When I was a little girl and Daddy drove us on any kind of road trip, I used to marvel at the fact that we never made it more than fifteen miles down the road before Mama fell asleep, sometimes sitting straight up in her seat. There was no pillow, no blanket, nothing – but more often than not, she was making her way toward some solid REM rest before we ever crossed the state line.

At the time I wondered why she didn’t use her car time to read a book or work on a crossword puzzle or even dabble in a little embroidery. Since I never got in the backseat of the car without a sack full of Nancy Drew books and a large assortment of hair accessories so that I could fix my hair JUST LIKE I LIKED IT, it was hard for me to fathom why Mama would settle in for the ride with nothing but her purse.

I just didn’t understand. At all.

But every single trip, just as sure as the sun, Mama was book-less, magazine-less, and off to the land of nod before I made it through the first eight or nine pages of Tiger Beat magazine.

A couple of weeks ago our little family took a road trip, and I had big plans to write on the laptop while D drove. I was going to be productive! And maximize my time! And hone my bloggy craft!

And do you know what? We were no more than ten miles outside of town, and I was out like a light. Sitting straight up in the passenger seat. Probably doing a little bit of snoring.

When I woke up thirty or forty minutes later, I had a bit of an epiphany.

Mama was a dedicated housewife. She cooked three hot meals a day, kept an immaculate house, and washed several loads of clothes every single day. She exercised three or four times a week and spent the better part of twenty years driving her children all over town. She shopped for groceries, baked the world’s best pound cakes, helped her friend with a catering business and sang in the choir at church every single week.

She never, ever sat down. And she never, ever complained.

So as I struggled to wake up from my own little road trip siesta – after spending the first half of my day immersed in bed-making, breakfast-fixing, clothes-folding, suitcase-packing, way-too-little-cleaning, plus, you know, doing the other work that I get paid for – I realized that all those road trips? When Mama slept in the car?

IT’S BECAUSE SHE WAS EXHAUSTED.

And I totally get it now.

Here are the five winners of the Third Day Christmas Offerings CD.

Comment #77 – Mary M. (gmail email)
Comment #123 – Anne Wilson (yahoo email)
Comment #129 – Lindsey
Comment #160 – Tami (yahoo email)
Comment #230 – April

If you lucky girls will email me with your mailing address, you’ll have your CD ASAP. So that you can listen to it in time for Christmas and all.

And thanks, everyone, for your great response to the giveaway!

Based on the number of emails I received yesterday, I believe that the Captain Rodney’s Cheese Bake is going to be an INTERNET SENSATION. So in the interest of clarity, a few, well, clarifications.

(Oh, I do have a way with the words, don’t I? It’s like poetry, really.)

First of all, as far as I know, you cannot buy Boucan Glaze in a grocery store (and make sure that if you’re making the dip you get the Boucan Glaze, not the Burgundy Sauce). I think it is sold primarily at your various and sundry specialty markets. So what I would recommend is that you go here, call the nice people at the Bell Buckle Country Store, and ask them if anyone sells the glaze in your area. If not, then you could order the glaze directly from them and more than likely have it at your house before Christmas.

And believe you me: if you leave the Captain Rodney’s dip out for Santa on Christmas Eve? You are gonna get SO many stinkin’ toys. Perhaps even diamonds.

By the way, if you call the people in Bell Buckle, please tell them that BooMama sent you. The person you talk to won’t have any idea who I am, of course, so when you say, “Oh, by the way, BooMama sent me,” she’ll say, “WHO?!?!”

And then you’ll say, “BOOMAMA! ON THE INTERNET! SHE’S THE ONE WHO SENT ME HERE!”

And then she’ll say, “I DO NOT KNOW ANY BOOMAMA! WHAT IS A BOOMAMA? I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF A BOOMAMA!”

And then you’ll say, “NEVER MIND, JUST SEND ME THE SAUCE! I NEED TO GET THE SAUCE! BECAUSE IT IS SWEET! AND ALSO QUITE SAVORY!”

And then you will give the nice person your credit card number.

It’ll be so much fun you won’t even be able to stand it.

Next.

I know that several of you who use Internet Explorer have been having issues (or, as Sister and I like to say: “ISH-AHS”) with my blog in that the posts were showing up so far down the page that you pretty much had to scroll until your fingers fell off in order to see them.

And really, a blog is never worth losing some fingers.

Anyway, the Internet Explorer ISH-AH has now been resolved.

Tell your fingers that I said, “You’re welcome.”

And please also tell them that I said, “MERRY CHRISTMAS, FINGERS!”

Finally.

Back in the summer I posted pictures of Alex waiting for his grandparents to arrive at our house, and I was completely taken aback by all the nice comments and emails regarding, well, our driveway.

Because I have to tell you that the driveway compliments were a first for me. They made me blush and giggle and bat my eyelashes.

Several of you mentioned that the biggest downside to a driveway like ours would be dealing with it in snowy, icy conditions, but since we have only had those conditions in Alabama once in the last eight years, we feel pretty confident that if the snow is so bad that we can’t get up our driveway, then the rest of our fair city has probably ground to a screeching halt as well.

However.

We do have a driveway nemesis, and until I found myself burning all manner of rubber in an attempt to leave my house right after we moved in last year, it’s a nemesis I would have never expected.

DAMP LEAVES, my friends.

THEY ARE A TERROR.

And that is why, at 6:30 this morning, when I was scooping coffee grounds into the coffee pot and heard our neighbor – who has an equally steep driveway – catch the Wheelie To Beat All Wheelies as she was leaving for work, I knew I’d better get outside and get busy if there was any hope at all of D being able to get up the driveway and take Alex to school. Normally D handles every single bit of our outside maintenance, but for some strange reason, I enjoy clearing off the driveway. It makes me feel like some sort of frontierwoman.

A frontierwoman with cable television, air conditioning, and high-speed internet. Just like in the days of yore.

And so, at 6:32 this morning, Alex and I were outside in our pajamas. I was armed with a rake (the blower doesn’t work so well when the leaves are really damp), and Alex was armed with a yellow lab on the end of a leash (Have you ever tried to rake while chasing a 100-pound yellow lab? It is nearly impossible). We had us a fine time.

But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized that the scene this morning was quite the Southern redneck stereotype: you had a woman in mismatched pajamas and houseshoes holding a rake, a child whose pajamas were so short that the bottoms of the legs hit somewhere around his calves, and an elderly dog on a leash who, bless her heart, barked her head off whenever the tip of a leaf threatened to brush across her nose. Couple that Faulknerian scene with the purpose of our outing – TO KEEP D FROM SPINNING OUT WHEN HE TRIED TO GET HIS CHEVY UP THE DRIVEWAY – and you’ve got yourself the makings of a Southern Gothic tale.

The only thing that would’ve made it more stereotypically redneck is if D needed to get up the driveway so that he could go to prison.

For making moonshine.

Well, and if D had gotten to the top of the driveway, lowered his truck window and fired a pistol in the air.

Season’s Greetings from Alabama, y’all.