Year: 2007

  • At least my legs are smooth and my mayonnaise is good

    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!

  • Hold on, let me get my purse

    I’ve been seeing this purse meme going around and then yesterday, Boomama tagged me for it and she was just sure that my purse would be chock full of zippered compartments. Yes, yes it is.

    And they would be just delightful if I actually put anything in them.

    But that would be too easy, and I prefer to think of my purse as a carnival grab bag. You never know what your gonna get.

    Here is a picture of the purse I was carrying yesterday.

    I have about 3-4 purses that are in regular rotation and so I base my decision for the day on important criteria like which shoes I’m wearing or how much I have to stuff into a bag for that particular day. And y’all will notice that I am not showing the inside of the purse with all the stuff in it because it’s so crammed in there that you couldn’t tell what anything was anyway.

    So, here are the contents.

    My wallet. It looks so nice and organized sitting there all by itself. And in truth, now that I don’t have a job which requires me to keep every receipt for every dime I spend, it is much better than it was a few days ago.

    Until you open it up.

    That would be a piece of a pretzel stick handily tucked inside. Looks appetizing, doesn’t it?

    Just in case y’all are wondering if it’s there in case I need a snack, let me show you this.

    Obviously, I am a health food nut as evidenced by all the pure, organic foods you see represented in this pile of sustenance. In all fairness, most of these items are for Caroline…well, except for the Sweet-tarts. Those are mine. All mine.

    The bright side is if we ever find ourselves trapped somewhere with just my purse, we can live for 2 or 3 days on the Cheese Nips alone.

    This pile represents my adult journey into the bowels of hell, also known as orthodontia.

    I had my monthly session of torture with my orthodontist yesterday, and I am not kidding when I tell y’all that I now have rubberbands completely sealing my jaws shut. Seriously. I tried to take some Advil for the pain and could not even fit it into my mouth.

    I asked my orthodontist if he thought I’d have my braces off by the end of summer, and he laughed an evil laugh and said, “I don’t think so, Sport.” He’s actually very nice, so I didn’t say any of the vile things that went through my head at that moment. Plus, in all honesty, I can’t really open my mouth to say anything, due to all the rubberbands keeping my jaw hinged in a web of agony.

    As y’all can see, I take my lip care seriously.

    This is my vast array of lipstick, lipgloss, and lipbalm. Nothing really accentuates the braces like just the right shade of lipgloss. One of these is even a lip plumper that stings my lips so they look a little fuller, because I need more pain where my mouth is concerned.

    I’m a sadist.

    This is a pile of change that was just loose in the bottom of my purse. I find there is nothing a waitress at Sonic likes more than for me to count out $1.99 in nickels, dimes and pennies to pay for my Route 44 Diet Coke with cherry and vanilla.

    In all fairness, I normally don’t have this much change floating in the bottom of my purse, but yesterday I had to clean out my company car before they came and picked it up, and all this change was in the console. I used to use it to pay for all the parking garages I had to park in for work because parking attendants also enjoy receiving $2.50 in dimes and nickels. But now, there may be enough here for 3 or 4 trips to Sonic. It’s like copper manna from heaven.

    Or you know, pennies from heaven.

    Let’s just file this stuff under miscellaneous. A business card holder for the business cards I no longer own. Some toothpaste that would serve a much better purpose if I also had a toothbrush in there. An unopened tube of LipSmackers lipgloss in case I find myself needing to entice and/or bribe Caroline to behave somewhere. A plastic bubble from the Buddy Buck machine at HEB. A rubber band for my hair because no matter how it starts out, it always ends up pulled back and one of Caroline’s headbands because she pulls out her hair accessories throughout the day.

    And what do we have here? A real, live paper dollar bill. I am so going to Sonic in just a little while.

    That, my friends, is my purse. I always knew that it was just a matter of time before it came to this…having no shame in baring the contents of my purse for all the internet to see. But at least now if you ever see me somewhere, you’ll know who has some snacks on hand and plenty of change to make a run to Sonic.

  • One more day

    I originally posted this back in September, but since today would have been my Mema’s birthday, I thought it would be appropriate for the occasion. Happy Birthday, Mema. You are missed.

    On Sunday I was reading Parade magazine because I love to see what kind of tricky questions people come up with for Marilyn Vos Savant, the woman with the highest IQ in the world or maybe it’s the United States. I’m not sure. Anyway she’s obviously very smart and knows important things like what sequences of certain numbers mean or how far a train goes if it’s going 55 mph for 6 days…you know, real practical information that you can use in every day life.
    But I digress.

    So I’m reading Parade magazine and there is an article that asks the question if you could spend one day with someone you love who has passed away, who would it be and what would you do? And as I looked at the question, I immediately knew my answer.

    In the last nine years, I have lost three of my grandparents. I miss them all dearly, but the person I would want to spend a day with would be my Mema, my daddy’s mama.

    By the time I knew Mema she was already older obviously. She was plump, had graying hair that she kept dyed black, and wore a lot of polyester pantsuits, but in her younger days she was a real beauty. I have her wedding portrait hanging in my hallway and she is so thin, young and beautiful. She was also a true fashionista back in the day complete with great hats, purses and shoes. But by the time I came along, she had raised three boys and lived a lot of life so she wasn’t necessarily thin and fashionable but boy, she was comfortable in her own skin.

    I can’t think of Mema without remembering the way she would come hurrying to the door to greet you. She’d always have on her aqua colored turquoise pants, a bright striped polyester shirt and some brown SAS orthopedic shoes. She would be wiping her hands on her pants because you can guarantee she was always in the middle of cooking something for lunch or dinner. She made the best spaghetti in the whole world and if I had one more day with her, I’d make her write down the recipe instead of just letting her vaguely talk about what she put in her sauce. When you left her house, she would always stand in the driveway to blow you kisses and to give you hand signals like a flight crew to help you navigate as you backed into the street. Nevermind that she never learned how to drive, she was an expert at directing traffic.

    Mema grew up in a huge Italian family. Her parents immigrated to the United States from Sicily when they were young and finally settled in Beaumont,Texas. Mema spent all of her life living in a two block radius of her entire family. I vaguely remember her mother, a small, wrinkled old lady who I didn’t understand because everything she said was in Italian. Mema’s name was Lena but a few years before she died we found her birth certificate and it said “Carmela”. We asked about it and she said that was her real name, so we asked where Lena came from and she wasn’t sure but thought that maybe they had a horse named Lena growing up.

    Mema married my grandfather against her parents wishes. She was a high school graduate and he was a 6th grade dropout. She was the daughter of Italian immigrants who had raised her to be a good Catholic girl and he was a bootlegger. Her younger sister, Josephina (Fina for short) was scared of Papa until the day he died. If he answered the phone, she would just hang up. I wish I knew more of the story. I wish I knew how she met Papa and fell in love with him. I wish I knew what gave her the courage to marry him even if her parents didn’t necessarily approve. Those are just a few things I’d ask if I had one more day.

    Mema raised 3 sons. My dad was born in 1945. She had several miscarriages and then six years later had twin boys. I would love to know what it was like when she delivered those twins. In the days before sonograms and weekly visits to the doctor, what was that moment like when they said “Oh, there’s two of them!”? Was she happy, was she scared, was she overwhelmed?

    Her 3 boys all turned out well. They graduated from college, married and had families of their own. They were a close knit family and everyone came to her house for a huge spaghetti lunch every Sunday. I don’t know that there was ever a Sunday when someone wasn’t at her house eating spaghetti and meatballs. I’d love to know how she raised her boys. What were her prayers for them? What did she instill in them while they were growing up? How did she discipline them because honestly, some of the stories from their childhood would lead you to believe they could have ended up serving time instead of becoming productive members of society.

    Mema’s best friend was her sister Mamie. Aunt Mamie drove the half mile over to Mema’s house every morning so they could have their coffee together. I remember when I was little, Mema had a little coffee cup for me so that I could join them. Mema never learned how to drive so Aunt Mamie chauffered her everywhere. They were always heading off to “Beall Brothers”, or “the Market Basket” to see what was on sale. I’d love to know what they talked about. What were their thoughts on their family? Were they happily married? Did they even think about those things?

    She had a formal living room that was separated from the rest of the house by a wooden pocket door. She never used that room unless she was hosting a wedding or baby shower. I can count on one hand the number of times people actually sat in there, but as a child I loved going in there and looking at all of her pretty china figurines and playing with a little table that opened up to reveal a copper interior. She also kept a secret stash of premium snack items in the china cabinet and she would pull you aside like a Keebler drug dealer and say, “psst…come see what Mema has in here for you” as she pulled out the Nutter Butters or Little Debbie snack cakes.

    Family was everything to Mema. She was surrounded by the people she loved and who loved her the most. She knew what was truly important and her home reflected that. It was very rare that there weren’t at least 20 people in her house at any given time. She was always there to laugh at a good joke or old story, to cook a great meal or to read a story to a grandbaby. I can still hear her reading me The Little Match Girl over and over again to help me fall asleep. She was a night owl and a scaredy cat like me, so she always understood how hard it was for me to go to bed.

    Mema slipped away from us unexpectedly. The summer before I got married she apparently had a stroke that just changed something in her. She was okay physically, but something changed inside that never really came back. I guess that’s one of the reasons that I wish for one more day with her because everything changed so suddenly. She lived four years longer and would have good days and bad, but was never quite the same.

    Now that I’m married and have a daughter of my own there are so many things I wish I could ask her about her life. When you’re younger you just don’t realize the richness of a life well lived and don’t question how it all happened. I would love to have one more day to ask her about her hopes, her dreams, her heartbreaks and disappointments and just to make her happy I’d let her make me some of that world famous spaghetti.

  • Sisterhood of the borrowed black socks

    I have one younger sister named Amy. I don’t mean that I have other younger sisters whose names aren’t Amy. I think what I’m trying to say is I have one younger sister and her name is Amy. She is 3 years and 9 months younger than me, which means I was exactly Caroline’s age when she was born. That’s hard for me to believe because Caroline seems so old to me right now, and when I look back at my life, I can’t remember a time that I didn’t have a sister.

    Today is my little sister’s 32nd birthday.

    32.

    How is that possible?

    I realize since I will be 36 in August, that obviously she must be turning 32, but in so many ways I still picture her as a 12 year old with enormous hair in a private school uniform yelling at me, “Slow down! You’re driving too fast! I’m going to tell on you as soon as we get home!”

    When I was little, one of my favorite games to play was Wizard of Oz. I loved to be Dorothy and I could always count on Amy to be my faithful little Toto. She followed me everywhere I went, so I figured I might as well make the best of it. I’d spread out my mama’s old yellow comforter on the living room floor and travel down the yellow brick road as my little “Toto” crawled behind me barking.

    Later on, I discovered the book “Freaky Friday” and loved that the main character called her little brother “Ape Face”. I quickly decided it would be a great name for my friends and me to call my poor sister.

    Obviously, I was really nice. A doting big sister.

    However, in my defense, Amy did have quite the reputation on our street. She was known to make grown kids come crying to our front door to ask our mom if she would please make Amy give their Big Wheel back because she had commandeered it and wouldn’t let go without a fight. Everyone was a little bit scared of her.

    She got me back for making her play Toto and the whole Ape Face thing the summer before I started 5th grade. My mom had gone back to work and my friends and I had some boys ride their bikes over to the house while the babysitter was there, which was strictly forbidden. Amy took blackmail to a whole new level and used this information against me for years. It got her more nights of me scratching her back before she went to sleep than I can even tell y’all. Finally, in about 7th grade, I decided the statute of limitations had surely worn out on this offense and finally told her to go ahead and tell. It was a relief like I have never known.

    We could be the best of friends one minute and then turn on each other in an instant. In fact, one fight is so legendary that, to this day, it will bring up a heated discussion.

    We call it The Black Sock Debacle of 1988.

    It was fall of my senior year of high school and I was truly a pleasure to be around. Like most 17 year olds, I had the world completely figured out and certainly didn’t need anyone telling me how to live my life or breathing air in my presence. Amy was in 8th grade and attended a private Christian school which required her to wear a uniform. However, one day a month was “Free Dress Day”.

    Since I attended public school, my wardrobe was significantly larger than Amy’s so she usually borrowed something of mine to wear on Free Dress Day. It seems on this particular Free Dress Day she wanted to borrow my black socks.

    Now, we could spend a few hours discussing why I even had black socks, but that’s beside the point. And honestly, I have no explanation other than to say that the late 80’s were an unfortunate time in fashion.

    I told her no. The black socks were off limits.

    I am telling y’all I was the picture of sweetness and generosity.

    Well, lo and behold, she snuck into my room and had the audacity to wear my black socks. I was infuriated. I was enraged. I threw a fit about the thievery of my black socks, and though I am sure my mom thought this whole thing was one of the dumbest incidents she had ever witnessed, she was forced to punish my sister.

    Amy got grounded for wearing my black socks.

    And I was glad.

    So, today on my sister’s 32nd birthday, I would like to publicly acknowledge that perhaps I pushed the sock incident too far. Maybe I should have been a little more forgiving and understanding about how a 13 year old girl, forced to wear a hunter green plaid skirt and matching vest on a daily basis, could have been driven to steal a pair of black socks.

    When you think about the unspoken freedoms a pair of black socks can convey, it’s totally understandable.

    Little did I know then that the same little sister who borrowed my socks would be the same person who would help me keep my sanity after Caroline was born. At that point, Amy didn’t have children of her own and was more than happy to come over on a daily basis and hold Caroline for hours while I did such novel things as shower and brush my teeth. She’d sit on the couch with me, listen and hold Caroline, while I sat in my purple, spit up stained, chenille robe and cried due to sleeplessness and a potent cocktail of postpartum hormones.

    I will be forever grateful for the afternoons she spent on that couch. And watching her hold my baby girl and seeing how much she loved her, just because she was mine, made me love my sister that much more.

    Happy Birthday, Amy. I still can’t believe you’re old enough to drive, much less to have a husband and sweet baby girl of your very own.

  • I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name

    Last night, Caroline spent the night with Mimi and Bops. P and I weren’t sure what to do with our night o’ freedom, so after ruling out going to the movies due to the fact there isn’t anything showing that is the right mix of romance and bloodshed to satisfy both of our movie watching needs, we ended up going to get ice cream and then going home.

    No one prepared me that your mid-30’s are filled with such reckless abandon.

    When we got home, P came in and turned on the T.V., and much to our joy and delight, some obscure channel was running a Wonder Years marathon. We’re huge fans of Kevin Arnold and Winnie Cooper, so we grabbed some candy to wash down our ice cream and settled in to watch.

    I’m not sure what channel this was, but it was obviously targeted to an older demographic because every commercial was for a product like a Personal Hearing Amplifier Device that will allow you to overhear girls at the gym discussing how buff you are, not to mention hearing them question why you’re holding that odd shaped device while walking on the treadmill. There were also commercials for motorized scooters and some Indian chief selling Lakota Arthritis Relief Ointment.

    It’s obviously a wild target audience watching The Wonder Years on a Friday night.

    Finally, at 10p.m., the marathon was over and we were just about ready to go to bed. I went in the bathroom to brush my teeth and when I came out one last time to check the email (because I have an addiction), P told me I was missing out on some quality television.

    It was one of those paid advertisements for Time Life music. Soft Rock Classics. I knew it would suck me in with all of its Dan Fogelberg and Boz Scaggs. And it did.

    I knew the words to EVERY single song. “Wildfire”…know it. “Sister Golden Hair Surprise”…oh, yes ma’am. “Eye in the Sky”…yes, okay, yes. I didn’t even know that I knew who Bertie Higgins is, but I know his song, “We had it all, just like Bogey and Bacall, starring in our own late,late show, sailing away to Key Largo”.

    P and I sat and sang the words to each one of these soft rock classics as they scrolled across the screen. I should be embarrassed, but such is my deep and abiding love for these soft rock favorites, that I am owning it. And before y’all judge me and my love of Rupert Holmes, ask yourself if you can finish these lyrics, “if you like Pina Coladas…”

    That’s what I thought.

    Some brought back memories of couple skating at the Magic Skate, some remind me of riding in the back of my mom’s Buick LeSabre, and most of them I just know. And therein lies the question.

    How do P and I know the words to all of these songs? It’s like they had some power over the years to seep into our subconscious and we were powerless to stop it. Why do I know all the words to “Saturday in the Park”, but yet can’t remember more than 4 words from the 3 years of Spanish that I took or the number of my checking account?

    I told P it was dangerous to let me sit and watch because I knew it would be a matter of time before I would want to pick up the phone and order. Plus, if we called within the next 11 minutes, we would get free shipping and handling. A girl only has so much willpower. And then, they threw in a bonus CD of the best songs of 1977. All 168 soft rock classics, plus the best of 1977, plus free shipping and handling, for a 30 day trial fee of $9.95.

    They never said how much it would cost to purchase the entire collection.

    So, P and I sat on the couch as I served as my own T.V. infomercial asking myself “How much would I pay for these 168 classic soft rock songs?” $129.99? $99.99? $59.99?

    Remember, these songs are getting harder and harder to find and it would take a lot of time and money for me to compile this kind of collection on my own. Time/Life has done an incredible public service in making these classic hits available on a 19 disc collection.

    19 discs of pure musical gold. That’s the gift that keeps giving, y’all.

    Caroline and I could drive down the road (if we had a car) and listen to these songs over and over again, thus ensuring a fine musical legacy for my child, albeit one that might make her a social outcast if she were to enter junior high with nothing but Bread and America on her iPod.

    And if the songs weren’t enough to sell themselves, they were being sold by the two guys from Air Supply, neither of whom have gotten the news that the early 80’s are over. Watching them sit and strum their guitars and sing acoustic versions of “Making Love out of Nothing At All” and “Even the Nights Are Better”, while sitting on white couches with what surely was a pitcher of margaritas on the coffee table, just made the entire offer that much more compelling.

    The entire collection not only included Air Supply songs, but was RECOMMENDED by Air Supply themselves. Air Supply and classic soft rock are practically synonymous terms.

    I think one satisfied customer summed it up best when he said “These songs aren’t just songs about our emotions, they are our emotions”.

    And at that point, P had to pry the phone out of my hand and tell me it was time to go to bed. But I went to bed singing, “I can’t live, if living is without you”, not to P, but to this incredible array of Time/Life classic soft rock.

  • I’ve always thought the CEO of Toyota was a kind, generous man

    Y’all know that I love nothing more than to compile a list of various items that are of gripping importance for you to ponder over the weekend.

    1. I need to make an edit to my story about Nena and the can of OFF. Gulley told Nena I had written about her again ON THE COMPUTER and told the story of mistaking OFF for Pam. Nena reprimanded Gulley and let her know she had forgotten a critical element of the story that must be told to preserve her good name.

    After she realized the error of her OFF ways and didn’t want to call and fess up, Granddaddy implored her to at least call Poison Control and tell them the situation. So Nena called up the folks at Poison Control and when the young man answered the phone she told him, “Lord help me, but I think I just poisoned my entire Sunday School class.”

    Her confession was met with howls of laughter until the young man could calm down and ask her what happened. She told him the story and he said the worst thing that could happen is some of them may get a stomachache, at which point she made the decision to “let them go to the ER, that’s what it’s for.”

    Also, it seems that some of the deceased’s family was in town from Louisiana, ate some of the muffins and declared them “JUST DELICIOUS!”, which just goes to prove that Cajuns really do eat anything.

    2. I thought I had officially announced I had resigned from my job in my post last week, but when I read it again I realized I didn’t necessarily make it official. So, for those of y’all who have asked, I did resign from my job a week ago this past Monday. My official last day is Tuesday, May 1st, at which point they will come and take my company car away, leaving me without vehicular transportation.

    So, here’s a big shout out to any execs over at Volvo, Pontiac, or Toyota! How about hooking Big Mama up with a car? I realize I have slightly less power over the American buying public than say, Oprah, but I still promise to influence the 8 people who read this blog to buy your fine automobile. I would say that Gulley and I would be willing to take a cross country road trip a la Gayle and Oprah, but we’d have to take the kids and let’s be honest, we wouldn’t make it to the Texas state line.

    3. P’s mama emailed me today regarding my post on funeral practices to let me know that a friend of hers actually attended a memorial service held in someone’s backyard complete with margaritas and mariachis. Talk about going out in style.

    P informed me he’d like to have that kind of service when he goes, and then I could just take him down to the ranch. I’m not completely sure how that would be so different from how he spends a lot of his time already.

    Oh, I’m kidding. He doesn’t even like mariachi music.

    4. It was a gorgeous day here yesterday and I took the dogs on a long walk while I listened to my iPod. I figure I better get in shape for all the walking I’m going to be doing without a car (Seriously, Honda, GMC, Chrysler, Cadillac, Nissan? Anyone want to donate a vehicle?) and while I was walking I noticed something and I know I’m not alone.

    Please tell me I’m not alone.

    When I have my iPod on and the music turned up loud, I can’t help but sing along to whatever is on. Loudly. And for the people on the street who don’t have the benefit of hearing Kelly Clarkson’s rendition of “Since You’ve Been Gone” drowning out my version, it just has to be painful. I think a dog may have howled at me, but what does he know?

    Those cocker spaniels are a judgemental breed.

    It will probably just get worse as the summer goes on and I don’t have a car to drive around in so that I can sing my rendition of Beyonce or Chris Tomlin in the privacy of my own vehicle. (Mercedes? BMW? Kia? Saturn? You can’t buy this kind of publicity. At least 20 people will read about your generosity and fine automotive products)

    5. And last but not least, is this video that I will just entitle “A Flair for the Dramatic” or “What She Wishes She Could Do at her Dance Recital”


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