It Certainly Would’ve Been Quite The First Impression, Though Not Necessarily A Good One

20 June 2008 by

We’re buckling our seat belts, getting ready to leave our house so that I can catch my flight to Charlotte:

“Hold on! I just looked down and realized that I can see through my shirt.”

“Oh, your shirt’s not…WOW. Your shirt is REALLY see-through.”

“Let me grab a tank top from my suitcase.”

I hop out of my seat, walk to the back of the car, open the trunk, unzip my suitcase, grab a tank top, then proceed to put on the tank top in the driveway while hiding behind a car door so the neighbors won’t think I’ve taken up an odd – and somewhat disturbing – new hobby.

Then:

“Can’t you just SEE me showing up for the SheSpeaks conference wearing a see-through shirt?'”

“Well, then they’d have to change the name of the conference to SheSpeaksVolumes.”

“You make an excellent point.”

“I try.”

Filed Under: Rambling

I’m Leavin’. On A Noontime Plane To Charlotte.

19 June 2008 by

So Martha just called to tell me how much fun! so much fun! just more fun! that she and Julia Claire had on the computer the other day, and OH, Julia Claire is such a dear friend! she’s just dear! so dear!, and do you know that they went to the Sam’s the other day and just had the best time? The best time!

(Julia Claire bought her grapefruit and Martha didn’t buy anything because everything she needed just comes in these ENORMOUS sizes and where would she put it? She doesn’t have anywhere to put it!)

She also wanted me to tell y’all that – and I quote – “An old dog CAN learn new tricks! She can! Oh yes she can!”

I think we’d all do well to have that engraved on some sort of commemorative plaque, don’t you?

Words for the ages, my friends.

Amen.

So, completely unrelated to Martha but relevant just the same because, well, IT’S ABOUT MY HAIR, I went to get my hair cut the other day and got home from the hair cut and decided it was WRONG, ALL WRONG, not what I wanted at all, and the root of the problem (OH YES I DID) was that I tried to “direct” the local guy who cuts my hair into doing what the hometown Hair Wizard has done for the last two or three haircuts.

Anyway, after I stared at my post-haircut self in the mirror for a solid four minutes, I picked up the phone and called the salon and asked if I could make a return trip because I’d made a grievous error in terms of trying to stifle my trusted hair care professional’s creativity. And the sweet receptionist told me to be there at three, that they’d work me in and get everything taken care of.

So at three I showed up and sat down in R.’s chair and repented. I said, “I should’ve never tried to tell you what to do. And I should’ve known better. I am so sorry. Work your magic. Whatever you want to do.”

He laughed and started cutting – HAIR FLYING EVERYWHERE. Ten minutes and about two inches later, I walked out of the salon with a short-and-sassy summer ‘do.

And while I didn’t think that I wanted short hair, I really do love it. It’s funky and flippy and fun. I’ll post a picture once I actually, you know, HAVE a picture.

Strangely enough, that’s a picture-posting formula that’s always worked well for me in the past.

So I guess that my short hair and I need to finish packing and then put on some clothes suitable for flying.

Which reminds me: when I was younger, Mama always thought we needed to get dressed up to fly on a plane because flying WAS VERY FANCY, and it’s only been in the last six or seven years that I’ve realized that boarding some sort of aircraft does not require a coordinated ensemble.

That would’ve been good to know when I went to Washington, D.C. my junior year of college and chose a red, white and blue outfit for the plane ride. I believe there may have even been some appliqued stars involved.

And while I didn’t actually sing “The Star Spangled Banner” while I was getting on the plane, I TOTALLY HUMMED IT IN MY HEAD.

While I carried a small – albeit imaginary – American flag.

Filed Under: Rambling

Next Thing You Know She’ll Be On The Twitter

18 June 2008 by

Late yesterday afternoon I saw an email in my inbox from Julia Claire, who is my sister-in-law Rose’s mother (stay with me) and one of Martha’s dearest friends.

She is also Martha’s only friend who has a computer with DSL, which means that she is pretty much Martha’s one and only link to the wide world interweb.

However, as some of you may remember, last summer Martha VOWED AND DECLARED that she didn’t think she could read my blog on Julia Claire’s computer because “it’s just for ordering things! Her computer is only for ordering things!”

Well.

Apparently Julia Claire upgraded to an internet package where she can send email, read the blogs AND order things, because that email that I got from Julia Claire this afternoon?

It was actually from Martha.

MARTHA SENT AN EMAIL, Y’ALL.

I’m thinking of having some t-shirts made.

Maybe y’all could use Julia Claire’s computer to order them.

Anyway, as it turns out, Martha was able to sit down at Julia Claire’s computer today and read my blog for the first time, and I don’t think I can even begin to articulate how deeply – DEEPLY – I would love to have a videotape of this particular milestone, mainly because I want to see what Martha was wearing the first time she surfed the ‘net.

I mean, did she wear her lime green jacket from the Steinmart(s)? Or her light lime green jacket from the Steinmart(s)? Or maybe her dark lime green jacket from the Steinmart(s)? Or the lime green jacket from the Steinmart(s) that’s really more of a yellow but not a golden yellow, OH HEAVENS NO, because that would clash with her hair and besides she would have a terrible time finding a lipstick to wear with a golden yellow jacket that wouldn’t wash her out! It would wash her out!

There’s just not a bit of tellin’.

So since I love the internets, and since the internets love Martha, I thought I would share her email with you.

It is quite a treasure.

Maybe even a future family heirloom.

Dear BooMama,

Guess who’s just been reading your Blog — Your Mother-in-Law!!!

Now that I know how to do this, you better be very careful what you say. JUST JOKING!!!

It was fun, and I really enjoyed the Rocking Reception.

Give Alex a big hug and kiss for me.

Love,
“Martie”

Now y’all have to admit that’s pretty adorable.

And I still can’t get over the fact that she called me “BooMama.” I mean, it was only a year ago when she asked me if there was a “handle” people needed to know in order to find me on the internet, and now she’s writing EMAILS with my BLOG NAME in the salutation. I don’t believe I’ve ever witnessed such staggering technological progress.

Also: you have no idea how happy the exclamation points made me.

(Not one! Not two!! But three!!!)

(Three exclamation points!!!)

(It’s more fun! So much fun! Just more fun!)

(!!!)

So welcome to the blawg, Martha / “Martie.” Who knows? There may even be a guest post in your future.

Provided that we can come up with a real cute “handle” for you and all.

Filed Under: Family Fun

It’ll Be Just Like HGTV. Except For The TV Part.

17 June 2008 by

Edited with new date and graphic.

Our first house was an old house. A really old house. A house so old that, when we first walked through it, we were able to look at the kitchen floor that had a slope of approximately thirty degrees and say, “Oh! Isn’t that charming?!”

And we meant it.

Clearly we weren’t thinking about that fact that if you dropped an apple in that kitchen, you were gonna be walking about six feet to pick it up.

We were undeterred by the kitchen’s hilly terrain.

And because the house wasn’t in pristine condition, I never worried too much about messing it up. The smallest cosmetic changes did a world of good, and I loved the whole process of transforming that house into our first real home.

And yes, that even includes the time that I ripped the carpet out of one of the bedrooms and gagged for about six hours as a result of all the exceedingly displeasing smells that seared themselves onto my temporal lobe, thus ensuring that I can never forget the foulness, EVER, and sometimes still catch a whiff of that carpet at the oddest moments, like when I’m walking through a parking lot or putting a puzzle together or unloading the dishwasher.

It was, in a word, horrific.

Thankfully our next house was in much better shape and didn’t require nearly as much work. The same goes for our current one. But this house was built in the early 70s, and there are parts of it that, while in fine condition, are a little dated. And after a year and a half here, it’s time for me to start tackling some of those things. Our master bedroom and bathroom are at the top of my list.

But here’s the thing.

If left to my own procrastination-oriented devices, I’ll make lots of plans for the master bedroom and bath, and I’ll make lots of lists related to the master bedroom and bath, but I won’t actually do a dadgum thing because I’ll get overwhelmed that I won’t be able to get everything like I want it.

Have I ever told y’all about my passive-aggressive perfectionism? It is loads of fun.

Anyway, I figured that since interweb accountability helped when I did this and this, it might also help when I’m working on our bedroom and bath.

And thus, a Before and After bloggy extravaganza was born.

Before&After

Brings a tear to the eye, doesn’t it?

So here’s what to do if you’d like to join the fun.

Grab the button by using this code:

Then write a post that tells us what your goals are. Maybe you want to paint your kitchen cabinets, or maybe you want to rearrange your den, or maybe you want to weed the area around your mailbox and then plant some flowers there. Whatever suits your fancy.

And your post doesn’t have to be long. A list-o-goals would be perfectly fine. Here are my goals, by the way:

1) paint our bedroom
2) paint our bathroom
3) paint the storage cabinet in our bathroom
4) tile our bathroom floor because there is CARPET in there right now but I can’t talk about the carpet anymore or I’ll start to itch

And if you only have one goal, that is perfectly fine. Not to mention reasonable. I just have a lot of goals because I’m ready to get this stuff done, and I figure that if I work on these projects a couple of days a week for the next four or five weeks, I should be able to get ‘er done.

On September 26th I’ll put up a Mr. Linky here, and you can add your post so that we can all see your fab Before and After pictures. You can tell us all about your project(s) – what worked, what didn’t, and maybe even share some helpful hints for people who might want to do something similar.

And then we will all gather ’round for a group hug.

Oh, I’m totally kidding.

Kinda.

Have fun, y’all!

Filed Under: Bloggity Fun

I’m Still Taking A Break From Giveaways…

16 June 2008 by

…but Carolina Mama isn’t.

And if you hurry over to her blog, you can sign up to win The JJ, an adorable jewelry travel case that my sister-in-law Janie designs.

Now I know that I’m a little bit biased, but I think these jewelry cases are a near-perfect travel product. They’re great-looking, practical and functional – I use mine ALL THE TIME.

And you can win one of your own by clicking right here.

The deadline to register is Wednesday night at midnight.

So get after it, girls!

Filed Under: Rambling

Oh, They Rocked It, All Right

16 June 2008 by

A couple of months ago, when David and I went to Los Angeles for his best friend Todd’s wedding, we were a little worried.

Or maybe “worried” is too strong of a word. “Concerned” is probably more accurate. Because for the two weeks leading up to the wedding, Todd was super-stressed out.

I’m not talking about pre-wedding jitters. That’s to be expected.

I’m talking about some full-on, full-out stress. Stress that was causing our mild-mannered, utterly kind, godfather-to-our-child friend Todd to use adjectives that were far more colorful and forceful than usual.

David kept trying to put his finger on what was going on, but ultimately we just decided that maybe the pre-wedding stuff was weighing a little heavier on Todd than it does most people. After all, he has been known to obsess over minutiae a time or sixty in the eighteen years that we’ve known him, and the details surrounding a wedding can make even the most laid-back person slap-dab crazy.

But still. We were concerned.

So we got to LA, and everything seemed fine except for the fact that Todd kept apologizing that he wasn’t getting to spend time with us. David assured him that while a wedding is good for many things, hammering out some quality time with your nearest and dearest is not one of them, and then Todd apologized and twitched some more.

We could not, for the life of us, figure out what was going on.

The day of the wedding we drove up to Palos Verdes, which has to be one of the most stunningly beautiful places I have ever visited. The scenery is so staggering that if you were to accidentally drive off the road and plunge straight into the Pacific Ocean, you might not even care because OH MY WORD AT LEAST YOU GOT TO SEE SO MUCH PRETTY.

The ceremony was at Wayfarers Chapel, a place that will absolutely take your breath away. After we arrived there, as we were walking up to the chapel, we noticed that there were a lot of cameras and microphones and clipboards with forms, but we just figured that wedding videographers out there are a little fayn-ci-er than what we’re used to here in the South. And based on our assumption, we bypassed all the people wearing headphones and walked inside.

The ceremony was absolutely lovely. Picture-perfect, in fact. And if I could, I would write an ode to Marti’s dress and then I would set the ode to music and sing it for you.

But, you know, I can’t.

I do apologize.

After the wedding we drove back to Redondo Beach for the reception (sidenote: on our way there, we passed a store that had a sign out front that said ALL SHOES: $20, and it took everything in me to stay firmly planted in my seat, because I totally wanted to pull a Bo Duke and roll down my window and hoist myself out of our moving vehicle so that I could check out ALL SHOES: $20. But I stayed in the car. It was a nuptial miracle). We finally found the reception site, where we were surprised to be greeted by even more people wearing headphones and holding forms.

Clearly something was afoot.

Then, when Marti showed up at the reception wearing a different dress than the aforementioned hypothetically-ode-inspiring dress that she wore in the wedding, I was Officially Suspicious.

Oh, I’m a quick one. Only took me THREE WHOLE HOURS to suspect anything at all.

As it turns out, Todd and Marti’s wedding was being filmed for a reality show on TLC called Rock the Reception (check out the video after the click), a show where three couples surprise their wedding guests by performing choreographed dance routines. And I’ve wanted to tell y’all all about it a thousand times, but I felt like I should watch the show before I posted about it in the event that some unfortunate editing caused me to be humiliated on national television.

Because on the way into the reception, as I was signing the release form for I-knew-not-what, I looked straight into the eyes of the assistant producer and said something along the lines of, “Gosh, we don’t have to sign forms like this at weddings in Alabama.”

And she said, “Really?”

And I said, “NAW.”

I SAID “NAW,” y’all.

ON CAMERA.

And y’all know that if they HAD used that bit of footage on the show (which they didn’t, thank the Lord), they would’ve turned it into some repetitive loop of me saying, “We don’t have to sign forms like this in ALA-BAMMER, NAW!” while the banjos from “Deliverance” played in the background.

And they would have used CGI to make it look like I was picking my teeth with hay.

But fortunately my fears were unfounded. The show actually perfectly captured the low-key sweetness that is the very essence of Todd and the high-energy enthusiasm that is the very essence of Marti. They are so fun to watch.

And, I would add, even better to know in person.

So now, thanks to the wonder that is YouTube, you can see Todd and Marti’s dance right here. You may want to watch it before you share it with your kids, not because there’s anything distasteful, mind you, but because it is a playful little dance number between married folks who are fully entitled to be playful with each other, oh thank you Lord and amen.

So all of Todd’s excessive pre-wedding jitters? They were the result of having to learn and practice a choreographed dance routine – and, besides that, NOT TELL A SOUL about it – in the midst of all the last-minute wedding stuff.

The stress, it is understandable.

And I have to say that besides seeing seeing Marti and Todd perform, do you know what my favorite part of their whole reality television experience was? It was reading a review for Rock the Reception in Entertainment Weekly. Because the critic referred to Todd as “an introvert with two left feet.”

And then I wanted to email the reviewer and say, “BUT SIR, HE ROCKED THOSE TWO LEFT FEET WITH EVERYTHING HE HAD.”

That’s our boy, internets.

That’s our boy.

With the girl of his dreams.

And we are ever-so-proud.

Filed Under: My Friends Rock
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