December Challenge Day 18

Since the last two posts have been boringly serious, let’s aim for levity today, shall we?

I’ve been sitting on these pics for about a week now. After the Chuck E. Cheeses party Adrian and I went to last weekend we stopped by my gal-pal, Elizabeth’s house. She had gotten a couple of pot bellied pigs about a year or so ago and had been wanting the boys to meet them. I don’t know how it works in the rest of the country, but here in Texas our farm animals are 100% fully integrated!

This here is Nathan…cautiously optimistic that the pig won’t eat him.



This are my friend, Elizabreast. She’s a hottie WITH a body.



Where do you feed YOUR pigs?



I had mentioned to Nathan the best way to dispose of a body is to feed it to the pigs. You can understand his apprehension in waving a cucumber slice near his mouth.



Adrian, however, was fearless and didn’t believe me when I told him about the dead bodies.



YES, everyone in Texas has pigs in their house. Just deal with it ya damn Yankees.

December Challenge Day 3.2

There are angels among us:
February 16, 2006 is a day I’ll never forget. I was walking through the living room at 1006 pm and I caught a glimpse of a photo on the news of a familiar face, with a name I knew all too well, and the words scrolling across the bottom of the screen, “The body 18-year old Bowie high school student Jennifer Crecente has been found in a field in south Austin”. The words stopped me dead in tracks. I refused to believe it was MY Jennifer Crecente. I picked up the phone and called my dear friend, Elizabeth, Jennifer’s mother, just to make sure this wasn’t OUR Jennifer they were talking about on the news. There was no answer. I called her cell phone. There was no answer. And I knew what I didn’t want to believe was true.

I’m not exactly sure how old Jennifer was when I met Elizabeth. Based on Adrian’s physical and emotional age, I want to say she was 4. Elizabeth was the leasing agent at the apartments I lived at when I first moved to Austin. Elizabeth and I became fast friends and by virtue of being her friend, I became close friends with her daughter. Elizabeth was a single mom at the time. I made sure to take Jennifer on shopping sprees on the appropriate holidays so Jennifer could spoil her mother properly. She was a joy to be around. Over a couple of years I had met someone and moved on from those shitty apartments and Elizabeth moved on to bigger and better things herself. Though we were in the same city we didn’t get to see each other daily as we had when we lived in the same complex, but saw each other when we could. And that included checking in on Jennifer. I think the last time I saw Jennifer alive was at a Halloween party when she was 14.

That first year after Jennifer’s murder was brutal for everyone, none more so than Elizabeth, I’m sure. But rest assured, a murder doesn’t just affect the victims, their families, and the perpetrators of the crimes. A murder affects everyone that has come into contact with everyone involved. Jennifer died in February, 2006. In December, Elizabeth had sent an email out to all of her friends to let us know Texas People Against Violent Crime was having a “Tree of Angels” tree lighting ceremony to honor victims of violent crimes. OF COURSE, I went. Perhaps out of guilt for not being as present in the past few years as I could, but most definitely because I felt Jennifer deserved to be honored. It was a beautiful experience.

The family members and other loved ones who wish to honor a person who was a victim of a violent crime were encouraged to bring an angel for the Christmas trees. The angels are tagged with the victims name before being placed on the tree and then each subsequent year the ornaments are put out for the families that want to put the same angels back on the tree (in addition to the new victims from the current year). I’m not sure exactly why I missed last year’s ceremony…I think I may have been out of town. But Elizabeth emailed last week to let us know the ceremony was coming up on December 2. I told her I’d love to go. THEN she emailed back a few minutes later and mentioned she had been invited to speak at a seminar in New York about Teens and domestic violence and wouldn’t be able to make the tree lighting ceremony. I told her I’d be there for sure and find our old angels at the church and be sure they made it back on the tree.

Last night I was at the Tree of Angels by myself representing my “family”. I’ve put a slide show together below to show what violence in Travis county looks like. The event is quite sobering. I’m not quite sure what is more sobering. The sheer number of Angel representatives, or the number of small children bringing up ornaments for mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandparents lost to senseless violence. Be sure to notice the “empty slates” of trees with nothing on them contrasted by the finished product. I only captured the fronts of the trees, but I assure you the anguish and, ironically, joy envelopes the entire tree.

Merry Christmas Jennifer. (F)reddy loves you.

Oh what a great holiday weekend…so far. You’re most especially welcome for the break from my blog postings since Wednesday. You’ll have to forgive me, I’m not sure what came over me that particular day. I know it wasn’t Jed.

I spent my Wednesday having fun with the kid, who was out of school that day. We ran a bunch of errands during the morning (shopping for poppa’s birthday pressie, which I can tell you, cuz my kitten don’t read my ramblings, was a “Don’t Break The Ice” game that Adrian “just knows poppa is gonna love it”.) I got him a few other things too…a pair of invisible underpants, and a bottle of lube, but I’m sure “Don’t Break The Ice” will be his favorite. For lunch we met Leslie and Jed up at Chipotle for a little burrito action. Side note for you Yankees, there’s no such thing as a “burrito” in Mexico OR Texico. “Burrito” translates into “little ass”, if you will. And not the kind that you make love to, the kind you beat with a riding crop to get him moving with your cart of vegetables you just picked up from the market. So if you think reciting the menu from Taco Bell makes you bilingual, all you’re doing when you order a “burrito” is calling the employee a little ass.

After lunch Adrian and I started working on preparations for the side dishes for Thanksgiving dinner. It was fun for him for about 3 minutes before he washed his hands and went to watch something on the idiot box and left me alone in the kitchen to cook and clean…much like his poppa does now that I mention it. The folks were on their way down from OKC and got caught up in multiple traffic jams. The usual 6 hour trip ended up taking them a little over 10 hours. Needless to say, they weren’t NEARLY as happy to see us when they finally arrived as Nathan was. The squealing of “DAAAAADDDEEEEEE” when he got out of the car made me want to send him to the grandparents EVERY week just to hear him scream my name when he returned. I don’t think the folks even turned the car off. Just dropped the kid off and headed to their hotel.

Thursday morning I woke up at 6 and didn’t leave the kitchen until about 9 that evening. That’s not entirely true…I was allowed out for 20 minutes to eat with everyone before getting back in there and finishing up deserts and loading the dishwasher. It was so nice having the folks on my turf again. Our very good folks, the Fenders, joined us as well. It was good food and great conversation. After lunch dad took a nap with Nathan while Adrian entertained himself and the rest of us played a rousing game of Phase 10. Some interesting conversation came up during the game:

Leslie: Babs, do you know what tattoos your son has?

Babs: Well I know he has a _____ on his arm and a ____ on his _____.

Leslie: Yeah, but what and where’s his third one?

Babs: Uhhhh, I didn’t know he had a third one, but it doesn’t surprise me.

Leslie: Well Jed tried to draw it one night while we were all eating out together and I know what he drew was the tattoo, but it looked like a sea dragon or something and they were both laughing so hard we couldn’t get it out of either one of them what it was.

Babs: A sea dragon, huh?

Leslie: Yeah. Just so you know Babs, when your son dies, I’m most definitely going to be pantsing him at the funeral. I just don’t want you to be alarmed when I’m pulling his pants off him. I’m not a pervert or anything, but I have to know what that tattoo is before he’s put in the ground.

And then, my most favorite conversation.

Babs: (F)reddy, can you show me how to create a MySpace page? I think I want to start a blog.

(F)reddy: (Spewing his beer across the table) WHAT? WHAT ON EARTH WOULD YOU WANT TO DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT FOR:

Babs: Because I find them entertaining. In fact, I’ve recently found yours and I’ve been quite entertained by your stories. In fact, you know which one of your blogs was my favorite?

Folks. I nearly died. FOR REALS.

Babs: The one where you took pictures of my house and made fun of me on your blog was my favorite!

OH MY GOD.

It took us all a good 20 minutes to stop laughing.

After the Fender’s left mom and I spent a couple of hours on the internet trying to find things she wanted to buy for all the grandkids for Christmas. Having found most of the stuff on Amazon, she was delighted how easy the whole thing was…but then we noticed that Wal-Shart had one of the Madden NFL games on sale for Black Friday morning at about ½ of what it was on line. She asked if I’d take her up there in the morning. I told her I wouldn’t do the “door-buster” thing, but that I’d run her up there so she could get them. So…

Friday morning I woke up at 430, ran to pick her up at the hotel and ran her to do her shopping. Things were not nearly as hectic here as they were in other areas of the country. We got in, got her stuff, and got out. We celebrated with “breakfast” back at the hotel afterwards. I ran home to grab a shower and the family and then met back up with the folks to drive to New Braunfels to hook up with Jed’s family (aunt, uncle, cousins, cousin’s spouses, cousin’s kid, grandmother, and red-headed step-child). From there ALL SIXTEEN OF US caravanned from New Braunfels to Fredericksburg, Texas to do some Hill-Country shopping and eat some German food. We had a lovely time co-mingling the families and choking down some beer and schnitzel. I’m so glad pappy drove on the way home, cuz (F)reddy was a little more than sleepy. When we walked in the house I collapsed in my La-Z-Boy just as my mommy says, “Hey, why don’t you put your tree up”? Huh? What? NOW?

Folks, my house is tiny. It’s 1100 square feet if you’ve got the windows open. Jed and I are big boys. We have two very active toddlers, and two very needy dogs. Add 2 parents who are a little more than twice our sizes, and it’s a very crowded house. So of course I…

Went to the garage and dug out all of our Christmas stuff. Granny wanted to see the boys’ faces as we put up the tree. Moreover, she wanted to take pictures of them “helping me” put the tree up. And, I’ll have to admit, as exhausted as I was, the boys really did have a great time setting up the tree and pulling off the ornaments as I put them on.

Saturday morning we got up early again and met the folks at Waterloo Icehouse of breakie. I had my standard Chicken Fried Steak and eggs with hashbrowns, toast, and copious amounts of coffee. After breakfast was over, we did our kiss n’ cry in the parking lot and said farewell to the folks. Jed and I ran the boys to the theater to see Madagascar 2. It wasn’t as good as the first one, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. After the movie we ran home and I got to take a much needed nap with the boys. After the nap, Jed CHALLENGED me to take Nathan to get his haircut. Never one to back down from a challenge, I accepted.

You should know, Nathan HATES getting his haircut. He considers any hairdressers to be his arch-nemesis. I once saw him (when he was two) snatch the scissors out of a woman’s hand and stab her in the eye with it. Another time, I watched in horror as he grabbed the clippers out of a guy’s hand and shave his balls with them. The hairdresser’s, not Nathan’s (cuz Nate’s only 3 and don’t got no hair on his balls yet.) To say he doesn’t like getting his haircut is an understatement. You would think Nathan is Superman and haircuts are his kryptonite. OR, you could simply believe that Nathan is Sampson. We just don’t take him that often because it is THAT horrible of an experience. The woman today certainly did a fantastic job AND deserved EVERY CENT of her 120% tip. I REALLY hope her hair grows back quickly, and I’m VERY sorry for handing him the lighter AND the hairspray at the same time.



Tonight I made some Turkey Tetrazini for dinner with some of the left over turkey. It was delicious. But now I’m tired. I’m sure not half as tired as you are reading this, but tired nonetheless. I have one more day tomorrow to “relax”…but it’ll be spent studying for my last week of school. That’s good for you, cuz it gives you a week to read all this crap.

Ohhhhhklahoma

Tonight after work we’re taking the boys up to the land of Sally Kern and hate and fried food on a stick smothered in gravy. And despite all that I just said, I’m actually really looking forward to it. On Saturday morning I have a day of LONG OVER DUE BEAUTY scheduled with my BFF, Jimmy. Jimmy was my best friend in High School and the only person I’ve trusted with my mop since he graduated from hair school (despite the many “experiments” he performed on my hair during his “learnin’”). I’ve just never really found anyone that I like taming my locks as much as Jimmy. And while he doesn’t cut “guy hair” anymore, he always makes an exception for me when I come to town.

My sister and her family will be coming over to my folks house later in the morning and we’ll be having the family Thanksgiving dinner, rather than waiting for Thursday next week. Following stuffing ourselves like pigs (and the deep frying afterwards) we’re having a bunch of my old Oklahomo friends come over (Jimmy & his boyfriend, Chris and their nephew, Austin; my ex, Steve, and his awesome husband…cuz they’re from California, Danny; my most awesome ex-sister-in-law (Steve’s sister) Shawn and her girlfriend ______ (of the week!). We’re all going to have ANOTHER birthday party for Nate and eat left over turkey dinner and eat some fried pies and cake smothered in Gravy.

The only thing I’m NOT looking forward to is the weather. APPARENTLY it’s only in the 20’s there right now, and that just makes my teeth hurt.

There’s nothing like surrounding yourself with your chosen family. Even IF it has to be in Oklahoma.

The Bug

Our sweet little bug is cursed with one of those shitty birthdays. Not nearly as bad as Christmas day, but pretty darned close. Last year his birthday fell ON Thanksgiving day. There were exactly three people here for his second birthday party…me, Jed, and Adrian. We felt like awesome parents that year. Fortunately he wasn’t old enough to realize how bad his party sucked. Jed and I decided we’d start celebrating his birthday on my birthday to be sure folks would be around to help him celebrate. After all, lerd knows I’ve had plenty of times to celebrate over the years, now it’s time to pass the torch.

Today we celebrated our birthdays together. I got to spend my birthday morning sleeping in and was greeted by a fantastic, albeit out of tune, version of “Happy Birthday Daddy” by the boys. THEN, I got my annual supply of socks n’ undies that I ask for ALONG with a pair of super swell Superman pajama bottoms, cuz I rock like that. Then I went to my lil’ neighborhood coffee shop to get my morning Joe. Shortly afterwards Jed’s mom and Aunt Jan came to play with us for the day. We started with a yummy lunch at Amaya’s Taco Village with some hot delicious chicken enchiladas. Then while Yia Yia, Jed and Adrian went shopping for party supplies, Jan and I stayed home while Nathan napped and we watched the UT game.

Late in the afternoon we had a house FULL of friends and extended family come by to celebrate Naterbug’s birthday with pizza and juice (and beer!).



Everyone took turns taking swings at the requisite piñata





Followed by a version of “pin the tail on the donkey” called “stick the nose on the lion”.



Then we ate birthday cake. Our friend Beth made the Elmo cake and I made the strawberry layered chocolate cake with chocolate icing and strawberries on top.





We wrapped the evening up with opening more presents than any 1 three year old would ever need in his life.



I can’t speak for Nathan, but this has been a really fantastic birthday.

For the love of my Larry

Two all beef patties, special sauce (mayo & ketchup!), lettuce, pepper jack cheese, pickles, onions, BACON, on a plain ol’ bun with a side of hand cut fries?!? MmmmMmmmmMMMM, delicious and nutritious.

While trying to decide between the SMO at The Onion today; the #15 with bacon at the Jimmy John’s today; or a CHEESEBURGER at Hat Creek today, I decided to put it out into the universe on Twitter to let my friends help me decide. I so value the opinion of my (f)ellow (f)atty, Cousin Larry and the (f)ormer (f)atty, Walt, and the never had-a-ounce-of-(f)atty, (F)airy Princess Holly. Walt immediately responded with a cheeseburger, of course. Larry seconded Walt’s emotion. And Holly, the voice of reason, reminded all of us that a burger isn’t a burger without the loving embrace of bacon wrapped around it.

With the plan in mind I marched my (f)at ass down to the corner of Who-gives-a-shit and 6th to visit a new local favorite, Hat Creek Burger Co. I just loves getting food from a trailer. It reminds me of my childhood home…





I ordered the double meat cheeseburger with the “whole garden”, bacon, pepper jack cheese, and a splatter of mayo and ketchup. Hold the drink, please. I’m on a diet.





Walking back to the office my heart pounded with anticipation. Or it could be that it was pounding because it’s increasingly more difficult to get my blood to go through it…
Folks, the picture don’t do the burger any justice. You can’t see the coarse ground black pepper generously sprinkled on the top of the patties. You can barely tell the thickness of the THICK cut bacon. The cheese, DELICHEESIOUS.





CLEARLY I was in heaven.





Thanks y’all for making my lunch fantastic. The only thing that wouldacouldashoulda made it better is y’all had been sitting across the table with me warshin’ down some Lonestars.

Comic Con 2008

We, the fam, just came off the best family vacation in the history of family vacations. I’ll try to keep it short, but I wanted to share my fabulocity with you. Rather than make a long(ish) blog even longer, I’ve uploaded pictures of the trip at my Flickr account…feel free to check ‘em out.

We left Austin for San Diego last Tuesday. I did a fabulous job chosing flights this time, as we were able to take a direct flight and cut our travel time down to only 2.5 hours. A perfect time limit for traveling with toddlers. Now if we could just figure out our packing! Getting through security with 4.5 carry-ons, 2 toddlers, 2 strollers, and 2 carseats is NOT FUN. YES, I realize we can rent car seats when we arrive, but kids travel on planes MUCH better if they’re actually IN their car seat. So we arrived in San Diego around 1030 in the morning; got our car; and navigated ourselves to the house we had rented…which just so happened to be next door to my ex, Steve, and his awesome new husband, Danny. As an added bonus, my good buddy, Shawn (Steve’s sister), drove down from L.A. to surprise us. We stopped to pick up provisions for a picnic later that evening and we all headed out to the most fabulous San Diego Zoo.

The zoo was fantastic. Adrian had set a goal to see all of the animals from “Kung Fu Panda”, and I think we might have accomplished that. There was a creepy guy working in the panda exhibit that was sitting in a chair talking in “sexy voice” about the panda exhibit. When we approached him, we noticed he was sitting with a blanket in his lap with a hand under the blanket. It was 90 degrees folks…it wasn’t like we were in Antartica. It was just plain creepy.

Wednesday morning Jed, the boys, and I drove a little bit north of San Diego to go to Lego Land. It was the most fun ever. Unlike Six Flags, the minimum height requirement for most of the rides was 36-40 inches…so even Nathan got to ride most of the stuff in the park. We ate lots of nasty park food and Adrian got to pick out some new Lego toys for himself.

Thursday morning we left early to head out to Comic Con International. I have never seen so many people in my life! We attended a couple of panel discussions on a variety of topics. A major disappointment for me was the panel on the “re-imaging” of the 70’s classic(s) Escape to Witch Mountain. We got to see the trailer for the movie and it, in a word, SUCKED. The film is going to be a TRAIN WRECK. It was a bit hectic navigating the convention center with the boys in their strollers. The size and scope of the convention was just overwhelming. One of the highlights of my day, however, was getting to meet Steve, one of my GuySpace pals. He was more obsessed with the convention than Jed was, and had already attended Preview Night, as well as getting there hours before we did…so he was able to offer us tons of tips and suggestions of where to start and fun things to do with the kids.

Thursday night Shawn came back down from L.A. and we all had dinner together. After the kids went to bed we drank every last beer in San Diego proper and played some poker. Now there’s a disagreement of who ultimately won it all, but Jed and I ended up taking the pot…the whole pot…all $25 of it! Not bad for my first time playing poker…and I must thank both Steve AND Shawn for replenishing my chips every time I lost ‘em!

Friday Steve and Danny took the day off of work and kept the boys for us so Jed and I could have a full da y of Comic Con without lugging the kids around. We met up with some of Jed’s comic nerd herd and hung out with Comic Steve some more. It was a completely different experience not having to fight the crowds with the strollers. We had a blast. Friday evening Danny’s parents came over to babysit the kids so the four of us could go out and have adult night. We started off with dinner and some “kick ass Margaritas”. And yes, they were…both of them. We strolled around the Gayborhood afterwards and played pool at one bar (more drinks) and went to another bar (more drinks) where I got to meet one of my podcasting friends, Wes Stone, from Live It Up!

Saturday morning, following breakfast with Steve n’ Danny, Jed and I headed out to the beach with the boys. We went to Hodad’s, a place I had heard about on the Food Network’s “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives” for burgers and to meet Wes Stone and Nessa from “We’re Mean Because You’re Stupid”, another one of my favie podcasts. If you’re not listening to either of these shows, you should be! Nessa and Wes were just as charming as could be. Afterwards we all went down to the beach and drooled over hot lifeguard boys and chatted for a bit. We said our farewells and headed back to the house for a quick nap before hoping on the trolly and going back downtown to meet up again with Steve and his super adorable husbear, Dennis. They’re the kind of couple that make you wish lived in your city so you can hang out with them EVERY day. After dinner we headed back to the casa, put the kids to bed, then spent the rest of the evening packing for the return trip home.

Sunday was another flawless travel day. Made it through airport security in no time flat. Kids were in a decent mood the entire time we waited to get on the plane. The SECOND the plane took off, Nathan fell asleep in his carseat and slept for the entire trip…while Adrian watched movies on my computra. It was another direct flight, so only 2.5 hours of travel time. It couldn’t have been a more perfect ending for a more perfect trip.

I can’t thank Steve and Danny enough for all they did in helping put this trip together. They really went above and beyond. I also can’t say how much I enjoyed hanging out with all the new people we met on this trip. You each made this a trip I’ll never forget. I’m truly blessed to know so many wonderful people, and look forward to meeting more of you in the future. FYI: Jed and I will be in NYC coming up at the end of August…sanz kids…so if any of you want to meet up…or meet up again TRALFIE…let me know!