Author: Big Mama

  • Sisterhood of the borrowed black socks

    I have one younger sister named Amy. I don’t mean that I have other younger sisters whose names aren’t Amy. I think what I’m trying to say is I have one younger sister and her name is Amy. She is 3 years and 9 months younger than me, which means I was exactly Caroline’s age when she was born. That’s hard for me to believe because Caroline seems so old to me right now, and when I look back at my life, I can’t remember a time that I didn’t have a sister.

    Today is my little sister’s 32nd birthday.

    32.

    How is that possible?

    I realize since I will be 36 in August, that obviously she must be turning 32, but in so many ways I still picture her as a 12 year old with enormous hair in a private school uniform yelling at me, “Slow down! You’re driving too fast! I’m going to tell on you as soon as we get home!”

    When I was little, one of my favorite games to play was Wizard of Oz. I loved to be Dorothy and I could always count on Amy to be my faithful little Toto. She followed me everywhere I went, so I figured I might as well make the best of it. I’d spread out my mama’s old yellow comforter on the living room floor and travel down the yellow brick road as my little “Toto” crawled behind me barking.

    Later on, I discovered the book “Freaky Friday” and loved that the main character called her little brother “Ape Face”. I quickly decided it would be a great name for my friends and me to call my poor sister.

    Obviously, I was really nice. A doting big sister.

    However, in my defense, Amy did have quite the reputation on our street. She was known to make grown kids come crying to our front door to ask our mom if she would please make Amy give their Big Wheel back because she had commandeered it and wouldn’t let go without a fight. Everyone was a little bit scared of her.

    She got me back for making her play Toto and the whole Ape Face thing the summer before I started 5th grade. My mom had gone back to work and my friends and I had some boys ride their bikes over to the house while the babysitter was there, which was strictly forbidden. Amy took blackmail to a whole new level and used this information against me for years. It got her more nights of me scratching her back before she went to sleep than I can even tell y’all. Finally, in about 7th grade, I decided the statute of limitations had surely worn out on this offense and finally told her to go ahead and tell. It was a relief like I have never known.

    We could be the best of friends one minute and then turn on each other in an instant. In fact, one fight is so legendary that, to this day, it will bring up a heated discussion.

    We call it The Black Sock Debacle of 1988.

    It was fall of my senior year of high school and I was truly a pleasure to be around. Like most 17 year olds, I had the world completely figured out and certainly didn’t need anyone telling me how to live my life or breathing air in my presence. Amy was in 8th grade and attended a private Christian school which required her to wear a uniform. However, one day a month was “Free Dress Day”.

    Since I attended public school, my wardrobe was significantly larger than Amy’s so she usually borrowed something of mine to wear on Free Dress Day. It seems on this particular Free Dress Day she wanted to borrow my black socks.

    Now, we could spend a few hours discussing why I even had black socks, but that’s beside the point. And honestly, I have no explanation other than to say that the late 80’s were an unfortunate time in fashion.

    I told her no. The black socks were off limits.

    I am telling y’all I was the picture of sweetness and generosity.

    Well, lo and behold, she snuck into my room and had the audacity to wear my black socks. I was infuriated. I was enraged. I threw a fit about the thievery of my black socks, and though I am sure my mom thought this whole thing was one of the dumbest incidents she had ever witnessed, she was forced to punish my sister.

    Amy got grounded for wearing my black socks.

    And I was glad.

    So, today on my sister’s 32nd birthday, I would like to publicly acknowledge that perhaps I pushed the sock incident too far. Maybe I should have been a little more forgiving and understanding about how a 13 year old girl, forced to wear a hunter green plaid skirt and matching vest on a daily basis, could have been driven to steal a pair of black socks.

    When you think about the unspoken freedoms a pair of black socks can convey, it’s totally understandable.

    Little did I know then that the same little sister who borrowed my socks would be the same person who would help me keep my sanity after Caroline was born. At that point, Amy didn’t have children of her own and was more than happy to come over on a daily basis and hold Caroline for hours while I did such novel things as shower and brush my teeth. She’d sit on the couch with me, listen and hold Caroline, while I sat in my purple, spit up stained, chenille robe and cried due to sleeplessness and a potent cocktail of postpartum hormones.

    I will be forever grateful for the afternoons she spent on that couch. And watching her hold my baby girl and seeing how much she loved her, just because she was mine, made me love my sister that much more.

    Happy Birthday, Amy. I still can’t believe you’re old enough to drive, much less to have a husband and sweet baby girl of your very own.

  • I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name

    Last night, Caroline spent the night with Mimi and Bops. P and I weren’t sure what to do with our night o’ freedom, so after ruling out going to the movies due to the fact there isn’t anything showing that is the right mix of romance and bloodshed to satisfy both of our movie watching needs, we ended up going to get ice cream and then going home.

    No one prepared me that your mid-30’s are filled with such reckless abandon.

    When we got home, P came in and turned on the T.V., and much to our joy and delight, some obscure channel was running a Wonder Years marathon. We’re huge fans of Kevin Arnold and Winnie Cooper, so we grabbed some candy to wash down our ice cream and settled in to watch.

    I’m not sure what channel this was, but it was obviously targeted to an older demographic because every commercial was for a product like a Personal Hearing Amplifier Device that will allow you to overhear girls at the gym discussing how buff you are, not to mention hearing them question why you’re holding that odd shaped device while walking on the treadmill. There were also commercials for motorized scooters and some Indian chief selling Lakota Arthritis Relief Ointment.

    It’s obviously a wild target audience watching The Wonder Years on a Friday night.

    Finally, at 10p.m., the marathon was over and we were just about ready to go to bed. I went in the bathroom to brush my teeth and when I came out one last time to check the email (because I have an addiction), P told me I was missing out on some quality television.

    It was one of those paid advertisements for Time Life music. Soft Rock Classics. I knew it would suck me in with all of its Dan Fogelberg and Boz Scaggs. And it did.

    I knew the words to EVERY single song. “Wildfire”…know it. “Sister Golden Hair Surprise”…oh, yes ma’am. “Eye in the Sky”…yes, okay, yes. I didn’t even know that I knew who Bertie Higgins is, but I know his song, “We had it all, just like Bogey and Bacall, starring in our own late,late show, sailing away to Key Largo”.

    P and I sat and sang the words to each one of these soft rock classics as they scrolled across the screen. I should be embarrassed, but such is my deep and abiding love for these soft rock favorites, that I am owning it. And before y’all judge me and my love of Rupert Holmes, ask yourself if you can finish these lyrics, “if you like Pina Coladas…”

    That’s what I thought.

    Some brought back memories of couple skating at the Magic Skate, some remind me of riding in the back of my mom’s Buick LeSabre, and most of them I just know. And therein lies the question.

    How do P and I know the words to all of these songs? It’s like they had some power over the years to seep into our subconscious and we were powerless to stop it. Why do I know all the words to “Saturday in the Park”, but yet can’t remember more than 4 words from the 3 years of Spanish that I took or the number of my checking account?

    I told P it was dangerous to let me sit and watch because I knew it would be a matter of time before I would want to pick up the phone and order. Plus, if we called within the next 11 minutes, we would get free shipping and handling. A girl only has so much willpower. And then, they threw in a bonus CD of the best songs of 1977. All 168 soft rock classics, plus the best of 1977, plus free shipping and handling, for a 30 day trial fee of $9.95.

    They never said how much it would cost to purchase the entire collection.

    So, P and I sat on the couch as I served as my own T.V. infomercial asking myself “How much would I pay for these 168 classic soft rock songs?” $129.99? $99.99? $59.99?

    Remember, these songs are getting harder and harder to find and it would take a lot of time and money for me to compile this kind of collection on my own. Time/Life has done an incredible public service in making these classic hits available on a 19 disc collection.

    19 discs of pure musical gold. That’s the gift that keeps giving, y’all.

    Caroline and I could drive down the road (if we had a car) and listen to these songs over and over again, thus ensuring a fine musical legacy for my child, albeit one that might make her a social outcast if she were to enter junior high with nothing but Bread and America on her iPod.

    And if the songs weren’t enough to sell themselves, they were being sold by the two guys from Air Supply, neither of whom have gotten the news that the early 80’s are over. Watching them sit and strum their guitars and sing acoustic versions of “Making Love out of Nothing At All” and “Even the Nights Are Better”, while sitting on white couches with what surely was a pitcher of margaritas on the coffee table, just made the entire offer that much more compelling.

    The entire collection not only included Air Supply songs, but was RECOMMENDED by Air Supply themselves. Air Supply and classic soft rock are practically synonymous terms.

    I think one satisfied customer summed it up best when he said “These songs aren’t just songs about our emotions, they are our emotions”.

    And at that point, P had to pry the phone out of my hand and tell me it was time to go to bed. But I went to bed singing, “I can’t live, if living is without you”, not to P, but to this incredible array of Time/Life classic soft rock.

  • I’ve always thought the CEO of Toyota was a kind, generous man

    Y’all know that I love nothing more than to compile a list of various items that are of gripping importance for you to ponder over the weekend.

    1. I need to make an edit to my story about Nena and the can of OFF. Gulley told Nena I had written about her again ON THE COMPUTER and told the story of mistaking OFF for Pam. Nena reprimanded Gulley and let her know she had forgotten a critical element of the story that must be told to preserve her good name.

    After she realized the error of her OFF ways and didn’t want to call and fess up, Granddaddy implored her to at least call Poison Control and tell them the situation. So Nena called up the folks at Poison Control and when the young man answered the phone she told him, “Lord help me, but I think I just poisoned my entire Sunday School class.”

    Her confession was met with howls of laughter until the young man could calm down and ask her what happened. She told him the story and he said the worst thing that could happen is some of them may get a stomachache, at which point she made the decision to “let them go to the ER, that’s what it’s for.”

    Also, it seems that some of the deceased’s family was in town from Louisiana, ate some of the muffins and declared them “JUST DELICIOUS!”, which just goes to prove that Cajuns really do eat anything.

    2. I thought I had officially announced I had resigned from my job in my post last week, but when I read it again I realized I didn’t necessarily make it official. So, for those of y’all who have asked, I did resign from my job a week ago this past Monday. My official last day is Tuesday, May 1st, at which point they will come and take my company car away, leaving me without vehicular transportation.

    So, here’s a big shout out to any execs over at Volvo, Pontiac, or Toyota! How about hooking Big Mama up with a car? I realize I have slightly less power over the American buying public than say, Oprah, but I still promise to influence the 8 people who read this blog to buy your fine automobile. I would say that Gulley and I would be willing to take a cross country road trip a la Gayle and Oprah, but we’d have to take the kids and let’s be honest, we wouldn’t make it to the Texas state line.

    3. P’s mama emailed me today regarding my post on funeral practices to let me know that a friend of hers actually attended a memorial service held in someone’s backyard complete with margaritas and mariachis. Talk about going out in style.

    P informed me he’d like to have that kind of service when he goes, and then I could just take him down to the ranch. I’m not completely sure how that would be so different from how he spends a lot of his time already.

    Oh, I’m kidding. He doesn’t even like mariachi music.

    4. It was a gorgeous day here yesterday and I took the dogs on a long walk while I listened to my iPod. I figure I better get in shape for all the walking I’m going to be doing without a car (Seriously, Honda, GMC, Chrysler, Cadillac, Nissan? Anyone want to donate a vehicle?) and while I was walking I noticed something and I know I’m not alone.

    Please tell me I’m not alone.

    When I have my iPod on and the music turned up loud, I can’t help but sing along to whatever is on. Loudly. And for the people on the street who don’t have the benefit of hearing Kelly Clarkson’s rendition of “Since You’ve Been Gone” drowning out my version, it just has to be painful. I think a dog may have howled at me, but what does he know?

    Those cocker spaniels are a judgemental breed.

    It will probably just get worse as the summer goes on and I don’t have a car to drive around in so that I can sing my rendition of Beyonce or Chris Tomlin in the privacy of my own vehicle. (Mercedes? BMW? Kia? Saturn? You can’t buy this kind of publicity. At least 20 people will read about your generosity and fine automotive products)

    5. And last but not least, is this video that I will just entitle “A Flair for the Dramatic” or “What She Wishes She Could Do at her Dance Recital”


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  • Se habla party

    Friday night was the beginning of a 10 day party here in San Antonio called Fiesta, which in case y’all don’t know, means Party in Spanish. And that about sums up my bilingual abilities, although Caroline did inform me the other day that pappalotte means windmill in Spanish. She obviously hasn’t inherited my gift of forgetting everything that finds its way into my brain almost instantaneously.

    I’m not sure exactly what all Fiesta celebrates, but it has something to do with Texas history and the ability to perfectly fry a corn tortilla into a crispy pile of goodness and call it a Gordita.

    And the translation for gordita is little fat one, which is about as accurate a description for what a food can do to you as I’ve ever heard. Except for maybe Big Mac.

    For 10 days the whole city basically becomes one big festival. Anywhere you look you can find overpriced food on a stick and overserved drunk people on a bench. There’s Oyster Bake, Taste of New Orleans, NIOSA (Night in Old San Antonio), and parades. Have mercy, there are parades.

    A river parade, a Battle of Flowers parade and a Fiesta Flambeau parade. It’s a mass of people everywhere you look.

    It’s a huge deal in the city and the first year I lived here and P and I were dating, he took me to alot of the different events so that I could get a real idea of what it was all about. As far as I could tell, it’s about eating too much food and sweating in huge crowds of people while getting beer spilled on you.

    I’m all about eating too much, but I’m not a big fan of the large crowd. So, these days we confine our Fiesta merriment to just one little neighborhood event, which is where we were last Friday night.

    Caroline had a ball because her only requirement for a good time is a bouncy castle and it did not disappoint. We paid for a few overpriced bounce sessions, barbecued shrimp on a stick, brisket tacos, and some blue hair spray paint, which some slick, high school salesman sold to Caroline while she sat in her stroller, leaving P and I to choose between watching a huge fit or letting our daughter be hosed down with blue hair paint.

    The blue hair paint won, hands down. It’s the best $3.50 we spent all night.

    Fiesta also includes several kings, queens, princesses and royal courts. When I was growing up in Beaumont, we had the Neches River Festival, which was really fancy. What else would you expect from a Festival honoring a muddy river running through a refinery town? I thought being a princess in the Neches River Festival was just about the biggest thing ever, but let me tell y’all, this San Antonio royalty puts the Neches River Queens to shame and not just because they have all their teeth.

    First of all, you have King Antonio. I’m not sure how he is elected or what exactly he is king of, but if any of y’all were to find your way to San Antonio and ran into King Antonio making his rounds, you might not realize you’re in the presence of royalty, and instead wonder why this bus driver has so many medals on his chest.

    But he is like a real king, y’all. He has a motorcade with a police escort and as far as I can tell, his chief job is to visit various elementary and preschools and hand out medals to a bunch of manic kids waving brightly colored streamers and shaking maracas. In fact, when I was looking at preschools for Caroline, some of them had brochures that looked like this:

    Accredited by the Episcopal Private School Association
    Full staff of experienced, Harvard educated teachers
    All children fluent in 4 languages upon entering Kindergarten
    Visit from King Antonio during Fiesta week

    What??? A visit from King Antonio? You can’t put a price on that. How, oh how do we get into this school? How can we deny our child an opportunity to have an upclose encounter with royalty?

    Oh, there are other kings floating around the city, but don’t you be fooled. There is only one King Antonio and the others are just imposters. Imposters, I tell you.

    Then, there is the queen and her court. There is a huge coronation ceremony that requires these poor girls to wear dresses that are so beaded and heavy that they weigh about 150 pounds. Not only do they have to truck across the stage wearing these behemoths, they have to do a full, deep curtsy in them. One year I attended the coronation and one of those poor girls had so much momentum going as she dragged that dress across the stage, that when she made her turn part of her train went into the orchestra pit and I just knew I was about to witness the greatest moment in Coronation history as she was sucked right into the pit.

    But life sometimes isn’t fair and it didn’t happen.

    You’ll never convince me that these girls are chosen based not on family position and social status, but on who has the physical tenacity to haul those dresses around and delusional enough to try to bow in them.

    When I moved to San Antonio almost 13 years ago, I didn’t really get all this Fiesta stuff. Not that I necessarily do now, but you got to love a city that takes eating good food and having a good time this seriously. Not to mention, it’s where I met P and the gordita.

    And if I hadn’t met P, I wouldn’t have this.

    Viva Fiesta.

    That’s means Long Live the Party.

    I’m practically fluent.

  • Cleansing my soul and my home

    Since y’all are my internet friends, and yes, that is how I refer to y’all, even though P has asked me repeatedly not to use that term because it sounds oh so nerdy, I am going to make a confession.

    I have cheated on someone I love.

    I’m not proud, but I would be lying if I didn’t say that if it’s wrong, I don’t want to be right.

    I let another woman clean my house behind Cata’s back. I’ve never felt so dirty, yet been surrounded by such clean.

    A few weeks ago, I posted about Cata and her addiction to the Pledge Grab-its. It had gotten out of hand. We were having to make our monthly budget revolve around the cases and cases of Grab-its that were being purchased at regular intervals.

    And honestly, it’s not just the Grab-its. Cata is a wonderful person. I love her and there is no one sweeter, but bless her heart, she is off her housecleaning game. In fact, after the last time she was here, she left her Coke can on the counter and I found used papertowels all through the house. P walked in and asked me, “Are you cleaning up after the maid?”

    I was, y’all. I was cleaning up after my maid.

    Then, I had a discussion with Gulley, who has a housecleaner come about once a month, and she mentioned how her housecleaner puts fresh sheets on the bed, washes the dirty sheets and then folds them and stacks them in the closet.

    WHAT??? That is PURE, UNMITIGATED CLEANING MADNESS!

    I had to admit that Cata doesn’t even make our beds, much less change the sheets. It was almost physically painful for me to admit that piece of embarrassing information out loud.

    So, last week Cata couldn’t make it for some reason and the house was in desperate need of being cleaned. And since I am the domestic goddess that I am, it honestly never occurred to me that I could do it myself.

    Plus, we were out of Grab-its.

    P has a guy that works for him and he mentioned to P that his girlfriend cleans houses. I tried to fight my urges, but I just didn’t have enough willpower. I gave in and said, “Yes, ask if her if she will please come clean my house.”

    When Ava arrived, she asked me for a few basic supplies, such as a bucket. A bucket? For what? What on God’s green earth would a housekeeper do with a bucket?

    Oh, it seems that Ava doesn’t just want to sweep the floors using inordinately expensive cleaning cloths, she would like to mop the floors as well.

    Mop. the. floors. Now, that’s just crazy talk.

    Y’all, I came home and although I should be embarrassed to admit this, but let’s be honest, I passed that milestone a while back, I took a picture of my kitchen floors because they have never been so clean.

    The house smelled clean, the beds were made up with fresh sheets and she even mentioned that if I had any laundry I’d like her to do, to just leave it on the floor in the laundry room. Not that I’d let her do my laundry, because I have huge laundry quirks and issues, but the fact that she offered? Blew my mind.

    I couldn’t get Cata to drop my clothes off at the drycleaners.

    She dusted my shutters, she actually moved furniture and vacummed under it, she vacummed MY COUCH. She is an angel straight from a dust free heaven.

    Later that night, P and I were sitting in the living room talking, and I noticed something looked different but I couldn’t quite figure it out. I have a pretty ficus plant that sits in a corner of the room and I realized what was throwing me off was the brightness coming from the leaves. It seems that Ava DUSTED the leaves of the plant causing them to glow with a green goodness that hadn’t been seen since the day I brought it home.

    And she didn’t even use Grab-its.

    I don’t want to go on and on (too late, you’re thinking) but she even folded the end of the toilet paper roll into a neat little triangle shape. I’m not going to divulge if I took a picture of the little Charmin triangle of beauty.

    I told P now that I’ve experienced Ava, things with Cata will never be the same again. I don’t even care that Cata may come in and notice that some other woman has been using her cleaning supplies. Oh, and she’ll notice alright, because in between Cata’s visits, those supplies don’t get used.

    Don’t judge me people. I’m just being honest. Plus, I am very busy using my time to decide if I should let my bangs grow out.

    Then, in a sign that can only be from God, I was pulling the broom out of our broom closet to clean up one of our hourly spills, and somehow the broom got caught and while I was using the time honored, loosening method of yanking it as hard as I could to pull it free, it got caught on the Grab-its sweeper and broke the bottom half off. The sweeper is broken beyond repair.

    I decided that I wasn’t going to replace it. Cata would just have to deal with life after Grab-its. I wondered if it was fate’s way of telling me it was time to let go of Cata and give Ava the commitment she’s been looking for.

    And then I resigned from my job, so it’s all become a moot point.

    No more maids, y’all. I’m going to have to clean my own house and figure out how to handle important issues like my bangs growing out all at the same time.

    I’m heading to the store tomorrow to buy myself a new Grab-its sweeper. My poor ficus plant will never be this clean again.

    I better go take a picture.

  • Split pea soup and other things to get you through

    I’ve spent the last few weeks talking to AJ on a daily basis, just listening when she needs someone to listen and offering prayers and encouragement along the way. During this time, we’ve cried some and laughed a lot because sometimes you just need to laugh. As Truvy says in Steel Magnolias, “Laughter through tears is one of my favorite emotions.”

    And since I shared our sadness yesterday, I thought I’d share some laughter today.

    A.J.’s family is financially very comfortable. I mean her daddy is a surgeon and you don’t generally hear people say things like, “Well, you know he’s a doctor and they are just barely making ends meet.” They also tend to have friends that are in the same financial type boat, present blogger excluded.

    Watching the last few months unfold has taught me a few things.

    1. Apparently, when the upper class are facing tough circumstances, their friends send their maids over to clean the person’s home. Yesterday, AJ said there were no less than 5 maids in her home at one time.

    I would have sent Cata, but there aren’t enough Grab its in the free world to give her the supply she would need to clean a house that size.

    2. When they send food over, they do it with style. At one point throughout this whole thing, I told AJ that I would really like to bring them a meal and asked what they were completely sick of so that I could avoid it. Her answer?

    Beef Tenderloin.

    I was thinking more along the lines of receiving too many King Ranch Chicken casseroles made with Velveeta. It’ s not too often that you get to hear someone say, “I am just sick of all this delicious, high quality beef served with garlic infused potatoes and fresh spinach casserole with creme brulee for dessert.”

    3. Instead of everyone bringing over their best fried chicken, tomato aspic, or potato salad for the funeral, they hire caterers. I honestly think there will be someone carving prime rib in the corner and an open bar.

    AJ and I have laughed about all of this because even though it’s the world she’s grown up in, she’s down to earth enough to find the comedy in all of it.

    Last night we were laughing about one lady who brought over some split pea soup in a reused milk jug. My personal opinion is split pea soup isn’t the most visually appealing food even when presented in a delicate, china bowl. AJ said her sister came downstairs, saw the milk jug full of soup sitting on the counter and asked, “Who barfed in the milk jug?”

    Needless to say, the split pea soup remained uneaten.

    I was over at Gulley’s this morning and I was telling her some of these things. When I told her about the split pea soup, she told me a great story about Nena.

    A few years ago, one of Nena’s good friends passed away. Nena’s best friend, Jo, was making some soup to take over to the family’s home, so Nena decided to make some sweet cornbread muffins to accompany the soup.

    Nena baked her muffins and wrapped them up to deliver, but saved two of them for she and Granddaddy to eat with their lunch later on. She and Jo drove over and delivered their soup, which I promise y’all was not in an old milk jug because Nena would never allow such unsavoryness, and muffins.

    After she got home, she fixed her lunch and took a bite of her cornbread muffin. She said it was the worst tasting thing she’d ever had in her mouth and spit it out. It was so bad she couldn’t even swallow it. She ran into the kitchen to try to figure out what went wrong. And that’s when she saw the error of her ways.

    Instead of spraying the muffin tins with Pam cooking spray, she had sprayed them with a can of OFF mosquito repellant.

    She told Granddaddy what she had done and he said “You need to call those folks up and let them know that they can’t eat those muffins. It could poison them.”

    Nena replied, “You hush your mouth. I’m not about to ruin my reputation in this town and let them know those horrible muffins are mine. If they get sick they can go to the emergency room, that’s what it’s for.”

    I’m sure that family was wishing someone had just brought over split pea soup in a milk jug, but on the upside, they probably didn’t have to worry about mosquitos for days after the funeral was over.