Just for fun

P and I began dating in March of 1995. That means that we’d almost been dating for one year when our first Valentine’s Day as a couple rolled around. I was hoping for a ring. Instead, I received a large tin full of cinnamon-flavored popcorn. It’s not that the popcorn wasn’t delightfully delicious as much as the fact that there wasn’t a diamond solitaire anywhere in that tin. And, trust me, I looked long and hard and very subtly as I ate an entire tin of popcorn in three and a half minutes under the guise of being hungry.

The problem was, even after a year of dating, I didn’t know P well enough to know that he wasn’t a fan of any holiday that he deems to be a passel of lies being sold to the American public. I should’ve realized it when he chose to spend our first New Year’s Eve hunting at the ranch with his friends instead of taking me out to a romantic New Year’s Eve dinner which led us to spend the first day of 1996 breaking up as we argued over what constitutes a holiday (according to him a holiday isn’t a day that falls during the height of deer season) but love is blind and optimistic.

Now, fourteen years, a wedding ceremony, one mortgage, a child and two dogs later, I totally agree with him on the whole made-up holiday thing. Oh sure, you may say that he’s trained me to disregard Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve, but it’s really no different than how I trained him to do his own laundry after one week of marriage. Frankly, I think I got the better end of that deal.

And just to be clear, we haven’t robbed Caroline of the Valentine’s Day experience. In fact, she got a Hello Kitty DVD and a new pair of binoculars this year because that’s what she wanted and how is a girl supposed to get by without her own pair of optics when she’s afield?

The thing about P is that he does really nice things for me all year long. He gets up first in the morning and turns off the ceiling fan so I don’t freeze, he brings me flowers for no reason, he doesn’t ever care when I announce that I’m too tired to cook and I’m calling in some Mexican food to go, and he never questions the fact that every purchase I bring into the house was bought for the bargain price of $15.00. And last week he completely outdid himself and installed a new kitchen faucet (even though he killed my farmhouse sink dream) and hung my new curtain rods.

Remember when I wrote about Holly and how she was helping me make some changes to my living room? And then remember how I showed the bird cage and the old suitcase that I found at the antique store? And then remember how I haven’t said anything else about it in a month?

One of the things Holly suggested was that I add some drapes in the living room. What Holly didn’t know was that I am deathly afraid of window treatments. They intimidate me. I blame it on some ill-conceived JC Penney drapes that P and I had in our first apartment. They were so unfortunate with their green swag of fabric draped across the top.

But Holly insisted that drapes were the way to go and I was too embarrassed to tell her about my long-standing drape phobia. We began to look for fabric and ultimately found this beautiful Robert Allen fabric that was on sale at Fabrics.com for $6.95 a yard. It was exactly what I wanted, something soft and subtle that would add some texture to the room and coordinate with the fabric we’d chosen for some new pillows.

However, I let my fear keep me from committing to the fabric purchase until Holly told me that I needed to go ahead and buy it because it was great fabric at an unbelievable price. She even calculated that I’d need about fourteen yards and I’m forever grateful to her for doing that bit of math for me because I don’t know what my guess would’ve been other than JUST WRONG. So I went online to order the fabric and it had been reduced to $1.95 a yard. ONE DOLLAR AND NINETY-FIVE CENTS A YARD. You can’t buy burlap for $1.95 a yard.

Or maybe you can. I really have no idea.

Procrastination has never served me so well. I ordered all the fabric I needed for less than $30.00. But then Holly began to mention words to me like “drapery lining” and “sewing machine” and I felt frightened all over again. I actually own a sewing machine but only because my mother-in-law was getting rid of it and asked me if I wanted it and why would I turn that down? That would be akin to admitting that I’ll never learn to sew and I’m totally going to learn how to sew. SOMEDAY.

Holly realized that all the sewing might never happen and the drapery lining was wishful thinking at best, so she suggested that I might want to just “mistreat” the windows with the fabric a la The Nester. (If you don’t read The Nester, you are missing out on a veritable wealth of home decorating information) I knew that Sophie had mistreated her windows with much success and since I know she and I function at about the same level of non-crafty, I felt that there was hope for me and the mistreating of the windows.

So I bought new curtain rods and clip rings at Lowe’s. Then God smiled on me and it rained all day Thursday causing P to say out loud in my presence, “I’m bored”. Which led to this pleasant development.

I don’t know that he’ll ever utter the words “I’m bored” again.

I rolled all fourteen yards of fabric out as best I could given the fact that I don’t have a room that’s fourteen yards long and then I nearly caused my brain to explode as I tried to compute the measurements of how much fabric I needed to cut for each window. A timely call from Sophie saved me from what would have been a terrible tragedy because I was about to cut the fabric right down the middle because I was in way over my head.

Words can’t describe the level of stress I felt as I debated cutting into the fabric because Holly had stressed that it was very important that I line the pattern up and each panel needed to match. My head hurts right now just thinking about. But finally I looked at P who was sitting on the couch trying to figure out how on earth I’d decided I could make my own drapes and said, “Well, here goes nothing. At least the fabric only cost $28.00 if I totally screw this up.”

He replied, “Yeah, but if you screw it up you’ll never find that fabric at that price again.”

It wasn’t really the word of encouragement I was looking for. Also, please note that I told him the actual price of the fabric because it was such a good deal and I needed him to know how much money I’d saved him. It totally makes up for all the other $15.00 items we have around the house.

I took a deep breath, hyperventilated for several minutes and began to cut. And now I have drapes in my living room.

Here’s the before.

Let us never speak of that fake plant again. It was the devil’s foliage.

And here’s the after.

Please don’t mention that vast array of animal prints. I was a woman on the edge who just made my own curtains and I threw that pillow and the footstool over there. I’m not attempting any sort of safari theme.

New pillows and other accessories will be coming soon. And, no, I’m not making them myself.

But the good news is they’re only going to cost $15.00.

On Thursday afternoon I drove to Austin for my dad’s retirement party. He’s worked for the same company since 1972. To put it in perspective, I was one year old when he started. And now I am significantly older than that.

I’m not sure what I was expecting since I’ve never been to a retirement party before, but it far exceeded my expectations. My dad has always been my hero and to hear a room full of people talk about his integrity and character and what he has meant to them was an incredible experience. An experience that about sent me straight into the ugly cry. Seeing him honored that way will go down as one of the best nights of my life because he deserved every minute of it.

We drove back to San Antonio on Friday morning and I was supposed to fly out to Nashville later that afternoon for my friend Travis’s 40th birthday party. His sweet wife had been planning a surprise birthday celebration complete with an 80’s theme for months, but the real surprise ended up being almost a foot of snow in Nashville which meant there was no way I could make the party unless I flew into somewhere south of Nashville and procured a team of speedy sled dogs to take me the rest of the way. And don’t think I didn’t consider it.

Instead of being at a fun 80’s themed birthday party with several of my friends, I spent Friday night sitting on my couch, catching up on DVRed television, and eating a Frito pie made with Hormel chili out of a can. So it was pretty similar to how I spent many Friday nights in the 1980’s except there was no DVR back then so I would have been waiting for Friday Night Videos in the hopes they’d show some awesome Wham! videos and I could wonder if George Michael might fall in love with a fourteen year old girl from Beaumont, Texas. (Bless my heart, it was a naive time. I thought being fourteen was my biggest obstacle to long-lasting love with George Michael.)

And I was usually home because I was grounded for breaking curfew the previous Friday night. Now I’m just home because I’m lame and also old enough to be Lady GaGa’s much older sister.

(I know that because I looked her up on Wikipedia while watching the Grammys last night. She was born in 1986. NINETEEN HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-SIX. Otherwise known as my sophomore year of high school.)

Anyway, I was so disappointed because it’s a major letdown to think you’re going to spend time with some of your favorite people, only to find yourself at home alone with can of Hormel chili and an 80’s outfit that took weeks and several trips to Forever 21 to put together.

Look at what I now own. Again.

But wait. There’s more.

And these gems that I found on the sale rack at Forever 21 for $4.99.

It was a final sale so I guess I’ll have to save them for the next PTO meeting.

They’ll look great with my new blue eye makeup and hot pink lipstick.

I even bought a can of Freeze It! to ensure that I could attain maximum hair volume before I pulled it all back with a banana clip.

Don’t ask me how I thought I was going to get it on the plane in my carry-on bag. I guess I figured I could sweet talk security and maybe tell them that Frankie says RELAX.

The most shameful purchase of all was a Miley Cyrus brand dress that I purchased at Walmart last week. If you’d asked me a week ago for a list of things I would never do, that list would have read:

1. Will never eat dark meat from a chicken again. Ever.
2. Will never marry George Michael. (Guilty feet have got no rhythm)
3. Will never purchase any sort of Miley Cyrus clothing for myself.

But, yet, here is the Miley Cyrus dress.

In my defense, I bought it solely for the skirt. And it was on sale for $10.00.

Which now seems like $10.00 too much.

Ultimately, here is what the entire outfit would have looked like had Nashville not had the biggest snowstorm in the history of me knowing anyone who lives in Nashville.

By the way, I already owned the denim vest. There are some items of clothing that are too sacred to be thrown out even if they haven’t seen the outside of your closet in seventeen years. (Okay, fifteen years. It was hard for me to give up on the vest. As evidenced by the fact that I still own it.)

So happy birthday, Travis. I hope you got some new dentures and a gift certificate for your 4:00 p.m. dinners at Captain D’s. And maybe a nice cardigan to ward off the chill.

As for me, I had a lovely Friday night at home thinking about all the fun I was missing with sweet friends.

And I also have a daughter who has discovered the banana clip and the beauty of a flipped up collar.

Which kind of worried me until I remembered what Frankie says.

There is nothing I would like more than to be able to completely recapture all the technological angst of the last five days. But honestly so much time and Valium have passed since then, I’m not sure I can remember all the details. However, I will do my best.

(You know this isn’t going to be brief.)

Last Friday started off like any normal day, except Caroline is in this new phase where she wants to bring her lunch to school and I had to start off my morning heating up Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup in the microwave (gag) while she repeatedly reminded me “DON’T FORGET TO CUT OUT THE BOX TOP! I NEED THE BOX TOP!” because we are in the midst of a box top obsession since the class with the most box tops gets a free pizza party. At this point I would just buy them a pizza if it meant I could get all the labels back on my canned goods and not waste any more time opening up Cream of Mushroom when what I wanted was Chicken and Stars.

Anyway, I spent most of the day at home since the temperatures were only in the twenties and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to don my white Michelin Man coat which is the only coat I own that is warm enough for that kind of weather because PMS + looking like a giant marshmallow = Insecurity. But I finally got a little stir crazy around noon and decided to venture to Hobby Lobby to look at some fabric Holly suggested for pillows.

While I was waiting in line at Hobby Lobby (I had to buy 1/2 yard of fabric to have enough to tell if it was going to work because the lady cut a sample for me that was smaller than my thumbnail) I checked Twitter and saw that someone tweeted that she couldn’t access my blog. And I thought, BLESS HER HEART something is wrong with that poor girl’s computer because my blog is working fine.

I was on my way to pick up Caroline from Brownies when Sophie called me and asked if I knew my blog was down. And, also, that it said ACCOUNT SUSPENDED DUE TO BILLING ISSUES. Like it wasn’t bad enough that the internet had unceremoniously dumped me, it was also trying to shame me.

I didn’t even know the internet and I were having problems.

Apparently the internet was afraid of confrontation and just decided to SHUT DOWN the blog instead of talking to me and explaining where it all went wrong. It was all very reminiscent of a break up I had in college, except that it didn’t end with me eating a one pound bag of M&M’s while I sang along with Sinead O’Connor as she sang “Nothing Compares 2 U”.

Although I did put a sizable dent in P’s inventory of Peppermint Bark.

Anyway, the short version of the technological side of things (as best I understand it) is that the flux capacitor got overloaded and caused the server to crash. Then the people in charge of my old server decided that I needed a different server. So I called the new people to find out about getting on a new server and they wanted to ask me questions about my bandwidth usage and the circumference of the moon and if Venus is in retrograde. And I don’t know any of those things because I went to high school back when we learned how to write DOS code and then majored in Speech Communications which isn’t really even a real thing because it’s just about talking. I majored in talking and made it through my FIVE YEARS of undergraduate work without ever having to turn on a computer, although I totally rocked at the Brother word processor. So don’t ask me about bandwidth and EPP codes because I DON’T KNOW.

By the time Monday morning rolled around, my frustration was at an all-time high. Then to make matters worse, I realized the new hosting company had attempted to send me several emails to update me on the situation and my personal email had blocked them all causing further delays. So now the internet had broken up with me, shamed me and is now just MOCKING me. Hateful.

On Monday afternoon I got off the phone with my new friend Larry from tech support and he’d just informed me that I may have to blah, blah, blah and that it might be another 72 hours to FIVE DAYS before things got up and running again. P walked in the kitchen and I started to cry. Like real tears. Because after three days, I’d reached my limit of not understanding one word that anyone was trying to say to me. I said, “It’s not even about the blog being broken. I’m just tired of dealing with it all.”

All of a sudden I heard Caroline say “OH MAMA, IS THE BLOG BROKEN?” as she started to cry. And poor P just stared at both of us and probably never wished more that he was sitting in a tripod somewhere, covered in doe urine and waiting for a buck to walk out.

The good news is that everything ultimately worked out okay. According to the tech support experts, the blog may still need to propagate for about twenty-four hours, but let’s not even pretend that I understand what that means. Basically, the internet and I have reunited and, if I may quote Peaches ‘N Herb, it feels so good.

And thanks for all the emails and the twitters and the emails to Sophie about my whereabouts. It made me feel a little warm and fuzzy to know that I was missed. I promise I will never just up and leave without telling you where I’m going because that would be rude. Do you hear me, internet? RUDE.

Also, if you’re ever trying to access this site and there seems to be a problem and you wonder if it’s you or if it’s me?

Always put your money on me.

I’m not sure what we’ve done in the days since Christmas, but I know that I’ve spent most of that time being cold. However, this summer when it was 126 degrees for three months straight, I vowed that I would never again complain about being cold. So I’m not complaining, it’s just an observation. And I guess we could turn on the heat, but I’m not a fan of the heat. It makes me feel like I can’t breathe and I’d rather just be cold.

Not that I’m complaining about being cold. It’s totally fine.

(I think the fact that I just talked about the temperature for that many consecutive sentences is a good indicator that I haven’t done much in the last few days. Maybe I should actually leave the house or something.)

I did manage to get the Christmas tree down on Sunday. Normally I’ll leave the tree up until around New Year’s and I definitely would have left this one up because it was my favorite tree EVER, but it had been dead for the better part of a week before Christmas and reached a level of dryness that I felt certain was going to lead to spontaneous combustion.

(I just used a lot of words to say I was afraid it was going to catch ON FIRE.)

(Also, P and his friend George used to take our Christmas tree out in the backyard after Christmas each year, put it in our fire pit and light that sucker up. I always thought it would be immediately engulfed in flames, but the trees would always just smoke and smolder. Highly anti-climatic.)

(I’m not sure that it was legal for us to try to burn our tree in the backyard but that’s before we had a child and needed to set a good example. Clearly we had a lot of time on our hands.)

(I kind of want to make fun of P for setting our Christmas tree on fire, but who was the idiot who stood outside to watch him do it?)

Anyway, I’d hoped to convince Caroline that taking down the Christmas decorations is as much fun as putting them up, but she didn’t buy it. I guess watching me attempt to untangle twelve strands of Christmas lights from a dead tree with needles of death didn’t create a persuasive argument. Especially when I debated just throwing the whole thing out, lights and all.

But, eventually, I got everything put away and all that’s left of Christmas are the battery-operated animals and a few random pine needles that embed themselves in my wool socks and impale my feet. Next year I’m wishing for a male six-plumed bird of paradise.

That may seem like a random wish until I tell you that we watched the Planet Earth movie that Santa brought and learned the male six-plumed bird of paradise is a meticulous cleaner. It’s how he woos his mate. Unfortunately for the bird in the movie, his lady friend was a no-show. I guess she didn’t want to go on a field trip with him even though his house was spotless. She obviously wasn’t a woman with a house covered in the remnants of Christmas.

So that’s what we’ve been doing around here. Taking down decorations and watching Disney documentaries on nature.

(And I don’t want to ruin the ending of Planet Earth, but it doesn’t turn out well for some of the animals. Of course given the way Disney is never afraid to knock off a parent for a good story, it’s hardly surprising.)

On a brighter note for animals everywhere, yesterday was rainy and COLD so Gulley and I took the kids to see Alvin and The Chipmunks “The Squeakquel”.

Spoiler Alert:
It all turns out okay for Alvin, Simon and Theodore.

Of course my ears started bleeding from listening to them halfway through the movie, but that’s not really important.

It’s not like I really need them, except for when I want to hear.

A few years ago, my mom emailed these pictures of me sitting on Santa’s lap.

Apparently the enormous chair with pom-pom fringe was a big part of the 1970’s era Santa.

Also, nice all-denim ensemble I’m wearing, complete with rollers in my hair. Something tells me this was an unplanned Santa visit.

However, this next trip was clearly orchestrated because why else would I be wearing my festive harvest gold tights with my harvest gold turtleneck and denim jumper?

This next Santa was a long way from the fancy throne at the mall. I have vague memories of walking into a double-wide trailer parked outside the Bealls store.

I think the imitation wood paneling really says it all.

And speaking of imitation, it’s a sad day when Santa can’t even afford a real fireplace.

Dang. That is one ghetto Santa set up.

I asked my mom to send a few more pictures last night because I was feeling a little nostalgic. A few hours later, she emailed several to me. She couldn’t remember how to work her scanner so she had my stepdad take pictures of the pictures with his digital camera.

You can hardly tell.

Oh look. This was a big Christmas for me. It was the year Santa brought me my very own curling brush.

It was the beginning of my quest for big hair.

And here I am in 1988.

It would appear that I finally mastered the technique for maximum hair volume.

I also cannot express how much I loved that outfit. It had a green jacket that went on top of that purple shirt and I believe I even had some purple flats to bring it all together.

Merry Christmas indeed.

Anyway, none of this really has any point other than to force you to take a walk down memory lane with me.

And to serve as a procrastination device before I force myself into the kitchen to bake untold amounts of holiday goods.

And to help me forget that this is in my backyard right now.

I’m afraid the reindeer won’t land for fear they’re being hunted.