Stimulus Eggs

17Apr

Categories: Changes, Childhood, Family, Husbands, Marriage, Marriage Confessions, pregnancy

$5 Egg

It has taken me all week to tell you about the great weekend I had over Easter.  First there was the not-so-fun travel adventure from Connecticut to Florida, then there was my baby shower, and then my sister got engaged.  What could possibly be left?  Well, Easter morning, of course!

We went to church at the church that I grew up in.  I love that church.  Its not only where I grew up, but where I was married and where my sister will be married now, too.  I know the people and the pastors like my own family, and going back there is truly going home for me.  Now, I tend to get a little emotional during church services.  Nothing major, just a little teary at a particularly touching prayer or if one of my favorite hymns is sung.  And I’m always inclined to tear up a bit more during holiday services.  I have so much to be thankful for and sometimes prayers just don’t do it, so I guess I show my thanks in the form of smudgy mascara.  But something happened during this past weekend’s Easter service.  I lost it.  Completely lost it.  It started during the opening prayer when we were giving thanks for the renewal and rebirth of the Easter season.  Something about that prayer just set off the water works.  And then came my favorite hymn, “Because He Lives.”  I thought I was going to have to sit down.  I was crying full on now.  Not the dainty “isn’t that sweet” kind of crying.  I mean the heaving, nose running, puffy eyed, huff and puff crying.

Chris looked over at me with this horrified look on his face.  This isn’t the kind of church where people just break out into tears like this, and I was causing quite a scene.

“What’s wrong with you?” he whispered.

“I don’t know!”  I heaved.

“Well, get it together!”

I tried the best I could, but then the choir started singing the freaking Hallelujah Chorus!  And children were singing in the choir!  Sweet little cherub children in white robes!  With handbells!  Now, how am I supposed to keep it together when the Hallelujah Chorus is being sung like that???  Oh, it was awful.  And the only thing that made me feel better was that there was another pregnant woman sitting in the pew in front of me and she was huffing and puffing the same as I was.  Its just those holy hormones, I tell you.

After Easter church, Chris and I left my family and headed over to his family’s house for their big Easter lunch and Easter egg hunt.  I ate way too many deviled eggs and really overdid it on the mashed potatoes, but when Chris’ grandmother is cooking, you just don’t turn anything away!  All through lunch, Chris talked about the Easter egg hunt.  Surprisingly, in the ten years that we have been together, I’ve never spent Easter with his family.  I have heard fables and myths of the legendary Brown Easter Egg Hunt, but I had yet to experience it myself.

In the Brown Easter Eggs, there are not jelly beans or M&M’s.  There is money.  Big money.  Like $5 or $10 an egg.  And then there is one or two Golden Eggs that hold between $20 and $50.  Chris said when he was younger, he used to leave Easter with $50 or $60 in his pocket.  I asked him if he thought we were too old to hunt Easter eggs, but he insisted that everyone hunted.  His Granddad hid them in sneaky places, and then everyone else hunted.  Great!  But when it came time to hunt the eggs, I noticed that most of the adults were hanging out on the porch, drinking and eating and talking, while the middle school-aged children hunted for eggs.

I looked down at my wedding ring, and then to my very pregnant belly, and then to the Easter egg basket I was carrying.  Was I too old to be hunting for eggs?  I was married and WITH CHILD.  Maybe that disqualified me from hunting.  And when I looked out in the yard, there was Chris standing in the middle of a group of middle school boys, throwing elbows and fighting for eggs just like the rest of the CHILDREN UNDER THE AGE OF 13.

I called his name and pulled him aside.

“Chris, I don’t think we’re supposed to be hunting these eggs.  I think its for the kids,” I whispered.

“What are you talking about?  I’ve been doing this egg hunt since before these kids were born!”  he insisted.

“I realize that, but that would be why you are 15 YEARS OLDER THAN ANYONE ELSE HUNTING EGGS!”

“I don’t care,” he said.  ”I just found a $20 egg.”  And he ran off.

I stood there for a minute, contemplating which group I belonged in.  With the women on the porch who sat in lawn chairs wearing Bunny-themed sweaters, drinking mimosas, and talking about tennis tournaments and the PTA, or out in the yard with the 13-year-olds, fighting for money-filled eggs.

Finally, I rolled up my sleeves, grabbed my basket and headed out into the yard.  Married, pregnant, of drinking age – none of that seemed to matter when there was a $50 egg lurking out there somewhere to be found.  And so Chris and I spent our Easter hunting eggs, like he had done his entire life.

It was the easiest and most rewarding $35.00 I’ve ever made.

10  comments   |   posted in Changes, Childhood, Family, Husbands, Marriage, Marriage Confessions, pregnancy   |   tags: Easter, Family, holidays, Marriage, pregnancy

I Am Not a Redneck. Really.

06Apr

Categories: Childhood, Family, Husbands, Marriage, Marriage Confessions, Random

Chris and I had brunch this past weekend with some new friends of ours.  We’ve known them for a while, but we only just recently started spending more time with them, and I really like it.  I love this part of new friendships.  Its like dating, really.  You are still showing up to brunches and dinners with flowers or a bottle of wine.  You are still trying as hard as possible to make a good impression.  You are still dressing your husband so that he doesn’t show up wearing socks with Birkenstocks.  Its the courtship phase.

This was our first rendezvous at our new friends’ house.  Big step.  Big.  They were bringing us home.  Its a huge event in any relationship, especially a new friendship.  I had the cutest outfit to wear, too.  I bought a new necklace last week that is brightly colored blown glass, and it was just made for jeans and a crisp white shirt.  So, I put on my new extra-large, extra-stretchy, ultra-cool dark maternity jeans and paired it with a lovely clean, white linen blouse.  The new necklace popped.  It was quite a sight to behold, if I say so myself.

Ten minutes into the car ride to their house, Chris peels out at a stop light, sending bright red Gatorade flying all over my white blouse.  And because the outfit was so simple, the hot pink stain was front and center.  You couldn’t miss it.  I COULDN’T DATE A NEW COUPLE IN THIS OUTFIT!  But we were already running late, so I scratched at it with a Tide pen and cussed Chris the entire drive.  Which made me feel a little better.

Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of our rocky first date.  When we got there, they had a beautiful brunch prepared.  Their apartment was so charming that I considered asking if I could take a picture to post for you all to see, but I decided that was more of a second date kind of thing.

And then I opened my mouth and started to tell stories that no person should ever tell on a first couple date.  Ever.

Somehow, every story I told made Chris and I sound like complete rednecks.  Complete.  Rednecks.  Like barefoot in the front yard with beer cans scattered about rednecks.  I should clarify for the record that we are NOT, in fact, rednecks.  We come from families who live on the beach and play golf as family outings.  We drink mojitos and wear argyle.  True, we grew up in the panhandle of Florida which has been called the Redneck Riviera, but that’s just locale.  We are not rednecks.  Contrary to every story that I told that morning, WE. ARE.  NOT. REDNECKS.

Still, I somehow summoned up every near-redneck experience I could recall and spilled my guts to our new friends.  The following stories were told in about a two-hour time period:

1.  When Chris was little, his family used to burn trash in their backyard.

2.  My mom’s lifelong fantasy is to own a double-wide mobile home in the mountains, and when we were little we used to drive through mobile home parks in the mountains of Tennessee hunting for Mom’s perfect abode on the road.

3.  I once had a rabbit that I won at a fair named Ping Pong (because I won him with a ping pong ball).  When we gave the rabbit away, the man that took him told us as he was driving away that he was going to eat the rabbit.

4.  Chris and I once had a opossum in our backyard in New Haven that the city refused to remove because it they said it would be “traumatic” to the animal.  So Chris beat him with a mop until he ran away.

5.  Chris spent a summer working in Utah and in his free time he and his friends took guns out to the desert and shot rocks.

6.  When I was little, my sister and I used to shoot frogs in the swimming pool at each other through our snorkels.

7.  My parents bought an RV this year.  You know, the kind that rock stars use on tour.  On our first visit to see them after they owned the RV, they dropped Chris and I off in the woods and made us spend the night in the RV to test it out.  Much to my Dad’s disappointment, we came home the next day and begged to please be allowed to stay in the house with central air and plumbing.

8.  Chris and I went camping with my family one summer down in the Florida Keys and in the middle of the night, wild pigs wrestled and fought through our camp site.

So you can see that no matter how much I might insist that we are NOT in fact rednecks, every little anticdote that I told that morning seemed to contradict this.  Not exactly the impression I wanted to make on our new friends on our first date at their house.

I’m hoping they will overlook my Gatorade stained ensemble and our penchant for firearms and cinder-block supported homes.  But I’m not sure.  Its kind of hard to come back from that.

8  comments   |   posted in Childhood, Family, Husbands, Marriage, Marriage Confessions, Random   |   tags: friends, humor, life, Marriage

How NASCAR Drivers Are Born

11Jul

Categories: Around the House, Childhood, Marriage Confessions

The other day I was out in the backyard with the dogs. Across the street, our neighbor’s car was parked in their driveway, but the windshield wipers were flying, the hazard lights were flashing, the bright lights were blinking and the windows were rolling up and down.

I wandered back into our house and showed it to Chris.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s their kid. They let him play in the car every day.”

And sure enough, once I started paying more attention, I realized that almost every single afternoon the car seemed to have a little disco party right there in their driveway. And at the wheel was their 3 year old son. His dad sits in the passenger seat, usually reading the paper, looking like it is the most normal thing in the world for his son to have a $35,000 jungle gym. He even smiles and waves at you when you drive by, just like he would if he were standing beside a swing set in their backyard.

On one hand I think, “Oh my God! You can’t let a child play in a car!” But on the other hand I think, “Way to be a hands on parent!” I’m confused about the whole situation. Is it good parenting or irresponsible parenting??? All I know is that every time I drive by that Disco in the Driveway, I giggle.

2  comments   |   posted in Around the House, Childhood, Marriage Confessions   |   tags: car, children, Family, humor, NASCAR, neighborhoods, parenting, Random

Mini Bar Maddness

20Mar

Categories: Childhood, Marriage Confessions

Sometimes when I do something that my parents would never let me do when I was a kid, I giggle to myself. You know, like when I buy sugared cereal or a candy bar in the check out line at the grocery store. Or when I order dessert at a restaurant. Or when I put dirty bowls in the top rack of the dishwasher. This is how I silently rebel against my happy childhood.

The whole idea of staying in a hotel is a silent rebellion for me. Chris and I checked into this great hotel in downtown Houston and I couldn’t help but giggle a little as I handed over my debt card. My parents were camping people. We traveled across the country in a little orange and brown pop-up since I was a baby. Looking back, I’m sure they could have afford a hotel, but they just loved to camp and I’m glad they did because there’s nothing better than a campground full of firepits, marshmellows, and bug spray. Even today one of my favorite sounds in the world is someone walking across gravel.

So staying in a hotel is just a hoot to me. I’ve stayed in plenty and the novelty really should have worn off by now, but I still feel rebellious. And yesterday I took it a step further.

I took a Diet Coke from the mini bar.

My mom is probably reading this right now and gasping in horror. That’s right, Mom. I willingly took an overpriced Diet Coke out of my mini bar and drank it. And even more than that – I didn’t even finish it. I’m just going crazy out here in Texas! Look who I’ve become! But you know what? I LIKE IT!

Who knows what I’m capable of next. Today I may even talk to a stranger…

2  comments   |   posted in Childhood, Marriage Confessions   |   tags: camping, Childhood, parenting

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