Author: Big Mama

You will be glad to know that I took some regular cough medicine on Sunday night and slept the sleep of angels. There was nary a squirrel nor a fishing pole in my dreams.

I was so relieved because Sunday was actually kind of a long day. Caroline’s soccer team had a game in Victoria, Texas at noon. And in case you’re wondering where Victoria is located, I’ll tell you. Head straight to the middle of nowhere and then drive about 100 more miles. Like P said on the way there, we must have passed by at least 35,000 other soccer fields we could have played on that would have been a little closer to home. It’s not like you have to drive hours away to find girls’ soccer teams. We are living in a post-Mia Hamm world. Girls’ soccer is everywhere.

But that was what was on the schedule and so we drove three of the soccer girls, including my friend Laura and her daughter Emily. And it was when we arrived at the fields in Victoria (Did I mention it was hours away?) the other little girl in the car realized she’d left one of her soccer cleats at home.

This proves to be very inconvenient when you’re supposed to play soccer.

Fortunately we realized she wears a size shoe that is at least in the neighborhood of my size 8 foot and so I let her borrow my Nike tennis shoes for the game since she plays goalie and could get away with not wearing cleats. In turn, she let me wear her Adidas slides. Which is how I ended up sitting on the sidelines sporting this sweet look.

Yep. Just me in my white socks and sandals. Cheering with a voice that sounds like a three pack a day smoker and a cough to match.

Someday this may be something that comes up in therapy for Caroline.

Caroline’s team lost but they played really hard. And at one point toward the end of the game she just got nailed in the face with the soccer ball. I held my breath to see what was going to happen next because, I’ll be honest, if it had happened to me I’d still be lying on a soccer field somewhere in Victoria. But she never even skipped a beat and was incredibly proud of the shiner she woke up with Monday morning.

After P took her to school I began to make a grocery list because it was growing apparent that I hadn’t made a real trip to the store in weeks. You know? The kind of trip where you fill up your whole cart with toilet paper and lunch meat and dog food and laundry detergent. One of those trips you have to make after you’ve just been phoning it in at the grocery store for far too long and it finally catches up with you and you can’t remember the last time your family ate a vegetable that you cooked.

So I gathered my strength to go to the store because I still don’t feel great. I walked up and down the aisles and checked things off my list and didn’t have a care in the world.

Until I got to the checkout line.

That’s when I was confronted with a harsh bit of current affairs. Sometimes I like to ignore the news. It can make me feel totally stressed out and helpless. Last week I forced myself to spend a full thirty minutes reading about what’s going on in Venezuela and the Ukraine just because I felt like I needed to know. Mainly because as Caroline and I left Houston last weekend there were all these people waving signs about Venezuela and I had no idea why.

But there was no way to ignore the headline that stared out at me while I was in the checkout line yesterday. America is in crisis. Frankly, I’m not even sure where we go from here.

And you think you have problems.

I hope this puts whatever trial you may be facing into its proper perspective.

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Quick book related notes:

The Antelope in the Living Room is currently back in stock online at Barnes and Noble here and available here on Amazon and you can also find it at your local bookstore or LifeWay store.

Speaking of bookstores, I’ll be at the Barnes and Noble on Texas Avenue this Saturday, March 1 from 10:30 until noon signing books. Would love to see you there if you’re in the area.

I woke up Friday morning and immediately knew that I wasn’t feeling better. Mainly because my throat was on fire with the intensity of a thousand suns.

As I walked into the kitchen, P asked me if I felt any better. I told him no and he said, “Then you need to go to the doctor.” Because, essentially, if I’m going to continue to complain about not feeling well, I need a note from a physician.

I really didn’t want to go to the doctor because I hate waiting in waiting rooms that are just giant petri dishes full of germ cocktails and so I decided I’d wait to see how I felt later in the day. Plus I was already scheduled to speak to a MOPs group in town and knew I was going to power through because I didn’t want to call in sick at the last minute.

It was while I was speaking to the MOPs group that I knew without a doubt I needed to go see a doctor because I don’t mean to be overly dramatic, but I was clearly about to die. And so I left MOPs and drove straight to the neighborhood medical clinic where I was overjoyed to see there was only one person in line in front of me.

Five minutes later, a doctor was looking at my throat and declared that I most definitely had strep. And then my throat burst into flames and I passed out cold. Not really. But I felt like that scenario could play out at any time.

I dropped off my prescriptions at the pharmacy and headed home to get in my pajamas. Caroline was already scheduled to go home with a friend after school, P was at the ranch for the evening and Gulley offered to pick up my medicine for me so I wouldn’t have to leave the house again. And so I did the only thing a person can really do when they feel terrible and are in pajamas by 2 p.m., I watched so many old episodes of Friday Night Lights that I began to wonder if Smash Williams made it to the NFL.

By the time Caroline and P got home later that night, I was fully concerned about Coach and Tami Taylor in Philadephia and how that whole thing is working out and decided it was perhaps time to both check back into reality and go to bed.

On Saturday morning I woke up and thought for a while that I felt a lot better. We went to Caroline’s basketball game, but by the time we got home my throat had really started to hurt again. So we spent the rest of the day just hanging out. Caroline and I watched The Mask of Zorro later that evening and I could tell that my congestion was dropping into my chest. Mainly because I started to hack and talk in the unmistakable voice of Hazel.

(In case you’re new here, Hazel is an eighty-something year old woman who lives inside me and comes out about twice a year when I have a bad cold and cough and wheeze and speak in a voice about fourteen octaves lower than usual.)

(It’s very attractive.)

Fortunately, the doctor had given me a prescription for cough medicine the day before. It was a different brand of cough medicine than I usually get (Yes, I have a preferred brand of cough syrup. I was a drug rep for eleven years and, thus, am a pharmaceutical snob.) but it appeared to have the same ingredients so I went with it.

I took the prescribed one teaspoon right before bed and then curled up and waited for cough relief and sleep to come. I felt myself start to drift off and then, all of a sudden, my brain decided to be wide awake. And by wide awake, I mean I was averaging about 478 thoughts per second. Yet I was relaxed enough that I didn’t really care.

I even grabbed my iPhone and began typing in notes about possible writing topics and various memories that came to mind. At one point I concocted an idea for an entire series of children’s books featuring a squirrel named Sitka who has a peanut allergy and decides to take up fishing and makes himself a teeny tiny fishing pole.

This is disturbing for two reasons:

1. Squirrels, to the best of my knowledge, aren’t carnivorous. And if they decide to be, we might be in trouble because there are a lot of them roaming our neighborhoods.

2. I was obviously having some sort of adverse reaction to the cough medicine.

I can confirm the second thing to be true because when I looked at my iPhone notes on Sunday morning, they essentially looked like this:

Assumption. Sitka. Peanuts.
Trees. Reading. Tears for Fears.
And alkdgjiaojstl bjsljf oasdfol.

Please let me know if you can make sense of any of this.

When I woke up on Sunday morning after barely sleeping for all the entirely lucid note-taking I was doing throughout the night, I immediately googled the name of my cough medicine because I felt that something was amiss. Sure enough, it turns out that it contains pseudoephedrine which is Sudafed.

Here’s what you need to know. I am highly sensitive to Sudafed. Like the package says you can take 2-4 at a time. You know how many I can take? One. And even then I have to take it early in the day or it will keep me up for three days.

So essentially that new cough medicine was like some sort of speed cocktail with a side of crazy because it also contained an antihistamine and hydrocodone. Which explains why I was very busy taking all the notes and thinking all the thoughts, but at the same time very tranquil about the whole thing. Like if someone had asked me how I was doing I would have replied, “I’m goooooooooood”. And drawing out the word “good” like that is a sure sign you probably aren’t.

Needless to say, I’ll be calling the doctor tomorrow to get a new prescription and, in the meantime, I am sounding more like Hazel by the minute. Which is probably why I have a strong urge to go sit on my front porch and yell at people to get off my lawn.

Unless, perhaps, it’s a poor squirrel named Sitka who’s allergic to peanuts and just looking for a place to fish.

I have good news and bad news today.

The bad news is I think I have succumbed to the virus that took Caroline down last week.

The good news is I laid on the couch yesterday and found cute fashion items in spite of my ill health. And, because several of you have asked, everything on this list is less than $50.

1. marseille drop waist dress

I was conflicted about this because I think it would be too short to wear as a dress unless your in your teens or twenties. But I think it has potential as a tunic thing with white skinny jeans. I love the color.

2. ansonia pullover

This is on sale at Anthropologie and also comes in a gorgeous green. I love tops like this because you can throw them on with jeans and a scarf and have yourself an outfit.

3. cross front jersey dress

These jersey dresses from Old Navy are really cute and would be perfect with a denim jacket thrown on over it and a pair of wedges.

4. multi-stripe scarf

Spring is a great time for a colorful scarf that you can wear with all manner of colored t-shirts or even one of the jersey dresses from Old Navy.

5. colorblock maxi dress

This comes in a few different color combos but I really like this blue and green.

6. macrame wedge sandal

How cute are these? They also come in a few other colors.

7. pam breeze-ly tunic

I love this style of top. It’s perfect to dress up or down depending on your mood. And this green is just in time for St. Patrick’s Day.

8. stellaluna tunic

This would be so great with white jeans for the summer. And might even be long enough to wear as a swimsuit coverup if you are so inclined.

9. annie’s feathered earrings

Noonday Collection’s spring collection is officially out as of yesterday. These earrings aren’t part of the new stuff, but I’ve loved them for a long time and felt like you should see them.

You should also click around and look at all the great new things they have for Spring.

10. evenings in argentina embroidered top

Love the blue of this top.

That’s it for today.

Hope you have a great Friday.

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Don’t forget about the Marriage in Six Words contest going on until the end of February. You can find all the details here. And if you’re bored this weekend you should totally go search #antelopeinthelivingroom on Twitter and Instagram and my Facebook page to see some of the entries. They’ve made me laugh and cry over the last week or so.

I didn’t post anything yesterday because I figured no one really wanted to hear about how Caroline was home sick again and I stayed in my pajamas until noon and we ate cheese and crackers for lunch because it was all we had since I still hadn’t been to the grocery store.

But now you just heard about it anyway. Sorry.

By the time Tuesday morning rolled around, I woke Caroline up for school. She complained of a sore throat but I told her to drink some water and assured her she’d be fine. And I was right.

While she was at school I did all the things that had been neglected for the last two weeks. I washed clothes and made a list of things to cook for actual meals and then even followed through with a trip to HEB to buy all the groceries on my list. The whole thing was terribly productive.

I had big plans to cook a real dinner, but then P called me mid-afternoon to tell me he’d decided to make a trip to the ranch and so I certainly wasn’t going to cook for just Caroline and me. I figured we’d pick something up, but then my friend Leslie called to me she was bringing by the Girl Scout cookies we’d ordered and, just like that, dinner was served.

Not really. We also ordered pizza. But my pizza to cookie ratio erred greatly on the side of cookies because THIN MINTS.

Anyway, a few weeks ago when I did that little video interview with Edie at Life in Grace, we talked about beauty products for a few minutes and she said maybe I should write an updated post about some of my favorites. And I thought that today might be a good day for it because why not?

So here are some of my current beauty products. You will notice there are various price points represented. I try to mix it up, but as I’ve headed towards my mid-forties I’m not playing around with my skincare. You only get one face.

1. Dr. Gross extra-strength alpha beta peel

I’ve mentioned these a few times but it’s because I’m in love with them. They come in handy little packets so you don’t have to guess about how much to use. I use these every other night after I wash my face and it’s like a little mini-peel for my face.

You can also just buy five day sample here if you want to try them out.

2. Bobbi Brown shimmer brick

Here’s a true confession. On days when I’m really lazy and not really going anywhere except the grocery store, I’ll just use some moisturizer and then brush this over my face. It’s a nice glow without being overly shimmery.

3. clarisonic brush

If there were just one thing I was going to buy for my face, this would be it. I bought my Clarisonic two and a half years ago and it has made such a difference in how clean my skin feels at the end of the day. It’s a little pricey, but you’ll have it for a long time and use it every day.

4. Rimmel London Lash Accelerator

Sophie told me about this mascara a while back and I think she’s now moved onto something else because she is always in search of the mythical unicorn of mascaras. (I have no idea what I mean.) But I’m still using this. It’s only $6.00, has a great brush and coats my lashes without being clumpy.

5. Revlon Colorstay Liquid lipstick

If you’re looking for a lip color that will last all day, then look no further. This stays put no matter what you do. Now I will tell you that it feels a little dry and I always put a lipgloss on top of it, but it’s my go to lip color when I know I have a long day ahead of me and little chance to check to make sure I still have on lipstick.

6. Paula’s Intensive Wrinkle-Repair Retinol Serum

This is the newest product for me on this list, but I already love it. My skin tends to be really dry and so whenever I use any type of Retinol or Retin A, it gets really dry and often starts to flake. But this is actually Retinol in an oil form. It only takes one drop to cover your whole face and you can even use it around your eyes. I love the way it soaks into my skin and doesn’t leave me feeling itchy and dry.

7. Dr. Jart Premium Beauty Balm

This is a product I discovered through Birchbox. (Birchbox is a monthly subscription where you pay $10 a month to receive a box of beauty samples. You can sign up here if you’re interested.) I’d heard about Dr. Jarts but wasn’t sure if it was worth the money, but I can honestly say I’m a fan. It definitely leans more towards coverage for fair to light skin so I don’t think I’ll use it this summer. However, it is the perfect amount of coverage for my face. It doesn’t feel heavy at all and is so moisturizing.

But for the summer, I’ll probably stick with Garnier beauty balm. It’s great, light coverage at a great price.

8. Neutrogena MoistureSmooth Color Stick

I love these color sticks from Neutrogena. They go on so smooth and the color is much more subdued than it looks. I keep a couple of these in my purse at all times.

9. Anastasia Brow Wiz mechanical pencil

So in the last year I’ve developed a bit of an eyebrow obsession. It all began when I realized I was over-tweezing my eyebrows and needed to let them grow in a bit. I blame my overzealousness on a very powerful magnifying mirror that shows every hair on your face before it’s even out of the follicle.

I think there is something to fuller eyebrows making you look more youthful. In fact, as I’m writing this I’m looking at J.Lo’s eyebrows on American Idol and they are stunning. I’m sure they’re like interwoven with real mink or something. (I also need to know about her self-tanner. Good night at the glow.)

For those of us who can’t afford mink eyebrow extensions, I recommend this eyebrow pencil. It just gives a nice soft color without looking too harsh.

10. Cetaphil

This is the basic staple of my face cleansing regimen. I use Cetaphil with my Clarisonic brush every night. And then because I am very fancy, I take off my eye makeup with Vaseline.

11. Hummingbird Farms lavender lotion

I tend to mention this a lot but it’s because it is my all-time favorite lotion. P and I both couldn’t live without it. The scent is about the best thing you’ll ever smell and it moisturizes even the most dry skin.

And so there it is. My current beauty favorites.

I’d love to hear about yours in the comments if you feel like sharing.

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Also, in case you missed it yesterday, some of you mentioned Antelope was out of stock on Amazon. It’s back in stock now. You can find it here. It’s also available at Barnes and Noble here. And you can always walk into your neighborhood LifeWay store or Barnes and Noble or Sam’s Club and find it there.