Really Good Siblings

See that coffee cup there?  The one with the really cute red elephants on it?  My brother got that for me.  But, as my sister-in-law said, he paid his pound of flesh for it.  Again, this is not my story but his (he gets ALL the good ones).

First of all, I blame my new best friend Lucy.  Lucy does wonderful things with crochet and flowers and crafts and all that.  But what Lucy also does is drink tea.  Lovely, warm, brown English tea.  And since Lucy does it, so should I.  So, for most of this winter, I have been enjoying a nice tea break every afternoon before the kids get home.  And I've been drinking the last of the best. tea. ever.  It came from our last trip to England in 2010, and I have HOARDED it to make it stretch.  My recent bout of afternoon tea, however, has depleted my stores completely.  I tried and tried to find a suitable replacement, but no.  Even the fancy blenders at Austin's Tea Embassy (awesome, awesome tea shop - you should go there) couldn't match it. Devastation had set in.

And then!  After the kids' dentist appointment!  At my brother's house!  On the calendar!  "J. to London."  Could it be?  Is it possible?  YES!  So, I immediately texted him demanding that he go to Harrod's (the biggest department store in England) two weeks before Christmas and find me that tea.  I'm not even sure I said "please."

So, he did.  Why?  I'll never know.  I was absolutely frightful to him for most of my (and his) adolescence.  According to my little nephew, I still "boss [his] daddy around an awful lot." I am really, really sorry that I was so awful.  I'm even more sorry because that sweet boy went to Harrod's for me on the busiest shopping day ever and got my tea for me.  And there was a buy two tins of tea, get a free mug deal (who knew?), so I got this precious, pretty mug.  AND not just because of that.

Also because the tea I like comes in a nice little tin container.  One that happens to look an awful lot like a bomb.  Especially when there are two.  And you're a tall, bearded man with no checked luggage on a short-stay flight from England.  So, there he is in line at the TSA on his connecting flight to Chicago with some very nervous security guys eyeballing him.  They call him over and ask him a harrowing number of questions, including:

TSA:  What's this?  What are these?
J:  It's tea.
TSA:  Is that so?  (looking inside)
J: Yes
TSA: (pause) Oh.  And what's THIS?
J:  Cheese
TSA: Cheese?
J: Yes

You see, the best part of this story is that the only other thing J brought back from England with him was a really, really stinky wedge of cheese that his friends always send back for my sister-in-law.  The TSAs had no idea what to do with that situation.

So, they did the only natural thing.  They swabbed the cheese for explosives.

I shit you not.

Happy Birthday, Bub.

Back to Earth

A dear friend told me that it's easy to get way wrapped up in the stats/analytics of blogging.  You can obsess over every new visitor and your average time on site and all that.  Considering that I've mostly limited my readership to close friends and friends of close friends, my numbers aren't exactly high.  They could be with some self-advertisement, but I'm just not there yet.  Maybe I will be one day.  Maybe not.

Anyway, regardless of my relatively small readership, I still took great pride, and great pleasure, in my regular handful of folks checking in on me, even when I hadn't posted in a while.  In fact, I felt pretty darn special.  Until the following exchange:

From: Mom

Subject: sniff

Date: January 14, 2013 10:18:26 AM CST

To: Me

Hi there, I am sad that your blog journey is over.  Guess I'll have to change my home page now :-)  You are great!

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From: Mom

Subject: hooray

Date: January 14, 2013 10:23:09 AM CST

To: Me

Oh!  I am so excited!  Just got online and there was your new posting, with more to come!  Hot doggies.  PS, you make me laugh.

********************************************************************************************************************************

There is so much to be concerned with here, not least of which is
someone with multiple doctoral degrees using the phrase hot 
doggies, but if you were paying attention, you will have noticed
that my mom has this blog as her home page.  Which means that
everytime she goes on line to check the weather, which I can
assure you is several times a day, she hits my blog.  Which
therefore means that my mother is something like 98.2% of my
readership.  Perhaps a little bit of self-advertising is in order.

Hmmmm.

Austerity, Day 1

I had a wonderful weekend.  G and I took a little girls' trip down to Houston.  S was booked all weekend with band trips, and T was still working on our new, architecturally-rendered (if by architecturally rendered you mean using the free Google app to design and measure and then pretty much making it up from there) shed, so I thought I'd go see my mom, who I haven't seen since June (!), and dad.

Any trip to see my parents necessarily involves the ingestion of a fair amount of alcohol.  Usually because we're enjoying each other's company.  Occasionally because we're driving each other crazy.  Regardless, my people come from a long line of people who enjoy a glass of the grape. Or the barley.  Or potato.  Or juniper.  Or whatever, really.  And we're really good at it.  Because we practice.

Anyway, I had an absolutely super time with my folks, saw some great, old friends from high school.  And ate.  Ate at all my favorite Houston places that I don't ever get to go to anymore. Ate road food on the way home. And I ate all the things I never let myself eat anymore, project-wise and health-wise. And that's when the party was over.  Because, today . . .

I. Feel. Like. Shit.

I can't do it.  I can't eat like that for three whole days, and I certainly can't drink like that.  So, since we've already delved into fiscal austerity, I've decided to take the plunge into nutritional austerity.  It's like my very own episode of Hoarders or Intervention.  Except I'm not saving others.  I'm saving myself.  Well, that, and I have no tattoos and all my teeth, but otherwise, just like that.  No alcohol.  No carbonation.  No nighttime gluten.  Seven days.

Pray for me.