Roughing It

On any given weekday morning, my roommates and I don't cross paths with one another. Our schedules are different enough that we shuffle around our respective morning routines without running into each others coffee cups and hair-dryers.

Last Friday, however, I had taken the day off from work to wake up extra-early, shower, wake up KS at the offensive hour of 6:15 AM and get the car packed to leave for the airport. Our flight destination was San Antonio, but our final destination was Whisper Valley Ranch in Camp Verde, Texas, where we were to congregate with our friends for our third annual reunion with our girl-friends from college.

We all knew this year was going to be different than the past for two small reasons: Lydia and Staples.

"Who are Lydia and Staples?" you ask. Lydia is the 6 1/2-month-old daughter of our friend KM, and Staples is the 5-week-old daughter of my dear old roommate, KB.

To put things in perspective as to just how much of a difference a year makes: last August, KM was barely showing at the reunion and KB wasn't even pregnant yet.

Thursday night before our departure, KS had made homemade cinnamon rolls to bring along for breakfast one morning of the weekend. Because I'm evil, I posted a photo on Twitter of the final product just as the maple and coffee-enhanced frosting was poured on, and after generous sampling we dropped them off at KR's house on Friday morning because she was going to be driving down to the ranch later in the day, with AV and BF and her own homemade peanut butter cup cookies and AV's homemade brownies. Just imagine what their car smelled like for six whole hours. The repetition of the word "homemade" should not be lost on anyone, either.

Some of our friends had flown/driven in the Thursday night prior, but KS and I were the first to arrive on Friday around lunchtime. The ranch we were staying at for the weekend belongs to KB's grandparents-in-law and she and her husband got married there a little over two years ago.

So if you're paying attention, KB gave birth to her first child five weeks ago and is hosting her college friends at a ranch for the weekend. Just pause and consider, if you will, all that caring for a newborn entails, and then pause and consider the pandemonium that 16 girls are capable of creating. Now think about the limits of one's sanity.

Mr. B, the darling man who owns the place, came to the ranch for the weekend, and took those of us in town on Friday afternoon on a Jeep-tour of the property. It felt like being on safari because we saw everything from whitetail deer (which are native to Texas) to more exotic game like blackbeak antelope, scimitar oryx and lechwe.

It took a lot of brain cells for me to remember the names of animals I'd never seen before and more than a few Google searches to get the spelling down, so I felt the need to list all of them. High-five.

We knew going into the weekend that activities like horseback riding, fishing, and skeet-shooting were options, and after our guided tour, Mr. B took us to shoot skeet. Mike and Kenny, who work at the ranch, already had everything set up for us: guns, ammo and shooting earmuffs. After receiving the Reader's Digest version of gun safety (always keep the gun pointed down-range, etc.) they let us take turns practicing. I was less than great- I'm sure it had nothing to do with the ruffly white dress and red t-strap sandals I was wearing and more to do with "holding your left elbow too high" as my brother and father critiqued from the pictures I showed them after the trip.

And people wonder why I quit the golf team after my sophomore year of high school.

I got over my nervousness on Saturday morning because I didn't want to be the lame one of the bunch, so after Mike reminded me for the fourth time to shut my left eye and aim with my right, I ended up hitting five of them.

The rest of our friends starting arriving throughout the day on Friday and we sat and ate enchiladas, drank margarita bombs (don't ask) and talked and migrated around the house well into the night.

Saturday morning I woke up at a leisurely hour to a mostly-quiet house and a "gone fishin'" note from a few of our friends who had decided to get out early. A few of us got the coffee pot brewing and sat down to a Saturday morning free of errands, phone calls and obligations.

I don't know if there are many better weekend mornings that I could imagine than that one of drinking coffee, eating a warm cinnamon roll, staring out huge bay windows at a view of nothing but grass, trees and sky with my favorite people wandering in one-by-one. I challenge anyone to find better than that.

I neglected to mention that The Lodge (the house we were staying in) also had a pool in the backyard, so if you weren't inclined to the ranch-ier activities, you could lie in a lounge chair with a beer and a book.

KB would bring the Staples back and forth with her from the main house the entire weekend so that we could coo at the baby and ask her all of the things you never wanted to know about being a new mom. Lydia slept like a champ (12 hours at night + two daytime naps) and KM would even bring her in the pool with us to play, which she loved. Both moms somehow managed to juggle their always-moving little ones without missing the slightest beat in conversation.

After a full day of ranch activities on Saturday, KB's brother-in-law was nice enough to pick up barbecue for us from a nearby town. He's a year younger than us and most likely thought we were crazy, but he stuck around to make us a campfire for s'mores and stayed around to listen to the cadence of 16 girls talking at the same time.

Truth be told, the entire weekend was a blur of friends, babies, wilderness, good food and rest. This year has been lighter on weddings than the past two, so with friends that don't live in my Dallas radius, I hadn't seen many of them in quite a while. It was easier to part ways this time, knowing that even if I don't see some of them over the course of the next year, I know there will be another reunion.

Come what may: be it weddings, babies or different zip codes... none can stop what was started the day we met each other in College Station, all those years ago.

Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

-Henry James

Nacogdoches, Texas

My roommate and fellow World Cup (ahem- Fernando Torres) lover, KS, invited all of the Community Group girls down to her hometown of Nacogdoches, Texas last weekend.

We happily obliged and left directly after work on Friday- piling seven girls in one Suburban and hitting the road. (And get this- we didn't. Stop. Once. It was a Christmas miracle.)

KS left on Thursday to prepare for our arrival and greeted us right at the sun was going down, at her parents' lovely home on the end of a one-lane road in East Texas, three little King Charles spaniels right at her heels.

Nacogdoches was the place to be this weekend because of the annual Blueberry Festival that was going on. There was blueberry pie, cobbler, ice-cream, lemonade and anything else you could dream of that would be good with fruit on it. It was fantastic.

Nacogdoches is also the proud hometown of US Soccer Team star, The Deuce: Clint Dempsey, if you've been following the World Cup. Apparently we brought him luck, since he scored against England to tie the game on Saturday afternoon.

We spent the better part of Saturday afternoon, evening and night next to the pool in the S's backyard- laying out, chatting, grilling burgers, corn and peaches that tasted burger-ish (but tasted great with Homemade Vanilla Blue Bell), then settling in for a great late-night chat until about 3 AM.

We had agreed to wake up and get going Sunday morning for the girls who needed to be back for church commitments- so we were up by 7 and on the road by 7:45 AM and once again made it home without stopping. Instead, we ate our body weight in pretzel sticks and listened to a WoW 2000 CD that MK's mom had in the car.

It took us back to the good old days of high school youth group- when four hours was considered a sufficient night's sleep and didn't cause you to collapse on a Sunday afternoon and be completely out of commission for an entire day... like it does when you're in your mid-twenties, evidently.

It was just what we all needed...

No errands to run or places to be but on pool rafts and patio chairs.

No people to worry about but each other.

The perfect little getaway.

It is only in the country that we can get to know a person...

-Cyril Connolly

Team Players

I made pulled pork for dinner on Sunday night.

It was pretty darn good, if I do say so myself. I don't do a lot of slow-cooking for the sake of timing, but on a Sunday afternoon, it's completely doable.

Unfortunately for everyone else, the only photo I took was of the noble clean-up efforts by Ruby. MG, KS, BF and Molly's boyfriend Z ate the entire 2 1/2 pounds of it. Oh and myself, I may have helped a bit too.

With peach cobbler made by MG and homemade vanilla Blue Bell for dessert.

I plan to make it again soon, since it was so easy and delicious. I'll be sure to get photographic evidence and post the recipe since it would seem downright unfair to keep it to myself.

BF also had us over Friday night for a cookout- sliders with all sorts of burger-topping options and anything you could ever want to eat with burgers, so we were really just returning the favor.

I adore nights like those- I wish I could make them happen more during the week days, when a home-cooked meal is exactly what everyone needs.

Food for thought is no substitute for the real thing.
-Walt Kelly

Pairings

I was going through my photos from the past few months and realized that most of the ones I take I don't end up posting.

Possibly because I'm not too quick with the camera-to-laptop upload. There is some bureaucracy that involves me not always being able to find that particular USB cord.

Anyway,

I found a few photos of twosomes that I particularly liked, so I wanted to share...

In an old house in Paris

That was covered with vines

Lived twelve little girls

In two straight lines.

-Madeline, by Ludwig Bemelmans

Premature Celebration

80,000 of my best friends, AV, KR, BF and I got to hang out in the beautiful weather on Saturday. We attended the St. Patrick's Day Parade on Greenville Avenue in Dallas- a long-standing tradition of a parade whose qualifications include registering a float... and that's it.

It was quite the experience. We hung out on the sidewalks, drank beer (open container laws were waived for this event) and stood amidst the masses heckling the passing parade floats to chuck Mardi-Gras beads and Jell-O shots into the crowd.

When our group decided to get a move on and head to a guy's party down the road, I first discovered that I needed to go to the bathroom, badly, and secondly that I had no where to "go."

We walked for about 20 minutes and came up on the big intersection at Mockingbird and Greenville, I spied port-o-potties outside of the Kroger grocery store and the neighboring gas station. To my bladder, they looked like an oasis in a desert.

I held up my hands as if in surrender and broke it to the group that I would need a reprieve. Someone suggested relieving myself under the bridge, which was where I drew the line. How would I be able to face those people again? I just don't think you can look at a girl the same way after an episode like that. Not to mention, I was not going to risk getting some sort of ticket for Public Exposure. Imagine me trying to recover from/explain that.

So with resolve, I marched down the hill and planted myself in one of the port-o-potty lines. I was about 15 people back in my line. I waited, I scooted, and finally I was one person from the front. I was staring at the ground, counting the seconds (yes, it was that bad) when I felt a person very close to me. It was KR.

I heard a quiet "Can I hop in line with you? I can't hold it."

I told her she could before we were interrupted by the dude behind us, clearing his throat in an impatient, "ahem" sort of way.

KR spun around and said "I'm sorry, I've been waiting for her right over there (points). I'll go in with her, we'll be fast!"

"I'll go in with her?!"

You know how your friends do things sometimes that make you give them a momentary bewildered "What the H?!" look before remembering that this (whatever "this" is.) though alarming, is not actually surprising at all.

Like back in the day when MK decided it would be a good idea to bathe our class hedgehog in 8th grade science. Or when she did the same thing to the class kitten later in the semester.

Or that time you wore a dress to an 80's party in college and admitted to everyone that you wore it to a formal in high school in 1999.

Come to think of it, it's an accomplishment that something I wore at 15 still fit at 19.

Anyway.

So KR volunteered for us to go into the port-o-potty together. I don't know if you've ever been in a port-o-potty, but there isn't much room. At all.

It came to be our turn and, as promised, KR and I sardined ourselves into the tiny, free-standing stall. I'll spare you the details, but needless to say, we were very snug and extremely quick. We also received some applause upon our exit and to be honest, we deserved it.

I felt like a new person and was able to enjoy the rest of the day, even though we were completely exhausted after walking what turned out to be about four miles in non-walking-friendly shoes.

Somehow I think Wednesday (the real St. Patty's Day,) won't be quite as exciting.

It's not easy being green.

-Kermit the Frog

Jesse's Girl

I think we can all agree that Saturdays are wonderful.

Unless you work on Saturdays, in which case they may be a little bit less than wonderful to you, but let's not ruin my story.

Saturday morning I woke up to glorious sunshine. I had plans to meet AV for brunch, so I showered, put on a cute little outfit, opened my sunroof and drove to meet her at Toulouse in Dallas.

MK gave us a ring and picked us up to go with she and her friend in town, C, to the Nasher Sculpture Museum. The Nasher is free on the first Saturday of the month, and since it's partially outdoors and the weather was gorgeous, there were people everywhere. There was a yoga class going on, children running in all directions with face paint on, security guards fighting the uphill battle of telling said children that they were not allowed to play on or touch the statues, etc.

We weren't in a hurry, we were just... there. I loved it.

After departing the Nasher, we walked down the street to the Ritz-Carlton to sit outside and get a drink.

Drinking in the afternoon... at the Ritz-Carlton.

Nothing to see here, folks.

After being told that the pool was on the second floor and available to hotel guests only, MK thanked the hotel employee and in true MK fashion, turned around to us and said: "Let's go find the pool."

So of course, we ended up sitting by the pool at the Ritz in lounge chairs, sunglasses on, loving life. MK's friend C had never been to Texas, and was already getting a favorable first impression.

We had just received our drinks and while sipping from our mimosas, a familiar face walked outside to join a rail-thin girl who had finished a work-out and was relaxing in a chair to our left.

I'm not a fan of celebrity gossip, but I love movies and watch T.V. and all, so on rare occasion, I recognize people.

Bringing the long-stemmed plastic glass up to cover my lips, and without looking at her I said very quietly to AV:

"John Tucker Must Die?"

Without flinching and reaching for her own glass, I heard a very quiet "mhmmm" to confirm.

That's right- John Tucker, aka ridiculously good-looking actor Jesse Metcalfe, was also at the Ritz pool.

All I can say is thank goodness we were all wearing sunglasses, because I think any one of us could now tell you that he was in Dallas filming the pilot episode for a new show after mercilessly eavesdropping... and could also tell you exactly where the tattoos are on his shirtless body. I'm pretty against asking photos and autographs in general, but I did manage this one behind-the-scarf candid...

You're welcome.

Cause she's watching him with those eyes...

-Rick Springfield, Jessie's Girl

Breeding Potential

I mentioned in earlier last week that a large group of friends and I went to Joe T. Garcia's for dinner last weekend in Ft. Worth. I didn't delve into many details of last weekend because most of them were completely overshadowed by the huge amount of snow that fell and the fact that we had no power for three days and woe-is-me, but it was actually a lot of fun.

At dinner that night I was sitting next to KR and her brother TR, who was in town visiting for the weekend before he heads to Scottsdale, AZ in a few weeks for spring training. TR's friend J was also with us and before long, we heard them commenting on the waitress serving the table next to ours and discussing her "breeding potential."

Say what?

Allow me to explain, or at least allow me to try and describe this as it was explained to me.

It has come to my attention that there is a contingent of men who do not merely survey a girl as attractive or not, but they actually take into consideration physical qualities such as height, coordination and athletic prowess. The waitress, for example, was brunette, in the 5'8-5'10 range, left-handed (TR's observation) and clearly coordinated, as waitresses are required to be. This qualified said young woman as "a breeder."

TR is an athlete, a baseball pitcher by profession and is 6'5, so in his words, if he were to have kids with a girl who is 5'10, "Do you know what our children could do on the athletic field?"

What indeed.

I had a similar conversation which I filed away for such a time as this at a party last fall. I was in the kitchen at my friends CC and AH's house while they were having people over, and found myself chatting with SR and her husband and LS and her husband.

Fifth wheel: present.

The girls were discussing the conundrum between being tall and wanting to wear heels and the various benefits of low heels and wedges, and the guys somehow ended up talking about the factors that went into choosing their wives. Both of their wives are beautiful blond, and interestingly enough, they are both around the 5'10 mark. They both discussed the fact that marrying a tall woman was definitely to their advantage. Siring future basketball and football stars was mentioned.

I know what you are thinking: compelling and rich.

Men also don't really consider that they also have equal odds of having a girl, but don't tell them that. It's like what Henry VIII's wives did, they just nodded and said "Yep, I can have sons!"

Worked every time.

I'm 5'7 with no shoes on, meaning I am upwards of 5'10-5'11 in heels. The average American male is about 5'10, meaning if I am wearing heels, I'll be looking most guys straight in the eye and maybe scoping out a few premature bald-spots from my birds-eye view. This can sometimes be an issue- it feels unnatural to look down at a guy when you are talking to him, and no one looks their best when they start hunching over.

I always thought that guys were more attracted to short, tiny women as a rule. The kind of women who shop in the petite section of Ann Taylor, where MK and I found ourselves admiring ruffly tank-tops last weekend before wondering aloud: "why are these so SHORT?" I can answer that. Because they are worn by women who are short and therefore wear everything well and who don't have to search for especially-long pants or need borderline could-be-a-minidress-long tank tops because anything shorter and you would see midriff... that's why.

Tangent is over.

So anyway, I was glad to learn, in the most roundabout of ways, that being tall and female is a good thing.

It's good-breeding, in fact.

I have good genes. My father is Danish and my mother is Irish and Native American.

They both have good skin.

-Virginia Madsen

Guinea Pigs

My friends love making plans. Plans for the day, plans for the night, the weekend, trips- anything.

When we are planning to cook at one of our houses, I usually assume the role of menu-planner. Weekends especially allow me the freedom to cook as I wish and unless otherwise noted, my friends let me use them as my guinea pigs for trying new recipes.

I have chopped, diced and baked with my friends around enough to know who I'm dealing with. I know that MG, AV and I will not eat fish, CC and MK will eat most anything but CC does not like celery and MK gets nauseous around bananas. AV does not like to mix salty and sweet in the same bite, KS is allergic to red meat and chocolate (I know, so tragic), and I can tell you that KR will eat sushi but also gets goobed-out handling raw meat. I can tell you who drinks coffee and who drinks tea, who prefers white wine and who prefers red, and so on.

Two weekends ago I decided I wanted to cook fried chicken. I felt like it was one of those staples that Southern women should just know how to prepare for lunch on a Sunday afternoon after church, so that's what I did. With the help of KS, who stayed hard at work making homemade biscuits, I made fried chicken in a cast-iron skillet, how God intended. It fried and then baked for an additional length of time which made it more crunchy and delicious.

Thankfully we cooked an entire chicken for just the two of us, along with mashed potatoes and the biscuits covered in honey butter. We even listened to a nice mix of country music the entire time and wore our favorite aprons, which should really complete the vision of domesticity in your head right now.


This past weekend it was decided that we would eat over at KR and MK's place. I was set on using their grill and decided that it was as good a time as any to learn how to grill steak. My dad makes amazing food from the grill so I consulted him on a marinade and got my shopping list together.


KR helped me light the grill and after turning on the gas and the knobs, as per instructions, we still managed to create a small atomic bomb-like explosion of fire as the grill roared to life. Eyebrows were thankfully spared. KR, AV, KS, BF and I enjoyed a night in and had dips, roasted garlic on crostini, filet mignon and Gruyere-Parmesan scalloped potatoes. KS also made us Sidecars (which were a hit, thanks for my friend CT's recipe) and KR made Nutella cupcakes which completed our decadent meal.

I bought a dining table for our front room tonight (thank you, Craigslist) and plan to add some cute covered chairs with it, so you'll hear about more dinner parties soon.

Explosions will henceforth be kept to a minimum... people start talking when someone singes an eyebrow.

Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.

-Harriet Van Horne

Fredericksburg, Texas

My friends and I woke up January 1 in the year 2010 only to pack and get going for a road trip.

I'll give you three guesses of where we were going or more appropriately, for what purpose.

...

The only reason I go anywhere is for weddings, so if you guessed anything other than that, you must be new around here.

We traveled to Fredericksburg, Texas this past weekend for the wedding of our friend KK. We got there via Secret Service detail (three black Tahoes) which transported us 280 miles southwest of Dallas. We coordinated last week which was helpful because otherwise we would have ended up with about nine cars across the state for no reason at all. If you think that's ridiculous then you have no idea what we are capable of. We listened to enough country music in those 10+ car hours and spent enough time on Texas backroads to twang up our accents and convince a less-discerning ear that we grew up in tiny triple-digit population towns rather than the Dallas and suburbs of our youth.

MK, LB, KR, BF and I were all staying at a B&B for the weekend. The owners were attentive to the point of asking about food allergies and showing us the proper way to close the icebox. We used six-inch voices the entire time we were there, but we had a great time and drank all of their coffee.

So the wedding itself was planned in eight weeks. This is a tall-order on it's own, so the fact that everyone was in place and the couple were pronounced man and wife after all was said and done was nothing short of an accomplishment. While some of our friends had wedding party commitments, the rest of us got to go to dinner together Friday night. Apparently a couple owns the restaurant; the wife is Greek and the husband is Cajun and the it's in Middle of Nowhere, Texas with Zagat ratings, so you can imagine how great the food was. Our friend AH pointed out that we made it through several bread-baskets and a bottle of olive oil with gusto, and likewise we managed quite well through salads, entrees and dessert. The place was very honky-tonk burger place looking, but if you used their same menu in any big city and put white tablecloths down, no one would ever know the difference.

The B&B girls got up Saturday morning and were served breakfast by the owners, which was great, then we went and tooled around Main Street in Fredericksburg for a few hours. The church where the wedding was to take place was about 30 miles from us, in Hilda, Texas, so we were showered and dressed and had our hair did and heels on by 2:15 PM. The church was even more remote than our restaurant the night before, but we found it and parked on the side of a narrowly paved stretch of road next to the church. Amid the gravel and rugged terrain in my patent leather heels I was thinking "why didn't I consider wearing hiking boots with this BCBG dress before?" which suddenly seemed like a valid option.

KK and her fiance had already decided they would see each other before the wedding and AH, the photographer coordinated to have the wedding party out at a family friend's ranch to take pictures the afternoon before the ceremony, so when we walked up they were taking more photos and seemed to be enjoying themselves. We made our way into the church and were shown to our seats by a bevy of 8th grade boys. NS, the groom, has been their Bible Study leader for the past few years, and one of their parents drove them down to the wedding to participate. They were very uniform in their blue blazers and even though were was some confusion over the proper way to escort a lady to her seat, they managed very well for being so young.

MG had an arsenal of bobby pins with her when we were seated because she had been on hair-duty all day with various members of the wedding party. Fifteen minutes before show-time she got another call and disappeared to the parsonage-looking house next to the church where the bridal party was waiting. The ceremony went well even despite a brief moment when the pastor put his left hand on the back of the groom's head and his right hand on the back of the bride's head to pray over them, and every girl on our pew let out a collective gasp because he was bear-clawing her chignon. I mean, thank goodness for hairspray.

We returned to Fredericksburg for the reception where we were greeted with delicious food and blue margaritas. We ate dinner and had wine and of course ended up at the table next to the 8th graders. KK's uncle and his band, who play country music from the 1960's and 70's were the entertainment for the evening. The music was great but the dancing required a partner, so after joking about it amongst ourselves I actually ran into the group of boys after a trip to the bathroom. They were sitting in a semi-circle of chairs and it did not take any convincing for me to get them out of the chairs and back into the reception room after I promised that my friends and I would dance with them. After a trip down middle-school dance memory-lane, complete with sweaty palms and non-reciprocated questions, the boys parents acting as their chaperones for the evening thanked our group saying that the dance "made their week" as the boys were finding the groom to high-five him and yelling "score!" If only guys our age were so easy.

Our night ended with a detour to Dairy Queen and a Mariah Carey sing-along before the carpool dropped us off at the B&B, only we were detained for a few moments by siren lights and a very serious police officer. Turns out MG had forgotten to turn on her lights after the DQ stop, which necessitated research that most likely included her SAT score and blood type because it took about 15 minutes and resulted in only a written warning.

On the way home the next morning CC, MG and I were driving back together, taking the scenic, non-I35 route and explained to every other driver poking along on the road or barreling through blind turns with a trailer hooked up to their Dodge Ram that they needed a seminar on road etiquette. Every time we passed one of them MG accounted for their bad driving by declaring "that explains it" regardless of the driver's gender, age or nationality.

We returned home to regale KS with tales from our weekend before crashing face-first into our respective beds. No one else crashed? That was just me? I would have taken my shoes off but my shoes were actually my Ugg slippers so there was no need. I couldn't help but think that a tornado must have whirled through my room while I was gone because surely I did not throw around the contents of my closet in such a reckless fashion on Friday morning.

I probably also thought I would never dance with another 8th grader after graduating middle school.

I love thee, I love but thee

With a love that shall not die

Till the sun grows cold,

And the stars grow old...

-Bayard Taylor

Moths & Cashmere

I don't have any sisters, so sharing clothes was never something I did growing up. I didn't really have to share anything because as soon as I was old enough to establish dominance with the bathroom counter-space for all of my pre-teen accessories and hair products, my brother moved into the third upstairs bedroom. We would steal t-shirts from one another during college, when he took hostage my Aunt Carrie's shirt for a few years (it's from a restaurant in Rhode Island, it's soft, t-shirty perfection) but I won the war on that one.

A few months ago I wore a cardigan that belongs to KS a few times and then took it to the dry-cleaner. I don't take things to the cleaner's very often and it's always a massive heap when I do, so when I started examining everything as I was paying, I saw the condition of the sweater and thought it was ruined. I panicked, thinking that the sweater must be the most important and pivotal piece of her wardrobe, and I would need to take her to J.Crew and pick out something she would love, just not as much as the yellow cardigan I had destroyed. Upon further examination, it looked like they had washed it and had knotted it and let it dry and it was just terribly wrinkled.

I don't know how everyone else's dry-cleaner operates, but wrinkled is not typically the look I'm going for. Glad we are on the same page.

Ultimately they fixed the sweater (after three attempts) and ironed it to within an inch of its' life so as to get out the wrinkles and I was able to return it to KS with profuse apologies of tardiness and she was nice as could be. That's just how she is.

Fast-forward a few months to yesterday as I returned home from work and found a cardigan of mine that KS had borrowed was hanging in the laundry room. KS and MG had been cooking for MG's family who were coming over, and KS said "I have something to tell you about your sweater..."

I saw the look of fear and worry in her eyes, the very look I had when I thought I had ruined her sweater. Before she could continue, I said "The little holes in the sleeve? I did that while moving a mirror." She looked confused and said that she thought they happened when she had been holding her dog Sadie, how she had been wriggling and thought that she snagged the two little holes and how she had fretted over telling me for months. I told her for first thing that the sweater had been gone for a while and obviously I was okay without it, secondly that it was not her fault in the first place and thirdly that it would have been okay had that happened anyway.

I realized it was completely true- it would be one thing if things just disappeared all the time but were never returned, but that doesn't happen at our house. It makes life so easy. In both cardigan situations, we both spent a good deal of time worrying about something that would have been okay either way. I have become more of an advocate of borrowing from each other out of convenience and in that it is non-budget-threatening way to wear something new. We have nice things and take care of them, but accidents happen.

Moths also happen, apparently.

Evidently a moth found my favorite blue cashmere wrap in my closet recently and decided to have a snack, leaving two finger-poke sized holes behind. I will not be so forgiving, should I find him fluttering around my closet again.

The culprit is still at-large.

I've got to get home - Oh, baby, you'll freeze out there

Say, lend me your coat - It's up to your knees out there...

-Baby It's Cold Outside, lyrics by Frank Loesser

Wallflower Tendencies

On the precipice of a busy weekend filled with parties and holiday cheer, I find myself preparing to face an inevitable evil:

Talking to people I don't know.

Oh, the horror!

I dread small talk. Or rather, I'm not good at it.

It's not as though I dislike people on the basis of not knowing them- I just get stressed and clammed up when a meeting occurs. When it comes to small talk I am an epic fail. If I don't know someone, beyond a few intro questions I run out of things to say. For someone who had a lot of random blind dates for date parties in college, you think I would have made some improvement in this area, but you would be wrong. First impressions are rarely smooth-sailing for me; they are more like a perfect storm of uncomfortableness and forced questions.

There are things I consider myself good at, such as cooking, choosing outfits, holding my own in a sports-related conversation or giving unqualified relationship advice, and then there are things I am less-inclined to, like pop-culture references, making music recommendations and talking to strangers. Those do not come naturally for me.

I am thankful that I live with MG because my social anxiety, as I have found out, is not weird. Or maybe we are just weird together, which I can also live with because MG is very funny and likes to talk about novels and eat chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs. I can appreciate all of those qualities. We have been, among other things, known to avoid random acquaintances at church, disappearing with the stealth of undercover spies until the coast is clear while one of our friends like CC, for example, hugs and greets every familiar face she sees. It's torture.

It's a deceiving sort of anxiety that we have because because we function normally in society. We both willingly joined a sorority and were actively involved in other activities in college. We have many close friends and both have jobs that involve talking to people for many hours of the day. When we are home with KS, we are rarely in our rooms because we are hanging out together. KS is good influence because she is nice to everyone, could talk to a wall if you asked her too and she's a master at flirting. Flirting is advanced on the socializing ladder, in case you were wondering.

An added issue is that most everyone by their mid-20s seems to develop the habit of saying: nice to see you. It is a practiced response and many people seem to say it without much consideration to whether they have met you or not. I like believing that politeness should be genuine, not generic. It is perfectly normal for two people to have run in similar circles and never met each other before- stranger things have happened, I assure you. My social anomalies give me a heightened sense of awareness around strangers, so I usually know if I have met you before. People who actually take the time to remember make themselves memorable to those who pay attention.

There are two things I have found that make meeting people easier: first would be that they are already a friend of a friend and you are meeting them in the context of people you already know. This makes any situation more automatically more relaxed because you are with people who put you at ease.

And the second? The second would be having a few drinks and hoping for the best.

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

-Robert Frost

Stockings Hung By the Sony With Care

I feel like I have been a bit detached from the blog world the past few weeks. I don't find myself at a loss for words, it's just that not every stream on consciousness forms itself into a blog post.

My friends and acquaintances have outdone themselves with the Christmas parties this year- so much so that KS, MG and I elected to wave the white flag this December and let everyone else entertain us instead. We'll have a party when people least expect it. You just wait. Our house does have nice holiday touches throughout, though as you may have guessed our stockings are literally hanging down below our T.V. on the media console because we have no fireplace. Santa will have to ring the doorbell.

I am currently chipping away at The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. The complexity of the story reminds me why the classics are the classics, and why they continually withstand the test of time. Knowing full-well that I could not read consecutive novels this engrossing, I am still enjoying it.

There is also this new application I have downloaded on my phone called Words With Friends, which is terribly addicting. It's more about strategy than actually knowing how to spell, which I'm trying to learn. I recommend it.

I cooked Italian over the weekend- first was eggplant parmesan with BF on Friday night, which MK came over and ate with us. I had honestly never tried it before, and as MK described it: it's one of those dishes that you see on a menu and you are thankful that vegetarians have it as an option, but you don't think to order it yourself. We cooked enough to feed an army and the man at the liquor store pointed us in the direction of a huge bottle of inexpensive red wine that "all of the old Italian people" buy in his store. I had no idea there were so many old Italians in Dallas, seeing as we have Mexican food on every corner, but the wine was good both in the dish and to drink, so he seemed to know what he was talking about.

The second meal was manicotti which I helped my mom with at home yesterday while my family watched football and relaxed at home. I had never made either dish before which made them interesting, and both were delicious. I find that with new recipes I am most concerned with timing- I can tell by looking at a recipe any ingredients I want to add or omit but I always read directions multiple times to get a handle on what needs to happen when.

So if anyone needs to eat this week, please let me know. Leftovers abound, though I cannot promise garlic bread because I'm fairly confident that BF, MK and I did a number on it Friday night.

After my snow report from last week I am pleased to say that the cold weather persists. I did not love it so much when our heat was out at the end of last week and MG and I had to sleep here in the 53-degree temperatures, but now that it's working again I can fully embrace the weather outside as being frightful. It must be my winter birthday doing the talking, but I do love it.

If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.

-Victor Hugo

No Subject

I have been all over the place this week. Nothing was adding up to one cohesive post, so everyone is getting a random compilation from me today.

MG emailed me yesterday to point out that we had exercised for three consecutive days, so why not keep the dream alive and go for four? Since I've actually been in a pattern of losing, rather than gaining weight (as would be typical this time of year), I was on board with the plan. Last night we (BF, KS, MG and I) went to a Pilates class. Other women were shocked at our age, after assuming we were in high school (which I took as a compliment), and after an hour of torture our instructor pointed the four of us out and said that we need to be sure and make it back next week. Something about inflexibility and inability to hold the plank position for very long... or maybe it was the pained faces we were making at each other the whole time. Not sure.

I gave myself a break last night and after we returned home from class (followed up with a stop at Chipotle, let's be honest), I watched Twilight and read some of KS's magazines while she made homemade pecan pie. She is supposed to be delivering it to a very lucky young man today but it did not escape without us sampling it. Had to.

While reading recent issues of House Beautiful and Real Simple, I realized that I really have not taken time to explore the designer haven of Etsy. I like the idea of people being able to start out small with an online storefront as opposed to investing in actual real estate. It makes starting a small business more accessible. I love that.

In my reading I found out about a similar website, Foodzie, and now my eyes have been opened to all sorts of amazing gift ideas and things to try. Who wouldn't want an assortment of cheesecakes in jars, or skillet bacon jam? There is even a tab called "Discover" which finds you geographically and tells which vendors produce things locally in relation to you.

I leave tomorrow night to go to Houston, where I plan to see a few friends, enjoy a Friday off then head to College Station, where I attended college at Texas A&M for four years. I visited once after graduating but am sad to say that I have not been back in over two years now. AV, BF and KR will be driving down on Friday, so I'll meet them there in the evening for dinner, drinks and a favorite tradition of mine: Midnight Yell Practice. I cannot wait. College Station holds great memories for me and fostered a group of friends that has continued to grow and stay close even 2 1/2 years out of college.

A near afterthought is the fact that New Moon comes out this weekend and I have friends all aflutter with the ongoing Team Edward vs. Team Jacob debate. It's very heated and there are many compelling Vanity Fair photos making the case for each.

With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard sane.
-John Irving

Women at Sporting Events: An Exposé

Let me tell you a little story about what happens when you give 11 girls suite tickets to an NBA game.

My friend BF invited our friends and Bible study girls to go to the Mavericks vs. Rockets game last night. The company she works for has season tickets to many Dallas sporting events, and she was granted sole use of their suite, including 12 tickets, at this game.

Job perks? Check.

We all met up and BF and LB were driving us to the game, each with a full car of girls talking a mile a minute. Once we got close to the American Airlines Center, traffic picked up and LB lost sight of BF's car. Turns out we were in a turn-only lane complete with a wall of orange cones to enforce the right turn, while we actually needed to drive straight to get to our parking garage. Traffic, mind you, was horrendous and there were pedestrians everywhere. LB stopped before turning, rolled down her window to talk to the police officer directing traffic, smiled and asked if he could get us to the gold parking garage.

The man literally stopped traffic for her, moved cones and directed her into the middle of the intersection where he guarded her car until he could let us through and told her exactly where to park. This same officer blew his whistle at a guy jogging and told him to get back on the sidewalk while we were waiting. LB, happy and universally adorable as she is, thanked him with such praise as: You're my hero! and my personal favorite: You're a pal!

Lesson learned: never underestimate the advantages of being a woman. It is a powerful, powerful thing.

I already knew it was going to be an entertaining evening, not only for the fact that we would be in a suite at a Maverick's game, but also because what on Earth was going to happen with 11 girls left unchaperoned at a sporting event? It's almost confusing to people to see a bunch of women together to watch game. Shouldn't we have been dragged there by dads, husbands, boyfriends or dates?

How quickly you forget that girls will go anywhere that involves some level of sitting around, eating and socializing. Especially if you want to give us VIP entrance access and popcorn.

CC and her roommate AH were already exchanging fighting words over gmail- CC being a Dallas native and Mavericks fan; AH being a San Antonio native, NBA photographer and a Spurs fan. They are the greatest of friends, let me tell you, but they are both fiercely loyal and their NBA team rivalry is actually one of the only things they ever argue about. Thank goodness we weren't playing San Antonio or else I think we would have had to put them in separate camps.

The suite had two tables, one short and one tall, and eight chairs in the middle with a huge flat- screen T.V., then several stools and seats where you could sit and watch the game. I figured there would be lounging at the tables- girls hanging out and catching up without paying so much attention to the game hoopla, kind of how women typically congregate in the kitchen when you go to someones house and while guys watch the game.

Would you believe that every girl present eschewed network television to watch the game the entire time?

Believe it.

Of course we were chatting about life, guys, KK's impending wedding and there was talk of whether or not the tight-rope walker at half-time had reproductive capabilities after having so many unfortunate falls on the rope, but all in all everyone knew what was going on. KR and I even discussed possibly coordinating a double-date between she, Kris Humphries, Dirk Nowitzki and myself.

I honestly would not have guessed that 11 girls would be so into a basketball game. I would have predicted more bonding over Diet Cokes inside the suite, roaming around the club level, possibly browsing pink and white Nowitzki jerseys and leaving early. There was none of that, though KR did spy the dessert cart sometime during the third quarter. CC and I have a long-standing bond over our love for the Mavericks, so we sat together during the fourth quarter having a tête-à-tête to analyze our new players added this season, who on the team has shown improvement, etc. I even consider that to be quite normal though because we've been to so many games together over the years.

I've definitely been at sporting events before and heard girls mess up in asking which quarter/inning/set/period the game is in. For example, asking: Which quarter is it? at a baseball game. Along those lines would also be: Did we win? -or- Who are we playing again? How much time is left? Who has the ball? The kind of questions which make guys roll their eyes and wonder why they brought girls along in the first place. We had none of that- I was so proud.

It was a generous gesture of BF's employer to let us use his tickets- that's not the kind of thing we get to do every day and it was enjoyed by all parties... except for maybe the tight-rope guy.

He's still recovering.

Winning may not be everything, but losing has little to recommend it.

-Dianne Feinstein

Half and Half

Half of this weekend was incredibly fun.

People started flying into Dallas late last week and KS and I decided to have our friends not in the wedding party over for dinner Friday night.

Opportunity to be hostesses? Seized.

After work that evening I prepped ingredients for salad and the pizzas we would be baking while KS nailed prints onto the wall of our small foyer and arranged a table with flowers and lovely, house-warming things. The new Michael Buble CD was bumping from the iPod dock and we were hardly speaking; the girl equivalent of being "in the zone".

KS arranged the Waterford glasses (I know, yes we have Waterford) in perfect bowling-pin formation as some of our friends began to arrive. KB, BF, JP, HR, AV and KR all came over and we enjoyed a ridiculously fun night which mainly consisted of wine refills and a spotlight on HR and JP, who entertained everyone the whole evening.

Our friends in the wedding party who were staying over at our house: AR and LB, came home with MG and also with the bride herself, HA, who was cool as a cucumber and not nervous or anxious in the least about her impending wedding the next day.

Everyone went their separate ways for the evening, and Saturday morning MG, AR and LB left for breakfast with the bride while KS and I laid on our couches drinking coffee, eating Multi-Grain Cheerios and watching College Gameday on ESPN. I was content to stay there indefinitely, until KS got a phone call from EM in Ft. Worth, reporting a sale at Neiman Marcus.

It was a false alarm, not what we were expecting, but we were there in minutes and KS consulted with her favorite Neiman's sales lady only to find out that the sale we are looking for is actually in November. We made the best of it, since we were already at the mall, and spent a solid hour looking at every single item in Anthroplogie. It was productive; dresses were purchased.

My afternoon centered mostly around picking up CC from the airport. I checked her ETA via the FlightTrack app on my iPhone (very helpful) and found that her flight was about 20 minutes late. I panicked for a moment when I realized I was an idiot and had failed to put a book in my purse for such an emergency, but thankfully I had my copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in my backseat, so I was content.

CC texted me when she landed and flew threw the doors of Gate B20 minutes later wearing a dress and heels from wedding numero uno, which had been in Little Rock, Arkansas. I had her bridesmaid dress for wedding two in my backseat, and in true Katherine Heigl fashion she climbed in the backseat to transform for her next appearance, talking a mile a minute about the wedding in Little Rock (her cousin's) and asking about HA and how she was doing. Luckily CC's roommate was also one of the photographers for the wedding, so she was safe and miraculously pulled off her two weddings in two states stunt.

The wedding was beautiful- MG showed KS and I HA's bridal portraits a few weeks ago and we chose about 18 of them as favorites because she is gorgeous. Her sisters, also, look like they could be the spawn of Belle from Beauty and the Beast.

The reception was a blast- there were somewhere in the ballpark of 400 people and somewhere in the ballpark of 400 bottles of wine and beer consumed. Just throwing those numbers out as a rough estimate. If it's any indication, at the end of the evening everyone was yelling "one more song" at the DJ until he played "Party in the USA" by Miley Cyrus. You may scoff but the crowd was loving it.

After the bride and groom left, everyone in our age bracket at the wedding moved the party over to Knox Street Pub, where dancing continued until the bar closed at 2 AM. Beyond that, some of the crowd came over to our house where KS and I made everyone potato egg and cheese breakfast tacos and everyone watched SportsCenter until 4 AM.

Seriously- the hostess gene does not turn off.

I set my alarm to wake up for brunch on Sunday morning and felt like an anvil fell on my head. It was pretty much downhill from there... and that was the other half of my weekend. Another story for another time.

Pictures tomorrow.

Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

-Robert Heinlein

Grand Finale

We'll keep this short and sweet because it's Friday, it's 55 degrees and there are no fewer than four bridesmaid's dresses circulating in and out of my house this weekend.

The final wedding I will attend in 2009 is tomorrow. My friend HA is getting married in Dallas and as usual, our college pals are flying in from their various corners of the U.S. to be here. She and her fiance are the same age, had overlapping groups of friends and have been dating since college, so this will be quite reminiscent of a sorority date party.

New friends, old lovers... old friends, new lovers... me driving to the airport to pick up CC tomorrow, who is attending two weddings in two states on the same day...

Should be interesting!

Jane: You write the most beautiful things. Do you actually believe in love and marriage and just pretend to be a cynic or are you actually a cynic who knows how to spin romantic crap for girls like me?
Kevin: I didn't follow that at all, but I think the second one, the spinning crap one.
-27 Dresses

Substance

Like clockwork, I found that it had been eight weeks and I was scheduled for another hair trim yesterday. I also had Community Group so clearly I was stretching it with a two-commitment evening and a rental car with no GPS.

I should really get out more...

Or not, since I'm driving a rental car sans-rental insurance.

While robed, checking Twitter and waiting for my appointment I realized I was the only brunette getting my hair done and found myself vastly outnumbered by Dallas Blondes. It was like being stuck in Austin Powers with a room full of femme bots- only I was in the Park Cities and there were women everywhere with frozen expressions, staring into mirrors or at magazines with foil all up in their hair. Someone needs to study the effects of peroxide fumes on the brain, no?



I left to go to KR and MK's place for Community Group, and it ended up being only MK, MG, CC and myself. With the majority of the group unable to attend this week, we sat around to chat, eat grapes and sample various flavors of Braum's ice-cream. Peanut butter and Snickers? Surprisingly good.

Conversation floated and I noticed that MG was making a list in her journal; creative writing courses, calligraphy class, living in Spain, teaching English in Latin America... Just things that had been on her mind making their way to paper. We discussed continuing education, classes we would consider taking and how we just miss talking about books and literary things.

Hi, welcome to life with English nerds. Non-stop fun.

We talked about ideas for the future, in a hopeful but directional sense. I see now that graduating college and working full time puts you in a position to realize your talents and what you really care about. And while my friends have goals and dreams aplenty among us, I don't see many examples in my own life of people looking simply to climb the corporate ladder or take a job simply to make more money. This manifests itself differently depending on the person but on some level we all want our work to have meaning and purpose.

I don't mean to paint my friends as pipe-smoking philosophers because that's not the case at all, but I do find refreshing the fact that our conversations have substance. Not gossip or idle chatter but rather honest questions and genuine interest in each other's lives.

We are women and I think that makes us dreamers by nature, but I also like seeing appreciation and "carpe diem" for the now...

The peanut butter and Snicker's ice-cream doesn't hurt anything, either.

Why do so many...settle for so little? I don't understand why they're not greedy for what's inside them.

-Jack Gilbert

Thanks Eve

I have discussed before my Community Group; a Bible study of girls my age that meets every Thursday night. I love it- it's a great opportunity both to learn about God and about my friends who share that time.

We did fun, social things over the summer since the teachers who get summers off were in and out on vacation, then met a few weeks ago to get back into a routine with the fall approaching and everyone back in school mode. I may not be in school, but I like when everyone settles back down, sharpens a few #2's and restores sanity to my mind so that I don't pop a blood vessel thinking about how everyone is having the time of their life while I'm at work.

That's a big fear of mine: missing out on fun.

So Thursday night rolled around last week (which was not spent blogging, I know) and as our friends dragged themselves into our house, we fed them semi-stale kettle corn and got into our discussion. Anyone who works or goes to school knows that Thursdays are a conundrum. You are happy that the week's almost over but completely exhausted from all of the working and the waking up early; you're happy to see your friends but your eyes are only half-open.

We all recognize this delirium and abate it as best we can during our hour and a half window of Community Group. This past Thursday we were in our discussion of the first chapter of Luke, one of the Gospels in the New Testament of the Bible, and we got to talking about Mary, who found out she would become pregnant with Jesus, and Zecheriah's wife Elizabeth when she found out after a lifetime of infertility woes that she too would have a child.

Elizabeth went into seclusion during her pregnancy, which segued into how awesome it would be to sit around for months and watch movies and read books while pregnant (unlike women today who work full-time until their water breaks). Since none of us can relate to pregnancy, we then detoured into talking about how women in Biblical times who were "incapacitated" could spend that week out of every month chilling out in the red tent. A better explanation might be that the red tent predated Midol.

What brilliance, we thought, to just let women go hang out together, be hormonal and eat chocolate in peace (or cocoa beans, as someone pointed out that Hershey's was not yet in business). And let's be honest; the ability to have a baby is an amazing gift, but it is a privilege that your body prepares for and recovers from for most of your life.

People paint the red tent to seem like women were shunned back in those days and had to hide out, but we thought it sounded kind of awesome... no complaining to the outside world that your abdomen is staging a coup on your body and affecting your ability to rationalize, no having to say "it's nothing" when someone male asks you why you are in a bad mood and/or crying. Throw in masseuses and central air conditioning and I think we could sell a lot of people on the idea.

Now to convince the outside world we need 4-5 days off every month... we'll have to discuss that at a later meeting.

If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long?

-Gloria Steinem