Another day

Before I even get started on any sort of weekend recap, I feel I owe Brett Favre an apology. I could not be more sorry that I decided to be a Vikings fan yesterday. I am almost certain it sealed their defeat because it is a non-scientific fact that any team I cheer for is destined to lose.

(I originally typed “any time I cheer for” which kind of makes me laugh because “HOORAY FOR THREE O’ CLOCK!”)

In fact, if you ever hear me say “Oh! I’ll be cheering for your team!” or your favorite chess player or mathlete or whatever, please feel free to ask me to politely refrain. My allegiance is the sporting kiss of death. The only exception are the Olympic Games. The United States usually fairs pretty well in spite of my loyalty and devotion, but most likely this is only because everyone else in the U.S. is routing for them as well and it balances out my allegiance.

The point is it’s probably all my fault that Brett Favre will have to play again next season if he wants to go out on a Super Bowl note.

So earlier this weekend, before the whole Vikings debacle, I took a little road trip to Houston to attend a Beth Moore event. I had the best time making some new friends and spending time with some old ones. Not that anyone I hung out with was old, I just mean I knew them before this weekend. Amanda and I had the privilege of introducing our friend Marla to the wonder that is the Freebirds burrito and I threw caution and shame to the wind and ordered the Monster size.

And it’s none of your business if I actually ate the whole thing.

I didn’t.

But I totally could have if not for a fear that I wouldn’t even be able to get out of bed the next morning.

Then on Saturday I ate some shrimp and cheese grits that may have changed my life. To be perfectly honest I’d never had grits before and I’d totally meant to have Sophie cook some cheese grits for me when we were in Memphis last fall because rumor has it that she makes some of the best cheese grits you’ll ever eat. However, we ended up being way too busy eating multitudes of barbecue sandwiches and ran out of time for the cheese grits.

Anyway, I felt confident that I would love cheese grits, especially when the menu description indicated they’d have bacon, mushrooms, and scallions in them. They did not disappoint. In fact, I think I need to quit thinking about them because it’s bordering on unhealthy obsession.

(This post is riveting. Stay tuned for tomorrow when I’ll discuss what I ate yesterday! What is wrong with me?)

I headed back to San Antonio after lunch on Saturday (Did I mention that I ate cheese grits?) and wasn’t looking forward to the long drive down I-10. It really is the stretch of road that scenery forgot. Thankfully, I fell in behind a gold Maxima that might have been driving slightly over the speed limit and I followed it for much of the trip until it had the misfortune of cresting a hill in Schulenberg, Texas and being the first line of sight for a state trooper’s radar. I genuinely felt bad as I passed my gold Maxima buddy getting a ticket and immediately regretted whispering “See you later, sucker” under my breath.

I was about an hour outside of town when Gulley called me and told me that her youngest son, Will, had fever and she was taking him to the emergency clinic to get him checked out. Normally this wouldn’t have been a big deal, but it was her oldest son, Jackson’s eighth birthday and she was supposed to take seven boys to a hockey game and then back to her house for a sleepover.

She called me a little bit later to report that Will had bronchitis. The doctor gave him some medicine and said he wasn’t contagious so the sleepover could go on as scheduled. I told her that Caroline and I would love to come stay with Will while she and her husband took the older boys to the hockey game because who would want to miss a hockey game with seven boisterous boys? I mean besides me?

Caroline and I got to her house right before it was time for them to leave for the game. Will was a little excited over his encounter with ill health combined with the fact he’d lost his first tooth earlier that day. Which, by the way, annoyed Caroline to no end because she still hasn’t lost a tooth and is convinced she will be the first person in the history of dentistry and the world to have all her baby teeth forever.

Anyway, as soon as Gulley walked out the door with her crew, Will turned to Caroline and yelled, “WHOO HOO! NOW IT’S TIME FOR THE PARTY TO BEGIN!”

Fortunately for me, their version of partying was to spread out a blanket in the playroom so they could have a picnic and eat their Papa John’s pizza.

Let’s just hope it stays that way.

Okay, I’m going to keep this brief because I have been struggling with a touch of the insomnia for the last week or so and have vowed to go to bed early before my mind has time to go to that place where I end up playing Pathwords for forty-five minutes and flipping through the T.V. channels because I just know that as soon as I get in bed I won’t feel tired anymore and will stay up tossing and turning.

Which will absolutely come true because I allow myself to get totally psyched out about it and then I can’t sleep for all the worrying that I won’t be able to sleep.

I’m tired just thinking about all the effort that goes into being this neurotic.

But I’m serious about shutting it down early before my inner night owl comes out and decides it’s time to party. In fact, I met Gulley earlier for dinner and SET MY PHONE ALARM for 8:45 to make sure I’d be home by 9:00. I don’t know when I became so lame.

Maybe it was around the time I had to start taking Zantac on a daily basis.

The bottom line is I’m taking this opportunity to link to a few things that you might find interesting and/or informative. Basically, it’s a total 180 from my usual content.

1. My sweet, hilarious friend, Lisa McKay, has written a brand new book called “You Can Still Wear Cute Shoes”. Lisa is a preacher’s wife and the book focuses on all the challenges that face the fishbowl existence of being married to a minister and how to handle it all with humor, grace and some semblance of dignity.

There’s even a fun contest you can enter that includes the chance to win a $100 gift certificate to DSW shoes and a $125 gift certificate to spafinder.com.

2. Another friend of mine, Kat, has written an ebook called “Maximize Your Mornings” and you can download it free by clicking right here. It’s all about helping busy moms create an effective morning routine.

Maybe I’ll check into the whole “effective morning routine” thing just as soon as I get over my insomnia. Right now my morning routine consists of drinking enough caffeine to kill a horse.

3. Yesterday I finally went to HEB and had to buy so many groceries that a man in the parking lot offered to help me wheel them out to my car. I though he worked for HEB because he was wearing a red jacket, but he was just some random stranger who probably didn’t expect me to take him up on his offer. EMBARRASSING.

Anyway, I purposefully bought all the ingredients needed to make the Pioneer Woman’s Perfect Pound Cake and let me tell you that it lives up to the name. It’s also a very dense cake. I could hurl it through the window if I wanted to, but I won’t.

Oh, and I also made her Potatoes au Gratin last week and immediately renamed them Potatoes au Perfection. I couldn’t blog about it at the time because the blog was broken.

By the way, my hips will rue the day I discovered that potato recipe. RUE THE DAY.

4. I didn’t mention this yesterday because there was never a good segue way. (As if that’s ever stopped me.)

But while watching 24, I couldn’t help but notice that all the women seem to be having some hair issues. The blonde girl named Jenny or Dana or whatever keeps it all sleek and pulled over to the side no matter how much stress she’s under and Renee Walker had straight up crazy person hair. Sadly, I think Chloe O’Brien may have the best coiff of the bunch and that is a sad state of affairs.

Yet, YET, President Hassan has volume for days. He is in the midst of surviving an assassination plot and his hair is still holding up beautifully. I’ve never seen such bounce. Frankly, I’d like to know what kind of product he’s using to get that kind of lift.

And now I have to go to bed because I feel myself drifting towards my invincible night owl persona.

Seriously, I have to go.

And no playing Pathwords or just checking Twitter.

I’m going to bed.

Where I will sleep the sleep of angels.

Since yesterday morning was a holiday, P got up with Caroline and let me sleep in. Eventually Caroline came running in to wake me up and inform me that we were almost out of eggs and she needed a new jump rope. I’m not sure how those things are related, but I’ve learned it’s better not to ask.

She’d already dressed herself like a bag lady for the day and ran outside to jump rope while I sat at the kitchen island watching her through the window while I tried to wake up. But then she got mad at me because I wasn’t giving her my full, undivided attention and marched back into the house to let me know she wanted me to give her a thumbs up through the window every time she completed a successful jump roping rotation.

Why, yes, she is an only child. Thanks for asking.

P decided he was going to head down to the ranch. Originally, Caroline had no interest in going but once she noticed that he loaded the dogs in the truck, she was suddenly all in. I’m not sure why the dogs were the selling point, but I think part of it is because she loves to come home and report how much cow poop Scout rolled in while they were there. Which, obviously, FASCINATING.

(Totally off topic, but I just looked up and P was making funny faces at me. I asked him what he was doing and he said imitating my blogging face. I was unaware that I had a blogging face, but I’m so glad he let me know because now I won’t be self-conscious about it AT ALL. Maybe someone should just mind his own business and go back to watching this episode of American Pickers.)

(By the way, when they find old stuff on American Pickers he thinks it’s super cool. But yet he doesn’t appreciate that his wife is his very own American picker. How else could I have scored that bird cage and the old leather suitcase?)

Anyway, I found myself all alone for the day with no real agenda. I debated using the time productively and going to HEB since we’re out of everything, but did I mention my tendency to procrastinate as of late? And that by as of late, I mean since I was born?

I ended up driving to Academy (sports and outdoors!) because P needed new work shirts and I decided that Caroline needed one of those beaded jump ropes like we used during P.E. in elementary school. Remember those? The ones that would occasionally leave a big welt on your leg if you made a false move while doing some double dutch?

While I was checking out at Academy, the cashier told me she’d lost fifty pounds by jumping rope. She said jumping rope for ten minutes is the equivalent of running for forty-five minutes. She totally had me with the whole ten minute workout part of that sentence, but I was a little concerned about the part that involved jumping rope because that sounded hard.

But TEN MINUTES. A TEN MINUTE WORKOUT. Take that, Jillian Michaels and your twenty-one minutes of Shred torture.

I came home, opened the jump rope and managed to jump three times consecutively before I nearly knocked myself out with the beaded jump rope.

So it looks like I’m stuck with Jillian.

Speaking of pain, how about Renee Walker just flat sawing that guy’s hand off on 24 last night? I knew as soon as we saw her in the elevator that she’d been drinking some crazy juice. It was in her eyes and I always recognize the crazy eye thanks to years of watching The Bachelor. It’s a gift really.

And when she told Chloe that she’d been working security somewhere, this was all I could picture.

It’s no wonder she’d rather infiltrate the Russian mob.

I KNOW.

I woke up this morning and just discovered that the blog is finally back up.

It’s a long story that I’ll tell you later (lucky you!), but the short version is that I have been beaten like a rented circus monkey by the internet for the last five days.

Okay, I have to keep this brief because I am pretty sure that I’m coming down with some sort of cold. Which, if you’re playing along at home, is the second cold I’ve had in less than a month. I told P that I was getting sick because I woke up with a scratchy throat (always a sure sign of impending illness for me) and he said it’s just all the cedar in the air. Apparently the cedar count is THROUGH THE ROOF.

But in my experience seasonal allergies don’t garner nearly the same amount of sympathy as a cold so I’m sticking with my cold theory. However, I may or may not take a Zyrtec later on just in case it’s the cedar. And really, it’s not like any sort of malady gets me much sympathy around here. It’s like I think if I’m sick that Caroline will tell me to put my feet up while she fetches me a warm blanket and some chicken noodle soup.

As a matter of fact, last night I told her I wasn’t feeling well and was going to take a hot shower. She told me she was STARVING (starving in her vocabulary means that she could eat half a chicken nugget) and could I please fix her dinner first. She wanted fish sticks and macaroni and cheese. I said, “It will take a while for the oven to preheat. Let me shower and get in my pajamas while the oven heats up and then I’ll fix your dinner.”

She replied, “Go ahead and microwave that mac and cheese before you get in the shower. I’ll have it now for an appetizer and you can get the fish sticks to me later for my main course.”

What a fount of sympathy and concern. And also a child who has eaten at her fair share of restaurants. I didn’t know what an appetizer was until I discovered fried cheese at Bennigans when I was a freshman in college.

But enough about me having what is probably the flu. Let’s talk about the biggest excitement in my life right now. Seriously, I am so excited.

For several years now there has been a sweet girl named Holly who reads my blog. She and I have emailed back and forth over the years and she even ordered some sugar cookies from one of my very best friends for her son’s birthday party. I don’t really know what that has to do with anything, but I just felt you should know. Oh, and she’s a fellow Texan.

Anyway, at some point, Holly mentioned that she is an interior designer and I didn’t really think much of it because Caroline was just three years old at the time and I was kind of out of the home decorating mindset since my living room was basically decorated in a style that can only be called Early American Fisher Price with a hint of Naked Baby Doll thrown in for good measure.

Then one day I was looking around Holly’s blog and noticed a link to where she’d been featured in Better Homes and Gardens in 2005. And, you won’t believe this, I totally remembered that entire article because I had LOVED her style so much. I don’t even subscribe to Better Homes and Gardens but just happened to buy that issue way back in 2005 while on a business trip. I even tore out pages from the magazine to keep for future ideas because I used to keep a big file folder full of future home decorating ideas before I started this blog and abandoned all other hobbies.

So, Holly and I were emailing back and forth one day about a month ago and I casually mentioned that I wished we lived in the same town because I would totally hire her to come help me make some changes to my living room because it’s grown a little tired and stale. (Did you see the pictures of those ducks swimming under my pew yesterday? I need some help.)

And Holly emailed me back with the best news I’ve ever heard.

We don’t need to live in the same town because she totally does consultations and design work over the internet. She said I could just send her some pictures and she’d help me put together a plan and give me some ideas on how to freshen things up based on my budget. It can all be done through the email. My living room will be forever indebted to Al Gore for inventing the internet. TECHNOLOGY IS A WONDER.

I emailed her back and said SIGN ME UP. We decided to wait until after Christmas because of the tree in the living room and all that, but now I’ve spent the last two days snapping pictures of my living room from every possible angle and sending them to Holly with helpful descriptions like “It’s not a goldy-gold, but more a of brownish-gold” and “It’s a little bit of leopard print but kind of cheetah-ish” and “I don’t know what I like but I’ll know it when I see it”.

Bless her heart.

But the amazing thing is that after just two of my incredibly helpful, insightful emails, Holly began to email me back with ideas and suggestions that I adored. She is totally getting my taste and what I want. Which is amazing considering that I didn’t even know what I wanted.

As we go through the whole thing, I thought it would be fun to do occasional posts on the progress with before and after pictures. It’s not going to be anything extensive (especially since I promised P when we bought this couch that we’d keep it until Caroline hauled it off to college while complaining that she can’t believe I’m making her take our beat up old couch) but I think it will show how some small changes can make a big difference. And, also, how the internet is AMAZING because how else can you explain that the person that I saw featured in Better Homes and Gardens FIVE YEARS AGO BEFORE I EVEN HAD A BLOG is helping me decorate my house.

(Well, not my whole house. Just my living room. At least until I can sweet talk P into getting off his wallet so I can make some changes in the kitchen.)

Lastly, you have got to go check out Holly Mathis Interiors. Her creativity astounds me. Plus she might be able to help you since, THANKS TO THE INTERNET AND DIGITAL CAMERAS, she isn’t limited by proximity.

Hooray for technology.

And hooray for finally getting rid of the fake plant that resides behind my couch for the sole purpose of catching dust.