Memory Month: Texas Road Trip

Roy and I took a road trip to Texas in September 2005 for my friend Lynn's wedding. We rented a car and paid out the ass for gas because it was right around the time of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. I had just bought our first (and only) point-and-shoot digital camera, so we spent a lot of time taking pictures of random things. I believe this is when we began our extensive use of the self-portrait shot to get pictures of ourselves (not to mention other random things).






The trip took us a couple of days. The first day we drove about 800 miles and ended up in El Paso, where we stayed the night.



The next morning we had breakfast and key lime pie for dessert (as previously mentioned). The next day was spent driving through Texas, and we finally got to our destination, my hometown of Victoria.



We spent more time on the road than we did hanging out in Victoria. Truthfully, that was fine by me, as I'm not the biggest fan of my hometown. There's not a lot to do, and I have a lot of conflicting emotions tied up in it. We did, however, make it to my friend Lynn's wedding. Since she and I grew up together, I saw many people that I knew that I hadn't seen in years. It was pretty cool to see everyone again. The best part? The groom's cake!



Roy's reaction to the cake was pretty priceless. He simply couldn't get over the fact that the cake had camouflage icing and little plastic hunter guys all over it. Me, I thought it seemed pretty normal for Texas, a place where deer season is more anticipated than Christmas.

Aside from that, we hung out with my mom. My mom showed me several bonnets she had found that had either belonged to her mother or her grandmother. We had a great time trying them on.



Roy and I did some modeling as well.



And what's a trip to my mom's house without pictures of the pets? (I'm only including 2 pics, but I could include so much more!)




And just like that, we were off. We stopped in San Antonio to see my uncle Charles and then spent quite a bit of time at Half Price Books, which is one of the coolest bookstore chains ever. We spent so much time there that it threw us off schedule, so we didn't even make it to El Paso that first day driving back. So we had to spend even more time driving the second day, but we still managed to hit up another bookstore in Arizona. (You can tell where our priorities were.)

By the time we hit the California border, we were both a little irritated (due to bad traffic in Phoenix) and we were so relieved to get back home. It was a good test for us, as we'd only been together for about 6 months at the time and were planning on moving in together the next month. Needless to say, we passed that test! And this was our soundtrack for most of the trip (and it ended up being our cake cutting song for our wedding).

Here are some more pics from our very first road trip together: a simple time for us, but scary time for the rest of the world, particularly New Orleans.

I miss her.

I was texting with my friend Candice today and realized that it's been 2 freaking months since I've seen her. So many things have happened, and it's weird that she doesn't know about them. We aren't the best at keeping in touch, apparently.

For the 5 years I worked at Chili's, we ate lunch together at every opportunity, hung out outside of work, and became very close friends. We talked about sex a lot (among other things, of course) and had a blast doing it. Since I left Chili's, I haven't seen her as much as I would like. Even though we live in the same general area, it's hard to make time to socialize when we both work, go to school, and have families.

Since I've gotten married, I have realized, like never before, how important it is to maintain my relationships. Life is truly too short to not spend time with the people who matter to me. So hopefully Candice and I will be seeing each other shortly after Christmas and can keep up a regular pattern of hanging out, because frankly, I miss her so much.

My Christmas List

Christmas is upon us! I love this time of year. As I've gotten older, I've grown to love giving presents more than receiving them, although I won't say no to someone who wants to give me a gift. Normally I have a long list of books and DVDs, but this year I went with a shorter list (but with more expensive items). I'm not really sure if I'll get any of these things, but truly I'm good with whatever people choose to give me. :)

1) I would like a decent camera such as a Canon Rebel XTI. I have been really getting into photography lately and would love a good camera to help me capture the world as I see it.

2) Photoshop would be a welcome addition to our household. I don't know much about it though, so I'm not sure which program is the best to start with.

3) I have waited forever for the Twin Peaks box set to come out! (Okay, so I didn't know there would be a box set, but seriously, waiting for the second season to be released was torture.) I would love to watch one of my favorite TV shows of all time on DVD.

4) I would love to have a scanner so I can start scanning in old photos. That would be just awesome.

And that concludes my Christmas list! Except for world peace. Definitely gotta have the world peace. It's not unattainable at all.

(I also have several wish lists on Amazon if anyone's dying to get me a present. kthnxbai.)

Memory Month: Years in the Life of a Family

For as long as I can remember, I have had a drive to write and have dreamed of a career in creative writing. (So far that hasn't worked out so well for me.) As a child, I was quite ambitious and started on my first novel during elementary school. (I believe I was in 2nd grade.) The name of the novel was Years in the Life of a Family, and it was basically just about that: a family. The mother's name was Leslie, and she was married and had about 15 kids, which is truly frightening to me now.

I wrote the novel with the help of my friend Amy. Since our moms both worked, we stayed in daycare after school hours and worked diligently on our novel. We added tons of illustrations, which was more fun than the actual writing. We had a blast naming all the chapters as well. As I recall, we eventually stopped writing and just kept on naming chapters. Eventually, the story of this family revealed itself through all the chapter titles. Leslie eventually gave birth to triplets (after having 15 kids - including a set of twins - before), some of the boys made a battery out of cow poo (don't ask me why), "Michael" was always spelled "Micheal," and somehow none of the kids managed to age at all. Mark the baby stayed a baby no matter how many seasons passed. Yeah, apparently at that age we still hadn't figured out the concept of time.

As a child, I longed for the presence of babies in my life. I wanted a younger sibling desperately (I hated being the youngest). I was also dying to be a mother, which sounds so incredibly strange considering I was still pretty much a baby myself. All of this obviously played into the writing of the novel.

What is even more obvious to me now is that I was hoping to attain an imaginary perfect family with myself as the mother. If I want to get all Freudian about it, I'd say that this story offered me the chance to escape from my less-than-perfect childhood by offering my fictional children my undivided attention, unconditional love, and selfless devotion. Eventually I gave up the dream of that perfect family, and that was where Break Up and Get Back Together (my second novel, written in 5th grade) came in. Already I was gearing up for romantic love, hoping to find what had been missing in my family life. (And we all know how that works out. Paging Dr. Freud, indeed!)

If I could talk to my 5th grade self, I'd tell her not to give up the dream completely because no one, not even that perfect family I created, has a perfect childhood, a flawless personality, or an always amazing life.

Despite knowing these things as an adult, I'm wondering if this is the reason I don't write fiction anymore. I just don't have that dream of perfection anymore. I can't even think it, because I know it doesn't exist.

I seem to have lost my sense of childlike wonder. But at least I once had it.

The Best 40 Year Old I Know!

Yesterday was Paul's 40th birthday! (Paul is my sister-in-law Mandy's boyfriend.) In honor of the huge milestone (and I mean that in the best way possible), Mandy planned a surprise party for him. Instead of giving him an overly adult party, she made it a party fit for a 4 year old - with game stations, fire truck plates and cups, and lots of balloons. Our friends Amy and Laura got Paul out of the house for the majority of the day so Mandy could set up. Roy and I arrived to help around 2 PM (after buying our new car). Everyone began arriving around 4, including Paul's mom, sister, and brother, who all drove a number of hours from northern California to surprise Paul for his big day.

Here are some pics of the setup:

Food table (before food)

Doorway to kitchen

Necklaces for winners of the games. The necklaces were Mardi Gras beads with a picture of Paul as a child tied to each. Whoever won the most necklaces got a $25 gift card to Target!

The banner Mandy had made especially for the occasion

The mini zero by the 4 on the above banner

Drink station

The main course (lamb). It was the bomb. I even ate some, even though I am not technically eating red meat anymore.

The cake, which I made (Mandy put the frosting and yogurt drops on.) It was a huge hit!

The disclaimer note by the cake

Favor bags

To keep everyone busy before Paul arrived, everyone settled in at different game stations and played like fiends. At our table, we played Memory and Hi-ho, Cherry O!




Finally, Paul arrived at around 5:45. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of him when he arrived, because Roy was using the camera for video purposes. But Paul was really surprised - it was great! (Video hopefully coming later.)

So afterwards we all just sat around and ate and hung out. It was a good time. We got Paul a framed picture of him and Mandy from our wedding:



And of course, we had to get Patty to take a picture of us as well:



Happy birthday, Paul! Here's wishing you a happy and healthy 40th year!

New Car!

Today Roy and I went to Crown Toyota to look for a new car. Since I already have a 2007 Corolla, we thought we might get a Yaris (but in blue with grey interior):



We test drove the Yaris and then looked at some cars that had been bought but returned after financing fell through. There was a 2008 black Corolla with 700 miles on it. We decided to go with the Corolla because the base model Yaris only comes with tan interior. (Call me shallow, but I think tan interior is a deal breaker.)

So now we have a new car that looks like this!



And actually, Roy took my 2007 dark grey Corolla, so I get the newer car. What an awesome guy.

We ended up getting an amazing deal because Roy's co-worker, who deals a lot with Crown Toyota, came with us to help get the price down.

We are officially happy campers - until we start making the payment in February, that is.

Pollution Post Unlimited

I just ordered this print by Andrew MacRae from the 20x200 website:



It reminded me so much of the work of Gegam Kacherian, whose work I first saw at the Riverside Art Museum a couple of years ago. This is the painting that I saw in the flesh (and loved so much I almost bought it):



I know that I shouldn't be buying myself things so close to Christmas, but I'm not following that rule at the moment.