I Need a Vacation from my Vacation, part two

I'm changing schools, but that's for another post.

On my very last day at Greens Prairie, my last day to work at the school where both of my kids go, we got out early. I decided that we should go get the boys passports to open up our vacation options. I didn't know if they would come in before our vacation this summer, but even if they didn't, we'd have them for next year. After a very sad day of goodbyes, prepping for vacation seemed like a perfect plan.

Several people asked what our plans were for the afternoon, and when I shared my passport idea I was met with skepticism. "Do you have an appointment?" No, I was just going to go to the passport office where their job is to order passports. "Have you called ahead?" No, surely they will know when I walk into the passport office that I'm there to get a passport. These people obviously had negative passport-obtaining experiences, but I figured that was probably out of the norm. I'd be fine.

Since both parents have to be there to get a kid's passport, I convinced Trey to meet me at the College Station Post Office, home of the Passport Obtaining Place, even though it is quite difficult for him to get away from work during the day at all, much less on a Friday. The boys and I were waiting patiently in line when he arrived. When I got to the front, a very nice postal worker lady said, "We only do passports by appointment, but I can make you an appointment if you like."

Hmmm...so the hours posted that indicate when passport getting is available are really just hours during which I can make an appointment?  Interesting. No big deal. I'll just make an appointment.

(Remember, I had a day of pretending not to be overwhelmingly sad about getting a promotion, which in and of itself is absurd at best, and I was determined to be positive about this.)

"Yes, ma'am. I'd like to go ahead and make an appointment."

"Okay," she says, as she flips through a paper calendar. "The next appointment we have is June 26th."

"What? As in, one month from now? That June 26th?" In my head I am telling myself over and over that this is just the lady with the calendar. She doesn't make the rules. It's not her fault. It's not her fault. It's not her fault.

"Yes,would you like an appointment on June 26th?" she replies.

I'm working very hard to keep a smile on my face with the woman (whose fault it isn't). "Seriously. Is that truly the soonest I can get one? Is there anything else I can do?"

"Well, the Department of Study Abroad at A&M does passports, and I have their number right here if you'd like to call them."

Yes, I would like to call them. And I did call them. And they said to come on over because they could let us order passports for the boys anytime before three. Score.

Trey mumbled incomprehensibly under his breath about government redundancies and scheduling and poor service, but he did agree to follow me over to campus to get the passports. It was already pretty close to two o'clock. We decided we needed to hustle a little bit so he could get back to his office. I checked the campus map on my phone, realized we needed to be near the MSC, and asked him which way to go. He didn't care, and he decided he'd just follow me.

So, hurriedly, we trekked over to campus.

Once we parked in the garage, I pulled up my campus map and told Trey which way I thought we should go. In my defense, I did tell him he might want to double check me, but for some reason unbeknownst to me, he decided to trust me with directions on this hot May afternoon. Let me state again. He trusted me with directions. Big. Mistake. 

When we got about halfway around the MSC, I realized that we had gone the opposite way from what we should have done. Meaning, we should have just walked straight to the front door of the Department of Study Abroad, but instead we walked all the way around the famous (and large) Memorial Student Center of Texas A&M University. It was also about halfway around that I realized Trey was looking hot (yes, that kind of hot AND temperature hot) in his Friday banker garb -- nice boots, dark jeans, black shirt embroidered with the bank's logo. Clothes made for a busy day of handling people's banking business. Not made for hiking miles across the humid landscape of Central Texas in the middle of the afternoon in late May.

I swear when I spotted the sign in the distance, it was like an oasis in the desert. Sweat dripping into unmentionable crevices (see sweaty bra post from 2009), my family of four entered the Study Abroad office.

The people there were so nice. They handed us forms, gave us desks to work at while filling them out, took the boys' photos one at a time. This was all going to be worth it.

Until we realized we needed a check. An actual paper check. Which we did not have.

Trey thought he had a checkbook in his truck, so I offered to run back to it (the shorter way this time) so he wouldn't have to be in the heat again. When I got to the truck, no check book. No check. Nothing. I looked everywhere short of under the hood, and there was no check to be found.

"He's going to kill me for dragging him through all this for nothing," was all I could think. Not that he would kill me for real, or even that he would be mad at me, but he would be sweaty and hot for no good reason AND he would have to leave work again the next week in order to make another passport attempt.  This would not make him jump for joy, my fault or not. Cautiously, I called to inform him of the no checkbook situation. "Just come on back," he said.

As I walked back to meet them, I noticed them from a great distance because they were all but running toward me. I thought something must have been wrong. When I got to them, Trey said, "I'm going to my office to get the checkbook. I think I have time." The he sprinted away in his good boots and black shirt in the Texas sun.

I think the time then was 2:42. I decided that he was, indeed, insane, and that this was an impossible task, but that I would humor him and wait around until 3:00 when the office closed and he wasn't back.

While he was gone on his futile effort, the boys and I hopped in my car to move it to closer parking that we'd found on our hike, but when we got to that parking we realized it was all taken. I decided to go ahead and park in "service vehicle only" parking since I didn't figure I'd even be getting out of the car. I had given up.

Then at 2:57, straight out of a movie script, Trey's truck came flying around the corner on two wheels and slammed on the breaks in the middle of the bike lane. It wasn't an illegal parking spot - it wasn't a parking spot at all - and there was Trey Hickman jumping out of the truck and sliding across the hood just like Bo Duke!

(I made up the sliding across the hood part, but he could totally pull it off.)

I jumped out of my car, and Trey and I ran into the passport office and made the boys stand watch on our two illegally parked vehicles lest a bored tow truck driver appear from the sky. We wrote some checks, took the oath that says we're really citizens and really Tucker and Keaton's parents, and we got those blasted passports ordered. It was a miracle. A Trey-Hickman-Can-Get-Anything-Done-When-He-Decides-To miracle!

Immediately, Trey rushed off to work, and as the boys and I strolled toward my car in the service vehicle space I noticed a lady on a moped approaching my car. Ugh! After all of this I was going to get (a well-deserved) parking ticket.

"That's my car," I told her as we approached.

"You're parked in a service vehicle only spot," she replied without looking at me.

"I know," was all I could say.

Then there was a good long minute of silence while she tapped away on her little ticket making machine. Finally, unable to stand the quiet, I asked, "So will I get my ticket in the mail or do I need to wait for it?"

She scowled at me. "Lady, if I was going to give you a ticket I would have done it already."

Score again!

"Quick!  Get in the car, boys! We're getting ice cream to celebrate the last day of school!'

And after all of the tears and sadness and goodbyes of the day, we got ourselves a win.

I may need a vacation from my vacation..., Part One

Vacation. I'm obsessed with it. I think it's a mental vacation for me to think about and plan for an actual vacation, so I've been spending too much time thinking about what we'll do this summer.

First, I was on cruises. Cruises are great because there is something for everyone to do every minute of the day (like my kids) and other family members are free to relax by the pool with a book and a Purple Bird of West Green Bananas cocktail.  Yes, I realize that this sounds like I'm planning a vacation where we don't have to spend every second of every day together, and yes, I will leave that off my Mom of the Year application. Also, the all inclusive makes it much easier to make and stick to a budget. Perfect for a cheap frugal person like me.

So, cruise. Bahamas or Jamaica?  Grand Cayman or Belize?  Honduras?

Definitely no Mexico - we went there last year. On that trip we learned our kids are NOT adventurous. One of them who shall not be named (*ahem* Tucker *ahem*) is just flat out not a risk taker in any way. He likes routine. The same. No surprises. For this reason, I've determined that we need to put the boys into situations where they feel uncomfortable so they can be be comfortable with their discomfort. Travel is the perfect way to do this! Makes perfect sense, right?  I thought so.

When we couldn't decide on a cruise, Trey suggested we just wait to book something and see if we can get a deal at the last minute. We really don't have a preference on where to go, so let's decide not to decide. I was totally on board with this. But, of course, I continued to obsess on vacations.

I discovered that cruises out of Florida are cheap  very inexpensive. In fact, we could fly to Florida and go on a cruise to the Bahamas and spend about the same amount as a cruise from Galveston or New Orleans. The boys have never been on a plane before, so there's the added adventure I'm wanting. Strangely, Keaton has decided that his dream vacation is to go to Miami (I have no idea why, and I don't think he does either). So this is my next plan -- fly to Miami, cruise to the Bahamas. One of the boys who shall not be named (*ahem Tucker ahem*) might need a kiddie xanax, but we'll cross that runway when we get to it.

But wait!  If we're going to fly, we may as well look into all inclusive resorts and forgo the cruise altogether. This has all the same benefits of a cruise (activities, food and drink included), without the ship. It may actually be less expensive according to my calculations. THIS is our plan!

But the boys don't have passports. They don't have them because their mother is cheap frugal and doesn't want to spend the money on them. I have, however, finally come to realize that once they have passports, we are free to choose any of the vacation options previously listed for years to come.

We got out of school early today, so off to the post office we went. And thus began the Great Passport Debacle of 2013.

Book #11: The White Queen by Philippa Gregory

I really enjoyed The Other Boleyn Girl, and I needed a book to fill the gap until Khaled Hosseini's new book came out, so I read The White Queen.

It was fine. Not great. Fine.

It was good enough that I wanted to finish it, but boring enough that I paid seventeen bucks (thanks to an Amazon gift card from my friend Sally) to download the audio version and finish it in the car when I took a one day road trip to to Rice. Mainly so I could start the Hosseini book.

The End.

Book #10: Bossypants by Tina Fey

I love this book both for its hilarity and its wisdom. Tina Fey discusses what it's like to be a woman in charge in the workplace, along with the fact that being a woman in charge in the workplace is something we would even have a discussion about (there aren't any books about being a man in charge in the workplace, to my knowledge). She's also a mother and wife and regular normal daughter of Republicans. I want to have a margarita with her.

Some gems from the book:
"'Bloft' is an adjective I just made up that means 'completely overwhelmed but proceeding as if everything is fine and reacting to the stress with the torpor of a possum.' I have been 'blorft' for the past seven years."

"Politics and prostitution have to be the only jobs where inexperience is considered a virtue. In what other profession would you brag about not knowing stuff? 'I'm not one of those fancy Harvard heart surgeons. I'm just an unlicensed plumber with a dream and I'd like to cut your chest open.' The crowd cheers."

Note that there are plenty of f-bombs, and Fey was a writer for SNL so she's not afraid of offending people with comedy. As one who is not easily offended and often reads at gymnastics practice and baseball games, I laughed out loud...a lot...in public...like a crazy person.

This book is especially recommended when you want to read something but are feeling too blorft to pick up something too heavy.

Book #9 Mudbound by Hillary Jordan

This is one of the best  books I've read in a long, long time.

Here's the first paragraph:
"Henry and I dug the hole seven feet deep. Any shallower and the corpse was liable to come rising up during the next big flood: Howdy boys! Remember me? The thought of it kept us digging even after the blisters on our palms had burst, re-formed and burst again. Every shovelful was an agony -- the old man, getting in his last licks. Still, I was glad of the pain. It shoved away thought and memory."

Now, how's that for an opener!

The story takes place after WWII in the Mississippi Delta. Two of the characters return from fighting in the war, one white and one black. The story centers around the families of both men, but it is so much more than that.

If I were still teaching, I would make kids read this book and then write a paper about morality as defined by society (ahh...the power!). In Mudbound, the good people believe strongly in ideals that go against everything we now view as basic human right. The bad people are, well, really bad, yet their behavior is allowed to continue because those around them are fearful of standing up to them or simply uncomfortable with the subject of race. We see how far evil and violence will go if good people choose to look the other way.  The chapter where Ronsel comes upon a concentration camp while fighting for the US during WWII will haunt me for a good long time. Through this painful scene, the author artfully ties in the injustices of Nazi Germany to the injustices of race prejudice in the Deep South.

Mudbound is told through several different narrators, which not only kept me glued to the pages but also shows Hillary Jordan's great craft as an author. There is tragedy and love and intrigue and even a laugh or two. In short, this is a fantastic book, and you should read it.

Addendum: This description makes the book seem very dense, and it's not at all. I would even call it a quick read. The voices of the various characters are quite conversational, so the book is actually pretty easy. I finished it in less than a week.

Cupcake Crazy

Approximately five weeks ago, I came home from work on Friday and decided to make cupcakes. Things have gone a little crazy since then.

Now, people often comment, "I don't know how you have time for things like that!"  The truth is, I don't. My house is messy. I often bring home paperwork from school on the weekends that needs to be done. There is laundry to wash and there are groceries to purchase. I should be working out. (I cancelled my gym membership because I was paying $45 a month and spending time chauffeuring kids to baseball and gymnastics and never making it to the gym. I am a quitter. I need a new exercise plan, but before I can plan I need time to actually implement the plan, and the aforementioned chauffeuring and other mom duties take up all of the time. Poor me. Did I mention I'm a quitter?)

I've never in my life been a procrastinator, but I think baking has become my form of procrastination. If I share the cupcakes with other people, then it's a random act of kindness instead of a random act of not-doing-what-I-really-should-be-doing-right-now.

Anyway, I got the idea from this link I found on Pinterest. It includes 31 unique cupcake recipes -- one for each day of the month. Now, if I made cupcakes every day for a month, I would have to do some shopping because none of my clothes would fit (and did I mention I quit the gym?). I could, however, make cupcakes on Friday nights, right?  On Friday nights I take time off from being the iPad Nazi, and my kids usually watch TV and play on their iPads uninterrupted for a good long while. Trey will come home and sit at the bar while I bake, and we have more conversation than we've had all week. There's something therapeutic at the end of the week about putting on my pajamas, blasting the Norah Jones Pandora station, opening a bottle of wine, and baking. Happy Friday to me.





My first Friday cupcake was a peanut butter cupcake with peanut butter frosting and chocolate ganache. I feel like "sinful" is an appropriate word. Sometimes peanut butter cupcakes are dry, but this one was moist and delicious. I also can't get over the genius of TWO frostings. Seriously. Frost a cupcake and then put some chocolate on top of it. It's like whoever came up with this recipe is as smart as the inventor of double stuff oreos.

The next batch, made on March 8th, was Irish Car Bomb cupcakes. Now, I've never had an Irish car bomb, but this cupcake sounded creative and exotic and I wanted to make it. It's a Guinness cupcake (made with the beer) with Bailey's Irish Cream filling and Bailey's frosting. Trey said it was "strong" which makes me think he could taste the Bailey's. I think this is awesome because I really hate when you make something with a superstar ingredient and then you can't taste said ingredient. These were quite unique and yummy. 

Then came my father-in-law's birthday which also happens to be on St. Patrick's Day. Each year I make him an Italian cream cake, but since it's St. Patty's Day it has to be green. I don't know if he really wants this each year or if it's just tradition now, but this is what he gets. Some years it turns out a little dry, and other years it's perfect. I think think this was a good year. 

Then I needed to take something to our family Easter celebration. I've been dying to make this cake, but it seems silly to make it for just our family. I mean, I would EAT IT ALL a little at a time, and then I would have this terrible food remorse whenever I went to grab one more bite and realized the pan was empty. So I made it for Easter, and it was pretty darn good. The cake was decent, but the praline topping was the best part. I cooked it a little too long and the consistency was a little too thick when I put it on the cake. It should have oozed down the sides more, and it would have been prettier if that had happened, but it still tasted great!  I think I'd like to try this gooey chocolate cake recipe I have and then add the praline topping to it. It would be even richer and creamier. It's called New Orleans Double Chocolate Praline Fudge Cake. 

The first cupcake of April was sort of at Trey's request. He saw a recipe somewhere for cupcakes that are like those old school Hostess cupcakes with cream filling, chocolate frosting, and that little white squiggle on top. I've had this recipe for a while (it came from the 31 days of cupcakes list), and I decided to give it a shot. It wasn't too pretty on top, but when I broke it open and dug in, it looked like it should - creamy and delicious!  

This week I had a difficult time deciding between nutella madness cupcakes and caramel macchiato cupcakes. In the end, I went with lemon cupcakes with raspberry filling and lemon frosting. It's a cupcake that tastes like summer! It's also one of my prettiest creations to date. This one is especially fancy because I actually bought and used cake flour for the first time. I think the cake is a little lighter than it would have been had I used my normal all purpose flour, and the cupcakes didn't rise as much as some of my others. I think I've learned what end result I can accomplish with the cake flour, and I may or may not use it in future recipes. 

What's up next?  It's so hard to decide!  I really want to try these Elvis cupcakes, mostly because they seem like something Trey would really like. But I still haven't made the nutella madness or caramel macchiato. These decisions may just start keeping me up at night.

Book #8: Killing Kennedy by Bill O'Reilly

I keep saying I don't read much non-fiction, but I think this is my second one this year. I really loved O'Reilly's Killing Lincoln, so I decided to read his similar book about the assassination of President Kennedy. It was good as I expected.

Before reading the book, I felt like the Kennedy family's reign over US politics was riddled with mystery. There is just so much that the general public will never know about JFK's election, Bobby Kennedy's role in his presidency, and the apparently dysfunctional relationship that JFK had with his father. The book sheds light into some of these mysteries, but when the evidence reaches a dead end, O'Reilly recognizes this and moves on.

I may have wanted more scandal than the book provided, but I did learn a great deal. Killing Lincoln reads like fiction to me -- the stories of Lincoln and Booth intertwined as the reader anxiously awaits the crossing of their paths. Killing Kennedy has some of that; however, it reads much more like I would expect from nonfiction.

I liked Killing Lincoln better, but this one was interesting, too. I think Mudbound by Hillary Jordan is up next.