Just for fun

On Friday afternoon, Caroline came running in the house because she wanted a pickle. This has become a little tradition at our house and now, whenever she is helping P in the backhouse, she feels the need to eat pickles. And really, who can blame her? There is nothing more satisfying than a sweet gherkin.

As I was doling out the pickles, I asked what she and Daddy were doing and she answered, “We’re out back making bullets”. It was one of those statements that causes me to stop and ponder what my life has become. My daughter and my husband are out back making bullets. It’s a sentence that I never imagined would describe my life, along the same lines as “I’m going to wait until these shoes go on sale”.

But bless their redneck hearts, I love them and their propensity for manufacturing ammo right in our backyard. Nothing says we are right wing, red state Republicans like making homemade bullets.

Except for maybe this.

Saturday morning, P asked me how we go about purchasing a pay-per-view event through our Dish Network service. I wasn’t exactly sure since we have never ventured into the land of pay-per-view, and normally, you just push a button on your remote that allows you to buy a program. But when our Dish Network was installed, the helpful technician said foul, horrible things to me like “phone cord running along your living room floor” and “wires that will show”, so I chose Option B which was the no wire option, but also means that we have to call a number to order pay-per-view. And y’all really don’t need to know, nor probably care, about any of this.

My point is I asked P what pay-per-view event he was wanting to spend money on, because I felt like it was a safe bet that it wasn’t “The Holiday” starring Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet. Sure enough, he wanted to order UFC 71, which for you novices is Ultimate Fighting Championships 71 (and I don’t know what the 71 stands for). It seems that someone named Chuck Liddell was going to be defending his heavyweight title against someone named Rampage Jackson, and I don’t know much, but based on the names, I’m thinking Rampage sounds a lot more intimidating than Chuck. Rampage is a fighting name, whereas Chuck is more the name of an accountant who coaches Little League teams on the weekend.

So, last night we had some friends over to watch the Spurs game and then, UFC 71. I even poured some Sour Patch Kids into a bowl to make the occasion that much more festive. Good times.

I guess the UFC people figure that if you’re paying to watch this event, then they need to give you your money’s worth. It was the longest buildup to a main event that I have ever seen. They had multiple matches with lesser fighters to get the crowd good and ready for Chuck and Rampage. And speaking of the crowd, there were celebrities there including Andre Agassi, Steffi Graf, and Mandy Moore. Mandy Moore a UFC fan? Who knew? There was also a celebrity named Lil John and based on his shiny red tracksuit, gold grill, multiple gold chains and the fact that he has “Lil” in his name, I’m pretty sure he raps for a living.

Finally, and I do mean FINALLY, it was time for the main event. Rampage came out first wearing a classy, diamond encrusted grill in his mouth and stopping intermittently to howl at the crowd. It was all more than a little disturbing. Then, amid much ado, Chuck Liddell came out and basically strolled down to the ring like he was on his way to show little Johnny how to hit the ball off the tee. No howling, no diamond grill.

Which may have been his problem.

About 1 minute into the fight, Rampage landed a right hook across Chuck’s jaw and that was the end, which means we paid about .75 cents a second to see this event. Money well spent, my friends. Well spent.

Then, in the post-fight interview with Rampage, he was celebrating his victory over Chuck and said, “He didn’t even touch me. My new name should be NO TOUCH”. And at that moment, I decided that hearing that kind of eloquent, witty banter more than justified our purchase. Mr. Rampage (or should I say Mr. NO TOUCH), my hat is off to you, your right hook, and your clever repartee.

You made it a Saturday night to remember.

I feel certain there are only so many times I can tell y’all about my stomach illness before you just click away, while yelling at me to get over it already. So, I will spare you the details, but sufficed to say my stomach bug decided it wasn’t quite ready to leave me and so I spent most of yesterday feeling sick.

And no, I don’t think I’m pregnant…because I know that’s what some of you are starting to think.

I woke up a little while ago and while I don’t exactly feel like a bright ray of sunshine surrounded by happy bunnies, I don’t feel like ripping my stomach out of my body anymore. I keep telling myself that I’m just getting ready for swimsuit season with a steady 4 day diet of 7Up.

So, while I could discuss at length all the various anti-nausea medications I have tried in the last 36 hours, I’d rather ask y’all a question that has nothing to do with being sick or 7Up. What song is your favorite song on your iPod right now? And if you don’t have an iPod, what song would you listen to on your 8 track player?

Oh, I’m kidding. I’m not an iPod snob. In fact, truth be told, I probably wouldn’t even own an iPod if my old company hadn’t given me one as a gift. I’ve never been one to jump on new technology, so I feel certain if I hadn’t been given an iPod that I felt forced to figure out, I would watch iPod commercials while shaking my head and thinking that there’s no way it could ever be better than my Sony Walkman. After all, it had a AM/FM radio AND a cassette player.

Plus, I’m the same girl who told my friend Hite in college that the “whole email thing” will never take off.

Prophecy is obviously not my gift.

Anyway, since Caroline will be taking swim lessons starting next week, I’ll have an hour each day to sit by the pool in solitude and listen to my iPod. My favorite right now is “Sweet Escape” by Gwen Stefani. What are y’all listening to?

A few people have tagged me to list 7 weird things about myself. And while I could easily come up with 7 weird things, I already did this list back in January except with only 6 things. So, I’m going to repost my original list and add one bonus item for you lucky folks playing at home.

1. I am absolutely, completely compulsive when it comes to all things involving going to bed at night. P and I have slept under separate covers since about the second week of our marriage because for some reason he didn’t want to sleep under a down comforter every night. I am now unable to share covers with anyone, even my child. If Caroline gets in bed with us at night, I bring her own quilt for her to cover up with because everyone in this family has to pull their own weight…or blanket as the case may be.

In addition to the no cover sharing, I must have a totally wrinkle free bottom sheet and all three of the pillows that I sleep with must be plumped down to the end of the pillowcase. I don’t need any extraneous pillow case hanging off the pillow, it’s just messy. And if there are any crumbs in the bed, then my night is just completely shot.

After I get all of this done (and I know y’all can’t imagine there is more), I have to go to the bathroom three times in a ten minute period. It goes like this: go to the bathroom, brush teeth, go to the bathroom, turn on bedside lamp and take down ponytail, go to the bathroom. It doesn’t matter that I may not have to even go, I’m just doing everything I can to prevent a 2 a.m. trip to the bathroom. My hatred of middle of the night bathroom visits made me a complete joy to be around throughout my pregnancy.

2. I know just about every song that has ever been written. I could be on Name that Tune…well, if it still existed. You give me a song and most of the time I can give you the artist and at least some of the lyrics.

3. I have mentioned before that I am OCD. I can’t stand clutter. Things pile up and I must get them out of my sight. However, what I may have failed to mention is that I often just put them somewhere else where they don’t necessarily belong, but where I don’t have to look at them. This may explain why a drawer in my kitchen holds takeout menus, batteries, a thank you note from Caroline’s teacher, playdough, some decorative garland from Christmas and other assorted oddities.

In fact earlier, P pulled out a little ziploc baggie containing a door stop, multiple picture hangers, and two double AA batteries and commented how handy it was to have all those items in one convenient baggie since they obviously all go together.

I would like to be more organized, really I would, but not enough to actually do something about it.

4. I know more trivial information than should be allowed. I am truly the Cliff Claven of my group of friends and PROUD of it. There is nothing I like more than throwing out a random fact about something or someone. I can’t always cite my source because I have stored information in recesses of my brain about things I’ve read years before, but oh yes ma’am do I know some stuff.

The only commonality is that most of it isn’t useful.

5. I briefly mentioned this in a previous post, but back when I used to go hunting and P would put me in a blind by myself, I would get bored and start talking to the deer. I’d get louder and louder until I was basically yelling “Hey YOU!” at them. Amazingly, some of them still stuck around which completely proved P’s theory that you have to be quiet while hunting totally wrong.

Either that or they just figured that any idiot yelling at them out of a blind was certainly not planning on shooting them, so they might as well keep eating.

6. I tend to obsess over things (see #1). I would like to say that I lose sleep at night over things like world peace or the budget deficit, but that would be a lie. I will wake up in the middle of the night to worry about things like if I should have bought the sweater that I saw earlier that day at Gap and if I go back tomorrow will they still have one in my size.

I also lay awake and compose letters in my head that I am going to write to the head of whoever is in charge of trains, regarding how many times a train conductor should be allowed to blow their whistle at 2 a.m. and wake people out of a perfectly good sleep, people who need their sleep because they have a child who rarely sleeps through the night and if this happens to be one of those rare nights, then they certainly do not need to be awakened by some train conductor blowing his whistle 146 times because he is bitter that he is working the night train shift.

I don’t limit my imaginary letter writing to the bigwigs at the train department. It’s just an example of one of my most common compositions. Anyone is fair game to end up on my pretend letter exercise, the only problem is that they usually make much more sense in the wee hours of the morning than they do in the light of day, which I’m sure is the ONLY reason that I don’t actually write out my thoughts and send them in.

And as for the newest addition to this list of oddities…

7. I have become addicted to American Idol. I never even watched it before this season, but now I will spend Wednesday worrying about who is going to be voted off. I adore Paula and the fact that she can’t make her hands actually connect while she claps, I love Simon and his brutal honesty, and I love that I know Randy will say, “Yo dawg, it was just AWright for me” at least 3 times every week.

And most of all, I love that the show has the power to cause Bon Jovi songs to find themselves in the top 100 list of most downloaded songs on iTunes. That is some serious consumer influence.

Hope y’all have a great Sunday!

I have a sore throat. And not just any sore throat, THE sorest throat of all time. I’m pretty sure that I got it from my orthodontist while he had his entire hand in my mouth twisting these rubberbands into the proper configuration to maximize my torture and minimize my ability to speak.

I figure he’s responsible for 50% of my pain at the moment, I might as well blame him for the other 50%.

So, I’m tired, I’m sick, I’m in pain.

And yes, I am whining. I don’t think I have much to say of any interest at the moment, but here’s a little something.

1. Gulley told me about 2 weeks ago that she had bought herself a Schick Intuition razor and it had changed her life. I’m always looking for a life change in the form of hair removal, so I bought one for myself three days ago.

IT HAS CHANGED MY LIFE.

Shaving is so flawless, so easy, so quick and painless. Run, don’t walk to your nearest retailer of shaving products and buy one immediately. This is not a paid endorsement, this is just me sharing the greatest invention of the 21st century.

You’re welcome.

2. A few weeks ago, I was up way too late watching David Letterman and Kelly Ripa was on. Bless her heart, someone needs to tell her to put down the self tanner. I mean she is a pretty girl, but she looked like an oompa loompa. I’m hoping maybe it was just my T.V.

However, I am a fan of a good summer glow, especially the kind I don’t have to sweat or get locked out of my house to achieve. What do y’all recommend in the way of self tanners? I’ve always been a Neutrogena girl myself, but since I yearn for knowledge I’m always interested in learning about new products that will change my life…or at least my skin tone.

The topic is self tanners. Discuss amongst yourselves.

3. Every now and then I like to look at my sitemeter stats and see how people found me. My favorite thing is to look at the Google searches, because I know that’s just some poor, unsuspecting soul who was looking for real information and instead ended up here.

I picture them looking at my Wizard of Oz float and wondering what on earth went wrong and how can they get the last 3 minutes of their life back.

Anyway, the Google search that brings more people to Big Mama than anything else is “Expired Mayonnaise”. I don’t even remember the post where I talked about expired mayonnaise, but I know it was in reference to a Christmas present that Gulley once received from her mother-in-law.

Here’s my thought. If you suspect your mayonnaise is expired to the point that you’re doing a Google search about it, you just need head to the grocery store and pick up a new jar. Go ahead and throw that Hellmans out.

Or give it to your daughter-in-law for a Christmas present.

Another search that brought someone here was “Grooms cake made out of Little Debbies”. All I could think when I saw it was how on earth can I get myself invited to that wedding? A cake made out of preservative filled pastries? That’s just pure, culinary brilliance.

4. A few weeks ago, the folks at Nature Valley sent me a box of their new Oats N’ Honey cereal to try. It was delicious flaky, granola filled goodness. I always eat my cereal dry, because really, who puts milk in cereal? That’s just weird, deviant behavior. And this was so good that I almost ate the entire box at one sitting, which would have been okay because it’s healthy and has lots of granola-ish vitamins and nutrients.

Now, P, who eats his cereal with milk (freak), said that the granola pieces tended to get a little soggy before he finished the whole bowl, but that overall he loved the taste and said it was very filling. All in all, we liked it so much that after our free sample was gone, I headed to store and bought another box.

If you’re a cereal family, y’all might want to give it a whirl.

That’s all I’ve got, kids. Have a great Friday!