’s her life and I’m used to Jen’s cooking methods. She once tried to bake a pan of brownies and 3 hours later couldn’t figure out why they weren’t ready until she realized the oven wasn’t even on. So, really, if she wants to make Monkey Bread in a 9×13 casserole, I just need to let it go.
It’s her way and part of her charm.
My advice was to bake it about 15 minutes less than the REAL RECIPE WITH THE BUNDT PAN calls for and they text messaged me later to let me know it turned out okay. And if they are reading this then let me say that I am so proud of y’all for how well you improvised with the recipe. I wanted to text message y’all back but, honestly, I’d still be here tonight trying to figure out how to change the caps lock on my cell phone.
Have y’all heard all that controversy about people texting while they drive and it’s a danger, blah, blah, blah? Well, yeah. I can’t even text message when I’m text messaging, much less when I’m driving. That’s just a whole other kind of skill set or something.
Okay, the second reason they called was to inform me they had pulled up Big Mama on Jen’s Blackberry this morning to read my new post and I hadn’t posted anything. WHY, WHY hadn’t I posted anything? Which is ironic considering that AJ hadn’t really read the blog at all until about a month ago and neither had Jen, and now? Now that they’ve made time to get to know Big Mama they are all demanding and everything, and calling on Saturday morning wanting to know why I didn’t spend my Friday night toiling away for their enjoyment and amusement.
I told them, “You people have got to back off. Big Mama cannot bring the funny every day, 7 days a week. I need my weekends.”
But here I am, so apparently, they wore me down.
Just remember ladies, even God rested on the 7th day.