Year: 2009

This post just put me to sleep while I wrote it

I watched the weather forecast on Tuesday night and listened to our local meteorologist as he predicted that rain and extremely cold temperatures would arrive around noon on Wednesday. So I went to bed with a master plan for Caroline and me to hit HEB before the front arrived. A trip to the grocery store wasn’t really part of our official Spring Break Agenda since I already went late last week, but P informed me that we were out of EVERYTHING.

If you’ve been reading here for any length of time then you know that by “EVERYTHING” what he meant was Nilla Wafers and Zantac 150. He suffers from acid reflux and a love of plain vanilla cookies.

Naturally, the weather man was wrong about the cold front’s noon arrival because it’s what weather men do. I don’t think they mean to lie; I think it’s just God’s way of letting them know they need to quit telling him his business. God’s in charge of the weather even if he doesn’t wear a cheap suit and point to a fancy computer satellite map.

By the time Caroline and I woke up, it was already windy, cold, and rainy. However, we went ahead and ventured out to HEB because what part of Zantac 150 and Nilla Wafer deprivation do you not understand? And, in all fairness, we were also out of Diet Coke and Sour Patch Kids. There was no way I was going to survive an entire day without either of those items. We’re not cavemen.

So we went to the store and then we came home.

Spring Break just keeps getting better and better.

I thought I’d share the rest of our day in pictures.

I cleaned out the refrigerator.

I cleaned this light fixture that hadn’t been cleaned since we installed it almost six years ago.

I cleaned the stove top until I could see my reflection.

In the meantime, Caroline tried on every outfit in her closet, including her Wonder Woman Costume.

She also spent a lot of time walking around with her new travel pillow around her neck.

And then at some point, she took the camera from me and took some pictures of her own.

This is Bruiser.

This is his ear.

And this is the picture I started to color.

I realized I was hanging on by a thin thread when she wanted to turn the page to do a connect-the-dots and I began complaining about how she never lets me finish my pictures.

And that pretty much sums up our day.

On the scale of Spring Break fun, it’s going to be pretty hard to top.

Any suggestions for something to do on a cold, rainy day besides play Sorry, otherwise known as the board game that is now dead to me?
The fishing trip

On Monday afternoon, P mentioned that he would take Caroline to the ranch to go fishing on Tuesday, which worked out nicely because I don’t think another trip to the mall would have gone over all that well. However, if she’s really good, we may hit Target later today. I like to save things like that for special occasions.

Apparently, I’m not the only one suffering from some sort of Daylight Savings Time jet lag because Caroline slept in until 9:15 yesterday. In fact, she was sleeping so hard that she didn’t even wake up when Shorty began raking leaves right by the bedroom window. P rushed outside to ask Shorty to quit raking leaves since Caroline and I were still asleep and for some reason Shorty took that request to mean that he should instead get out the leaf blower and BLOW the leaves out of the yard right by the window.

Because that’s so much quieter.

Anyway, in spite of the roaring sound of the leaf blower, she slept until 9:15. That has happened approximately NONE other times in her entire life.

By the time she woke up, P said they needed to get going if they were going to make it to the ranch, otherwise he’d have to go without her. I guarantee you have never seen someone get a pair of Wranglers and some camo on a child that fast. She was ready to go in about 5.2 seconds with a cup full of dry cereal and a juice box in her hands.

I spent the rest of my morning running a few errands. Then I came home and decided that our bathroom cabinets desperately needed to be cleaned out. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I threw out an entire garbage bag full of various toiletry items, including some Immodium AD that expired in June 2004. On the bright side, it’s nice to know that we haven’t needed any Immodium AD since the early 2000’s.

Apparently my makeup bag is the place where lipgloss goes to die. There were at least sixteen different variations of lipgloss, which is astounding since I wear the exact same color every day. I started trying on various shades to see if any of them were keepers and unfortunately came across some kind of All-Day Lip Color that cemented itself to my lips, which wouldn’t have been so bad except that it was some sort of day-glo coral tone.

Why do I even have that? Did my Great Aunt Fina come to visit and leave it in my bathroom?

So while I threw out six pounds of lipgloss and Maalox (I guess I have some sort of irrational fear about possible stomach ailments that never come to pass. Pun not intended.) my peeps had themselves a big time catching fish and riding around in the Polaris.

I sent the camera with P for the day, hoping he’d get some pictures of the catch of the day. It’s very important to me that we document our Spring Break with photographic evidence of all the fun. He took one darling picture using his cell phone and sent it to me.

I’d love to show it to y’all, but the problem is that I don’t know how to get pictures off my iPhone and onto the computer. Part of the problem may be that I don’t actually have an iPhone, but just a four-year-old hot pink Motorola Razr phone which seemed so cool and edgy four years ago and now is just a constant reminder that technology has passed me by and left me lying in the gutter of total uncoolness.

It’s probably kind of how Bill Gates feels.

However, I did get some video of Caroline talking about her day after they got back home. She was channeling her inner Steven Spielberg, so it took a couple of tries to get the whole story, but here it is in all it’s amateur quality.

Spring Break Fishing Trip from Big Mama on Vimeo.

Here’s hoping that she’ll always say “be-cept”.

Also, the temperatures are supposed to drop into the forties complete with some sort of monsoon later today. It’s going to put a real damper on Spring Break ’09.

Pray for me.
Survival of the fittest and most unenthusiastic

Okay, I’ll admit it. We watched “24” at our house last night.

I know I said we were done with it, but how could we just walk away without knowing if the President would survive the attack by a militia who were not only skilled enough to attack the White House by killing one handyman with a screwdriver, but also managed to bring in a laptop and a complete arsenal while scuba-diving in the Potomac?

What can I say? I guess I like television programming that causes me to suspend my imagination beyond all human reason, which explains why I kept watching “Diff’rent Strokes” even after Dixie Carter married Mr. Drummond and that little red-headed boy with the bowl cut moved into the penthouse.

And also why I kept watching “E.R.” after Dr. Romano not only got his arm cut off by a helicopter, but was then later crushed to death by a helicopter that fell out of the sky. What are the odds?

Anyway, enough about television.

(Like I could ever get enough of the T.V.)

Yesterday we spent our first official day of Spring Break at the outdoor mall here in town. Here is Caroline in front of Neiman Marcus.

I feel like I need to document the week in pictures so that someday when all of Caroline’s friends are reminiscing about their fabulous Spring Breaks spent at Disney World or an exotic beach somewhere, she can pull these out and say, “My mom took me to the mall”.

And all her friends will be totally jealous because who cares about having breakfast with Cinderella compared to riding the escalator at Nordstrom and climbing under clothing carousels while your Mom looks for sale items at GapKids?

In all fairness, she was the one that wanted to go to the mall. I was glad she suggested it because our other option would have been a trip to the zoo and I’m just not a big fan of the zoo. Actually, that’s not true. I think the zoo would be great if not for all the animals.

So we spent Monday in various children’s clothing stores where she completely blew my mind by turning down pink shirts covered in sparkly butterflies and instead grabbed a darling brown dress with nary a unicorn or bedazzle on it and declared it, “A KEEPER!”

I’ve never been so proud of her taste, but I kept it to myself because any indication of enthusiasm from me might have been a death sentence for the cute dress.

The good news is that both the dress and the President on “24” both lived to see another day. There is nothing Jack Bauer or a little lack of excitement can accomplish.

Except for maybe scuba-diving into the White House while carrying a laptop.
I’d like to dedicate this post to Daylight Savings Time

Our Spring Break officially started at 2:00 p.m. Friday afternoon and we started it off much like I used to start the Spring Breaks of my past, except instead of heading to the beach with a pack of Zima and suntan oil (Note to 20-year-old self, you will regret both of those decisions later in life), we went to Pizza Hut to meet with Caroline’s t-ball team.

This is our first foray into the team sports arena or field or whatever, so we are excited. Everyone knows most colleges offer lucrative athletic scholarships for t-ball players and we feel pretty sure we have a prodigy on our hands. Never mind the fact that she’s most excited about her pink baseball glove and hopes the uniforms aren’t brown, I have no doubt she will be totally into the mechanics of the game once the season starts.

When we arrived at Pizza Hut, we met her coach and the other players and parents. Most of the kids already knew each other because they all go to the same school. Caroline was beyond excited that her “boyfriend” from her class is also on her t-ball team. I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant by “boyfriend”, but judging from their interaction at Pizza Hut, I believe it means that you take turns hitting each other on the head and laughing a lot with pizza hanging out of your mouth. It made me so nostalgic for the days when P and I first started dating and did that exact same thing.

The coach informed us that our first practice would be the next day at 10:00 a.m. As parents we were all supportive and said, “Dude. It’s the first Saturday of Spring Break and it’s just t-ball. We’re not looking for anything other than a reason to hang out at the little league fields and eat snow cones on Saturday afternoons.” So he postponed practice until the following week and then probably went home to make some calls to see if he could coach a team of kids with parents who have goals and ambition.

One of Caroline’s best girl friends is also on the team and after the meeting she came home with us to spend the night. This was the first official sleepover for both girls and my friend Julie and I kept calling each other with updates until the girls fell asleep after hours of giggling and coloring Disney Princess pictures and we realized it was actually going to happen.

They wanted to sleep on air mattresses on the floor of my bedroom, which I bet won’t be the case when they’re thirteen.

Of course, with all the Caller ID technology these days, it takes the fun out of the primary sleepover activity of calling boys and hanging up on them. Plus, you can’t call the local radio station and dedicate REO Speedwagon songs because who listens to the radio anymore? And for that matter, who listens to REO Speedwagon besides people over thirty-five?

On Saturday I was exhausted from all the sleepover fun, but I had to make a trip to HEB because we were having some friends over for dinner and I figured they probably didn’t want peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Caroline went with me and I bought her a new coloring book in exchange for the promise that she’d let me take a nap. And she was true to her promise other than the forty-seven times she woke me up to ask if I thought Cinderella’s dress should be purple or blue.

Our friends came over on Saturday night and we had a great time. It had been forever since we’d all been together so we thoroughly enjoyed catching up on each other’s lives. In fact, we threw caution to the wind and hung out until 9:30 p.m. even though we knew it was really 10:30 with the looming time change, but we felt like it was worth it because otherwise we wouldn’t have had time to discuss our denture cream and arthritis.

Then came Sunday morning and Daylight Savings time officially killed my weekend buzz. I don’t know why the government insists on taking the extra hour away from us every spring, but I am certain it’s because no one in Congress remembers what it’s like when you’re trying to recover from listening to two five-year-old girls laugh into all hours of the night and then demand blueberry pancakes at 6:45 a.m.

It’s enough to make me reach for a Zima.
My cowgirl
Edition 53: Fashion Friday

So, before I even get started with this week’s Fashion Friday, I need to say thank you for all your coffee table support. It’s nice to know that most of you have very similar coffee table issues. I have long suffered from coffee table insecurity and am comforted to know I’m not the only one who uses it as some sort of catch-all for candy and remote controls.

March 2 is Texas Independence Day and Caroline’s school had Rodeo Day yesterday to celebrate the occasion. I signed up to volunteer for the festivities because I had some vague notion that it might be like all the Texas Independence Day celebrations I went to in college. A case of Lone Star Light, some lawn chairs, Robert Earl Keen blaring over someone’s stereo and, if we were really feeling festive, a bucket of fried chicken.

Apparently, that’s not how Kindergartners roll. I ended up being the DJ for the dancing portion of the festivities, which basically involved constantly pressing rewind and play on a tape called “The Wagon Trail”. But because I like to shake things up, we also did the Chicken Dance. I feel that it embodies everything that those men fought and died for at the Alamo.

Anyway, yesterday morning I was pulling out Caroline’s Western apparel for her to wear to school and realized her Wrangler shirt was terribly wrinkled. I tried to ignore it, but I knew I needed to pull out the iron. So I dragged out the ironing board and began ironing the shirt into some semblance of respectability.

About that time, Caroline walked into the kitchen and saw me ironing in the laundry room. She cocked her head to the side as if she had stumbled upon a freak show and said, “What are you doing, Mama?”

“I’m ironing.”

“Oh. Hey! I saw somebody do that on T.V. one time.”

What can I say? I am a firm believer in dry-cleaning. Or wrinkled clothes.

Now for the questions.

1. Melissa asks: “I’m flying to LA this weekend to see a guy I went to high school with and recently reconnected with on Facebook. So I need ‘don’t I look fabulous and wouldn’t it make a great chick flick if we fell in love because of Facebook’ outfits for the trip. Seeing as I’m not 25 or a former DCC I’d like to avoid the scarf and tank top combo a la The Bachelor..any great looks for me?”

Melissa, I don’t even know if I have any great fashion advice to offer you, but I am so fascinated by the whole possibility of a Facebook romance that I’m a little bit giddy. Facebook is a wonder. How did we ever live before we could look up the boy that was mean to us in third grade and rest in the knowledge that he is now totally bald?

Hypothetically speaking.

I think the key is to go cute and casual. Maybe a cute printed trench or a cotton blazer with a pair of jeans for the plane ride.

Depending on your plans for the rest of the weekend, you could put together an outfit like this one (love the statement necklace) or maybe something like this if you’re feeling brave.

And you can never go wrong with a versatile dress that you could dress up or down.

Most importantly, I am going to need a full report on the weekend and whether or not your life will eventually be the subject of the feel-good movie of the year. I know you don’t know me, but I am incredibly nosy.

Hence, my love of Facebook.

2. Angie asks: “My brother got me a $50 gift card to Old Navy for my birthday. If you had $50 to spend there what would you buy for your spring wardrobe?

Too bad I can’t buy a brother because I could seriously use a $50.00 hookup to Old Navy.

But enough about me.

If I had a $50.00 gift certificate to Old Navy, the first thing I’d do is wait for about another month before you buy anything. The upside of these horrible economic times is that they are going to have to drastically reduce prices to move merchandise. Not to mention the fact that you should never pay $26.50 for an item of clothing you buy in a store that has shopping carts.

That being said, I love this skirt and it comes in various colors and patterns. I also really like this tunicswimsuit coverup. These short-sleeve henleys or ruffled front cardigans would go great with jeans, shorts or skirts all summer long.

And if I had any money left over, I’d buy two pairs of flip-flops because if you buy two, they’re only $2.50 a pair.

$2.50 for flip-flops?

Is this 1974?

That’s all the questions for today. I was hoping to answer more questions, but I’ve stayed up way too late every night this week catching up on all the DVRed television that isn’t going to watch itself and I am exhausted. Not to mention that our Spring Break officially starts tomorrow and I’m going to need all the energy I can muster to serve as Caroline’s cruise director for the next ten days with no Kindergarten.

So, in fashion terms, that means it’s time to put on my big girl pants.

I’m putting up Mr. Linky if you have any fashion tips you want to share or feel free to leave them in the comments.

Y’all have a great Friday!