Another day

We were at the pool for five and a half hours yesterday. And while that’s not a personal record, it comes pretty darn close. It also explains the sunburn on my shoulders and my inability to form proper sentences at the moment.

But here I am anyway.

I’d also like to give a shout out to whoever decided to add soft pretzels to the pool menu. Before this summer I never sat around at the pool and thought about how much I’d like a soft pretzel, but now that they’re available I’m not sure how I survived without them.

So, where was I when I realized I was over my self-imposed 1,000 word limit and ended yesterday’s post?

We went to a wedding. Actually we didn’t just go to the wedding, but P actually performed the ceremony because he is a licensed minister. Like a real licensed minister, not just some type of internet licensed minister. He can marry people or bury people or landscape your yard. He can also bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan. P is what some folks may call a renaissance man.

Anyway, about three or four weeks ago, our friend, Stewart, called P to let him know he’d proposed to his girlfriend, Hannah, after three years of dating. This was especially significant to us because P is the one who set up Stewart and Hannah in the first place. So, oh yes, P can also add successful matchmaker to his resume.

Stewart asked if P would be willing to perform the ceremony and, by the way, they were planning to get married in less than a month. It would seem that after three years of dating each other, they didn’t feel there was much point in wasting any more time.

And that is how we ended up making the forty-five minute drive to Comfort, Texas on Sunday afternoon for one of my favorite weddings ever. Stewart and Hannah knew they didn’t want to do anything big, no Bridezilla or Brides Gone Out of Their Minds or Whacked Out Brides, just a simple wedding surrounded by their immediate family next to the Guadalupe River.

After P and Caroline picked me up from the airport, we picked up breakfast tacos so I could get a quick Mexican food fix. Then went home so I could unpack and repack. Caroline decided to help me and critiqued my choice of wedding attire by informing me, “All that dress says is ‘I LIKE BLUE AND GREEN AND THAT’S IT’.” But it was the only dress I had that was ironed and ready to go so I packed it anyway. Along with the Spanx I have to wear under it. Which Caroline referred to as “Mama’s bloomers”.

Yes.

Mama’s bloomers.

(Also, spellcheck doesn’t recognize the word “Spanx”. Clearly spellcheck has never had to worry about creating a smooth silhouette when you’re on the precipice of forty years old and have had a child.)

We dropped Caroline off to spend the night with a friend and we made the quick drive to the Haven River Inn in Comfort. The rest of the afternoon was spent swimming in the river with both families, including the bride and groom. Except the bride didn’t really swim because she didn’t want to get her hair wet and have to mess with washing and drying it before the wedding.

See what I’m saying? That is a relaxed bride.

Eventually it was time for us to all get ready and we went to our rooms to get dressed so we could meet back down by the river at 7:00 p.m. for the ceremony. This is where I regret to inform you that I have no pictures of the ceremony because I served as the videographer.

What? You didn’t know I had videographer skills?

That’s because I don’t.

A fact that I repeatedly told the bride who insisted, “How bad can it be?” A question that we’ll be able to answer after watching the video I took with a borrowed flip video while I prayed that the Lord would perform some type of fishes and loaves miracle on my paltry video abilities.

The ceremony was simple and beautiful. In fact, I told P that it’s exactly how I would do it if I found out tomorrow that we weren’t legally married and had to do the whole thing over again. I’m going to ignore his reference to a GET OUT OF JAIL FREE CARD.

He is hilarious.

And, also, we are very much legally wed. I double-checked.

But in all seriousness, of all the weddings I’ve ever attended I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more joyous bride and groom. There is something to be said for simplicity.

After the ceremony, the bride’s parents had planned a beautiful dinner at Riven Rock Ranch. It was unbelievably beautiful. The food was amazing and the scenery was even better. Oh, and look! I actually have a picture of our tables.

Please notice there are no people seated at those tables. I am a whiz at capturing the real moments.

But I did manage to get one quick picture of the bride and groom with my phone. Heaven forbid I should use a real camera that takes a high-quality picture.

On the way home the next day, P and I talked about how blessed we felt to be a part of such a special day. There are just some moments you know you’ll never forget and this one was even better because we’ve been a part of Stewart and Hannah’s relationship from the very beginning and we love each of their families so much. To see them all brought together was evidence of one of God’s best plans.

And here’s where I’d normally wish them all the happiness in the world.

Except I think they’ve already found it.

I know.

I didn’t post a single thing yesterday. Frankly, I can’t believe it either.

But the last five days have been filled with a flight to Louisville, Kentucky (Not to be confused with Lexington. I hear that can happen.), four days at the last Deeper Still Conference, a Sunday morning flight back to San Antonio, two hours at home where I unpacked and repacked and then a quick trip to Comfort, Texas for the wedding of some dear friends, and watching the Aggies lose a baseball game 23-9 only to rebound and win last night for a trip to the College World Series.

(WHOOP!)

(And also, GIG ‘EM!)

Y’all. It has been a marathon. Or maybe a sprint. Or some other running analogy. All I know is I AM TIRED.

I also know that I have a lot of laundry to do and will have to go to the grocery store at some point. Fortunately that point wasn’t yesterday because I had told P to manage his expectations of any kind of home cooked meal being served.

The problem is that I don’t even know where to begin. The other problem is that I’m going on somewhere between zero and six hours of sleep. The other problem is that the T.V. in our living room broke on the last day of school. Which actually has nothing to do with the first two things, but I felt like I should include it while I’m composing a list of problems.

So let’s start with Thursday. Bops picked me up to drive me to the airport at 5:45. This is approximately three hours earlier than my desired wake up time and I probably should issue an apology to anyone who had to see me walk through the airport with bags under my eyes while growling and looking for the nearest Starbucks.

I arrived in Louisville after one grande non-fat latte and three bad magazines. (If you want to know the latest on Pippa Middleton just ask me. I know all about it, thanks to my never-ending quest for hard-hitting news stories.) We spent the rest of the day setting up the arena in Louisville and then I went back to the hotel to wait for Sophie to arrive so we could search out some mediocre Mexican food per our tradition. This is also when I noticed that Kentucky seemed to have an abnormally large number of folks that ride motorcycles. An observation that made much more sense when I realized our hotel was hosting some sort of biker convention as evidenced by a burly fellow wearing a denim jacket with the sleeves jauntily cut off with a Harley Davidson logo on the back. Oh, and he was missing an eye.

Once Sophie arrived we left go eat dinner, threw caution to the wind and ate very mediocre Mediterranean food instead. I can’t explain all the reasons why, but it’s largely due to us taking culinary advice from someone fresh out of college. And I don’t know if you know this, but college students aren’t really the best judge of good food. Take me for example. There was a time in my early twenties when I thought there was no finer meal than about four .99 cent crispy beef tacos from Taco Bell. Which explains an extra twenty pounds I put on between my sophomore and junior year. Well, the tacos and perhaps the Zima.

Friday morning we went back to the arena for the last of the set up and then back to the hotel until it was time for me to go do work that I prayed wouldn’t involve selling t-shirts for $2.00. And the Lord heard me and I helped with the greeters at a door where only about sixteen entered. Yet I still had the power of a walkie-talkie. It was perfection.

The rest of the weekend went by so fast and was a whirl of laughing until I thought I was going to be sick, spending time with friends, eating a bag of Double Chocolate Milanos and listening to some great messages. I wish I could put it all into words but that would be impossible.

Here are the cliff notes :

Priscilla taught about the importance of rest, which she referred to by the Hebrew term “Shabbat”. I plan to crack myself up regularly by telling people I need to take a Shabbat. Because I am twelve.

But in all seriousness it was such a good, practical message about creating some margin in our lives and not living lives that are filled with being so busy that all we end up knowing is that we’re tired.

Beth taught about the links between the generations and had every woman identify themselves as a Timothy, Eunice, or Lois based on 2 Timothy. It was all about how each generation has something to offer the others, but there is no way for me to explain it all because, well, I’m not Beth Moore. I was also thrilled to still be a Timothy and patted Sophie and consoled her for being a Eunice. Until she said, “You better listen to what she says about the Eunices because you’re hanging on to Timothy by a very thin, two month thread”.

And as I stood with the Timothys and saw all these darling young girls with tricky braids in their hair, I realized that YES, I am much closer to the Eunice side of things.

Finally it was Sunday morning and time for me to fly home. And this is where I am sad to report that the TSA went TOO FAR. They confiscated by almost full bottle of Garnier Wonder Waves hair spray. I knew I was playing fast and loose to think it would make it through security, but no one blinked an eye when I flew from San Antonio to Louisville. But those Kentucky TSA folks do NOT play around and they searched my entire suitcase thanks to my daring hair product escapade. AND they tried to take my Aveeno Face Scrub until I pointed out it was almost empty and was in NO WAY over three ounces of liquid. It was a narrow face scrub escape.

And I don’t really know what the moral of that story is unless it’s that maybe you shouldn’t feel totally secure flying out of the San Antonio airport because they will totally turn an eye to eight ounces of good hair product and who knows where that could lead?

All I know is there is some TSA agent in Kentucky who is probably rockin’ some good wavy beach hair.

I landed back in San Antonio and was so happy to see my peeps and eat some Mexican food for breakfast. And then it was time to head to a wedding.

But that’s a story for tomorrow.

Okay, so where did I leave off?

(And, by the way, I wrote yesterday’s post and then totally forgot to hit publish and didn’t realize it until about nine hours later.)

(I blame the heat.)

(Which is going to be my standard excuse for everything between now and sometime towards the end of September.)

After our three hour road trip/Spanish Inquisition about hamsters and Star Wars, Caroline and I arrived at Honey and Big’s house. I knew Caroline was tired from the sleepover the night before so I had already warned her that if she started to feel tired and grumpy she should separate herself from the rest of the herd and have a little down time. It only took about thirty minutes before that happened.

Fortunately, she emerged from her few moments of alone time with a better perspective on life and tattle-telling because we still had a big night ahead of us. Around 5:00 we all ate some barbecue and then headed to Olsen Field to watch the Aggies play Seton Hall.

And that’s when I discovered that an early barbecue dinner and excessive heat don’t really mix so well. I had to mind over matter myself to not revisit the brisket I’d eaten earlier. We were sitting in the same seats Gulley and the boys had sat in the night before and she’d warned me that Will spilled an entire Dr. Pepper. And then while we were watching Saturday night’s game, he spilled another one. And then knocked over a bucket of popcorn. I thought for a moment that one of my flip-flops was permanently stuck to the ground. I have new sympathy for those poor little mice that get stuck in glue traps. Our section of the bleachers was one large glue trap. With popcorn for texture. The good news is they’re tearing down Olsen Field in the next day or so because there’s no way that spot of the bleachers could ever be clean again.

The Aggies won Saturday night’s game which meant they were one game away from winning the tournament. We bought our tickets for Sunday night’s championship game and felt certain that we’d get to watch them wrap the whole thing up and head home on Monday morning. Because twenty-five years of being an Aggie fan has taught me nothing.

On Sunday we took the kids to a neighborhood splash pad to burn some energy. We lasted for about an hour before Gulley and I wanted to find the nearest deep freeze to hide in. Instead, I ran to the grocery store to buy stuff to make this Southwestern Black Bean dip that I’m currently addicted to and will continue to eat until I never want to see it again.

And while I was at the Kroger’s in Bryan, I experienced all the reasons I love that town in one five-minute period. I saw a man wearing a gold sequin shirt with a huge gold cross hanging around his neck and gold shoes walking through the produce section. Then the cashier called me “Honey”, “Darling” and “Baby” as I checked out. And then a man named Skeeter, wearing his visor upside down in a jaunty, redneck way, yelled out “No harm, no foul darlin’!” as I apologized for accidentally cutting him off with my shopping cart. Finally, as if a gift straight from God, I heard a loud “MOOOOOO” as a trailer full of cattle was being pulled through the parking lot. God bless small town USA.

After I got back to the house, the skies opened up and it began to rain. We were thrilled with the hope that the rain might cool things off before the game later that evening but only because we are idiots and didn’t think that afternoon rain plus excessive heat equals a whole new meaning to the term SULTRY. By game time the whole outdoors was like one gigantic sauna but not as refreshing.

We arrived at the field and walked up to our own personal glue trap, otherwise known as our section of the bleachers, and waited for the game to start. And by the time the first pitch was thrown I immediately regretted my decision to wear jean shorts because denim? It does not breathe. I felt like I was going to pass out.

At one point I went to the bathroom and totally had a Ross Gellar moment. Remember that episode of Friends when he wore those leather pants on a date and then went to the bathroom to cool off and couldn’t pull them back up? There but for the grace of God and a lot of pulling and tugging at belt loops go I.

We’d been at the game for a little while when Gulley got a text on her phone from an unknown number that read, “These new Diamond Darlings aren’t nearly as good as the old ones”. (Gulley and I were Diamond Darlings back in the dark ages of the early 90’s) She texted back and asked, “Who is this?” It turns out it was an old friend of ours from college who happened to be at the game.

(The new Diamond Darlings are darling. But they have a cushy existence. Back in our day we had to drive the tractor to smooth out the infield and chalk the field and we DID NOT have some sort of fence that protected us from stray foul balls. Rumor has it that they even have their own dressing room. We had to get dressed at home and then walk uphill in the snow BOTH WAYS to get to the baseball field. It’s a wonder we survived.)

Anyway, our old friend came over to visit us in section 216 and we caught up on the last twenty years. But what astounded me was when I introduced him to Caroline and she not only shook his hand, but looked him in the eye and said, “It’s very nice to meet you. I’m Caroline.” We’ve been talking about the importance of good manners and looking grown ups in the eye when you speak to them, but I had no idea she’d actually been listening. I just throw these things out there constantly and hope some of it sticks.

So when he left, I said, “Caroline, I am so proud of you. You just used the best manners and made me so proud. Good job!”

And she asked, “Is that the kind of thing that’s going to get me a hamster?”

See what she did there? She didn’t let it lie.

In the end, the Aggies lost the game and Gulley and I decided we couldn’t bear to sit through another stifling hot baseball game. We’d reached our limit. And that turned out to be the best decision because Monday’s nights game got called because of rain. I don’t really remember what rain looks like but, if memory serves, it’s wet and falls from the sky.

They played the final game yesterday. And the Aggies won. Which means they’re headed to Tallahassee to play Florida State in the Super Regional. Gig’em.

I think it’s safe to say that we’ll be cheering them on from Texas. There’s no way we could survive a road trip to Tallahassee.

I can’t bear the thought of a sixteen hour hamster sales pitch.

Listen.

I have lived in Texas my whole life, MY WHOLE LIFE, but over the last few days I have constantly thought that I can’t ever remember it being this hot this early in June. Then our weatherman confirmed it earlier tonight when he announced we broke the record high temperature yesterday that was originally set in 1948. And I felt vindicated to know that I can legitimately complain about the heat. It is sucking the soul right out of me.

But enough of the complaining about the temperature.

For now.

This is also where I kind of want to put it out there that I am committed to enjoying this summer. I want us to relax and make the most of it and therefore I am giving myself permission to not feel like I have to blog every single day. That doesn’t mean I won’t blog every single day because there are several factors at work:

A. I am compulsive.

B. I’ve been doing this for five years and have developed quite the habit.

C. I actually enjoy writing at the end of the day 99% of the time.

D. There is no D.

It just means that I may take the occasional day off because sometimes the summer feels like a steady stream of IT’S SO HOT combined with WE WENT TO THE POOL combined with IS IT EVER GOING TO BE COOL OUTSIDE AGAIN.

And on that note, have I mentioned that it’s hot?

Anyway, Thursday was Caroline’s last day of school and we celebrated by, SURPRISE, going to the pool. We ate some victory nachos and paid $5.00 for a pizza that was smaller than the majority of bagels I’ve eaten throughout my life. And then the kids all swam until we shut ‘er down around 8:30 p.m.

We slept in until a glorious 9:15 on Friday morning and then got up to wait for the AT&T guy to show up sometime between his appointed 8-noon time slot. He must have heard that all the good repairmen play hard to get because he didn’t actually arrive until around 2:00 p.m. I wanted to be irritated but the truth is it was a good excuse for Caroline and I to spend the day at home cleaning the house. The dust was embarrassingly thick and there were so many blue toothpaste remnants on her bathroom counter that it looked tie-dyed. Not to mention that the playroom had been overrun by half-naked Barbies and sparkly horses and was a little too reminiscent of Lady Godiva.

The good news is I think AT&T fixed our problem. The nice repairman gave us some super high-powered modem and the internet appears to be all better.

(I realize you probably don’t really care about our new modem but I felt like I had to tell you how the whole thing was resolved because I’ve complained about it more than several times.)

(Also, no one will ever be able to hijack our wireless access because our new code is approximately 124 characters long.)

Late Friday afternoon Caroline went to a sleepover birthday party for her friend Sadie. I wasn’t sure if she’d actually stay the whole night because she isn’t a big fan of sleeping away from home, but she’s known Sadie since birth so I thought she might make it. And she did. They’d gone to get pedicures and I’m sure you want to know that neon nail colors appear to be all the rage for seven and eight-year-old girls.

I picked her up on Saturday morning because we were heading to College Station to meet Gulley and the boys to watch some Aggie baseball. But before we could get on the road, she insisted that I meet Sadie’s new pet hamster. Personally, I’ve never been a big fan of hamsters. Or anything that is small and rodent-ish. But I faked some enthusiasm since it seemed like the polite thing to do.

(I also need to point out that Sadie is my friend Julie’s daughter.)

(Julie is my friend that had Johnny Cash in a shoebox.)

(Johnny Cash was a baby bird. She didn’t have the real Johnny Cash in a shoebox.)

(What I’m trying to explain is that Julie appreciates having a menagerie of animals whereas I just sort of prefer a dog.)

But as Caroline and I hit the open road for College Station, it quickly became apparent that it was going to be one long three hour sales pitch for a hamster. Actually it vacillated between a pitch for a hamster and wanting to know all the reasons I won’t let her watch the third Star Wars movie. (Not the third one from the old movies, the third one from the new ones.) And I had to explain that hamsters have cages and they poop and scratch and are eerily similar to rats and also that Anakin Skywalker turns to the dark side and gets thrown into a fire and burns up and it’s all very disturbing.

The hamsters and the burning in the fire. Just to clarify.

And she hasn’t even watched the first two Star Wars yet and her beloved pet fish has been dead for over a month and she has yet to notice. I know this because I am conducting a very unscientific experiment to see how long it takes her to realize Scissors (that was the fish, God rest his soul) is no longer with us.

The bottom line is we spent three hours in the car debating about things that are irrelevant at this point and time because A) she can’t even watch the third Star Wars if she hasn’t seen the first two and B) if, and that’s a BIG IF, I even consider a hamster it would be a birthday present and her birthday isn’t until August.

However, when I explained all this to her about six different times throughout the car ride, she’d look at me and say, “Oh. Okay.”

Which was immediately followed by, “But if you had to guess if you were closer to a yes or no, which would it be?”

And then I couldn’t even remember if we were talking about the hamster or Star Wars.

But I do know that she plans to name her VERY HYPOTHETICAL hamster, Princess Leia.

Now I’m 1047 words into this post and I haven’t even gotten to the part about College Station and Aggie baseball. And so it’s going to have to wait until tomorrow.

This is why I really need to write something every day.

Otherwise I have too many words stored up inside my head.

Oh have we had ourselves a weekend.

In fact, we are still in the midst of our weekend and that’s why there will be no real post today.

But I’ll tell you this, we have watched A LOT of baseball in 104 degree temps.

And since the Aggies lost last night, I think we have more baseball in our immediate future.

I’ll be back tomorrow after I’ve recovered from a possible heat stroke.

I wasn’t even sure if I was going to write anything because these last two days of school have worn me out. I’m not entirely sure why but I think it has something to do with my list of 853 things I’m trying to accomplish before Caroline is home for the entire summer. But today is officially the last day of second grade. Cue the hallelujah chorus even as I sit here slightly stunned that my baby is about to be a third grader. The only thing I have left to do is figure out how to get two gallons of Blue Bell ice cream up to the school in 106 degree heat for the end of the year class party without it turning into sweet milk soup.

On an entirely different subject, I wanted to clarify that, yes, that was an artichoke in the pot of crawfish in my post on Tuesday. Our friend William had the good sense to marry a girl from Louisiana and they are big believers in putting anything you can find into the pot of crawfish; oranges, whole garlic cloves, mushrooms, artichokes and the occasional squirrel. Except not really on the squirrel part. Although I bet it’s happened. And if you disagree with me it’s only because you’ve never been to Louisiana.

The bottom line is the artichoke was delicious. I ate it until I felt like my lips were going to burn off from the spice which is always the prime indicator of MMM, MMM GOOD when it comes to Cajun food.

Anyway, I just wanted to clear up the whole artichoke thing because several of you asked about it and I hated not to tie up that loose crawfish boil end.

In other news, Sophie and I tried to record a podcast yesterday. But remember last Monday when we posted our other podcast and I said I was going to call AT&T and get to the bottom of our internet issues? Yeah. I never actually did that because I suffer from an astonishing lack of follow-through on those types of things.

So since I couldn’t connect to any sort of bootleg wireless connection here at the house, I told her I’d just podcast from my car outside of Starbucks while I connected to their internet. Except when I got there the signal was too weak. And then I tried Borders, but there was too much feedback or something. Not to mention that I underestimated how conspicuous a person might feel wearing headphones and talking into a microphone in a very public parking lot.

Ultimately, it finally dawned on me that I was going to all this effort solely to avoid having to deal with the customer service department at AT&T. And it probably isn’t too much to expect for the wireless internet we pay for every month to work, but I just dread all that “Have you reset the modem? Have you jumped up and down three times and changed the flux capacitor on your computer? Have you danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?”

But I’d put it off long enough. I told Sophie I was going to head back home and face the music. Or Muzak as the case may be considering how long I might be on hold.

I called and pressed a myriad of buttons until I finally got a real person on the phone. She was very nice and tried to be very helpful as I explained that our internet goes out several times a day and I can’t connect to Skype or iChat for more than three minutes at a time before being cut off. I told her this was problematic because I need the iChat to do my job. However, I left out the part about my “job” being a podcast I do with my friend in Alabama where we talk about our hair and Friday Night Lights. I felt like I might lose some credibility.

We went through the whole reset modem/flux capacitor/change wireless channels/serial number of the modem and then she said, “Okay! I see you’re connected to the internet! Your problem should be fixed! Call us again if you continue to have problems, but it should all be better now!” The use of all those exclamation points left me skeptical, but I reluctantly hung up the phone and then I called Sophie so we could try out the iChat and see if it worked.

It did.

For forty-two seconds.

I wanted to call AT&T a bad name.

Instead, I googled the names of other internet providers in San Antonio and called AT&T back. After I re-entered all my information and pushed all the right buttons, I had another real life person on the phone. She asked me what the problem was and, bless her heart, was greeted with a tearful plea for assistance that lasted almost four and a half minutes and included the ultimate threat of breaking up with them unless they sent someone out to my house before the week is over. It ended with me whispering in a desperation, “Ma’am, I am sorry that you had to hear me like this but, please, I need someone to HELP ME. I JUST NEED HELP.”

Which probably explains why she talked to me throughout the duration of the phone call like she was a hostage negotiator. And I know ALL ABOUT hostage negotiators because I saw The Negotiator starring Kevin Spacey and Samuel L. Jackson back in 1998.

She realized the time for resetting modems and changing wireless channels was over and so she offered to send out a repairman on Thursday morning. They had a window available from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. Really? Can we not narrow it down to perhaps, OH I DON’T KNOW, six hours instead of twelve?

Just for fun I think I might start scheduling appointments with people and telling them I’ll be there sometime between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. and would they mind just waiting on me?

I opted for the 8 a.m. to noon window that was available for this Friday. We’ll see what happens.

But I have the names of four other internet providers on speed-dial just in case.

And I’m not afraid to use them.