Author: Big Mama

A few minutes ago I was looking around on Facebook (because that’s what I do when I’m in the midst of a serious bout of procrastination) and I noticed that it must be Cotillion time here in San Antonio based on the number of pictures in my newsfeed featuring girls dressed up in pretty little dresses and wearing gloves. It also helped that all the pictures were captioned with things like “Susie’s First Cotillion!” or “Jenny is SO EXCITED about Cotillion” because it’s not like I’m a detective.

But it reminded me of something that happened a few weeks ago. I’d picked up Gulley’s boys from school and then they rode with me to pick up Caroline. And then Gulley came to pick us all up at my house because that’s when we were going to Bryan for the weekend. And now I’m giving you way too many details and you just died from boredom.

Anyway, we were all in the car (See? Couldn’t I have just said that the first time? It would have been so much simpler.) and Caroline announced that some of her friends were talking about a dance with a weird name that you go to in fifth grade. And Gulley asked, “You mean Cotillion?”

“Yes! That’s it. Cotillion!”

Will piped up and said, “Caroline, you don’t want to go to Cotillion. It’s just a thing where you have to go and act fancy and use good manners.”

I think Gulley and I were both taken aback by Will’s wealth of Cotillion knowledge and so she asked, “Will, how did you know that Cotillion was a dance where you have to use good manners?”

He responded, “I don’t know. Maybe it is or maybe it isn’t.”

And I decided right then and there that I’m going to employee Will’s strategy from now on. I’ll just throw stuff out there and maybe I’ll be right or maybe I won’t. But at least I’ll sound like I know what I’m talking about. Unless someone actually realizes I don’t have a clue.

Speaking of not having a clue, I went to the grocery store yesterday.

This isn’t one of my favorite chores even on a normal day. So factor in the fact that I was still a little tired from the weekend combined with a list that was a mile long because we were legitimately out of everything and not just P’s version of out of everything which means he’s low on Nilla wafers and razor blades.

I’d noticed when I went to HEB about a month ago that they’d rearranged the produce section. And I wasn’t one bit happy about it. They’d put all the organic produce front and center so that’s it’s hard to find the non-organic produce and maybe some of use would rather just wash our strawberries than pay some jacked up price. I’ll pay later when the pesticides kill me.

And they’d moved the salad stuff over where all the cilantro and parsley and celery and stuff used to be. I couldn’t find my broccoli slaw in a bag anywhere and the whole thing made me angry. I realize this is a first world problem but I am a person who paid money for eyebrow gel a few weeks ago to help my eyebrows grow out. My wheelhouse is first world problems.

After a few trips I began to figure out the new lay of the produce land. But then I was in there last week and noticed they were moving other things. The vitamins were over by the lunchmeat and cheese section and the beauty products were over by the frozen foods. I began to have a sinking feeling that this wasn’t going to end well for me and my love of routine and stability.

Sure enough, I walked in the store yesterday and the nice ladies that make sushi right past the deli section were nowhere to be found. And there were people moving stuff all around and packing boxes on the bread aisle. Then I discovered they’d moved the cheeses up to the very front of the store where they used to have all the granola bins and all the natural health supplements like Gingko Biloba. Worst of all, they didn’t even have the lunchmeat next to the cheeses. It was just the cheese.

The cheese stood alone.

What the actual heck, HEB?

It’s like no one in the grocery industry has ever heard of IF IT AIN’T BROKE, DON’T FIX IT. Now I’m going to have to spend real minutes of my life figuring out the new layout of my grocery store.

Which is time I could use to wash my non-organic produce.

Or to watch my eyebrows grow.

So I spent this past weekend in Birmingham. I believe I’ve now mentioned that one or forty-eight times but apparently I felt like that wasn’t enough.

I flew out of San Antonio on Thursday morning and thankfully I was feeling significantly better than I’d felt earlier in the week. Which is to say I only felt like partial death instead of full-blown I’ll never breathe out of my nose again or take a breath without coughing death.

This is where I also have to mention that I managed to fit all my clothes for the entire weekend into one carry-on bag. I suffered from serious suitcase pride. Until the end of the weekend when I decided my bag had been like Mary Poppin’s magic bottomless carpet bag when I packed but had turned into a real suitcase with strict limits by the time I tried to repack everything.

Anyway, when I arrived on Thursday, Sophie picked me up at the airport and then we waited in the cell phone lot until Amanda and Kelly’s flight arrived. They texted that they had landed so we began to circle the airport which is when Sophie said, “Oh look! There they are!” and we both began waving maniacally to get their attention. Until we realized it wasn’t them. And then Sophie said, “I think that’s Korie Robertson from Duck Dynasty.”

Yes. Yes it was.

I’m sure she was probably terribly frightened of the overzealous women in the white car who were waving at her like idiots. And I’d wanted so badly to make a good first impression and not come across as a weird fan with stalker tendencies. Oh well. Good intentions and all that.

But eventually we found Amanda and Kelly. And we made it to the hotel where we had a few minutes to relax and unpack before Sophie and I had to do a run-through of our emcee duties. This is the point where we found out we had no script to follow, it was just up to us and our ability to engage in witty banter about absolutely nothing. This only caused a small amount of panic.

Later on we went to dinner with a group of bloggers and a few other people, including Korie Robertson and her mom. I’m happy to report that Korie is absolutely delightful and so beautiful and we even confessed that we were the people in the car waving furiously at her earlier that day. And I gushed for a few minutes about how much we love their show but stopped short of asking her to be my best friend. So that felt like a win.

On Friday morning I slept in until 9:30. And I don’t even feel bad about it. I was helped significantly by the dose of cough medicine I took that night. The only problem was that I awoke to discover that I had some sort of rash all over my arms. And my stomach. It started to fade after a few hours and I’m still not sure what caused it in the first place. It’s something I don’t want to examine too closely considering that I was sleeping in a hotel. I’ve watched enough 20/20 to have some concerns about hotel linens.

The conference actually started right after lunch on Friday and it was so good. Jen Hatmaker was the first speaker and I cannot express how much I love her. She is real and funny and just makes me want to live my life not being afraid and trusting God in all things. I’m not kidding when I say she’s one of my favorite people ever.

And that was the beginning of a great weekend. All the speakers were so good and offered such great wisdom about raising kids. Sophie and I had the chance to interview Korie Robertson about their show and a man named John Croyle who runs Big Oak Ranch in Alabama. He had some amazing stories and I really enjoyed him even though he told me the Aggies moving to the SEC was like a lamb going to the slaughter.

Yeah. We’ll see who’s laughing after A&M plays Alabama this year.

Oh wait.

He’s probably going to be the one laughing.

Best of all, I got to hang out with so many people that I love and respect and that just make me laugh hard. It was the best medicine in the world for a girl who started the weekend with a lingering case of bronchitis and a sty in her eye and a rash of unknown origin.

You know what would have been really great?

If I’d taken the time to take even one picture.

I’m an idiot.

But I’m excited because in February the DotMom Conference is moving to Texas. Frisco, Texas to be exact. You can find out more by clicking over to the event page. I’ve been to a lot of events over the last few years but this is one of my favorites.

After it was over on Saturday Sophie and I went to eat at Chuy’s and then crashed on her couch and watched the LSU vs. Auburn game until I mustered enough energy to drag myself to bed. And then I caught an early flight home on Sunday morning to return to my people.

And now I plan to spend the next few days catching up on my sleep.

And going to the grocery store because we ran out of food while I was gone.

Well.

It has been quite the twenty-four hours. Or maybe it’s been forty-eight hours. I really have no idea because that’s what prescription cough medicine will do to you.

I slept fairly well on Monday night, but didn’t feel any better on Tuesday morning. Which was unfortunate since I had a mammogram scheduled and didn’t want to cancel at the last minute. So I hauled myself off the couch and made my way to the imaging center by 9:30 a.m. and that felt like an accomplishment.

But then I got to the actual mammogram part of the mammogram. And it was fine. Except you know what you don’t want to do when you’re in full-blown mammogram position? Cough really hard. And you know what’s hard to do when you have bronchitis? Not cough really hard.

It was an experience I’ll treasure forever.

After that I had to mail off a few packages and figured I was already out and might as well get a few things done. What I didn’t factor in though was that my energy level would plummet and I’d be in desperate need of a nap by 11:00.

So I came home, put my pajamas on, curled back up on the couch where I belonged, and tried to forget about the earlier boob trauma with a few episodes of Friday Night Lights on Netflix. And it helped immensely because there is not much that ails a person that can’t be fixed with a little Dillon, Texas.

Right around the time Caroline got home from school, I began to notice that my eyelid felt kind of tender on the inner corner. So I went to the mirror to check it out and saw that I was beginning to experience a little bit of eye swelling that looked like it might be a sty.

Perfect. There is nothing better than knowing you’re about to be at a conference in front of a bunch of people with a swollen eyelid and a cough that makes people feel like they’d rather be in a room with Typhoid Mary.

And then I found out my blog was broken so I had to do extensive research to figure out the problem. And by extensive research, I mean that I ate four Hershey Special Dark miniatures while emailing my tech person, Cathy, a flurry of emails that read, “HELP ME!!!!!”

Fortunately, my blog was working again and my eye looked better when I woke up in the morning because I was debating going to Dot Mom with a patch over my eye. And people could call me Left Eye Lopes (may she rest in peace). Except it was my right eye and not my left eye.

And she never wore a patch but just had a black mark under her eye.

Whatever. It seemed better to go with Left Eye Lopes than Long John Silver. Although he managed to make a delicious fish with malt vinegar sauce in spite of only having one eye.

(I have no idea if he only had one eye. But he was a pirate so it stands to reason. I basically don’t know what I’m even typing at this point because I need to just go to bed.)

There was actually a time I had to wear a patch over my eye. I was in ninth grade and had somehow gotten a speck of paint on my eye that had to be lasered out or something like that. And then I had to wear a patch to school for FOUR DAYS when I was FOURTEEN. It’s a wonder that I even lived to tell about it.

And now you might be wishing I hadn’t because you just died from boredom.

See y’all tomorrow for Fashion Friday. There’s going to be a giveaway!

And now I’m off to see if I can cram all my clothes and toiletries for the weekend in one carry on bag. Because I enjoy a challenge.

If you’re at Dot Mom this weekend, please come say hi. I promise I’m only a little bit scary with my hacking cough and bad eye.

I wish I could start this out by saying that I feel tons better and all I needed was a good night’s sleep. But that would be a lie.

And even though I was in bed at an hour when chickens are still awake, it’s hard to sleep well when you’ve lost the ability to breathe through your nose. It’s also unattractive, just in case you’re wondering.

Before someone says that I always seem sick, I just want to clarify that this is my first real illness since last October. I mean, sure, since that time I’ve been sick in other ways like sick of going to the grocery store and sick of cooking dinner, but I haven’t been officially diagnosed with those things.

Anyway, I remember that it was last October because it coincided with my visit to Tyndale (my book publisher) and, needless to say, I think they felt pretty good about choosing me to write a book after they heard my smoker’s cough and saw the glassy look in my eyes. Those are the kind of attributes that inspire confidence.

Normally, I would wait this kind of thing out, but since I’m leaving for dotMom on Thursday morning and they are expecting me to have a voice that works, I decided I needed to go ahead and go to the doctor. So that’s what I did. He diagnosed me with bronchitis and gave me an antibiotic and, most importantly, prescription cough medicine. Otherwise known as liquid heaven. I hope he didn’t judge me because I knew to ask for the kind I wanted by name. This ain’t my first bronchitis rodeo.

Needless to say, there isn’t much going on around here.

Yesterday morning Caroline decided she had a case of the Mondays and made a desperate attempt to stay home from school, citing vague symptoms like “I kind of have a stomachache” and “maybe my throat hurts”. There was a time when she was younger that I could immediately tell if she was faking an illness because I’d ask her to list her symptoms. And then once she’d rattled them off, I’d give her a sympathetic look and say, “Poor baby. Does your elbow hurt too?”

I knew if she said that her elbow hurt too that she was just trying to conjure up ill health and felt like the more symptoms the better. But she’s on to me now and that doesn’t work anymore. P had left the house already for an early morning appointment so I had to put on my best tough love face and tell her she was absolutely going to school. To which she replied, “What kind of a person makes a nine-year-old who doesn’t feel good go to school?”

Yes. What kind of person does that?

I’m a monster.

But after texting her teacher to inform her of Caroline’s possible ill health/propensity for drama, she sent me a text back informing me that Caroline had made a miraculous recovery between the walk from my car to her classroom. So while we don’t share a bronchitis diagnosis, we do share a flair for drama.

And that’s probably all for today. I’m going to go get some rest and take some cough medicine. I usually like to take advantage of the current state of my voice to turn into a cranky octogenarian smoker named Hazel. But I’ll be honest with you, things are so out of control in the world right now that I don’t really trust Hazel.

If I let her loose, she may never shut up. She may start with the frustration of carpool lines with no discernible correct way to maneuver through them and move on to the absurdity of standardized testing and how we’ve all bought a bill of goods if we believe that’s the best way to measure a child’s intelligence and, ultimately, she’d move on to the upcoming elections and then she’d never shut up.

Which is why I’m calling it a night. Or a day. Or time for cough medicine.