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WELCOME TO THE NEW HOME OF BIG MAMA.

I decided to change the site because of multiple technical issues, but from here on out this will be home sweet home.

There were multiple problems with my former webhosting service, but I’m now being hosted through Webex Domains and I cannot thank them enough for all their help.

And, as for my fab new look, it’s by the lovely and talented Jules at Everyday Design. I adore it. In fact, it made me clap my hands when I saw it for the first time.

So here’s what I need from y’all. Please re-subscribe to the new url which is thebigmamablog.com. Also, if you link to me on your blogroll I will love you forever if you’ll take the time to change the url there as well.

I promise I’ll never put y’all through all these changes again. I was just in dire need of a total blog cleanse.

As a reward, here’s Caroline singing an Easter classic.

Well, it’s not really a traditional classic, but it’s Caroline’s idea of the perfect Easter song.

Happy Easter from Big Mama on Vimeo.

And in case you’re wondering, the hippo’s name is Butterfly.

Apparently all the cool hippos are wearing hot pink, velour jogging outfits these days.

Who knew?

And remember, don’t forget to re-subscribe and change the link on your blogroll. Y’all are the best.

Here’s a piece of advice.

If you find yourself cooking dinner on a Friday night and you’ve resorted to a throw-down recipe because it’s easy, plus you have all the ingredients on hand, you might want to take a closer look at the sour cream before you just dump it in.

Because, otherwise, you might discover that all your paltry efforts have gone to waste and there is now a hairy lump of sour cream staring at you from the middle of what would have truly been an average tasting dinner.

And at the precise moment it truly registers that there is no turning back from spoiled sour cream, it will actually growl at you because it is just that bad.

But, if you have set your meatballs aside you can whip up a delightful marinara sauce or, you know, pour in a jar of Paul Newman’s Cabernet Marinara, heat up some french bread and make meatball sandwiches instead.

It’s like that old saying: When life hands you ptomaine, make meatball sandwiches.

I am so excited about all the comments and suggestions from yesterday’s post. Mainly because it confirms my suspicions that more than a few of y’all would have been lining up to check out some books from the library in my closet. Not to mention that you brought up a few books I had completely forgotten about such as “The Westing Game” and “From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler”.

Frankly, it made me nostalgic for the fourth grade and not just because I was a huge fan of the Bammel Elementary Cafeteria’s chicken fried steak.

And for those of you who thought I was even remotely serious about shutting down the blog, let me assure you that you have underestimated my level of addiction. I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d just make stuff up, so if all of a sudden my posts start to highlight my weekly lunches with Heidi Klum or Tina Fey, there’s a good chance they might be loosely based on the truth.

The truth being that I had lunch with Gulley. Or my sister.

But in the interest of complete truthfulness and transparency, here is what we did yesterday.

We woke up around 8:15, which sounds great except for the fact that when you factor in the work of Satan on the American timetable, it was really just 7:15.

And I hadn’t slept very well to begin with because, apparently, there was a very frightened skunk outside our bedroom windows last night.

After a delightful breakfast consisting of Frosted Mini-Wheats for me and 1/4 granola bar for Caroline, it was time to get ready for gymnastics. I wrangled Caroline into her leotard and then brushed her hair back into a ponytail while she launched into a dramatic, three-part monologue detailing the agony of having someone at your beck and call to groom you each morning.

To sum it up, her life is very hard and she will die at the hands of me and Goody hair accessories.

We arrived at gymnastics just in time, and she went in to hone her flying trapeze act while I visited with the other mamas in the front room. The main topic of discussion was summer activity plans and weighing the merits of art class vs. gymnastics vs. watching three consecutive hours of “Charlie and Lola” while slowly becoming an idiot.

We also counseled one woman, who is fairly new to the area, on the importance of joining the neighborhood pool because, other than the fact that it requires donning swimwear, it is hands down the best money we spend all year.

And I’m including food and air-conditioning in that equation.

Although by August my word for the pool will be HATE. It’s at this point that the high school employees all become a tad surly and the chicken fingers and quesadillas all start to taste exactly alike. Plus they run out of the cookies and cream ice cream sandwiches.

Anyway, after gymnastics we went to Gulley’s house to play. Jackson had early dismissal from Kindergarten so we picked up food from McDonald’s which, by the way, is still featuring those lame Spiderwick toys.

The kids spent the afternoon racing back and forth across Gulley’s backyard with her industrial-sized garbage cans because why would any child want to play with the hundreds of dollars worth of outdoor toys and a trampoline when there are nasty, outdoor garbage cans to play with and a barbecue pit to climb on?

Finally, we headed back to the house where I planned a delicious meal for P by looking up the online menu for a place called “Podna’s” that I’ve been wanting to try. And in spite of the fact that I am generally not a fan of any establishment that attempts to spell their name phonetically, they reeled me in because they serve fried catfish and cajun-type food. We got the fried catfish and a shrimp po-boy.

MEH.

It wasn’t bad and it wasn’t good. It was food. Although in the favorable category I will say that at least a dozen and a half shrimp were killed in the making of my po-boy and the bread was delightful.

I put Caroline to bed and hit play on the DVR so we could watch “American Idol”. I already loved Jason Castro, but now that I know he’s an Aggie and he whooped on national television, he will have my unwavering support. Plus, love the whole laid back guitar thing he has going on. Also, I would buy anything that Brook White ever sings. Ever.

I would also buy any hair product she ever uses because she has some seriously good hair going on.

And that was my day. No frills and with some slight exaggeration.

I completely understand if it makes you want to peruse my card catalog and see if you can come up with something more interesting to read.

May I suggest The Little House on the Prairie series? It’s very popular.

So, what are your thoughts on Daylight Saving Time?

I’ll tell you mine. HATE.

It’s an hour of my life I’ll never get back, much like that time I watched “When Good Pets Go Bad”.

Sometimes it’s hard for me to find the words to talk about what’s really going on. And really, it’s not that I don’t want to write about it or that I’m trying to keep it to myself, it’s just that it is harder to get out. It takes thought, which isn’t really true of posts that show pictures of Snoopy Sno-Cone Machines.

A few days ago, I was cleaning out my desk drawer and found my Daytimer from last year. I opened it to the month of February and saw written on February 15th, “Meeting with Human Resources in Dallas”. Honestly, even though I know how it all turned out, seeing that date and those words made my stomach knot up in a little ball of anxiety. I had no idea the journey I was about to go on.

That day will always signify the day things began to change because, even though everything was resolved, I didn’t walk away from that experience the same person I was before it. Something shifted. And while I didn’t really adore my career as a drug rep, it’s not the kind of job you just walk away from. It’s good money, a free car, great benefits. For me it was security wrapped in golden handcuffs.

The next several months brought some big challenges. I became a big fan of picturing the worst case scenario and my mind just went crazy with fear. I had no idea, until we experienced some serious financial setbacks, how much security I found in what was in our savings account. However, by mid-December something clicked and I just let it go. I surrendered all my financial fears to God and truly began to trust Him and His provision. It was as if a hundred pound weight had been lifted.

And guess what? He’s provided.

But none of that is really the point. It’s just the background information.

Just about the time I really began to trust God with our financial situation, I started to have a health issue. I’m not going to go into great detail because Google Ads will pick up on it and who knows what will end up being advertised. As if it could get worse than the current ads for stomach bloating and constipation. And now that I’ve written those out, those Google Ads will never go away. My Google Ad fate is sealed.

Anyway, I started having an issue. Nothing serious, but not quite right either. I went to see a few different doctors and none of them really had any answers. Every test came back negative, but I knew something was going on.

By January, what started as a minor thing became huge in my mind. I worried constantly. I felt like I had a black cloud over me. I knew I was starting to feel other symptoms that signaled something more serious. I made the terrible mistake of going to WebMD and looking up my symptoms to self-diagnose.

Here’s a word of advice. Don’t go to WebMD to self-diagnose. You will always come up with a fatal option. It could be allergies or it could be HORRIBLE PLAGUE OF DEATH. Always. It’s like internet law.

So, on top of the fears about my health, I began to have other irrational fears. There was one Sunday in particular when P and Caroline left to go to the ranch and I just knew something bad was going to happen. It took everything in me not to call him and tell him to come home, but deep down I knew it was my mind raging out of control. I had to calm myself down, spend some time in prayer, and it all turned out okay. They went to the ranch, had a lovely day, and other than Caroline poking a hole in her Whataburger cup full of lemonade, everything was fine.

Finally one night, sitting on the couch next to P, I was gripped by the fear that something was really wrong with me. It was hard for me to even find the words to tell him what was going on. Honestly, I don’t think I even conveyed how truly worried I was, I just told him I was really concerned about my health and told him to pray for me.

The next morning I was sitting at the computer when he walked in from an appointment. He said, “I prayed for you this morning. I prayed that God would heal whatever it is in you that feels like anytime He is doing something really good in your life that it means something bad is going to happen.”

And with that statement, I began to cry. Because at that moment, P had just spoken an incredible truth into my life. I hadn’t even been aware that’s what I’d been doing, but I knew in an instant it was exactly what was going on. I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Somewhere along the way I was tricked into believing that I don’t deserve the good. It’s not even that my life has been full of the bad. I have been abundantly blessed in so many ways, but there’s a part of me that always feels like I don’t deserve it or that it must mean something bad is going to happen eventually. I had even convinced myself that the whole reason I had this blog was so I could fight my horrific faux health battle on the internet.

It was a lie. It was all a lie.

God wants to give us good things. Actually, He wants to give us the BEST things, but it requires faith. And yes, bad things are going to happen because it’s an inevitable part of life, but when they happen we make the decision to walk through them with God or away from God. He doesn’t cause them. He’s not up there with some holy abacus keeping count of the good and the bad in everyone’s life and making sure it comes out even.

Here’s the amazing thing. That morning after P and I talked, my health issue disappeared. I’ve been perfectly fine ever since. It’s like it had a grip on me and once the truth was spoken it had no choice but to let go.

And that’s what this year has been about for me. Letting go. Of fear. Of insecurity. Of pride.

I’ve let it go and life will never look the same again.

It’s all about remembering God holds it all. And He is good.

Psalm 103: 2-5 “Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits – who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”

So, here’s a question.

What does this look like to y’all?

Tool of Satan or innocent toy that makes icy delights?

After spending an afternoon that will now be forever remembered as “The Day My Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Began”, I have to go with Tool of Satan.

Also, do mamas get some kind of workman’s comp?

Because, technically, this was an on-the-job injury.