One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times - Chapter 26

#26 – “Always turn the lights off when you leave a room. It saves electricity and helps keep the house cooler.”
(Photo is of my San Antonio Grandkids, Cassie, Will & Syd)
People often ask me, “Do you really have a hundred things, or is that just a catchy title.” I really do have one hundred things. Actually I think it’s right around 103, but who’s counting. Sometimes though I can’t decide which lesson to write about. I just read through them waiting for my muse to jump out. This morning I guess my muse slept in, so when Crouse-y-poo (the husband) wandered through, I said, “Pick a number between 26 and 103.” He picked 87, and #87 on the list became #26, and today’s topic.

You know how when you were a kid and your mom would say things so many times that you just wanted to run out of the house screaming? Well, that’s my #26, “Always turn the lights off when you leave a room. It saves electricity and helps keep the house cooler.” And you know how one day you’re just tootling along and all of a sudden you realize that you’re going room to room, turning lights off, and you get wide-eyes and shriek, “Oh my gaud! I’m turning into my mother!” Yep, I thought so.

The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris

Loved it, hated it, loved it, hated it, hated it, hated it.

“It’s back,” says the main character, Tim, referring to his mysterious, sporadically reoccurring illness (real or psychological – we never find out), that causes him to walk out of anything and everything, and walk until he drops from exhaustion, suffering frostbite, malnutrition and other physical disasters.  Tim’s a high-powered attorney, wealthy, healthy and smart, until all of a sudden he’s not. Due to his “walking thing” which no amount of Dr.’s worldwide can diagnose or cure, he looses his position in the firm and an important case, which causes one of his clients to eventually kill himself. His illness all but kills his wife. And I found that I wanted to kill him myself about halfway through the book just to be done with it all.  It’s sort of hard to explain, understand, or swallow, but honestly I think it’s more like a metaphor, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

Gals Guzzle

Not only do “Gals Graze” (reference previous posts of Gals – Very Smart Gals luncheons), they also sometimes, “Guzzle”!  Thursday night was one such instance as I met Very Smart Gals, Angela Tharpe Guillen and Nancy Weiss Coplin for drinks at Red’s Porch.

(Nancy left - Angela right) 

Nancy is the Music Coordinator at Austin-Bergstrom Airport, has sold music posters at the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar forever, manages several musicians/bands in Austin, is very good friends with Marcia Ball, knows more music people than anyone I know, and is very involved in lots of musician support groups. I met Nancy around 1983-ish through the Women’s Chamber of Commerce, which was just being formed.

Angela created and owns the Flamingo Cantina on Sixth Street (a successful music venue for close to 20 years), and is one of the masterminds behind the Austin Reggae Festival.  I knew her long before she became the “Bob Marley” of Austin as she worked for Bob Honts (County Commissioner and Developer) in his private business while I worked for him in his public office.

This And That

The Continuing Saga – My Husband the Housekeeper
Remember my posts saying that my husband Crouse decided that in his retirement, he would come our housekeeper? And then I posted that the “Thrill was gone,” and that he was slacking off? Well, he was a little hurt at my comment that he wasn’t doing such a great job cleaning, and really is trying harder. Can you believe it! I adore my hubby, and he knows it!

OK, this is precious and priceless. Guess what he said right after I returned from a five-day trip to New Mexico? “Did you notice how clean the house is?” Then he rattled off a list of the cleaning chores he’d done. It was so adorable!

My Kitchen Cabinet
Crouse always says that when work gets slow, we start renovating, and he’s right. Over the holidays we renovated and redecorated our front bathroom – not to worry friends, it’s still full of the nudes I’ve collected over the years – it’s just a little less “bordello,” and a little more “museum!”

Also, when we were camping in Fort Davis over Thanksgiving, my Friend Deb Harrington and I saw some bookshelves, the insides of which were painted bright red, and it look fabulous, so I decided that I wanted to paint the insides of my kitchen cabinets (which are open – no doors) a bright color. So, after my husband came down off the ceiling and warmed to the idea, we went to Home Depot to look at paint samples, and ended up with a completely unexpected choice – stop-sign iridescent orange-yellow.

Also – I’d recently, for what reason I can’t account for, purchased a couple of vintage TV lamps, but couldn’t figure out what to do with them. Well, one thing led to another, and a couple of forays on eBay, and next thing you know we owned a number of TV lamps and they were lighting my kitchen cabinets. AND I LOVE IT!

Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

I tend to launch right into my opinion, forgetting to tell people what the book I'm reviewing is about. So before I get carried away – Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin is sort of a behind-the-scenes look at the 2008 presidential race, but with an "opening of the kimono" twist, revealing the candidates as we rarely see them,  people just like us – sometimes stupid, sometimes smart, capable of fear, insecurity, profanity, love, pain and plain ole' meanness. So on to the good stuff.

I loved Game Change. I couldn’t put it down. It was an interesting, cleverly written and fun story about a historic time in America. That’s not to say that some of the things about it didn’t tick me off, or that it was completely accurate, but I’ll get to that in a minute. Read on...