Christmas for Two Please......

Our Christmas this year was a cozy one. Two place setttings. Two filets. Two glasses of wine.









Mark catered to one my whims by making me cupcakes. There is something about cupcakes with lots of frosting that strips away about 20 years. We spent most of the day alternating between being in the kitchen cooking or sampling and being on the couch watching Christmas movies.


We ended the day in a storm of torn wrapping paper in the joy of which Charlie thoroughly exhausted herself.







Merry Christmas Everyone!!

The Lazy Route

Cesar would be so disappointed in us.

Every morning I get up and walk Charlie for about 45 minutes, give or take depending on the weather. And every afternoon, either Mark and I sit out in the backyard, accompanied by about a thousand mosquitos and gnats, and play fetch or chase with her. This is what you have to do when you have a dog with this kind of energy level. When we don't....we pay for it.

But sometimes, you just don't have it. There are some afternoons that the damn no-see's keep me holed up in my house with the door locked. There are Sundays where I am still in my pajamas at 3:49 in the afternoon and the prospect of having to dig up my tennis shoes to go outside is just too much.

For those afternoons, we resort to the Kong. The Kong is an absolutely incredible, INDESTRUCTIBLE, indispensable toy that we have had since she was a puppy. It may be the equivalent of sticking a child in front of the television, but you put a little peanut butter down in that thing, and you have at least 45 minutes of respite.

I am sorry Cesar. Kong wins this round.

A Very Expensive Cherry Coke (or Why Charlie Had a Banner Night)

I am not exactly sure where to begin the story of tonight.

Perhaps I could start with lunch this afternoon when I picked up the styrofoam cup that had been previously full of Coke and, after taking an empty slurp, swore at Mark. He had begun with a small sip and that progressed into an absentminded consumption of every last drop.

Or maybe my tale needs to begin at some point during one of the four times that Mark's car battery has died in the past year.

Or, I could go all the way back to when we bought the damn Toyota Echo that Mark affectionately refers to as "his pregnant roller skate" due to it's snub-nosed design. This hamster-powered, tiny car that lacks basics such as power-steering was far from our first choice, but our options were severely restricted when, with both of us in school and living on student loans, his former POS died so suddenly and completely that we literally left it on the side of the road with a note inviting anyone who could drive it to keep it.

Regardless of where it begins, the story picks up at the point when we pulled the frozen pizza out and popped it in the oven for dinner tonight. Mark declared he was going to have a beer and I commented that I usually like Coke with my pizza. Still feeling bad about drinking all of mine at lunch earlier today, he decided to redeem himself by leaving right then, driving to Sonic and getting me a Cherry Coke with extra cherries. What a sweetheart!

Three minutes later my phone rang.

DING DING DING. You guessed it! Dead battery!!!!

So I pulled the pizza, all bubbly and smelling gorgeous, out of the oven, threw Charlie (who was looking longingly at the pizza) outside, and went to rescue my husband.

Unfortunately, it seems things were a little more serious than usual this time. The hypochondriac battery had finally become seriously ill, and could not be resuscitated. So it was on to Walmart to buy a new battery, and then back to Sonic so that Mark could replace the one that was now in a better place.

(On a side-note ladies, how sexy is it that my husband actually knows how to replace a car battery himself?)


So the $1.50 Coke became an eighty dollar battery and consumed the majority of our evening, but don't fret! This story has a happy ending!




When we finally got home and I was pulling the pizza out of the oven for the second time, it slipped and about two thirds of the toppings slid right off. When you are a dog....it just doesn't get better than that.

The 12th Man

Some of my earliest memories of my grandfather involve him teaching me how to climb a tree or sitting in a hard, plastic chair amongst peanut shells cheering on Texas Tech. A rotund, red-faced and bearded man, he could always be found in the stands clapping his large hands when Tech scored, and hurling epithets such as "SQUIRREL" (an insult I still do not fully grasp) at the clearly half-blind referees.

He grew up in Lubbock, TX, graduated from Lubbock High School, opened some small grocery stores and started what would become a very large and loud (read: slightly insane) family. The quintessential Patriarch, my grandfather would sit among all of our raucous conversation at family gatherings with his bourbon and enjoy being surrounded by those he loved. Among the many important life lessons that he ingrained in all of us (such as how to play blackjack and make popcorn without a microwave) he instilled a passion for his favorite team, the Texas Tech Red Raiders, as well as a deep hatred for the Longhorns and Aggies.

I lost my grandfather in September of 2007. Last week Texas Tech defeated a top-ranked team for the first time in school history, and it was the Texas Longhorns: a school that has barely deigned to acknowledge a rivalry between the two schools, much less grant that the Red Raiders could be any kind of threat.

He would have loved every second of it, and after the game last Saturday, after I managed to get my pulse back to a reasonable rate, I raised a glass and joined Texas Tech's tribute to one of their most devout fans.

State Fair of Texas

The State Fair of Texas has concluded for another year, and I couldn't be more relieved. One of my clients is The Women's Museum, located within Fair Park, and for the three and a half weeks that the fair rolls on they really go all out. All year long, I help plan the events for this time, and then fly to Dallas to help oversee them. It is exhausting, intensive, and stressful. However one of the highlights of the fair is the WIDE scope of people that traverse through. For three and a half weeks I can come face to face with some of the most bizarre, perplexing and flat out most ridiculous questions and comments one could ever be privy to. Here are some of my favorite examples:

"Where can I find the chicken-fried bacon?"

"Why don't you have an exhibit about Sarah Palin?"

"Do you know where on the fairgrounds the life-size butter sculpture of King Tutankhmon is?"

"Do you have to be a woman to come in here?"

"Why don't you allow women with strollers into your handicap-only elevator? Shouldn't you be supportive of mothers?"

and the best....

"Why isn't there more stuff about men in here?"

Oh State Fair of Texas, you certainly bring an expanse of people into your fold. Perhaps someday I can learn to be as patient and unjudgemental.

Half-way through a bottle of wine and a really good session pouting...

We had a long-distance relationship for almost two and a half years, and the last year of that was our first year of marriage.

He was in med school in Texas and I had my heart set on St. John's College in Santa Fe for grad school. Though I have never once regretted the decision, to say it was brutal doesn't begin to scratch the surface. We tried to see each other at least once a month, even if it was only for one night, but that was not always possible. However, we made it through, and I have often credited the strength of our relationship to that experience. Fast forward four years, and you find us done with grad school and medical school, living in Biloxi, MS while he plods through residency. You would imagine, or at least I have been told enough times, that the years apart should have prepared us. You would think that, over time, the long-distance thing would be a piece of cake. They didn't, and it isn't.

Today he left on a plane again. We got two days together after a four-week separation, and now we have 2 more weeks apart. He was in Ecuador on a humanitarian mission and I have been traveling for work as well. When he left last month to go help thousands of people who do not have easy access to medical care, I could not have been more proud, or more like a two-year old that just accidentally let go of her balloon.

Yes, I know I should still be in high school....

Over the last couple of years, I have started my own grant writing business, and though it has had a slow start....things are beginning to pick up. So much so, that my sister and I have discussed the possibility of her coming on as a partner (she is the best writer I know) a few times. One of those conversations came up again this morning, and we were running through the list of possible names for the business.

The conversation went a bit astray, however, when the obligatory combination of initials followed by a one word description of the business came up. Her last name begins with a "J", mine with a "B". I kind of think BJ Consultants has a nice ring to it, don't you?

Noodles to You

I discovered these noodles at Williams Sonoma a few months ago, and if I was Julie Andrews, these would definitely go in my song.

They are big, fat curly-Q's of happiness. And I challenge anyone to stay in a bad mood while these are in front of you. They go well with any sauce or in a soup, but don't try to serve them as a background player to chicken. No, they are divas, and will only give you their full love if you feature them as the headliner in whatever dish you are serving. The company that makes them is dai Marella and they are called Molloni. I have not seen them anywhere else, but will definitely be keeping my eye out for them everywhere I go now. Enjoy!

Jacket Weather

I had a delicious surprise this morning.

After months of stepping out into the suffocatingly hot and muggy summer mornings; after a summer full of swatting at flies and mosquitos so often that I am sure all of my neighbors are thoroughly convinced that I have a motor-skills disorder; after and unending parade of days that required me immediately stripping out of moist-sticky clothing as soon as I walked back through the door; this morning I was greeted with weather that invited me to go back inside for a jacket.

I adore the first day of jacket weather. It brings to my mind apples, and blue jeans, and the smell of library books.

I did forget one small thing in my glee. While the steamy humidity of the summer is equally draining on me and my pup, cool weather has the same effect on her that a Frappuccino has on a 10-year old with ADHD. Which is why all of the cushions have been pulled off the couch in the living room, my shoes are scattered in various places, and Charlie is standing in the middle of all of it, tail wagging, insisting that there is nothing more important right now than a game of tug-of-war.

Prologue

On a recent balmy day in Mississippi, I was driving down the interstate when I happened to see a man sitting on the side of the road. He was perched on a white, plastic lawn chair. He had no sign asking for money or a ride, and no evidence of any kind of bag or luggage. He was not hawking any wares or collecting any thing from the roadside. He was just sitting there....grinning. There was no vehicle of any kind in sight, which led me to believe that he had walked to this point, quite a distance from the nearest exit, carrying only a lawn chair.

My first question was "How?". The second was "Why?".

Of course, he could ask me the same thing.

I never dreamed I would live in the deep south. I never could have anticipated the insanity of being married to a med student...and now a resident. I had no idea the complete befuddlement I would face when I adopted a droopy-eared, big-eyed, 10-week old puppy from the shelter.

I have no clue how I got here.....but here I sit....grinning until my jaws hurt.