In which I am a grown up.

"Did you see who had the NERVE to sit next to me in church?" I pseudo-whispered to a friend at the coffee maker after mass. My friend looked at me, pretending not to know what I was talking about. As if. "You know. Remember? I can't stand her."

Flashback to a little event that I like to refer to as O Holy Clusterfuck, otherwise known as the Annual Children's Program. I won't go into the logistics of the now defunct ritual (praise be) other than to say that it was, a-hem, somewhat chaotic. And also needless to say, my daughter pleaded with every fiber of her being to be included. Every. Single. Year.

This particular year, she was playing a violin solo at OHC (aka ACP) before the actual mass began. Several children with varying levels of musical ability were playing solos in a half-hour *presentation* before mass, a mass that is always full to capacity with overflow seating in folding chairs ringing the perimeter of the church and spillover folks standing in the hallway outside of the church. The way that OHC (aka ACP) worked was, mass starts at 5 p.m. The Program begins at 4:30. The children in the Program had to arrive by something ridiculous like 3:30. As a result, all seating for the 5 p.m. mass was completely filled to capacity by 4 p.m. Oh, and this all took place on Christmas Eve, the one night of the year when everyone that has not been to church in a calendar year comes to church, and those who come to church every weekend point and stare and mock and judge. But I digress....

My child, wearing angel wings and a Christmas dress, was standing at the front of the church playing her violin solo. I was sitting in a near-front pew, videotaping her. And this woman walks in, stands directly in front of me and my videocamera, and does not sit down. Just stands there, looking around.

I choked down my roar of hey lady, down in front! and instead said, excuse me, I'm trying to videotape my daughter. To which the woman responds by ignoring me completely and talking to her husband in her *outside voice* about how ridiculously crowded the mass is. Meanwhile, my daughter finished her solo, took a bow, and left the altar, and I not only didn't get it on video, but barely got to see it.

Needless to say, I memorized this woman's face and vowed my vengeance, wherein vengeance = being totally passive-aggressive and snubbing her at every occasion. Heh. Also, no need to comment on my unchurchly like behavior. I know.

Back to present. I am standing at the coffee maker with my friend, who is pretending not to know what I am talking about. As if.

"You know. Remember? I can't stand her. The one who stood in front of me at the Christmas Program and wouldn't sit down? Totally rude? Remember?"

And my friend looked at me and said, "Seriously? That was, like, five years ago. Let it go."

What?

I drove home thinking about the last time my now 11-1/2-year-old preteen wore angel wings, and I'd say five years sounds pretty accurate. Seriously? Am I that fucked up, that I have been harboring a grudge against someone whose name I do not know for five years? Oy.

So in the spirit of embracing the message at church today, which I could barely focus on because I was so busy being mad at this woman sitting next to me, and , hence, in the spirit of preserving my mental health, I am letting go.

Poof. Gone. Goodbye. I am done. I am letting go.

Dear obnoxious lady, I forgive you. You're welcome.*

*I actually wrote "you're welcome, bitch," and then realized that might be contrary to the spirit of letting go. So I deleted it. Because I am letting go. Like a grown up, albeit in baby steps.

What I've been up to this week

Don't you hate it when life gets in the way of the blog? I know I do.

This week is Catholic Schools Week, which is kind of like a ghetto version of what would be Spirit Week at your child's school. I say ghetto because it's not as fabulous as one might hope and there are only two of the five days that kids actually get to "dress up" and forego their school uniforms.

Monday was "Super Hero" theme day. So Sunday was my sewing day, because Disco Girl needed a cape.

You must click to enlarge so you can behold the itchy splendor of the silver polka dotted lame' fabric. And how do you like that "D" for Disco Girl handiwork on the shirt? My skill with electric tape knows no bounds.

Tuesday was my Rotisserie Chicken of the week day. I made a delicious Classic Chicken Casserole and chronicled it on my food blog. We had it for dinner again tonight. Scrumptious. Try it.

Saturday was Carlie's school auction. Just got the final numbers today and we earned $117,000 after paying the bills, which is extremely excellent. I spent the day Saturday working on set up at the Hilton. The event was beautiful.

I did three donations this year. One of them is hosting our annual Casino Night party, which will be in April. People sign up for that at the auction and pay to attend. We host it with two other couples and it is always great fun. My second donation was a New Orleans themed basket. OMG I HAVE NOT EVEN TALKED ONCE ABOUT THE SAINTS GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL. Holy Shit. Have you guys heard, THE SAINTS ARE GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL! Behold the wonder of my basket...
The basket is so full of cool shit that you cannot even see the six-pack of Dixie Voodoo Lager, the two bottles of rum, the Cafe Du Monde coffee, the pilsner glasses or the hurricane glasses. The entire thing was packed up in a beverage tub. This basket? Was the bomb.

My third donation is a pot of gumbo delivered to the home of the lucky high bidder on Super Bowl Sunday, you know, so they can enjoy it while THE SAINTS PLAY IN THE EFFING SUPER BOWL.

The auction theme was Midnight Masquerade. I look like shit in this picture. As harsh as I am as my own critic, I can assure you that I did not look this horrible all night. It's just a crappy picture. With my mask on my head. Like a dork.

Because I was on the set up crew, I was at the Hilton from 8:00 a.m. until the event started at 5:00 p.m. At 4:30, I afforded myself the luxury of having my hair professionally done. A team of professional hair doers were set up in the volunteer suite and had appointments booked to beautify party-goers.

$20 per "beauty treatment" (hair do, fake eyelashes or makeup) and they donated a portion of it to the school. So for $20, I got my hair done. IN A PONYTAIL. EXACTLY THE SAME WAY I WEAR IT EVERY FRIGGIN DAY. Lame ass who?

Also, want to know what was really fabulous? I put on my makeup, put on my auction outfit and went into the hair suite. First question, "Do you want us to do you make up for you?" Second question, "What are you wearing to the auction?" Yeah. Awesome.

And also on the "things that kept me away from my blog" front this week, I started my NEW JOB on Monday. And damn it, I forgot to lose 15 pounds so I could fit into my professional wardrobe. Crap! I knew I was forgetting something.

Here's a picture I posted on Facebook as I was leaving for my first day of working for The Man. Do you like my ponytail? I did this one myself. FOR FREE.

Off to visit blogs and see what everyone else has been up to : )

Holy Moly

Carlie was an altar server for the first time on Sunday. Did I bring my camera to church and use it during mass? Why, yes. I did. Relax. I turned the flash off. Sheesh.

I snuck in back and got a few pictures of the preparations.

Silliness abounded.

But the silliness gave way to rapt attention paying.

Carlie was in good company. Notice the uniformity of the servers.

Wonder who this is? Wearing her BALLROOM DANCE SHOES to mass.

To see those shoes in action, click here. Really. You're going to want to see this.

PS: Carlie spent Saturday night at a friend's house, so we met her at church Sunday morning. And her hair? Completely a mess. And I said to the dad from the sleepover, sheesh, could you have told her to brush her hair? To which he replied, um, it looks like it does when you bring her. Smart ass.

Home, sweet home

So I found a house that I have to have. HAVE TO HAVE. The perfect house. It's a few blocks from my house, has always been one of my favorite houses in the neighborhood. It's valued at about $100k less than my house and is considerably smaller, but that's what downsize means, right? Bottom line is, if we could get just half of what we would like in equity for our house AND get a 5% interest rate, we would cut our $2k mortgage in half.

But here's the problem: my house is not even anywhere close to being ready to show or sell. And project declutter? It has kind of hit a stall today. I've done a shitload of laundry, and now? All I want to do is park my ass on the couch and watch Tivo'ed episodes of Supernatural. Yes-huh.

I had my first day of marathon training this morning. We did a three-mile pace run. I signed up to be in the "red" group, which is the slowest running group, meaning 10+ minutes per mile. I finished up right in the middle of the slow pack, which is fine by me. I'm so out of shape, I couldn't even run the entire three miles. I had to take a couple of "walk" breaks, but the walks were never longer than 60 seconds, so as far as I'm concerned, they don't count.

After running, I grabbed a quick shower and then went to mass. And then realized it is Palm Sunday, which means an hour and half long mass, and I got annoyed, and then was guilt-ridden about being annoyed about church. And then? This woman had NO CONTROL over her screaming children for AN HOUR AND A HALF, and didn't even TRY to have any control over them, just let them carry on like wild monkeys. SO ANNOYING. And then, again, with the guilt because, honestly, having wild monkey children in church probably is not any more fun for her than it is for me to be subjected to them. But still. My oldest two kids are 17 months apar and I would have been mortified had they carried on that way. And I'd have taken them to the "cry" room or bailed. Not just sat there pretending that we weren't disrupting mass for everyone else.

After growing up in New Orleans, I moved to Houston with my ex-husband for about seven years when my kids were little. The church that we went to in Houston had an old priest named Father Emile. He was cranky. All. The. Time. If your kids made noise during mass, he would call you out from the alter. I mean, seriously, call you out during mass. He'd stopped what he was doing, be it a reading or homily or what have you, and say PLEASE REMOVE THOSE CHILDREN TO THE CRY ROOM. RIGHT NOW. WE'LL WAIT. And just stare at you until you slunk out of the church.

I never caught his wrath and frankly I always thought he was kind of a dick for doing it, but after the freak show I sat through today of screaming, laughing, crying, NO NO NO NO NO MOMMY NO for an hour and a half... oy.

So that's my Sunday: went for a run, have been eating like a horse ever since, got pissed at church and now am camped out in front of the TV (even though my house is a sty) with my laptop, house shopping on Zillow. This is what weekends are for, no?

Oh... and Best Husband Ever just brought me a bag of peanut M&Ms and a Diet Coke.  Possibly to try to make up for being the Worst Husband Ever yesterday when he hauled all of my garage sale treasures to Goodwill after I finished sorting them for a garage sale. But M&Ms are a mighty fine peace offering.

Are you saying I do not possess a CALM DEMEANOR and ALL AROUND LEVEL-HEADEDNESS?

Have you ever really NOT wanted something, yet still got annoyed when it was not offered to you, and offered to someone else, like, say, your husband, for no apparent reason, and you wonder how your husband's name came up in these discussions about this thing that you don't want, and if they were talking about your husband, then logically the next step is that they also talked about you, but decided that YOU were not the one they wanted to ask about the thing, but your husband instead. Haters.

As a side note, I recently took the How Narcissistic Are You test by Dr. Drew, via the link at June's blog, Bye Bye Pie (which is funny, go read it now if you don't read it already). I was tickled pink to see the link because I had been cracking up at the test results of the staffers on the Howard Stern Show (which is where I learned the term "dirty sanchez" fyi) and so I was happy to take the test and see how I compared.

And it turns out? I scored 30. Which is, um, pretty high. And indicates that I am extremely self centered, egocentric and also feel superior to everyone around me. Which only reinforces my need to tell this story, because now I KNOW FOR SURE that everyone REALLY IS enthralled by the minutia of my life. And now, back to the story.

I'll preface by saying I have over-committed volunteer-wise at Carlie's school/our church. I am chairing the used uniform committee, which is a big commitment which involves collecting, sorting and marking hundreds of pieces of clothing and then putting on a multiple day sale. I am the "manager" of the church gift shop. And I work on the school auction, which is a huge project. In fact, I just told the Parent's Club (which is like PTA at other schools) that I will handle uniforms for one more year and then someone else needs to step up. 

So there you see where I am coming from. I don't need or want another volunteer commitment, and if someone were to ask me to volunteer for something, I'd have to decline. Because? Need to work more hours at jobs that actually pay.

Now let's preface Tim's involvement. He goes to mass maybe twice a month, and that's if Carlie is singing in the choir. And it's a big maybe. He NEVER goes to the school. He's at work. The school drop off and pick up are my domain. And in fact, he checked Carlie out of school early on Thursday and my friend (who works at the school) sent me a text message saying he held up quite well under the office staff's inquisition of "Wow, we never see you here. What are you doing here?" So that's where he is on the school/church participation continuum. If I am an 8/10, he's a 2/10.

So imagine my surprise when I listen to the voice mail today and there's a message from someone at the Parish, who makes a point of saying multiple times that this MESSAGE IS FOR TIM, implying hey, Shana, if you're listening, GO GET TIM, because apparently right now we are ALL ABOUT TIM.

And the message is asking him to make a 3-year commitment to be on the Pastoral Committee, which makes decisions about churchy stuff. EXCUSE ME? THE MAN DOESN'T EVEN GOOOOOO TO CHURCH. Huh?

And the reason that they would like him to consider this is because of his, and I quote, "calm demeanor and all around level-headedness," implying UNLIKE YOUR PSYCHO WIFE, WHO BY THE WAY, IF YOU'RE LISTENING, THIS MESSAGE IS NOT FOR YOU.

So, in summary, I am irked by the implication that I am unfit for a volunteer position which I do not want. And by implication, I mean the fact that I am totally taking everything said on the message, which was NOT MEANT FOR ME, and making it ALL ABOUT ME. Because? Hello, 30 on the Are You A Narcissist quiz.

Don't you wish your gramma was hot like me?

You know that trip to New Orleans that I have hardly mentioned at all in the last 24 hours? On the way there, I have an almost four hour layover in Houston, during which Maggy and Iris will be coming to the airport for an airport birthday party with me. Because that's how we roll.

This is Iris' Christmas photo, taken in early December. She turned one in September. Last time we saw her, she was nine months old, not even very mobile. Now she is 15 months old, walking and running and dancing and saying bye-bye. And Carlie and I are dying to see her.

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Quiet day on the home front. Early trip to the gym for a 5k run. A quick shower and then a crepe brunch with Holly of Fantastic Forrest fame. After crepes, I put in two hours at the ceramic shop doing finishing work on the tiles that Carlie's class painted yesterday. 

We had one close call. One of the tiles? TOTALLY unrecognizable as anything, plant, animal or mineral. The other mom who was working on the project with me had to take it back to the school and ask the child what he was going for, because can you even imagine the horror if I had written his name on the wrong end and had it mounted on the bar upside down? Poor little dude. Turns out, the artist was going for two bunches of bananas growing on a tree, in the sunset. THANK GOD we asked.

So our class project? It is totally going to kick the asses of all of the other class projects. We're taking one of these

And 50 of these

Some of which are solid colors and some of which depict scenes from the rain forest.

And when when we're all said and done, we will have a pimped out tile topped patio bar.

Carlie's contribution? That plant that eats people from Little Shop of Horrors. It's right here, to the left and a row up from the aardvark. Or maybe it's a hedgehog. 

The auction is the premier fundraising event every year for Carlie's school. But the main goal? To be the parent who comes up with the most kick-ass class project. Because it's a Catholic school. And that's what Jesus would want.

Carlie's Church Debut

Carlie and Kyung singing the Responsorial at Mass on Sunday. I know that singing in the choir at church is more of a liturgical duty than a "performance," but, still, how freaking cute is she?