Author: Big Mama

  • Schemes, lies and automobiles

    Last Tuesday morning, I had to put my new car in the shop.

    In the shop.

    Last Tuesday.

    Almost a week ago.

    Granted, it’s a used car, but it’s new to me and it hardly seems possible that we’ve already reached this milestone of disappointment and betrayal. What happened to the love and the trust? Why did the honeymoon end so soon?

    The good news is that part of the reason P and I decided on a used Volvo was because they offer a bumper to bumper warranty up to 100,000 miles.

    Which is the only thought that kept me from weeping loudly when the car started to die on me periodically. If I had thought we were about to pay for a new transmission or flux capacitor or whatever, I would have been overwrought and there would have been crying and wailing and shaking of fists with declarations that begin with “As God is my witness…”.

    Instead, I called the friendly Volvo service center that JoEL talked about so highly during his sales pitch and told them my check engine light was on, the car was dying on occasion (slightly inconvenient), and I needed to bring it in for service. I also informed them that I would be needing the complimentary loaner that was so hyped up during the aforementioned sales pitch.

    They kindly let me know that a loaner would be available in 2 weeks.

    It was all terribly convenient.

    It’s not like I wasn’t enjoying the mild panic attacks I was experiencing every time my car died.

    Anyway, I scheduled to bring it in once a loaner was available because there was no way I could survive without a car and everything is covered under the bumper to bumper warranty. What do I care if the engine blows up before a loaner is available? I have important places to go, like HEB and the pool.

    And also, Hollywood Video to rent 3 year old crack in the form of Disney movies.

    So, Tuesday was the day. I dropped off the car, lugged the carseat over to the loaner, and drove Caroline to school. I was especially thrilled to notice they had given me the loaner with less than 1/4 tank of gas because it’s not like gas costs thousands of dollars per gallon these days.

    They called late Tuesday to tell me something was wrong with the fuel pump and gave me the estimate. I informed them the car was under warranty and therefore, repair away! Because it’s free! And throw in a new transmission while you’re in there!

    Then service guy said something about needing my warranty information and my thought was, we bought it from you so why don’t you go ask JoEL if he can find it somewhere?

    I called P and he said he’d handle it, which is my preferred method of handling things.

    Then today, service guy called to tell me that since we’d just bought the car 5 weeks ago, a claim couldn’t be paid through the warranty yet, and they needed the loaner back, so could I please come in, pay for the repairs out of pocket with no hope of reimbursement and turn in the loaner?

    Umm, that would be a no, but hats off to you for having the nerve to ask.

    I called P with this update because, as y’all know, he’s my preferred method of handling things.

    He drove over to the Volvo Center (but not in the loaner because we are clever like a band of foxes) and basically told them it wasn’t our problem. If they wanted the loaner, then they needed to give me back my car and then file the claim as soon as the warranty took effect.

    Otherwise, the loaner? It’s a stayin’ with Big Mama.

    I can’t believe JoEL wasn’t completely honest about the service we could expect from the Service Department.

    It’s like you can’t even trust a used car salesman these days.

  • Daddy’s girl

    When P and I found out we were having a baby, lo these many years gone by, most people had the same reaction which was, “You better hope it’s a boy!” The general consensus was that P is a guy’s kind of guy, a man’s man, and would be utterly hopeless and lost if called to raise a daughter.

    I’ve always been a daddy’s girl myself, so the bar was set pretty high for me. I know what it means to have a dad who wants to give you the world and thinks you’re about the greatest thing ever. A dad who will instill in his daughter that she can do anything she sets her mind to. A dad that wouldn’t trade having a girl for anything in the world.

    And so does Caroline.

    So, to my dad, I wish you a Happy Father’s Day. Thanks for setting the bar high.

    And, to P on Father’s Day, watching the way you love Caroline makes me love you that much more. She is blessed to have you as her daddy. All those people who thought you wouldn’t know what to do with a little girl couldn’t have been more wrong.

    Happy Father’s Day!

  • I have been saved from a life of dry skin or LOOK! a non-controversial post

    About a month ago, Boomama wrote a post about a friend of mine that owns a lavender farm in the Texas Hill Country. I had told Boomama about my friend’s lavender lotion and she had fallen in love with it with the same deep and abiding love as me. It is a lotion like no other, a lotion that makes other lotions weep with envy over their inferiority.

    It’s natural, it’s aloe vera based, and it smells like 14 slices of heaven on a beautiful, china plate. I am addicted to it like it’s all natural crack.

    And because of my addiction, I am constantly calling my friend to tell her to bring me a fresh stash. I’ve got to have the good stuff and I’ve got to have it now.

    Anyway, a few weeks ago, she was dropping off a case of her Hummingbird Farms lotion at my house and brought me a new product to try, which proves she really is like a lavender aromatherapy pusher. She just feeds my addiction.

    It’s a lavender spa treament salt scrub, otherwise known as the greatest beauty product I have ever used. When I use it on my feet and hands, it makes them softer than the day I was born. It is a miracle worker and the smell makes me happier than a bowl full of M&M’s.

    But really, the main purpose of this post is to let y’all know she has started a blog called Lavender Chick. It’s about her life at Hummingbird Farms and just her life in general. So, go check it out. You’ll be so glad you did.

    And make sure you don’t miss this post. It’s my favorite.

  • Summer of the skinny cow

    So, I’ve rebounded from my impending nervous breakdown caused by all the non-sleeping and am feeling much better. I won’t even embarrass myself by taking an “after” picture of the bowl of patriotic M&M’s. Let’s just say a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

    Caroline and I were at the pool yesterday. The pool, just so y’all know, is the greatest thing that has ever happened to our family and I’m not even exaggerating a little bit, because y’all know I don’t EVER, EVER exaggerate. I don’t know what we would do without the pool, but feel sure it would be something along the lines of spending all summer locked inside watching Noggin because MY WORD the heat.

    It’s like sticking your head in hell every time you walk out the back door.

    And why would you do that on purpose?

    Anyway, we were at the pool. We’d spent well over an hour playing in the big pool, and then headed over to our favorite grassy spot by the baby pool to eat some ice cream, because HELLO, they totally sell a wide assortment of ice cream and ice cream bars at the pool.

    The pool has ice cream, celebrity sightings, and it causes Caroline to be so tired that her legs collapse beneath her by the time we leave. What more do you need to know to convince you of its greatness?

    We sat on our towel and I opened Caroline’s ice cream sandwich for her which, let me just say, if you’re trying to watch your fat grams and have been purchasing Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches and telling yourself that they taste exactly like the real ones? Then, don’t actually take a bite of a real one. The disappointment and disillusionment will be more than you can bear. Blue Bell vs. Skinny Cow…let’s just say Blue Bell takes Skinny Cow and chops her up into a sad, pathetic, tasteless hamburger.

    Could I get more off topic?

    The answer is always yes, yes I could.

    But I won’t.

    And really, it’s all coming back around to skinny cow…in a manner of speaking.

    So, we’re relaxing on our towel when I look over and notice a lady nursing her 1 year old while sitting on the edge of the baby pool. And I don’t mean discreetly breastfeeding her child. I mean swimsuit top pulled up and maximum boobage hanging out. I am all for breastfeeding. Hooray for breastfeeding, but seriously there are gangs of 12 year old boys that roam the pool. They do not need to be confronted with the boob, much less the boob of a nursing mama, which could cause boyhood fantasies to crumble and die in a sad little pile.

    My sole goal became to distract Caroline from the breastfeeding because I knew it would open up a can of awkwardness and loud questions that I just couldn’t bear to answer. Being in a swimsuit is bad enough without having your 3 year old pointing loudly and asking inappropriate questions.

    And while I realize that I am perhaps a little more modest than your average person, as evidenced by the fact that I changed clothes in the bathroom for most of my honeymoon (never even imagining what horrors childbirth would someday unleash on my modesty) until P reminded me that we were married, I still think that given the setting, a discreetly draped towel might have been a good choice. Maybe it’s just because I am such a private person.

    Well, unless you count the fact that I broadcast my life on the internet.

    If a woman wants to nurse right out in public, then more power to her. But boobs hanging directly out of a swimsuit for all the world to see are just wrong. It shouldn’t happen at the pool unless, hypothetically speaking, it was caused by an unfortunate wardrobe situation while going down the slide.

  • Look! Pictures of stuff with limited commentary

    Last night I was suffering from a touch of the writer’s block and my plan was to wake up this morning and write the best post of all time. However, Caroline didn’t know about this plan and proceeded to keep me up over 3/4 of the night for no good reason whatsoever. Unless trying to drive your mama insane is a reason.

    So, the greatest post will have to wait for another day. Although I did think about writing something around 3:30 a.m., but it would have just said, “Help. I’m having a nervous breakdown and would like to run away from home.”

    Good stuff.

    Instead of that heartwrenching plea for help, this is what y’all get instead.

    LOOK!

    Red, white and blue M&M’s. God bless America, I found them at HEB on Monday and they make me happy. So happy. There is nothing better than combining my love for this country with my love for the chocolate candy coated goodness.

    I will most likely finish this entire bowl by noon in a futile attempt to make myself feel better after all the sleeplessness last night.

    Speaking of the sleeplessness, here’s a picture of the perpetrator that caused all the no sleeping with all the non-sleepiness.

    Notice she looks fresh as a daisy. She woke up (as if she ever went to sleep) at 6:15 a.m. and has been dressed and accessorized since 6:25.

    There will be no picture of me because, trust me, there are some things the human eye is not meant to see.

    And lastly, while I’m sharing pictures. Here are some pictures I took last week when Janet from Life with the Wisners came to visit with her kids, Big H and Goo.

    That’s Caroline and Big H. Caroline is practicing her stellar hostessing skills. Hopefully also thinking that maybe her wardrobe selection of green jogging pants with bright turquoise shirt wasn’t really the best choice.

    Let’s just say the microwave caused quite the uproar. All the injustices of the world could be solved if only there were two Pottery Barn microwaves in every household.

    Also, in my defense, I do wash Caroline’s hair every day. It just looks particularly greasy because I’ve been putting baby oil in her bath to fight the drying of her skin from all the chlorine in the pool. The process makes her hair so greasy that I could style it like Danny Zuko’s.

    That’s the Goo. She is so much cuter than my limited photography skills indicate. I wish I could have caught a smile because, seriously, she smiled the entire time she was here except for the two seconds when I took this photo. She would make babies everywhere weep with envy at the joy she gets out of life.

    And that’s about it for now.

    Oh, except for seriously? Bo Brady is 60 or 52 or whatever. Hats off to Botox and hair dye, because while he doesn’t look like he did back when he and Hope ran away from the church on his motorcycle (a scene which was the epitome of romance in my 5th grade mind), he doesn’t look 5 years away from Social Security either.

    Y’all have a lovely day. And please say a prayer that I get a nap because otherwise, a breakdown is in my near future.

  • Those were the days of my life

    My freshman year of college, which is really synonymous with a time in my life when I was absolutely brilliant and full of wisdom, I lived in Mosher Hall. Mosher was part of a group of 2 girl dorms and 2 boy dorms with a common area consisting of a T.V. room, a cafeteria, a snackbar, and a little mini-mart type thing. Appropriately, these dorms were named The Commons.

    I have very few memories from this year because, let’s face it, I can barely remember what happened yesterday. Plus, I hadn’t met Gulley yet, and Gulley is really the only reason I remember anything from college because she remembers it for me and then tells me what a good time we had.

    I really need to do some kind of brain exercises before I find myself cutting into people’s wedding cakes.

    Anyway, I have two vivid memories of living in Mosher my freshman year.

    And oh yes, y’all get to hear both of them.

    First, it was always FREEZING cold. I mean teeth chattering, bone chilling, need a parka, cold. I spent most of my time in my dorm room wearing maroon sweatpants with AGGIES written down the leg (nice), and wrapped in the comforter from my bed which is, ironically, the comforter that P now sleeps with every night.

    I developed a major head cold about 2 weeks into the fall semester due to the cold, and never really recovered. I pretty much spent the rest of the semester drinking Nyquil straight from the bottle. Which may explain why I don’t remember anything.

    And also my grade point average.

    My other memory of life in Mosher is, apparently, I was not the only driven, focused student scheduling my classes around Days Of Our Lives. I would rush home from class every day at 11:45 to get back in time for Days. One day I realized it was on the T.V. in the Commons area and there were about 25 people gathered around the T.V. watching and discussing critical plot points.

    It was like a non-intellectual book club. And I was hooked.

    I spent the rest of the semester watching Days Of Our Lives with people I didn’t know and never got to know because our only common thread was our concern over what Stefano DiMera was plotting against the Brady family. I’d sit and watch, while drinking my Nyquil, and then stick around long enough after the credits rolled to hear everyone’s input on that day’s episode.

    Right now, my dad is reading this while he sits at his desk and I can’t even imagine the pride he feels.

    I hadn’t thought about this in years, but then last night I was up way too late watching T.V. and a commercial came on for Days Of Our Lives. It showed snippets of what’s coming up in the next few weeks and the plotlines are EXACTLY the same.

    Bo loves Hope. Hope loves Bo. Tony DiMera is back and plotting evil (shout out to Gulley who does the best Tony DiMera impersonation EVER and can crack me up to this day when she busts it out). Stefano is back and has to be 152 years old, but yet is still plotting doom and destruction for the Brady family.

    At one point, there was even a clip that featured Hope saying, “We’re going to kick some DiMera butt!”

    And I was all like, what is this, this is terrible, who would watch this? The acting is horrible, the plots are terrible, the whole show is just a waste.

    I was even going to blog about it right at that very moment.

    But then, Beverly Hills 90210 came back from commercial and I forgot all about it.

    Now that’s a show.