Year: 2007

After the last twenty-four hours of living through the ARCTIC BLAST ’07, which so far has consisted of intermittent cold rain, I now realize why God made me a southern girl, other than the fact that I have a tendency to like big hair and good manners.

If I lived in the north and was cooped up all winter long, I wouldn’t just be a Big Mama, I would be an enormous two ton Mama. I cannot quit eating. It’s like I have turned into some sort of mammal that is stocking up before the hibernation.

I’m not sure how much is due to the cold weather and how much is due to the complete boredom of being stuck inside for over twenty-four hours, but either way I have got to stop the madness, especially in light of the fact that the really bad weather that they keep forecasting hasn’t even hit yet. At this rate, P and Caroline will be rolling Mama out to play in the snow on Tuesday.

Yesterday, I had two breakfast tacos, a chocolate chip cookie, peanut butter crackers, two diet cokes, more chocolate chip cookies both in dough and cookie form, and a bag of Sour Patch Kids.

I’m planning out my dinner menu for the next three days and the common ingredients are butter, cream of whatever soup, cheese, and more butter. It is like I’ve turned into Paula Deen, but with better hair.

The stir craziness has also led me to completely clean out the playroom. I dug deep and packed up toys that haven’t been played with in over a year and wouldn’t you know that those are the toys that Caroline spent all morning trying to find. It’s like she has some kind of radar. Would it be wrong to tell her they died and went to toy heaven?

I also cleaned out her closet. In the top of her closet, I keep a small, plastic crate that serves as a home for a few college/newlywed/pre-child mementos. There are cards from my grandparents, notes my dad wrote me in college letting me know he was working hard to keep me in the style to which I’d become accustomed, and tons of photos.

There are a few of Gulley and me with hair so big that I can’t believe we both fit in the picture. Seriously, someone should have told us to step away from the teasing comb and the hairspray. Of course, I can blame some of our big hair woes on our roommate Meredith who shared with us her secret for great hair which was, “You’ve just got to tease the sh*t out of it”. We listened. We listened well.

Anyway, as I was looking at the pictures, I came across a framed photo that was taken right after P and I started dating. Seeing as how that was twelve years ago, we look a little different. P weighed 155 the day we got married and he’s 6 feet tall, so you might say he was a little on the thin side. Over the course of the years, he has filled in a little. He still looks good, just a little meatier than he used to be back in his bachelor days.

I showed Caroline the picture and asked her if she knew who it was. She didn’t, so I told her it was Mama and Daddy. She said “Oh, look at Daddy! He looks brand new!”

Yes sweetie, that’s when Daddy was brand new, before Mama wore him down and showed him how to hibernate and consume mass quantities of cream based soups and chocolate products.

I was talking to Gulley on the phone earlier this week and was describing the odd outfit that Dee (my friend from work) had on that day. Considering that we work in a pretty conservative field, Dee tends to dress a little flamboyantly and often puts together an odd assortment of accessories. I personally, wouldn’t even know where to find brown fishnet hose.

I explained to Gulley, “She had on black tights with some kind of little socks with a granny type lace up boot. Then, she had on a pretty, gray skirt with a nice, black sweater and had topped the whole thing with a polarfleece vest. You know like a polarfleece vest I’d wear to go running.”

Gulley interrupted me and asked, “Have you started running?”

And I said, “No…but if I were to start, I would wear a vest like the one Dee had on today.”

Yesterday, Caroline and I headed to the grocery store. A trip to the store was not in my original plan, but due to the fact that Caroline has acquired another case of intestinal distress, I needed to get some bananas. We had everything else we needed for the BRAT diet and since it is, in fact, the BRAT diet and not the RAT diet, I felt we had to have the bananas in an attempt to make the foulness stop.

Please make the foulness stop.

I made the executive decision to head to the gourmet grocery store instead of our normal HEB. The main reason for this decision is they have chocolate chip cookies in their bakery that are almost as good as homemade, and Mama needed herself a cookie or six.

Anyway, while we were there, I decided we might as well load up on other things we might need in light of the fact that we are supposed to get a wintry mix of weather on Monday and Tuesday.

Y’all haven’t lived until you’ve experienced a wintry mix here in South Texas. The meteorologists will be on ALL DAY with important updates about the VERY COLD RAIN that is falling and tell you that although the temperature is currently 40 degrees, it could plummet to 32 degrees in a heartbeat so DO NOT LEAVE YOUR HOME. Everyone knows there is nothing more dangerous than driving on very cold wet roads. All the graphic designers at the various networks will be competing to see who can come up with the best winter catchphrase and graphic. It will be an all day event called BIG CHILL ’07 or FROSTY FREEZE ’07. It ought to be called “IT’S ONLY COLD RAIN SO YOU HAVE NO REASON TO SHUT THE CITY DOWN”.

I realize that I have wandered off on a tangent.

So we’re in the grocery store and I decide to get the ingredients to make crawfish etouffee since it’s one of my favorite things to eat on a cold night. Since I don’t shop here all the time and they have a huge produce section, I was wondering aloud where the green bell peppers were, when Caroline pointed right to them and yelled “Land HO!”.

She cracks me up.

I secured a few peppers for us and then headed to the seafood department to buy my frozen crawfish tails. They didn’t have any in the freezer case, so I asked the butcher if he had any in the back. He went to look and sure enough, he had two pounds. Perfect! I’ll take them.

Until he told me they were $24.99 a pound.

I know my mouth dropped open. I looked at him and maybe half shrieked, “$24.99 a pound?” and he said in a very authoritative voice, “Yes, but it’s because they’re from Louisiana.”

Oh, well that makes complete sense seeing as how Louisiana is a whole six hour drive away and covered in crawfish.

What I wanted to tell this poor man, who really has no control over what he is being forced to charge for the bastard of the seafood world, is that I spent a good part of my life in Beaumont, Texas, which is twenty minutes from the Louisiana border, and after a good rain we had crawfish milling around our backyard. Crawfish are not rare, they’re not a delicacy, and they’re not flown in from New Zealand, therefore, there is no way on God’s green earth that I’m paying $24.99 a pound for them.

That would be over $50.00 after tax and that kind of money would be much better spent buying a sweater at Banana Republic.

Needless to say, I left the store with everything I needed to make my crawfish etouffee except for you know…crawfish.

All was not lost though, because while I was there I stocked up on other essential items we will need in case the cold rain keeps us homebound. Sour Patch Kids, Assorted Jelly Bellies, brownie mix, a 12 pack of Corona Light and two bottles of wine.

If that doesn’t get us through, I don’t know what will.