Year: 2007

  • Se habla party

    Friday night was the beginning of a 10 day party here in San Antonio called Fiesta, which in case y’all don’t know, means Party in Spanish. And that about sums up my bilingual abilities, although Caroline did inform me the other day that pappalotte means windmill in Spanish. She obviously hasn’t inherited my gift of forgetting everything that finds its way into my brain almost instantaneously.

    I’m not sure exactly what all Fiesta celebrates, but it has something to do with Texas history and the ability to perfectly fry a corn tortilla into a crispy pile of goodness and call it a Gordita.

    And the translation for gordita is little fat one, which is about as accurate a description for what a food can do to you as I’ve ever heard. Except for maybe Big Mac.

    For 10 days the whole city basically becomes one big festival. Anywhere you look you can find overpriced food on a stick and overserved drunk people on a bench. There’s Oyster Bake, Taste of New Orleans, NIOSA (Night in Old San Antonio), and parades. Have mercy, there are parades.

    A river parade, a Battle of Flowers parade and a Fiesta Flambeau parade. It’s a mass of people everywhere you look.

    It’s a huge deal in the city and the first year I lived here and P and I were dating, he took me to alot of the different events so that I could get a real idea of what it was all about. As far as I could tell, it’s about eating too much food and sweating in huge crowds of people while getting beer spilled on you.

    I’m all about eating too much, but I’m not a big fan of the large crowd. So, these days we confine our Fiesta merriment to just one little neighborhood event, which is where we were last Friday night.

    Caroline had a ball because her only requirement for a good time is a bouncy castle and it did not disappoint. We paid for a few overpriced bounce sessions, barbecued shrimp on a stick, brisket tacos, and some blue hair spray paint, which some slick, high school salesman sold to Caroline while she sat in her stroller, leaving P and I to choose between watching a huge fit or letting our daughter be hosed down with blue hair paint.

    The blue hair paint won, hands down. It’s the best $3.50 we spent all night.

    Fiesta also includes several kings, queens, princesses and royal courts. When I was growing up in Beaumont, we had the Neches River Festival, which was really fancy. What else would you expect from a Festival honoring a muddy river running through a refinery town? I thought being a princess in the Neches River Festival was just about the biggest thing ever, but let me tell y’all, this San Antonio royalty puts the Neches River Queens to shame and not just because they have all their teeth.

    First of all, you have King Antonio. I’m not sure how he is elected or what exactly he is king of, but if any of y’all were to find your way to San Antonio and ran into King Antonio making his rounds, you might not realize you’re in the presence of royalty, and instead wonder why this bus driver has so many medals on his chest.

    But he is like a real king, y’all. He has a motorcade with a police escort and as far as I can tell, his chief job is to visit various elementary and preschools and hand out medals to a bunch of manic kids waving brightly colored streamers and shaking maracas. In fact, when I was looking at preschools for Caroline, some of them had brochures that looked like this:

    Accredited by the Episcopal Private School Association
    Full staff of experienced, Harvard educated teachers
    All children fluent in 4 languages upon entering Kindergarten
    Visit from King Antonio during Fiesta week

    What??? A visit from King Antonio? You can’t put a price on that. How, oh how do we get into this school? How can we deny our child an opportunity to have an upclose encounter with royalty?

    Oh, there are other kings floating around the city, but don’t you be fooled. There is only one King Antonio and the others are just imposters. Imposters, I tell you.

    Then, there is the queen and her court. There is a huge coronation ceremony that requires these poor girls to wear dresses that are so beaded and heavy that they weigh about 150 pounds. Not only do they have to truck across the stage wearing these behemoths, they have to do a full, deep curtsy in them. One year I attended the coronation and one of those poor girls had so much momentum going as she dragged that dress across the stage, that when she made her turn part of her train went into the orchestra pit and I just knew I was about to witness the greatest moment in Coronation history as she was sucked right into the pit.

    But life sometimes isn’t fair and it didn’t happen.

    You’ll never convince me that these girls are chosen based not on family position and social status, but on who has the physical tenacity to haul those dresses around and delusional enough to try to bow in them.

    When I moved to San Antonio almost 13 years ago, I didn’t really get all this Fiesta stuff. Not that I necessarily do now, but you got to love a city that takes eating good food and having a good time this seriously. Not to mention, it’s where I met P and the gordita.

    And if I hadn’t met P, I wouldn’t have this.

    Viva Fiesta.

    That’s means Long Live the Party.

    I’m practically fluent.

  • Cleansing my soul and my home

    Since y’all are my internet friends, and yes, that is how I refer to y’all, even though P has asked me repeatedly not to use that term because it sounds oh so nerdy, I am going to make a confession.

    I have cheated on someone I love.

    I’m not proud, but I would be lying if I didn’t say that if it’s wrong, I don’t want to be right.

    I let another woman clean my house behind Cata’s back. I’ve never felt so dirty, yet been surrounded by such clean.

    A few weeks ago, I posted about Cata and her addiction to the Pledge Grab-its. It had gotten out of hand. We were having to make our monthly budget revolve around the cases and cases of Grab-its that were being purchased at regular intervals.

    And honestly, it’s not just the Grab-its. Cata is a wonderful person. I love her and there is no one sweeter, but bless her heart, she is off her housecleaning game. In fact, after the last time she was here, she left her Coke can on the counter and I found used papertowels all through the house. P walked in and asked me, “Are you cleaning up after the maid?”

    I was, y’all. I was cleaning up after my maid.

    Then, I had a discussion with Gulley, who has a housecleaner come about once a month, and she mentioned how her housecleaner puts fresh sheets on the bed, washes the dirty sheets and then folds them and stacks them in the closet.

    WHAT??? That is PURE, UNMITIGATED CLEANING MADNESS!

    I had to admit that Cata doesn’t even make our beds, much less change the sheets. It was almost physically painful for me to admit that piece of embarrassing information out loud.

    So, last week Cata couldn’t make it for some reason and the house was in desperate need of being cleaned. And since I am the domestic goddess that I am, it honestly never occurred to me that I could do it myself.

    Plus, we were out of Grab-its.

    P has a guy that works for him and he mentioned to P that his girlfriend cleans houses. I tried to fight my urges, but I just didn’t have enough willpower. I gave in and said, “Yes, ask if her if she will please come clean my house.”

    When Ava arrived, she asked me for a few basic supplies, such as a bucket. A bucket? For what? What on God’s green earth would a housekeeper do with a bucket?

    Oh, it seems that Ava doesn’t just want to sweep the floors using inordinately expensive cleaning cloths, she would like to mop the floors as well.

    Mop. the. floors. Now, that’s just crazy talk.

    Y’all, I came home and although I should be embarrassed to admit this, but let’s be honest, I passed that milestone a while back, I took a picture of my kitchen floors because they have never been so clean.

    The house smelled clean, the beds were made up with fresh sheets and she even mentioned that if I had any laundry I’d like her to do, to just leave it on the floor in the laundry room. Not that I’d let her do my laundry, because I have huge laundry quirks and issues, but the fact that she offered? Blew my mind.

    I couldn’t get Cata to drop my clothes off at the drycleaners.

    She dusted my shutters, she actually moved furniture and vacummed under it, she vacummed MY COUCH. She is an angel straight from a dust free heaven.

    Later that night, P and I were sitting in the living room talking, and I noticed something looked different but I couldn’t quite figure it out. I have a pretty ficus plant that sits in a corner of the room and I realized what was throwing me off was the brightness coming from the leaves. It seems that Ava DUSTED the leaves of the plant causing them to glow with a green goodness that hadn’t been seen since the day I brought it home.

    And she didn’t even use Grab-its.

    I don’t want to go on and on (too late, you’re thinking) but she even folded the end of the toilet paper roll into a neat little triangle shape. I’m not going to divulge if I took a picture of the little Charmin triangle of beauty.

    I told P now that I’ve experienced Ava, things with Cata will never be the same again. I don’t even care that Cata may come in and notice that some other woman has been using her cleaning supplies. Oh, and she’ll notice alright, because in between Cata’s visits, those supplies don’t get used.

    Don’t judge me people. I’m just being honest. Plus, I am very busy using my time to decide if I should let my bangs grow out.

    Then, in a sign that can only be from God, I was pulling the broom out of our broom closet to clean up one of our hourly spills, and somehow the broom got caught and while I was using the time honored, loosening method of yanking it as hard as I could to pull it free, it got caught on the Grab-its sweeper and broke the bottom half off. The sweeper is broken beyond repair.

    I decided that I wasn’t going to replace it. Cata would just have to deal with life after Grab-its. I wondered if it was fate’s way of telling me it was time to let go of Cata and give Ava the commitment she’s been looking for.

    And then I resigned from my job, so it’s all become a moot point.

    No more maids, y’all. I’m going to have to clean my own house and figure out how to handle important issues like my bangs growing out all at the same time.

    I’m heading to the store tomorrow to buy myself a new Grab-its sweeper. My poor ficus plant will never be this clean again.

    I better go take a picture.

  • Split pea soup and other things to get you through

    I’ve spent the last few weeks talking to AJ on a daily basis, just listening when she needs someone to listen and offering prayers and encouragement along the way. During this time, we’ve cried some and laughed a lot because sometimes you just need to laugh. As Truvy says in Steel Magnolias, “Laughter through tears is one of my favorite emotions.”

    And since I shared our sadness yesterday, I thought I’d share some laughter today.

    A.J.’s family is financially very comfortable. I mean her daddy is a surgeon and you don’t generally hear people say things like, “Well, you know he’s a doctor and they are just barely making ends meet.” They also tend to have friends that are in the same financial type boat, present blogger excluded.

    Watching the last few months unfold has taught me a few things.

    1. Apparently, when the upper class are facing tough circumstances, their friends send their maids over to clean the person’s home. Yesterday, AJ said there were no less than 5 maids in her home at one time.

    I would have sent Cata, but there aren’t enough Grab its in the free world to give her the supply she would need to clean a house that size.

    2. When they send food over, they do it with style. At one point throughout this whole thing, I told AJ that I would really like to bring them a meal and asked what they were completely sick of so that I could avoid it. Her answer?

    Beef Tenderloin.

    I was thinking more along the lines of receiving too many King Ranch Chicken casseroles made with Velveeta. It’ s not too often that you get to hear someone say, “I am just sick of all this delicious, high quality beef served with garlic infused potatoes and fresh spinach casserole with creme brulee for dessert.”

    3. Instead of everyone bringing over their best fried chicken, tomato aspic, or potato salad for the funeral, they hire caterers. I honestly think there will be someone carving prime rib in the corner and an open bar.

    AJ and I have laughed about all of this because even though it’s the world she’s grown up in, she’s down to earth enough to find the comedy in all of it.

    Last night we were laughing about one lady who brought over some split pea soup in a reused milk jug. My personal opinion is split pea soup isn’t the most visually appealing food even when presented in a delicate, china bowl. AJ said her sister came downstairs, saw the milk jug full of soup sitting on the counter and asked, “Who barfed in the milk jug?”

    Needless to say, the split pea soup remained uneaten.

    I was over at Gulley’s this morning and I was telling her some of these things. When I told her about the split pea soup, she told me a great story about Nena.

    A few years ago, one of Nena’s good friends passed away. Nena’s best friend, Jo, was making some soup to take over to the family’s home, so Nena decided to make some sweet cornbread muffins to accompany the soup.

    Nena baked her muffins and wrapped them up to deliver, but saved two of them for she and Granddaddy to eat with their lunch later on. She and Jo drove over and delivered their soup, which I promise y’all was not in an old milk jug because Nena would never allow such unsavoryness, and muffins.

    After she got home, she fixed her lunch and took a bite of her cornbread muffin. She said it was the worst tasting thing she’d ever had in her mouth and spit it out. It was so bad she couldn’t even swallow it. She ran into the kitchen to try to figure out what went wrong. And that’s when she saw the error of her ways.

    Instead of spraying the muffin tins with Pam cooking spray, she had sprayed them with a can of OFF mosquito repellant.

    She told Granddaddy what she had done and he said “You need to call those folks up and let them know that they can’t eat those muffins. It could poison them.”

    Nena replied, “You hush your mouth. I’m not about to ruin my reputation in this town and let them know those horrible muffins are mine. If they get sick they can go to the emergency room, that’s what it’s for.”

    I’m sure that family was wishing someone had just brought over split pea soup in a milk jug, but on the upside, they probably didn’t have to worry about mosquitos for days after the funeral was over.

  • A good fight

    I just got home from my friend A.J.’s house. Her mom passed away Sunday evening around 6:30 p.m after a 6 month battle with pancreatic cancer. A.J. had called me earlier in the day to let me know that it wasn’t going to be much longer, but even when the phone call came, I still felt surprised. It’s just hard to imagine that someone who was so full of life is gone. Last week while I was in the midst of all my life changes, I spent an evening helping A.J. write her mom’s eulogy. Needless to say, it put things in their proper perspective.

    This evening their home was filled with friends, family, laughter and tears. It was the kind of gathering that always seemed to happen at their house, but tonight her mom wasn’t there in the center of it all, yet she was the center of it all. I know there is relief that she is no longer in pain, but there is pain in feeling that she’s gone much too early.

    A few months ago, I sent her a letter thanking her for how much she encouraged me as a new mother and told her that I hoped to raise Caroline to have the same qualities that she instilled in A.J. She emailed me back (apologizing for the rudeness of email opposed to the written letter, of course) and told me that I was too generous in my compliments and she had definitely made mistakes along the way.

    All I know is that tonight, her home was filled with people who think she got it just right. She lived life to the fullest, she always made time for the people she loved, she followed God faithfully, and she fought until the end. And although we know where she is, she’ll be terribly missed.

    “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day…” 2 Timothy 4:7-8

  • Maybe we’ll get a puppy instead

    Caroline and I were driving down the road the other day and out of the blue she said, “Mama, will you go to the store and buy me a baby sister?”

    Well, where do I begin with that line of questioning? Something tells me she isn’t necessarily interested in the part of the answer that involves explaining that little sisters don’t typically come from the store.

    And when the time comes that she is interested in that part, I will sit down with her and tell her all about the stork that brings babies, because that’s what good mamas do. I won’t have my girl growing up ignorant about the birds and the bees. No ma’am.

    So, I went with the time honored tradition of avoiding answering a question by asking a question of my own.

    “Sweetie, do you want a baby sister?”

    “Yes, so when she’s bad I can give her spankings.”

    And that response completely eased any guilt I was feeling about her not having a sibling.

  • Internet shame both in song and picture

    Tracey over at More than a Minivan Mom tagged me for a little meme about my 7 favorite songs. I don’t know how I’m going to narrow the list down to 7, but since she took “Can’t Stop til You Get Enough” by Michael Jackson, that helps me out some.

    I am also a little afraid that writing this list down on the internet for everyone to see will cause people to laugh and mock me and my song preferences. Therefore, I’m also posting this picture of me from prom, because while you’re laughing and mocking, I might as well cover all my bases. Plus, Amanda asked me to and I love her because, not only is she a fellow Aggie, but she uses phrases that crack me up like “missing out on a blessing” plus, she understands the complexity of dealing with big hair. So, Amanda, here’s your blessing for the day. I wouldn’t want you to miss out.

    I’m just sad I don’t have a photo that better showcases the bubble skirt.

    And one more thing before I get to my song selections. Do y’all see that I’m procrastinating about putting my diverse musical tastes out there for all the world to see?

    If any of y’all ever find yourself at home on say, a Thursday night, and have a craving for Ghiradelli Double Chocolate brownies and so you open a box, pour in the dry mix and 1/3 cup of water, and then discover that you’re out of vegetable oil, and you wonder if putting in a 1/3 cup of Crisco butter sticks and extra water would suffice…the answer is that yes, yes it does, if you don’t mind making a big pan of chocolate crumbs with an odd consistency. But if you’re like me and have no shame in just pouring those crumbs down your throat, then it totally works.

    Paula Deen would be so proud.

    Okay, here are my 7 favorite songs as of this moment. There is no guarantee that this list would be the same tomorrow.

    1. “Something in the Way She Moves” by James Taylor. I could just list 7 songs by JT and be done with it, but that would be boring. And even though sometimes it may be hard to tell, I try not to be boring.

    2. “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond. Obvious choice. It will always have special meaning for me because I promise that I listened to it about a million times during the summer after my miscarriage and knew that God was going to eventually give me a girl and we would name her Caroline.

    There is nothing quite as attractive as a hormonal, half crazy, moderately depressed woman belting out “Sweet Caroline” as she drives through town.

    3. “If I Had a Million” by Pat Green. Any song that talks about drinking margaritas and dancing to mariachis is my kind of song. Seriously, it’s just a beautiful love song.

    4. “Cowboy Take Me Away” by the Dixie Chicks. There again, I could just name 7 Dixie Chicks songs and be done. Love the Dixie Chicks and not just because Charlie and Emily are my BFF from the pool.

    5. “I’d Have to be Crazy” by Willie Nelson. Willie Nelson reminds me of my childhood. I can’t hear his voice without going back to the days of fast forwarding songs on casette players. Back then, I always liked “On the Road Again”, but now I’m partial to this and “Pancho and Lefty”.

    6. “Crazy in Love” by Beyonce. It just doesn’t get much more fabulous than Beyonce. I almost chose “Bootylicious”, but decided that I’d go with a more sophisticated, upscale choice. Beyonce’s music makes me feel like I can dance. And that’s a tall order.

    7. “Our Lips Are Sealed” by the Go-Go’s. It’s a classic. Don’t tell me I’m alone.

    Alright, I have bared my soul and my enormous 80’s hair. Shout out in the comments or post your favorites. What makes you shake your booty or moves your heart? OR BOTH?