Author: Big Mama

Caroline and I were at the pool on Thursday afternoon when my cell phone rang. It was P and he was calling to see if I’d noticed if the house felt hot before we left for the pool. I told him that I didn’t remember it being any hotter than usual but, considering it’s June in South Texas, everything feels hot. Hot is a way of life right now which makes me want to go back and kick the version of myself that complained about the cold this winter.

Unfortunately, it was truly hotter than usual because our air-conditioning had gone out. Thankfully we have two units. One controls the temperature in the bedrooms and the other controls the main living areas of the house and the one that was out was the unit that cools the main living areas. I’ve never been so grateful that we have a T.V. in our bedroom.

The repairman showed up on Friday morning and had my utmost sympathy as he climbed up into our attic because it is approximately the temperature of hell. After about five minutes he came down, looking like he was about to die, and showed me something that is apparently part of our air-conditioning unit . He launched into a lengthy explanation about the motor and the circuit board and I can’t remember what else because I wouldn’t have questioned him if he’d told me that the air-conditioning was powered by fairies. Sir, I don’t care what the problem is, just FIX IT PLEASE.

He went in search of a new motor and, in a last minute effort to make this already uninteresting tale of woe end sooner rather than later, the short version is that there isn’t a York air-conditioner motor to be found in the San Antonio city limits and it’s being shipped from Austin. And it will be here on Tuesday.

For those of you doing the math at home, that means we won’t have any a/c in the main areas of our house until Tuesday. The only upside is it’s given me a brilliant excuse to not cook for the last four days because “we shouldn’t turn on the oven because it will just heat up the kitchen”. That’s what you call making lemonade out of lemons. Which is actually the one thing I made over the course of the weekend.

However, because I am very focused and not easily distracted from my goals (unless I see something shiny or a Real Housewives marathon on Bravo) I spent all day Saturday painting the kitchen turquoise. I hated to do it, what with the whole idea of manual labor and no cool air, but P had already planned to take Caroline and some friends down to the ranch so I had the whole day to paint without a “helper”.

So I went to Lowe’s and bought a gallon of an Eddie Bauer color called Sea Breeze, five different paintbrushes, blue painters tape, and plastic dropcloths to cover the floor. P set up a box fan for me in the kitchen before he left and I spent the rest of the day painting my little heart out.

At the end of the day, the color is somewhere between a box from Tiffany’s and Taco Cabana, leaning a little more towards the Taco Cabana side. If I’m totally honest, it’s a little brighter than what I wanted but not nearly as bright as it looks in these pictures because holy bean and cheese tacos.

My long term goals involve finding some big pieces of white pottery to place on top of the cabinets. Maybe something like this pitcher along with some bowls and whatever else I happen to find.

And then I may do some window mistreatments out of some kind of retro-looking fabric like this pattern from Amy Butler.

I also found these Thomas Paul plates that I think would look so cute hanging on the wall somewhere, but then I’d need to go with a simpler fabric for the windows or just leave them plain or maybe hang the plates above the windows and oh my word you’re getting a live look inside my brain and it’s very crowded in there.

photo from babygadget

Or maybe I’ll just hang a neon pink sign that reads “Estamos abiertos las 24 horas del día”.

I think I need a little time to adjust to the new color and decide if it works. Especially considering I’ve never been good with change of any kind. And, if I ultimately decide it’s too bright, I’ll repaint it a lighter shade in the fall because painting is like childbirth. You have to forget the pain before you’re ready to do it again.

You know how when you were a little girl (or boy for all three of you who might be reading) and you dreamed of the day you’d turn sixteen and your parents would surprise you with a brand new Trans Am just like the one Burt Reynolds drove in Smokey and the Bandit with a sweet, sweet firebird on the hood? And then you’d try to drive from Texas to Georgia following Jerry Reed in a semi-truck while outwitting a Texas sheriff and his dimwitted son?

Oh wait. Was that just me?

If so, then I can only assume that you didn’t spend as many hours of your childhood watching Smokey and the Bandit 1, 2, and 3 as I did. (I think we can all agree that 3 was a mere shadow of the first two)

My point is that the black Trans Am was the first car I ever loved. It spoke of excitement and adventure, much unlike the 1977 Buick LeSabre with baby blue velour interior that sat in our garage.

Then one day my best friend, Caroline Fletcher, pointed out a Corvette as we sat in the back rear-facing seat of her mama’s station wagon and it pulled up behind us. I renounced my love of the Trans Am and dreamed of the day I would own a red Corvette.

(I was way ahead of Prince)

(Of course, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t singing about a car)

The summer before I turned sixteen, my dad took me shopping for a car. By that time there was really nothing I wanted more than a Suzuki Samurai. A teal Suzuki Samurai. God bless the 1987 version of me. However, my dad took it for a test drive and decided that he didn’t want to buy his teenage daughter a car that made him feel like he was “driving a tin can”. And I told him that I completely understood and admired his desire to put my safety first. Or maybe I whined and pouted. I can’t really remember.

Ultimately, I ended up with a Honda CRX that I drove until I started my first job after college and decided to embrace the American way and get myself a car payment in the form of a Nissan Maxima. A few years later, I got a job in pharmaceutical sales and drove company cars for the next ten years, including an awesome white Ford Taurus that looked just like the pills I was selling at the time. Except not as big.

And then, three years ago, I left my pharma job and they had the nerve to take away my free company car. So P and I had to find me a car TOOT SUITE which led us to a Volvo dealership where we met a salesman with a cowboy perm named JoEL. (emphasis on the EL) He sold us a used Volvo S60 sedan that has served us well and felt pretty dang sporty compared to all the Tauruses (Taurusi?) and Grand Prixs and Ford Escapes that came before it.

All of this is leading up to an email we received from the Volvo dealership late last week informing us they were looking for used S60s to add to their pre-owned inventory and they would make us a special deal if we wanted to trade it in. Granted, this may have all been part of an elaborate ruse to get us into the dealership in the midst of a truly sub-par economy, but it worked like a charm because on Tuesday morning we drove over JUST TO LOOK at what they had in stock.

And, ultimately, made a decision that would make that little eight-year-old-Trans Am-wanting girl mock me endlessly.

OH YES WE DID.

We bought a stay wag.

A 2006 stay wag with only 30,000 miles. Apparently it was owned by an elderly couple who drove it back and forth to the grocery store about three times a day and then put it back in the garage.

When we bought the S60 sedan three years ago, I assumed it was all we needed because, in case you haven’t noticed, we only have one child. As it turns out, she has made friends. And she wants to pile those friends in my car so I can drive them places because they keep getting lost every time I make them ride the city bus.

So we looked at SUVs, but kept coming back to the wagon. I heard myself tell P, “I actually really like the stay wag. It’s white, it’s a great deal, and it has a rear-facing third row like the wagons of our childhood.”

He said, “Do you really want a station wagon?”

I thought back to all those moments I spent riding in that rear-facing seat in Caroline Fletcher’s mama’s wood paneled station wagon and how we’d make funny faces at the cars behind us and drool over red Corvettes and sing Dr. Hook songs at the top of our lungs. And I thought about how I didn’t want my Caroline to be deprived of that unique childhood experience and replied, “Yes. YES I DO. I can make the station wagon cool again.”

Which, let’s be honest, is way overestimating my cool-making abilities.

But I think as long as I decide to forgo playing any Dr. Hook music, I’ll be okay.

Y’all.

It is hard to pick out a paint color.

This is what my kitchen wall looked like after a trip to Home Depot yesterday morning.

Apparently my camera has intensified all the colors drastically because I promise I’m not about to paint my kitchen Taco Cabana Blue. The colors are all much softer in person.

(The royal blue stuff is the tape that one of the Mendez brothers placed over the light switch and the thermostat sensor)

(Also, the Mendez brothers should not be confused with the Menendez brothers)

But I’m still not sure I’ve found what I’m looking for so I’m heading to the hardware store to look at Benjamin Moore paint samples, specifically Mermaid Green which a few of you mentioned in the comments yesterday.

In the meantime, my kitchen is covered in spackle and sheetrock shavings and my OCD nature is only going to be able to survive this kind of chaos for about twenty-four more hours before I just start slapping paint on something to make all the messy go away.

Pray for me.