Author: Big Mama

So this weekend is the beginning of rodeo time in San Antonio. And I think it’s safe to say I’m pretty excited about the whole thing. Sure, some of my excitement is due to all the fun Caroline will have watching the rodeo clowns and bull-riding, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that a large portion of it is because I know I have one or seven delicious corn dogs in my near future.

With a funnel cake for dessert.

And maybe a gordita or some Texas tornado chips as an appetizer.

But even in the midst of all my culinary anticipation (ROASTED CORN ON A STICK!) I realized yesterday morning that Caroline has outgrown all her western wear. And a girl can’t be expected to go to the rodeo without a shirt with some pearl snap buttons.

It’s like a constitutional right.

I mentioned over breakfast that I might head to Cavenders and buy her a new shirt for the rodeo. And Caroline said, “Oh! I want to go with you and pick it out.”

Here’s the thing. There was a time when I was bright-eyed and optimistic (like last week) when I would have waited to pick her up from school and taken her to Cavenders with me to peruse the shirts. But I began to think about the inventory of shirts at Cavenders and how some of them are, well, how do I say this?

Tacky.

That’s right.

And I knew Caroline would inevitably fall in love with a shirt that would make Cher say “Wow. That is over the top” and also maybe ask, “Do you believe in life after love?”

(I don’t think she’d really ask if I believed in life after love. But that’s where my mind went after I said Cher and now I can’t get that song out of my head.)

I just knew that it would end up being a battle in Cavenders and, frankly, I just don’t have the strength. And I certainly don’t have the strength at 3:30 in the afternoon when I know I still have to face homework and a long soliloquy about the unfairness of life and I don’t even have the promise of a baked potato filled with cheese and butter to help me through the night.

Just the other day a friend of mine brought a few bags of clothes over that her daughter had outgrown. Caroline and I went through the bags and I told her to only keep the things she would actually wear and we could do something else with the other stuff. She began to pull things out and loved all the sweatshirts and some purple skinny jeans, but then she pulled out this darling, DARLING, striped dress and announced, “No. DEFINITELY NOT THIS.”

“Really? But it’s so cute. I would love to have a dress like that.”

And she looked right at me and said, “Mom, let’s not make this harder than it has to be.”

Okay then.

And so really I just took her words to heart when I decided to go to Cavenders by myself. I picked out four shirts that I thought she might like and ignored the ones with iridescent purple horseshoes and fringe. I made sure that I could return the shirts she didn’t want, threw in a bedazzled belt for good measure and made my way home.

You know what? She was thrilled with her new shirt. Granted, she wasn’t a fan of two out of the four I chose (PLAID? Why would I want a PLAID shirt?) , but she loved the other two and the belt that would make Liberace weep with envy is a little much but she has already declared it her FAVORITE THING EVER and wore it over her nightgown until she went to bed.

I don’t know when I’ve felt such a thrill of victory.

And I didn’t even have to take a Xanax.

(Although I would eat the heck out of a baked potato if you put one in front of me right now. Not because I’m stressed but because IT’S A POTATO.)

The thing is it’s not her fault that it’s become so hard to shop with her. She has 50% of my DNA. Which means she has to look at and overanalyze everything in the store and envision every possible combination of outfits.

And she has 50% of P’s DNA. Which translates to being hard headed and stubborn. And possessing an innate desire to wear a lot of clothing that comes from Academy.

In fact, P decided he needed new jeans and pants last Friday. So after Caroline’s basketball game we went to Old Navy. On a Saturday. To shop for P.

That’s a hat trick of misery.

I knew we were in trouble when I began handing him various types of jeans and pants to try on and he asked, “Why do I need to try all these on? Can’t we just buy what we need in my size and leave?”

It’s hard to explain the unpredictable sizing of Old Navy to someone who only shops once every three years and only then because all his jeans have “shrunk”.

Yes, because when you hit your forties, clothes tend to “shrink” at an alarming rate.

But he put his game face on and tried on all the different incarnations of Old Navy jeans. I can’t tell you how tempted I was to slip in a pair of skinny jeans just to see what he’d do, but decided there was no reason to subject everyone in the dressing room to profanity.

Finally we walked up to the cash register with two new pairs of jeans and two pairs of khaki pants. And I have never felt more certain that people have had gum surgeries that were less painful than the last thirty minutes I’d just spent sitting outside that dressing room.

Which is why I’ve pretty much decided I’m only shopping for myself from now on. The rest of these people can head to Academy without me and buy all the Magellan shirts and Nike running shorts their hearts’ desire.

Because I’m not going to make this harder than it has to be.

I just finished watching the Super Bowl. And by “watching the Super Bowl”, I mean that I just finished checking Twitter to read about Madonna’s halftime performance and commentary on all the commercials while I occasionally looked up to see the game because I really didn’t care at all if the Giants of New York beat the Patriots of New England.

In my opinion, real football ended for the season after college football wrapped up.

Also, Madonna has an incredible amount of energy for someone who’s 94 years old. Good gracious. She must take her One A Day plus iron without fail.

And now I’m going to write something quick because Downton Abbey is waiting for me on the DVR and I have to watch it tonight or I’ll never get to sleep for wondering if Lady Mary helps Matthew Crawley find the will to live again.

Speaking of DVRS, we got a new one on Thursday. We finally replaced our old T.V. with a nicer one. It wasn’t very hard to do considering that our former T.V. was a 20 inch Sony with a picture that had become so blurry that it was hard to tell what the score was when you watched a sporting event. Of course maybe the problem is with my eyes. I choose not to examine that too closely.

The upside of the 20 inch Sony was that we never had to worry about anyone stealing it because it weighed about 450 pounds. And, well, it was a ten-year-old twenty inch T.V. We could have left it out on the curb with a sign that read FREE and no one would have taken it.

But we’d put off getting a new T.V. Mainly because I am the technological person in our home. And that’s like saying that Debra Winger as Sissy was the classiest character in Urban Cowboy. Sure, maybe compared to Bud, but you weren’t going to find her at any debutante balls.

And part of the reason I didn’t want to get a new T.V was because I knew it would mean unplugging things and figuring out where wires go and how remotes work and the whole thing just seemed exhausting. So I wasn’t surprised at all when I called Dish Network and found out they needed to come replace our old DVR with a high definition DVR. And they could be at our house in two weeks with a ten hour time frame for the appointment.

Technology. You make me sad.

So our nice technician shows up and asks if they’ve told me he’ll also need to replace our satellite dish. This is where I need to assure you that it’s a very small, hardly noticeable dish because I am just vain enough to care that y’all might think we have a huge satellite dish sitting in the front yard of our home on wheels. Right next to the sixteen stray dogs.

And the car up on cement blocks.

Of course no one mentioned that our entire system needed to be replaced, but I told him to go ahead and do what he needed to do. And about an hour later he came in and announced our old dish had been completely installed the wrong way. Which explains why we had to sometimes lean out of bed at a precarious angle to change the channel on the T.V. in our bedroom.

Then he brought in the bright, shiny DVR along with new remote controls. That’s when it dawned on me that he was taking the old DVR with all the episodes of Thirty Rock I haven’t watched yet this season. And a little part of me began to hurt because I had big plans to curl up and watch some Liz Lemon on Friday night.

I was kind of feeling a little bitter and resentful toward the new shiny DVR with its absence of Thirty Rock episodes until the Dish Network guy handed me the new remote control and explained that I can now record up to 450 hours of shows. 450 HOURS.

Well, that’s a game changer.

I can’t tell you how many times I would get so stressed when we got down to the 30 hour zone of recording time. I’d start figuring out what I could delete to make more room. It was like a weekly Sophie’s Choice.

(Although I’d usually solve the problem by deleting some of P’s shows because how many hunting shows or shows about catching monster fish does one person need?)

But now there is such freedom with 450 hours. I can keep every episode of Downton Abbey on there forever. And I can let The Bachelors pile up until I have enough that I can watch the entire season in one hour instead of subjecting myself to all the filler and “Stay tuned for the MOST DRAMATIC ROSE CEREMONY EVER” stuff.

And I can experience all this television freedom on a screen that’s big enough that I can actually see the picture from across the room.

It’s an abundance of riches.

Now I just need to figure out where we’re going to put the T.V. because it’s currently sitting on the church pew in our living room. I always loved having our T.V. in an armoire but these fancy new T.V.s don’t fit in an armoire. I’m thinking built-ins. Any thoughts on that?

Also, is anyone watching The Voice? And is anyone going to watch that new show Smash?

I was on the fence about it but I’m going to give it a whirl now that I can rest in the security that I can still record an additional 449 hours of other shows.