Je Suis un Inadapté

I want to go home.


There I've said it.


I've made something of an idiot of myself and I want to go home.



Friday night was Sabrina's end of season soccer party and one of the other soccer moms offered up her house for the party. I was really looking forward to the get together because I hadn't really had a chance to visit with the other moms, plus after days and days of cold rainy weather, Friday afternoon turned into a beautiful day with actual SUNSHINE.


And the party went great. But here is where I screwed up.


When we were leaving the party, I looked around at this nice woman's expertly decorated house and saw that there were beer bottles, wine glasses, plastic cups, bowls, napkins, and other party paraphernalia everywhere. And all the guests were making a beeline for the door. So I told the hostess that if she would like, I would be happy to help her clean up - I just needed to run my husband and kids home and then I would be back in a jiffy to help her. Of course, she protested and said, "No, no. I don't need any help." I said, "Really - I don't mind at all." And she said, "Well, OK, if you want to come back that would be great."


So I left her house thinking, "Cool! Maybe we'll get to gossip about all the other moms while we load the dishwasher! Find out who does her hair while we wipe down counter tops! I'll get the scoop on her vegetarian chili recipe while we wrap up leftovers! Three cheers for female bonding!!!"


But when I got back to her house a mere 20 minutes later, I was greeted with, "Oh. I didn't think you would actually come back."


"Well, of course I came back! What can I help you with?"


"Nothing. I don't need you to help with the cleaning up!"


"No really, I came to help."


"No really. I don't want you to help."


Which left me just kind of standing there thinking, "Well, this is awkward." I mean it's not like I showed up at her door with a bottle of Windex and roll of paper towels, but I don't know these people well enough to just pop in for a social call. Standing there in the doorway, I could feel the blood rush to my face as I tried to figure out how I misread the signals. Was I supposed to come back over, or not? If I say, "Oh - OK" and turn around and leave, will that be rude? If I walk in and put my purse down and start picking up beer bottles, is that rude?


At this point her husband tried to come to the rescue by offering me a drink. (Warning: This is the part of the story where I REALLY make an idiot of myself.) I told the husband thanks for the offer, but I brought my own. And then I pulled a Mike's Hard Cranberry Lemonade out of my purse and twisted off the top with my shirt hem.





I know. Real. Classy.


Maybe I could blame it on a sudden onset of nervousness, but see, at the party earlier everyone was drinking wine and some weird kind of beer and I can't drink wine (migraines) and I am kind of particular about my beer (as in I only like Coors Light), so when I dropped my husband and kids off at home, I ran inside and grabbed a Mike's just in case there was still drinking going on.


So anyway, I ended up sitting in their formal living room drinking spiked lemonade out of the bottle (until the husband discreetly took it from me and poured it into a wine glass) and having polite conversation for about an hour. Of course, by this point I had worked myself into a nervous wreck and was just feeling completely inappropriate (do you know what I mean? where everything you say and do feels exaggerated and too loud and too, I don't know, too MUCH?). Like when they asked me if I had a job, I am pretty sure I said in a high pitched, self-righteous kind of way, "blogging is my passion, but I also do some human resources consulting on the side." Somehow I finally managed to say something about how the time flies and how I really needed to get home. I could practically hear them rolling their eyes and laughing at me as I got in my car.


As I made the short drive home, I realized the experience left me feeling kind of cheap, and kind of desperate. Like I had misread the signals and showed too much enthusiasm by coming back over, even though I could have sworn I had been invited.

I felt like I had let a boy go too far on a first date. Do you know what I mean?


Back at home, I found my husband waiting up for me in the dining room. "Did you make a new friend?" he asked.


"I don't think so. And, by the way, I want to go home."

Sister Sister

Okey-dokey. I am totally freaking. out.

My 19 year old sister that I have not seen in ELEVEN years is coming to visit one day from today. Yep. Tomorrow I will pick her up from the airport and she will be here until Thursday. (Right about now you are probably asking "why haven't you seen your sister in eleven years?"...but you should know by now that I didn't exactly have a fairy tale life. I mean most fairy tales have the heroine facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles, wacky and sometimes malicious stepmothers, talking animals, and then finally, a prince charming that comes and saves the day and everyone lives happily ever after. Wait a minute. Aside from the talking animals, this IS my life in a nutshell. Crap on a cracker. Could I be living a Grimm's fairy tale and not even know it? Is Disney about to digitally remaster the my life? Something else to obsess about - that's just what I need!)

Anyway...

My sister Sam is coming to visit. She just turned 19. Did I mention that already? But guys, I am 3freakin7 years old! Practically old enough to be her mother for cryin' out loud!!! But I am SO EXCITED that I could pee on myself. No lie. I have missed my youngest sibling so so so so MUCH!!! And I hope we get to do all those sisterly things I've read about in books like paint each others nails and braid our hair and talk about boys and eat too much ice cream. I hope hope hope she likes me. I can't wait to see what types of things we do the same and which things we do completely different from each other. See, we've only really been in contact with each other for the last two years or so, and it has taken this long for me to get up the courage to turn my back on the family drama and put her on a plane to where I am. Crazy, huh?

But.

I don't know. I took a real long honest look in the mirror yesterday (an actual mirror, no symbolism or anything) and realized that I have aged. I am a real true grown up. With kids. And a husband. And toilets to scrub. And I started wondering, what if Sam finds that she doesn't really like me? She is a young college girl with her whole entire life spread out before her. What if she finds that even though my Myspace page is all tricked out and cool and hip, in reality, I am just a typical, cranky, middle-aged mom? What if she finds me boring, or ordinary, or just plain irrelevant?

Then what?

I Say Disaster, He Says Delicious

Well. For those of you who don’t know, I am considered a pretty good cook. Not in a Julia Child or Martha Stewart kind of way, but you know, my meats are always tender and flavorful, my pancakes are light and fluffy, and my veggies are always steamed just right. For the last ten years or so, in my family and friends realm, any holiday or special event that involves food has been given to me to plan and prepare. I am the one that bakes like 20 pies for the church fundraiser and teacher appreciation day. I am the one that sends baskets full of fudge and muffins at Christmas time. I have special platters for Deviled Eggs, special tins for tiny little muffins, and more pots and pans than I have shoes (gasp!). I really like this about me and always look forward to a party where I can feed people.

But this Thanksgiving was going to be different. This Thanksgiving I had no family in hollering distance, except for our small little nuclear unit of four, to prepare a Thanksgiving feast for. I thought that maybe we would completely buck the system and order Chinese food or pizza and use the day to get a head start on Christmas decorating. But then our next door neighbors came up with this great idea. See, they have a large family and each year there has been this dilemma on where to entertain guests before the meal, since an additional table needed to be set up in their living room to accommodate the crowd. So, they asked if we could host a “social hour” (in Texas this is called “drinks and dip”) at our house for everyone, then we would be welcome to come to their house for the main meal. I was thrilled (no really, I was) because even though I had never met 13 of these people that were going to descend on our house at noon, but they had never met me either! So I was really looking forward to preparing some pre-meal goodies for a fresh audience.

Since I didn’t want the appetizers to fill everyone up before we sat down for turkey, I decided to go with a very simple and fool-proof menu. Veggie trays with carrot sticks, celery, and broccoli with ranch dip. A platter with a few different cheeses and summer sausage (you would not believe how hard that was to find up here – it involved the assistance of the grocery manager and a scavenger hunt through the wine and fine cheese section. For real!!). Deviled eggs, of course. Fudge with and without walnuts. Mini Banana Nut muffins. And then a few little dishes here and there that involved various nuts and chocolate (my favorite combination). Simple – right? But see, I also agreed to make a pecan pie (or as they say up here, pee-can pie) so that I could offer a taste of the South. And this is where my Thanksgiving preparations went to Hell in the proverbial hand basket.

I had my mom ship me pecans from Texas and I scouted out the best vanilla and eggs I could find. On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, just after I got the kids on the school bus, I began baking. On my list for the day was to do a few batches of fudge, the pecan pie, and a pumpkin pie for my son. See, my son Dalton absolutely loves pumpkin pie. Well, I really don’t think it is the pie, but more like he adores my Aunt Dawn who always makes him his very own pumpkin pie. From the essay he wrote earlier in the week for school, I knew that my sweet little third grader was also missing our family and I wanted to make sure he had his pie (He was asked to write about his best Thanksgiving memory, and he wrote about Auntie Dawn always making him his own pie).

So. I set out all of my ingredients, turned on the ipod and got to work. But see, while I was stirring the fudge, my Dad’s favorite song came on (Wasted Time – Eagles) and I started to cry. So then I had to stop stirring and go blow my nose and wash my hands and by the time I got back to the fudge, well, it was ruined. It looked a lot like this:

That my friends, is tree bark. Not what silky smooth fudge that you’ve made at least 954 times is supposed to look like. But I added in some nuts and said the hell with it.

I put on some happier music and started on the pecan pie. But you know what happened? Ten minutes after I put it in the oven, the pie swelled up like something I have never seen before! I swear, it was like a score of blackbirds were going to come bursting out the top at any minute! The poofiness went down by the time it finished the 50 minutes of cooking time, but it still looked like baked dog vomit! At this point I really lost it. I had used all of my Texas pecans sent from mom and the last of the good eggs on this pie! It was supposed to be my masterpiece! I called my mom. I called my aunt. I called my husband. And you know what I said to each of them? Can you guess? I said, “I WANT TO GO HOME!! THIS NEVER HAPPENED TO ME BACK HOME!” But nobody gave me ruby slippers to click three times, so instead I went to the store and bought pecans that originated from God only knows where and more brown sugar and more eggs and went home to try again.

Since I needed the pie dish the barf-o-rama pie was sitting in for my next attempt, I dumped the pie on a plate. Just then the kids walked in from school and said “Ewww! What’s that?” A really ugly pecan pie I told them. “Can we eat it?” they asked in unison. Umm sure why not? Here is what it looked like:

And here is what it looked like after the kids ate their fill:



My sweet son says to me, “Mom. You should so totally open a restaurant. Yeah. You could call it ‘Ugly Food’ because some of the stuff you make looks like really really gross, but tastes really good.”
Gee. Thanks.

But after that? You know what? Everything turned out perfectly.

Turkey Day was terrific. I guess maybe I needed a small moment to truly and deeply miss my family so that I could appreciate the kindness and generosity of another family including us in their holiday. We met some really great and wonderful people. And, you know what?? They LOVED my pecan pie!!