When that sun is high in that Texas sky

What feels like forever but was really two weekends ago, we packed up The Monsters and drove south to San Antonio for Fiesta. “Fiesta?” you say? “As in a party?” Not quite. “As in an entire month of pageants and fundraisers culminating in a week of parades and parties and festivals? When parking restrictions and open container laws mean absolutely nothing? When asking to see a pretty girl’s shoes isn’t creepy?” Yup.

There is a historical side to Fiesta, however. It all began in 1890 as a singular parade put on by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas to honor the heroes of the battles of the Alamo and San Jacinto. Fiesta now stretches over 11 days with over 100 events, has a huge economic impact on the city of San Antonio and raises money for many charities and causes in and around the city as well. The Battle of Flowers Parade (where I took the above photo of The Joey) is second in size only to the Tournament of Roses Parade, and continues to be the only parade in the country organized and produced by women. Plus, it’s just awesome! 

When we (finally) made it to San Antonio there was just enough time to sleep until early the next morning, when we got up early to go to The Battle of Flowers Parade.

If you think I should look a little happier to be at the most awesome place in April, you’re right. I was miserable. As it turns out I am allergic to absolutely everything outdoors, most especially oak and pecan pollens, and grass. So springtime in San Antonio when it’s dry and windy and everything is coated in pollen and grass seed is not my friend. I took Benadryl and kept falling asleep behind my sunglasses sitting and waiting for the parade to start. Which is funny now because I’ve since learned that The Husband and my cousin Bucky kept talking to me only to find out I was asleep behind my sunglasses. Ha!

When was the last time you saw McGruff the dog?! I got a little excited, all those flashbacks to D.A.R.E. and all.

 

 

 

 

This is the army band. And what was so awesome was that they are playing tejano music! I will make a confession here: I still have no idea what they’re saying or anything, but something about San Antonio makes me love tejano music.

 

 

 

 

 

This is pretty much what San Antonio is like during Fiesta. Beautiful, tradtional and draped in flowers.

 

 

 

 

 

I’m still trying to figure out why only Miss San Antonio was driven in a low-rider.

 

 

This is one of the more traditional floats I saw in the parade. I wish the photo could translate the fresh, earthy sweet smell of the flowers as they passed by. It was just beautiful.

 

 

 

 

 

So then we got out the cascarones. Confetti eggs. And if you’ve never had the joy of cracking a dyed eggshell filled with paper confetti on the skull of your beloved cousins (shout out, R’s!), you’ve obviously never lived. The downside is that when you have insanely thick curly hair and you get that confetti in there because your aforementioned beloved cousins not only crack the shell on your skull but then rub it in you have to brush out your hair, immediately resulting in a Mexi-fro.

I didn’t take a picture of that.

Did I forget to mention that I had my wisdom tooth out the day before we left for San Antonio? I was so worried that I wouldn’t be able to eat all the yummies awaiting me down south, but it all worked out.

Except for the cerveza-ritas.

My cousins Bucky and Rae kept telling me and The Husband about some wonderful drink called a cerveza-rita. So since our grandmother was out of town* and we were staying there with The Monsters and Izzy the Wonder Dog alone, The Cousins brought over some liquor and beer and made Trey a cerveza-rita. Since I could neither drink through a straw nor ingest alcohol due to the wisdom tooth healing process, I just took the pictures of the cerveza-rita. I hope to have one soon. Very very soon. It wasn’t fair, and I may have pouted.

 

And that was just the end of day one.

 

*Who am I kidding? My grandmother would have probably pulled up a schooner with the rest of them. She’s kinda cool like that.

All the cheap and sugary philosophies

I could never attempt to put into words how much I love The Husband. Just yesterday I spent the entire day with The Doctor and he cancelled his plans to stay home with The Monsters. So I left the house carefree, had a tiring but lovely day with The Doctor. I headed home around 9pm and had a vision of walking in the door and having some dessert and TV time with The Husband before bed.

Um, nope.

The Monsters were still awake. And lively. Probably in that “I’m-so-tired-I’m-going-into-a-manic-state” kind of lively, but lively nonetheless. And evidence of dinner was everywhere. On the table, on the stove, in the sink and all over the counters. The Husband had obviously just bathed The Monsters and I found him putting lotion on The Elliot. He looked shell-shocked. Exhausted, like he’d just been through battle alone. And I guess technically he had. He’d been on his own with our heathen children for 12 hours. So I jumped into the fray and helped lull The Monsters into a quiet holding pattern (aka sleep), and then I found The Husband working on the dinner mess. I requested he put away the perishables and then ordered him to the couch to have dessert. We ate some strawberries and watched the news… well I watched the news. He mostly slept.

The Husband told me later on that he didn’t get half of what he wanted to do done, and he gets why I get so frustrated about most everything. And it took me a little while to think on it, but I turned to him and said this: “Honey, I’m kind of glad you didn’t get anything done today. Because I do it everyday and I end most days feeling like a complete failure because I didn’t get anything done. So thanks for failing today.”

I love my husband. And his failures. But not his messes. Those I barely tolerate. Time for some barely tolerating in the kitchen.

Come on get happy

Sometimes in life there are mysteries. And while I support unraveling the enigmas and conundrums of this vast and wondrous world we inhabit, there is one thing that I believe should remain shrouded in uncertainty.

Dentistry.

I don’t want to know anything about what a dentist is doing inside my mouth, unless he is implanting one of my molars with a tracking device for the aliens. [For the record, I watch a lot of “X-Files” on Netflix streaming.]

I had two fillings this afternoon. The only thing the dentist told me was “I’m going to put this topical numbing stuff on your gums now.” So after he did that, he never said “Now I’m going to use a needle and inject you with medicine” or anything of the sort. He hid the needle from me and I just looked away, or I did as best as I could laying in a dentist’s chair. He just did what he had to do, speaking to me in a soothing voice and it was a relatively positive experience overall. It was so awesome – he didn’t even tell me when he was starting to pull my wisdom tooth.

So thanks for keeping the mystery alive, Doc. You’re rad.

And my mouth hurts. Thanks for that, too.

I hope you had the time of your life

The Elliot’s personality is really starting to shine through now that he’s walking and a lot more independent, and if there’s one thing I’m becoming more sure of it is this: my kid is kinda weird. Which is pretty par for the course when it comes to our house. This morning The Elliot is walking around the house with his new favorite toy. It’s a plastic knife from the kitchen/tea set in his room. Not weird, right? Well, he’s walking around the house with this thing, shiving the furniture like he’s leading a revolt in Alcatraz. And every time he thrusts the knife he giggles.

In other news, we did something so very awesome this weekend. We loaded up the van and drove 45 minutes to the drive-in! And in the words of The Joey, “This is the best night of my life!”

And in case anyone is thinking about renting or buying “Rango”, just don’t. It was an awful movie and it is what eventually put everyone to sleep. “Mars Needs Moms” however, is just awesome. And it provides an endless supply of “Do you want the martians to come take your mommy to Mars because you’re misbehaving?”

So we decided ahead of time to pick up some pizza on the way and eat in the van and watch some movies. I thought I was so prepared, stopping at a 7-Eleven on the way to get some drinks and cookies. Well, the pizza and drinks didn’t even last the entire wait before the movies even began. The cookies made it through the first five minutes of the movie (ten for Elliot), and by the time intermission began I was listening to “Mooo-oom! I’m thiiiirrrsty!” So The Husband and I began making our “let’s be better prepared for next time list”. MORE DRINKS. MORE SNACKS, or at least more cash for the concession stand. BUG SPRAY. The play pen so The Elliot doesn’t have to sit in his stroller completely immobilized for the duration of two hours. Toys, for the time in between when we arrive and when the movies start after the sun goes down. Blankets and pillows for the back of the van. Not to say we didn’t have a good time this first time, it was just very evident that we were the newbies. But the boys had a great time.

I can’t wait for the next time.

Hey, hey, do the zombie stomp

If you know me personally and not just online, you know I have a special spot in my heart and mind for, um… zombies.

brains….

Luckily I have found in The Husband a mate who shares this love. Frankly, the couple that plans for the zombie apocalypse together stays together. And before you start thinking we’re crazy or anything, we prefer to sit and watch movies about zombies. And watch tv shows about zombies. And listen to audiobooks about zombies. And read books about zombies. And talk about zombies (seriously – if zombies are, in fact, dead, how do they digest human flesh? Aren’t all their organs dead? So why do they eat human flesh?!). And dress up our baby as a zombie.

Okay. We might be crazy.

So crazy, in fact, I’m instituting ZOMBIE FRIDAY!!!! here on momnipresent. I think it might catch on.

Last night The Husband and I couldn’t find anything we really wanted to do so we sat down and watched a zombie movie. It’s our go-to when we’re bored and/or indecisive. I recently found out that netflix has a zombie genre, so I added a couple of films I thought sounded interesting. And I landed on a gold mine. I present to you…

“AAAAH! ZOMBIES!”

This is seriously awesome. ZOMBIES WHO DON’T KNOW THEY’RE ZOMBIES!!!! Truly a game-changer.

Tune in next week to find out what’s next on…

ZOMBIE FRIDAY!!!!

How much do I know, to talk out of turn

Along with a lot of the country, I’ve been following this mess going on in Washington, D.C. concerning the government shutdown. I read about how it’s going to impact our daily lives, etc. I see on the news how we’ll still get our mail, but we won’t get our tax refunds and we can’t go visit a national park. Well let me tell you what’s going on in our house.

The Husband can’t go to work. As an employee of the 136th Airlift Wing of the Texas Air National Guard he is deemed non-essential. And if he’s not at work, he doesn’t get paid. We aren’t eligible for the promise of back-pay. And since I stay home with the boys, he’s the only person bringing money into this household. We were lucky enough to have already received our tax refund so as long as this shutdown doesn’t last too long (or happen at all), we might be okay. We don’t have a savings account. We were all set to start one a few months ago, but something else happened.

We had to file for bankruptcy. Yeah, it’s been something we’ve been keeping under wraps for a while. Mostly because we’ve been doing what we need to do to get to our future goals and we just didn’t feel the need to put our shit out there for everyone. But I’m pissed now, and the only way to explain it is to explain it all. When The Husband began to work in Fort Worth The Joey and I were still living in Hell (or Howe… whatever). We tried for a year and a half to sell the damn place and during that time the housing market tanked. At the end of that year of a half The Joey was having night terrors every night The Husband was gone, I was essentially a single parent and we were officially upside down on our home. It was a terrible time and the choice came down to either we do something to alleviate the stress on all three of us or I was going to do something about it on my own, i.e. relocating myself and my son to Houston… without The Husband. We just couldn’t take it anymore.

So we essentially let the house go into foreclosure. We knew we’d have to take a hit and there would be consequences we’d have to weather before we could buy again, and we assumed those risks. Then The Husband became a federal employee. Our home loan had been guaranteed by the USDA and a few months ago they came after us for the remainder of our home loan to the tune of $36K. And they added on another $10K for fees and fun. They were garnishing The Husband’s wages, about $500 a month. We were still paying on The Elliot’s week-long hospital stay for pneumonia, The Joey had just had pneumonia (yeah – I still don’t know how they both got it!) and had to go to the ER, but everything was manageable without The Husband’s wages being garnished. We had been saving, we had been living by an envelope budget (thanks, Steve Ramsey!) and things were pretty awesome. Not anymore.

Now with this shutdown looming over our heads I am just pissed. We play by the rules. We don’t live outside our means. We’re doing what we can to pay back our debt. We just want to move forward and create a good life for us and our children, with a house and a yard and good schools. And now not only are we giving the government our expendable income, not only does my husband serve our country every weekday and one weekend a month, now the government won’t pay him for his [albeit civil] service and we don’t have anything to fall back on because we give it all back to pay a government agency. And why? I really wanted to know and I kept seeing things on the news, reading them on Huffington Post and CNN, and hearing them on NPR.

"It looks like it's headed" toward a shutdown, Reid said on the Senate floor. "The numbers are basically there, but I am not as nearly as optimistic -- and that's an understatement -- as I was" on Wednesday night after a previous meeting with Obama and Boehner.

Reid said the differences between the two parties "are no longer on how much savings we will get on government spending." Instead, he insisted, the major obstacle at this point is Republicans' insistence on including provisions related to abortion and environmental protection.

Republicans are, among other things, pushing to strip all funding from Planned Parenthood as well as trying to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

In a statement Thursday, Planned Parenthood noted that "by law, no federal funding for Planned Parenthood goes toward abortion." Cutting its funding would harm Planned Parenthood programs that provide contraception, cancer screenings and help deal with sexually transmitted infections, the group said.

"A small group with an extreme political agenda is forcing a shutdown of the United States government over a dangerous proposal that would bar women from getting the lifesaving health care they need," said Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards.

-From CNN

So now I’m not only pissed about our financial situation and the possibility it’ll only get worse and we’ll never catch up and move our kids to a better school district, now I’m pissed because Republicans can’t keep themselves out of my vagina and uterus. AND they want to make toxic air acceptable for my children to breathe – a big topic here in Fort Worth due to the ongoing issues and unknowns concerning natural gas drilling.

I’m kind of torn. Do I support those refusing to back down on women’s and environmental rights, two things I feel extremely strongly about, or do I support having income to feed and shelter my children? The two should never have been entwined but now that they are there just doesn’t seem to be an answer.

I promise my next post will be happier.

I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain?

So every year I begin the spring season with high hopes of beautiful flowers and herbs. I head out to Lowes or Wal-Mart or wherever and load up my cart with planters, planting soil and seeds. I get myself outside (a rare event in and of itself), I get dirty (an even rarer event) and I dig around in the dirt planting things. Sometimes I even sweat (the rarest event of all). I water my little planters of dirt every other day religiously. I watch some seedlings poke through and then I talk to it, watering it every day and relishing in its growth and maturation process.

Then summer comes.

It’s too hot. Blazing, irradiating, scalding heat. The faucet singes my hand when I try to fill my watering can. Sometimes I swear I can feel the hellfire and smell the brimstone of the hell that is Texas summer. So I’ll attempt to con The Joey into watering my plants for me because it’s summer and he wants to live outside. But, as it happens, he’s only five and is about as reliable as I am in the watering-the-plants department.

Every once in a while I go outside with him (slathered in sunscreen and praying to God I don’t start sweating) and I’ll notice the poor withering, wilted, curled-up Plants Of Death and Dying. I begin my most sincere and heart-felt apologies to the plants (yes, I talk to my plants), watering them and nursing them back to health. But the cycle begins again; I don’t water and the Plants of Death and Dying eventually just die.

Here are some pictures I just took in my backyard:

IN MEMORIAM:

These are the remains of my basil plant. I used to make awesome pasta sauce with the help of this guy. Basil, you will be missed. Trust that you will be remembered fondly and often.

Alyssum and four o’clocks. R.I.P.

Alyssum and sweet peas (the flower). Do not go gentle into that good night.

Sunflowers, I don’t know how I’ll get over you.

Out of all tragedy comes a renewed hope in life. New life brings with it a sense of completion, a fresh start. In this case:

Sunflower sprouts and clover!

I planted sunflower seeds two years ago. And I’m still getting sunflowers. It’s awesome. And I know clover is a weed, but those little yellow flowers are so pretty! Of course, I know nothing about plants and for all I know those little yellow flowers could be something else entirely. So here’s a better picture in case you can identify it:

All joking aside, I really want to try again. Yes, again. It’s spring and I’ve got planting fever. The Husband and I have been discussing transforming our driveway from this:

to a wonderful patio oasis. We recently bought a sandbox for The Monsters, we’re looking at and pricing out patio furniture, and our plan is to create a barrier around our driveway space with large planters (I’m still on the hunt, if you have any suggestions. I’m going to Garden Ridge this weekend.). Yes, planters! You know what that means, don’t you?!

I GET TO PLANT FLOWERS!

This year I’m getting ambitious and I’m going to plant herbs, too. I love to cook and I miss Basil. But I don’t have planters yet, and we’re still in the planning stages of The Great Transformation (aka The Driveway Project). So on a trip to Target this week (danger, checkbook, danger!) I impulse-bought a greenhouse. Here is a collage of what I planted today:

In this picture (and in my greenhouse) are Texas bluebonnets, parsley, sweet peas, basil, cilantro, oregano, rosemary and four o’clocks. The herbs are pretty self-explanatory. I chose bluebonnets because I love bluebonnets and I kinda miss being out in Hell and seeing a ton of them everywhere. I call The Joey “Sweet Pea” and I’ve tried to grow them every spring for three years now. Finally, I chose the four o’clocks because when The Elliot decided to make his entrance and my water broke, I looked at the clock and it was 4:05am. I really hope they come in! After that, I really hope I keep them alive!

The last time I tried to use one of the greenhouses everything just molded and I got really sick. Because I’m allergic to mold. But I thought I’d give it another go and added plant food to the dirt mixture all in the hope that I see some sprouts in the coming weeks. For now I’ll have to settle for this: