Author: Big Mama

We’re making Christmas bright

Well, we have lived a million life times since I last checked in. Honestly, I have no idea where to start so I’ll start from the beginning.

Our weekend fun and festivities really began on Thursday afternoon when I picked up Caroline and her friend S. from school and took them directly to HEB to pick up two dozen plain cake-like donuts that I had ordered on Tuesday for her class party on Friday. We walked over to the bakery section and I told each girl they could pick one treat from the bakery case. S. picked a sugar cookie. Caroline picked the largest eclair I have ever seen.

It was an ambitious choice.

Anyway, I told the lady behind the counter that I was there to pick up my order and handed her my receipt. She searched all over for my order and finally came back to report that they didn’t have my order because they don’t make plain, cake-like donuts.

Okay.

She then asked if I actually meant plain, cake-like donut holes. I said, “Why? Do you make those?”

No. No they don’t. I guess she was just making pastry conversation to distract from the awkwardness of me waiting for donuts that were never going to happen.

Dear HEB,

Please do not take my custom order for a product that you do not, in fact, make. That information would have been solid gold on Tuesday but, alas, on Thursday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. merely sends me into a frenzy of non-holiday emotions and feelings towards the entire HEB chain of stores.

My blind love for you has already been on the fence ever since you placed the sushi-making station right next to the produce and dimmed the lights in an ill-conceived notion of grocery store ambience and this bad turn of events has pushed me closer to the edge.

Sincerely,
Melanie

The good news is I was able to find the aforementioned donuts at Shipley’s, thereby avoiding a Kindergarten Christmas party tragedy. And my efforts were totally worth it when I was able to watch those little five-year-olds try to catch those donuts with only their teeth while they hung down from a string.

On Friday night, Gulley and her husband had plans to go see Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison at Gruene Dance Hall and I offered to let their boys spend the night with Caroline and me. Caroline was so excited and on the way to pick them up she said, “I don’t even know what to think about this. I AM FREAKING OUT.”

Are you also fifteen? Because last I checked, you were five.

I took the kids to E.Z.’s where they all ordered cheese pizza with a side of curly fries. When their fries arrived, I asked if they wanted ketchup. Jackson said he wanted gravy. Caroline wanted ketchup. Will said he would like some polynesian sauce.

When your kid knows to ask for polynesian sauce at age three it’s a sure sign he’s had his share of Chick-Fil-A nuggets.

After they finished their light, healthy dinner they all started to run around and dance to the music. As I watched them, I began to get a little teary-eyed thinking about what a huge blessing it is that Gulley and I are getting to raise our kids together and watch this next generation of sweet friendship grow deeper all the time. Then they started playing “If You Think I’m Sexy” by Rod Stewart over the loud speaker and the moment was gone.

I took the kids to a girls’ basketball game after dinner to watch a friend’s daughter play. I told them they could all pick out some candy at the concession stand. Jackson picked Starbursts. Will picked Skittles. My delicate flower picked a giant dill pickle.

P and I have always looked at the large jars of giant dill pickles with disdain, wondering who really wants to eat a giant pickle. I’ll tell you who. Our daughter.

I managed to get them all home and in their pajamas, then I turned on “Rudolph” in the hopes that they would all start to settle down while I went to put on my pajamas. It was a good thought even though it was completely unsuccessful. So, I grabbed a book and told them it was time for bedtime stories.

Here they all are, listening intently to my every word.

On Friday night, I saw my daughter’s future. She will be that kid at every slumber party who will only go to sleep after all her efforts to keep everyone else awake have completely failed.

I know that kid. I was that kid.

The next morning, Gulley picked us up and we all headed for Bryan/College Station to go to Santa’s Wonderland. A great time was had by all and I’ll get to that at some point.

But, for now, I’ll leave you with one of the highlights of the trip for Gulley and me, seen on the way to Bryan.

In case you can’t read it, it says, “I wish my wife was as dirty as this truck”.

I wonder if that’s what he asked Santa for this year because that is a treasure.
Episode 13: Big Boo Cast

Just in case you thought you may not get anything good for Christmas this year, we’re giving you the gift that will keep on giving for 45 minutes or so.

And sure, it’s basically a whole lot of nothing involving discussions of top teen idols of our youth and ill-spent Sunday nights at Mazzio’s Pizza after youth group. But where else can you find that kind of random content on the internet for free besides everywhere you look?

The good news is that the podcast was ready in time for me to put it up today because I am in the midst of great Christmas festivities in Bryan/College Station involving unbelievably long lines to see Christmas lights and hayrides and therefore am extremely busy.

So, y’all enjoy.

Click on the picture below and select episode 13 to listen.

Also, for the record, we never intended the podcast to become a bi-annual event. It’s just turned out that way through the miracle of modern technology and our lack of anything interesting to say.

Fortunately, we didn’t let that stop us this time.
The ugly sweater is alive and well

About a month ago, I came up with the idea of having an ugly Christmas sweater contest. It seemed like a brilliant idea at the time, but that was before I realized how many pictures of ugly sweaters I would receive in my inbox. Let’s just say that we are in the midst of an ugly Christmas sweater epidemic in America.

The other factor in all this is that I’ve discovered the game Pathwords and have developed a wee bit of the addiction. And I used the word “wee” because I type it about a hundred times a day while I try to beat my high score. It’s a sickness really. A sickness that will most likely end with me completely losing all use of my right hand to carpal tunnel syndrome.

You may be wondering what Pathwords has to do with the Christmas sweater contest. Well, it distracted me from all the Christmas sweater viewing and I procrastinated until the last minute, and then spent my Thursday evening looking at ugly sweaters until I felt like I could feel the poly-blend synthetic material and had to go take a shower.

Before I announce the winners, I’ll share a couple of things I discovered along the way.

Apparently, the holiday season puts folks in the mood to put on some sort of vest. I kind of knew this already because of an unfortunate incident at a college Christmas formal when my date wore a sweater vest. It was horrific and gave new meaning to the phrase, “Don we now our gay apparel”.

But I don’t know that I’ve ever seen someone wear a vest with this kind of aplomb and style.

According to all the entries, there is nothing that brings yuletide cheer like some sort of teddy bear or a kitten, probably because everyone knows that the teddy bears and kittens were the first on the scene at the birth of sweet baby Jesus.

If PETA is looking for a real cause they need to forget the fur coats and worry about the continual abuse of kittens on a knitwear canvas.

And, while teddy bears and kittens are the favorites, birds aren’t exempt from spreading some Christmas gaiety.

The other travesty that occurs on the holiday sweater is what people do to poor Santa Claus. Clearly these sweaters were designed by people who are still bitter that Santa didn’t bring them the Barbie Townhouse (complete with working elevator) when they were in second grade and view him as Christopher Walken Santa.

Of course I don’t know that it’s any more right to turn him into Cowboy Santa complete with surrounding cacti.

The best part of the sweater is its ability to cause normal people to tap into some latent desire to don a fake mustache and pose for cheesy pictures.

Needless to say, I had a terrible time deciding on the winners. There were so many incredible entries to choose from and I actually had to call in help to make my final decisions. Thank you all for participating and sending in your hilarious and often frightening pictures.

Now for the winners.

3rd place and the winner of a $15.00 gift certificate to Amazon is Tammy at Grateful in Georgia for this entry that is basically a sweater all hyped up on steroids and bows.

2nd Place and the winner of a $25.00 gift certificate to CWDKids is Judi for an entry that is basically a total cliche’ of the holiday sweater because nothing says “Merry Christmas” like some teddy bears doing a pyramid in the shape of a tree.

1st Place and the winner of an original piece of jewelry by Lisa Leonard Designs is Nicki at The Kenningtons. Technically this is a Christmas sweatshirt, but there is no doubt that it is just wrong.

Who takes a perfectly fine red sweatshirt and thinks “Wow! What this really needs is some KITTENS! And some POINSETTIAS! And some STOCKINGS! And some GARLAND! AND, OH WAIT! DON’T FORGET THE CHRISTMAS CLOCK AND THE CHRISTMAS CANDLE!”?

I’ll tell you who. Someone with questionable taste and attention deficit disorder.

Please email me at [email protected] to collect your prize for your truly bad entries.

By the way, I feel that I should mention no one is exempt from the holiday fashion faux pas. Wednesday night I met my group of girlfriends known as “The Birthday Club” for our annual Christmas dinner and wine exchange. I wanted to look festive, but not overly Christmas-y so I chose a red coat over a black shirt with a Burberry plaid scarf.

So did my friend Steph.

There really isn’t anything dorkier than two women in their thirties dressed totally alike and sitting next to each other in a restaurant.

Well, until one of them pulls out her camera to take a picture.

Y’all have a great Friday.
We’re thinking about calling in the CSI team

A normal weekday morning around here usually consists of Caroline waking up, eating Lucky Charms (without milk) in my bed and watching “Little Einsteins”. I like to use this time for some quiet meditation and deep breathing, also known as getting an extra twenty minutes of sleep courtesy of the television while my child essentially eats marshmallows for breakfast.

I’d like to think she’s actually eating the cereal portion of the Lucky Charms, but I’d be kidding myself.

After “Little Einsteins” is over, I head to Caroline’s closet while whispering a silent prayer for patience and wisdom and then pick out three clothing offerings. I carry them into my bedroom like a diligent lady-in-waiting and say “Would it please madam to choose her apparel for the day?”

Right.

In reality, I lay out the three choices on my bed while attempting to strategically position the one I hope she’ll choose. That never works, by the way. I inform her that these are her three options and most days she waves her hand over them and says, “None of them!” with a mouth full of magically delicious marshmallows.

And then the wrangling begins.

“Oh yes. You’re going to wear one of them, so hurry up and decide or you’re going to be late.”

Realizing she has to choose from the garments before her, she’ll roll her eyes and try to negotiate various combinations of socks, jeans and shirts, while I issue threats along the lines of “Maybe we should just give these cute boots to some little girl who would LOVE to have a new pair of boots” or “If you wear those brown leggings with a brown t-shirt and nothing over it, you’re going to look like a piece of poo.”

Finally, she is dressed and ready for school so we go to her bathroom to brush her teeth, which is usually completely uneventful.

Until yesterday morning.

She was waiting for me to help her get the toothpaste on her brush when she asked, “Mama, WHAT’S THAT?” while pointing at the window.

I glanced over at the window and said, “It’s a spider, but it’s on the outside.”

“No, not the spider! The other thing!”

“It’s the spider’s web. Come on, we need to brush your teeth and get going!”

“Mama, there really is something. I see something fuzzy out there!”

Wanting to clear this up once and for all, I really look out the window and don’t see anything.

“I don’t see anything.”

“No, Mama. Look over there. It’s fuzzy!”

And then I really look at where she’s pointing.

This is what I saw.

The untrained eye might not know what that is, but I knew immediately that it was a raccoon perched on the neighbor’s chimney.

You see, the house next door to us has been vacant for some twenty plus years. The short story is the elderly owners passed away and left the house to their two grown children who haven’t been able to agree on what to do with the house. So while they’ve spent the last twenty years bickering and arguing, their parents’ home has turned into some sort of shelter for wayward raccoons.

I’ve tried to get the city to condemn it or whatever it is they do to old, abandoned houses but, apparently, “IT JUST LOOKS SO TACKY!” isn’t really enough grounds to bulldoze a home.

Anyway, I see the raccoon and since I am highly skilled in all things wildlife related, I immediately begin to bang loudly on the bathroom window in an attempt to get the raccoon to turn around or run away or something.

It doesn’t budge.

I bang loudly again.

Nothing.

Caroline is taking all this in, looks me straight in the eye and says, “Mama, I think he’s dead.”

“Well, maybe he’s just sound asleep.”

“No, he’s dead.”

Oh my little optimist.

She decides I’m not getting the job done and runs off to find the big guns, otherwise known as Daddy. I can hear her yelling, “DADDY! THERE’S A RACCOON AND MAMA KNOCKED ON THE WINDOW AND MAYBE HE’S SLEEPING BUT HE’S PROBABLY DEAD!!”

They head outside to do some up close investigation which basically involves P throwing a stick at the raccoon to see if it moves. It doesn’t.

Then I hear a loud thunk which I find out later was P throwing a large piece of firewood at the raccoon. Still no movement.

The raccoon is dead.

We’re not sure what caused his demise. I’d like to think he just curled up peacefully and died in his sleep, but I have a feeling in that house it’s every raccoon for himself and there may have been some foul play involved.

Speaking of foul, P is going to have to get rid of that corpse posthaste or it’s going to give us a whole new appreciation for the phrase, “It smells like something crawled up there and died”.

And of course if Caroline asks what happened to the raccoon, I may tell her that he argued with his mama one too many times about what to wear to school in the morning.
Cookie, cookie, cookie starts with C

Caroline has been begging to make sugar cookies for days on end and I’ve been waiting for the right time. That time being a day when I didn’t feel like my head would explode from the inevitable disaster in the form of colored sugars and flour all over my kitchen floor.

Yesterday was that day.

She rolled out the dough with the grace and precision of a monkey after too many shots of tequila.

Then, once we had an assortment of baked gingerbread men, Christmas trees and snowmen ranging in thickness from paper thin to won’t cook in the middle if world peace depended on it, we began to make some icing.

Green icing.

I’ll be honest. It’s not a shade of green you would find in nature. It was more like a shade of green you’d find in some sort of congealed salad that your Aunt Millie makes for Christmas lunch.

We spent the rest of the afternoon listening to Christmas music, enjoying a fire in the fireplace and using enough sprinkles to cause a possible sprinkle shortage throughout the United States.

Let’s just say that I’ll be picking red and green sprinkles off the bottom of my feet well past Easter.

But all our hard work totally paid off.

Oh baby. If loving you is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

By the way, I don’t know who bit the top of that green tree off and put it back on the plate.

Probably some crazy lady who thinks of JFK, Jr. every time she’s in Walmart.
I don’t know how this turned into a post about Walmart

Yesterday was one of those days that started off a little breezy and turned into full-fledged COLD by noon. Fortunately, it wasn’t my day to drive carpool so I managed to stay in my pajamas until around noon, at which time I threw on some clothes and headed to Walmart.

Yes, I said Walmart.

Back when I was a little girl, my Nanny and Big Bob had a lakehouse in the booming metropolis of Colmesneil, Texas, population 526. We’d spend weeks there in the summertime floating in the lake on various innertubes every day until we reached the point where no amount of sunscreen would protect our skin.

It was at this point that we’d all hop in Nanny’s Cadillac and head to the big city of Woodville, Texas. Why Woodville, you may ask?

Because it had a Walmart.

And not only did it have a Walmart, but it had a Walmart that sold the best corn dogs and fresh-squeezed lemonade in the whole world or at least in East Texas. Whatever.

At that point, my family lived in Houston and we’d never seen a Walmart. I realize that’s hard to believe, but it’s true. I lived in the days before Walmart took over the world.

We’d go to Walmart and spend hours wandering the aisles, stocking up on important things like Snoopy Zebco fishing poles, new pajamas and a few coloring books and boxes of crayons. Then we’d stop for a corndog and lemonade on our way out.

I thought Walmart was the greatest store ever. Even better than Weiners, which is saying something because Weiners is where I bought my first red satin jacket with blues stripes down the sleeves (Yes. I said FIRST red satin jacket. There were others.) and also where I bought a pair of faux leather cowboy boots when I was in fourth grade and my life’s ambition was to ride the bull at Gilley’s. (What can I say? I watched a lot of “Urban Cowboy”.)

But at some point, Walmart lost me. The bloom was off the discount retailer rose.

However, as of late, Walmart has rekindled my love. There are several reasons for this:

1. Now that Target has moved, Walmart is much more convenient.

2. Target didn’t feel the need to stock any girls’ size 5 red long-sleeve shirts or turtlenecks this holiday season.

3. Walmart had fleece pajama bottoms on sale for FOUR DOLLARS. They really need a slogan like “We’re Rolling Back Prices” or something clever like that.

4. At some point Target began to feel that it was the new Nordstrom. They got a little arrogant and started charging upwards of $19.99 for their Mossimo goods.

5. Every time I’m at Walmart and I see their “George” brand of clothing it makes me think about John F. Kennedy, Jr. because he had that magazine named “George”. I realize these two things are totally unrelated but it’s how my mind works.

Plus, you know when the Kennedy family got tired of hanging out at their Hyannis Port compound, they loaded up in the car and headed to Walmart for a corn dog.

6. If you shoplift at Walmart, you’ll still get chased down by an overweight security guard in orthopedic shoes and an ill-fitting uniform, the way God intended shoplifters to get caught. Whereas if you shoplift at Target, they’ll send this after you.

It’s all so high-tech.

7. Walmart still has all those ghetto rides by the door which are where quarters go to die. Just the sight of them makes me feel all warm and nostalgic.

If Walmart and I had a song that best described our relationship over the previous twenty years, it would probably be Bonnie Raitt singing, “I Can’t Make You Love Me”.

Oh, but these days our song would be ($5.00 if you know what I’m going to say) “Reunited and It Feels So Good”. Because y’all know I love me some Peaches ‘N Herb.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still shop at Target because I do love to check out the Mossimo apparel.

I also still have a deep longing to see the Asset Protection Device in action.

Rumor has it that the security guard even wears a helmet.

And that alone is worth the seven extra minutes it takes to get to Target.