Me and My Momma Vignette

-SHAKAAAAAB!!! (it's more like an 'aaaah' sound she makes when she screams than an ahhh or uuhh)
Momma calls out from the kitchen. I'm sitting on my little drab gray love seat typing away on a writing kick begun a few minutes earlier. I insisted upon squeezing this former living room mainstay into the last bare spot of wall/floor in my room, saying that it would allow more room for people to sit, which translated to me piling up clothes, Rolling Stones, "Gradulation" announcements and unused blankets on it. Richly filling my room is the sound of the Avett Brothers from my set of computer speakers sans computer. I heave myself up and walk into the kitchen in my business socks. I don't know why I was wearing my business socks, considering it was Habib Wednesday.
-Momma I gotta go write I just gotta.
We've been through this a few times already since we got back from State UIL I'm 1A State Champ. I read 150 pages of the Yiddish Policemen's Union in the cracks of time between loooong awards ceremonies and meetings and visits to the capitol building and eating eating eating at "restrunts." Reading Chabon is definitely the reason for this feverish writing I've been doing.
Momma shoots me a look. Not just a look. It's one of a collection that mother owns and by owns I mean they are HER. LOOKS. One day, with much practice (and we'll prolly have to have children of our own), I and my siblings will inherit some of- if not her entire- repertoire of "child-o'-mine?!" looks.
-Son?! Who's day is this? This is your mother's and your sister's day. You and I haven't been around all weekend and your father had had to get everything straightened up.
That my father cleaned up the house really was something and I began to feel convicted.
-So we are going to get lunch ready. Now, put this salad in a bowel. (Danielspeak for bowl).
I open up the cabinet where all the "bowels" are. I see porcelain, porcelain with-a-lil-garland, porcelain with-a-lil-leaf, porcelain with-a-lil-branch, glass and wood bowels. I pick out a glass bowel, because, to me, "glass" just bespeaks "salad."
-I'm just gonna put it in this bowel.
Another look.
-Son! That is a MIXING bowel. Pick out one of those nice bowels.
-I don't like any of those bowels. None of them say, "salad."
-Son?! Of you ever say you don't like my nanny's bowels I'm going to kick your bart! (danielspeak for butt)
_I'm sorry! It's just that when I think "salad" I think "glass."
-Whull there's a nice glass bowel right there. Or you could even use that wood one.
Momma pronounced wood like you'd, not wood like should. I really wanted to use the wood one from the get-go but didn't know if it was actually a salad bowl even though I had eaten salad out of it multiple times previous. I grabbed the "woud" one. In it was a picture of my cousins Lauren and Jenny from several years before and two dusty African salad spoons.
-I like this one.
Array salad.
Momma starts to account for the number of plates necessary for those attending Mother's Day/ Jalesa's birthday lunch.
-Ok now, how many people are going to be here? There's going to be the six of us. Mallmall and Pallpall, Aint Adana Uncle Wain, Momma and Albert, Hunky James. . .
-Is Nate the rat going to be here?
-No.
-Fwhy the crack not?
-He's hung up in Denton with finals.
-rassmfrassm
-So there's going to be twelve of us here. Son? I need you to run upstairs and see if that plate is up there. And check Jalesa's room too.
I walk through the living room and turn into the stairwell remembering as I take the stair two at a time (a capability afforded me by my long legs. Taking them one at a time would be stupid) that momma had only counted 13 people. She had 13 plates in the cabinet. Why the crack was I getting this plate?!
Sho nuff, I find a dinner plate in the middle of the floor upstairs in front of Jayce's much attended television and two smaller plates in Jalesa's room. These plates were interspersed amidst fast food, gas station and home cups holding various types and volumes of beverage. I take the stairs one at a time on the way back down (no need to get reckless), set the plates in the kitchen and start toward the bathroom.
-I gotta pee.
Momma makes a noise like an aggressive bird or a velociraptor. ( I know what dinosaurs sound like, I've seen Jurassic Park)
-AHAHAHAHAH! Wash that plate.
I go back to the sink and squirt the sink-inset soap dispenser's contents onto the plate. The contents are brown. I don't think dish soap should be brown.
-Where's the dish soap?
I know where the dish soap is. Momma knows I know where the dish soap is. She opes the cabinet below the sink where we have kept our household chemicals for the past 10 years. I'm surprised she doesn't punch me in the chest.
-right there.
I begin washing. I always set the water as H as it will go, realize that I always do that and set it a lil closer to C. Momma gets a dish out and starts squeezing store-bought (but the best store-bought) guacamole into it. Urination! No breathing! I don't pee my pants, rather opting to give my right leg a vigorous shake. Momma notes this, chuckling.
-Son? Do you have to teetee?
Chuckling we both chuckle.
I finish wuf warshing the dish.
-Hokay, now I'm gonna go pee and then go write this down, Momma, you're gonna love it.
I notice that the salad now sits in a glass bowel. Apparently, the wood bowel has reconfigured it's atomic structure. . . No. That can't be it.
-Did you change the bowels?
-Yes. I forgot this was going to be a Catalina salad so the wood bowel (this time she pronounced wood, as the english-speaking community would say, correctly) would have been useless. Now we need to put beans in it and -baring her clenched teeth, she lets her breath hiss through the cracks- sssssshhhhhheese!

Feed Store Blues

My feet (question mark up), are soooo cold, that I feel as if they might simply fall off and then (question mark up) that's it. . . no more feet. And my head? Congested with congestion. So I started this blog one month ago and am now making my first post. On today's agenda we have

1. The state of my feet
2. The state of my head
3. Why now?
4. True Grit
5. So would you like the 14.5% Show Pig or the 16% Show Pig?
6. Jesus talk

I've just been reading through other peoples' blogs (which were very good, very insightful, very interesting) and I thought to myself, "Self, it's time people knew what is going on between you and me." So I'm happy to inform you that me and my Self have been together for 19 years and are in it for the long haul. We're not quitting ourSelves of each other just yet. But seriously, I'm just trying to impress all the people (read "girls") out there who actually read blogs. Much less my blog. But seriously, yeah, that's how it is. Mission statement. I'm here to stun with my intellect, and incredibly wild hair

(seriously, triple crown. and I'm not talking about horse racing), tell you stories about my family (they're great and oft times hilarious) and review movies and books and art and architecture and food and drink and fashion and interior design and public speaking and websites and fonts and the severity of my vision impairment and ramble ramble ramble. And this is all coming out now because I have soooo much time that I could be spending editing my Uganda Documentary but cannot help but waste it on stuff like this.

I love the Coen Brothers. No Country for Old Men woke me up to movies and I've been a devoted fan of theirs ever since. They are so consistently good. True Grit is no exception to their meticulous track record. I don't know why they chose to do this film, but I am so glad they did. Classic western vibe with a Coen sensibility and a Deakins look. Deakins is one of my favorite cinematographers (the only one whose name I've ever committed to memory) and he just goes to town with this film. Snow falling in the forest + close up on Jeff Bridges craggy face + dentist in a bear skin riding up= gorgeous. The dialogue snaps along with quick and easy banter and several memorable quotes (e.g. Lebouf- "Sounds like to me that you're gettin' hoorah-ed by a little girl." Cogburn- "Hoorah-ed?!" Lebouf- "That was the word."). And then there are the performances. All these people just seem to be having so much fun doing this, and there is not one weak let alone average performance. Seems to me that everyone stands out. But if anyone stands further out than the rest, I'd have to say that Hailee Steinfeld (14 YEARS OLD!) does. We've come to expect great performances from the likes of Bridges and Damon and Brolin (and they deliver), but Steinfeld in her first leading feature role just shines. I want to see her get nominated for best actress and I don't want to hear any crap about her being a SUPPORTING actress. She's the focal point of the entire story: the turkey. Everybody else is dressing, but the good kind of dressing, the one that has the celery in it. Go see this movie.

To you, a 1.5% difference in the protein content of a 50 lbs. sack of feed might not mean that much, but let me tell you, I still don't understand what the big deal is. But there are people who come by here who do. And they stand there and they look at the two different feeds and belly ache. Do I want 14.5% protein or do I go the full 16%? Don't even talk to me about 18%, I may never even get there. Is there a 13.5% Showtec pig feed? The pigs might not need the 1% more protein that is offered by the 14.5%. Just feed the pig.

And then there was Jesus. Yes. Jesus has saved me from my sin. But I struggle with that carp ever day. Does that make me less of a Christian? No. The problem is not so much what I'm doing that I need to stop doing (although it is admittedly A problem), but what I have been commanded to do by God that I am not doing at all. So what about evangelism? Therefore go and make desciples? No mention of Jesus outside of the BSM for me, and even there, I didn't say much. But Christ holds me. Though I struggle and run off on my own destructive path, He's going to be there for me. There is no lasting satisfaction in possessions, nor unshakeable love in man. But in Christ, I believe, there is true worth. So that's my Jesus plug.