Standard Casual

There are times I think I can start myself all over again. Scrub the callouses off my feet, trim the toenails and paint them bright, do my hair up with some latest vibrant boxed color and get Oprah's team to style it just right. New clothes, new shoes, new all over do. And then I could present this shiny new beaming me to people who had hither to not really noticed who I was. It would be a good feeling, walking around all primed and pressed and starched to the crisp. And then I think that I would have to get another pedicure in a month, perhaps touch up color on my head, trim the dead ends of my hair, re-crimp, starch, press and prime and the thought of it just exhausts me. I'm just sure there are people who manage all of this by having other people manage It all. As it is, I am the one who manages It all, so the managing of myself slips off the table. I find it ironic that when friends come for dinner, I might spend the entire day cleaning and cooking, making the house look nice and smell good. Then, fifteen minutes before they arrive, I'll look in the mirror and wonder who drug that bag lady in. Most people have it the other way around - self first, surroundings next. But I'm always looking outward so what I see gets the makeover while I go self-neglected on my blissful way.

Bubba's wardrobe is in a sad state. I didn't realize it until a few weeks ago when I balked at getting him anything made of cotton for Christmas. In Christmases past, I have bought him all kinds of cotton things: blue pin striped long sleeve button ups for a casual work day, flannel/cotton long sleeve pullovers for raking the leaves on a Saturday, t-shirts for hanging around the guys. He always returns whatever I buy - so I gave up. And then he said he'd like, or was it needed, a few shirts and I was like, YOU? Yeah Right. And then I looked at what he was wearing, a shabby rendition of his former self, and thought maybe he was on to something.

Today, I peered into his side of the closet. The man has more t-shirts than he could ever possibly wear. They're from running meets and bike shops, beer shops, places we've ventured. Most of them fall into the beater category - and those are the ones he wears the most. I noticed, just before I started to feel sorry for his pathetic wardrobe, that he does have at least 6 nice long sleeve button up shirts for work. So why was he wearing that inadequate overly casual short sleeve this morning when it was freezing cold? We only get about a month and a half of cold weather in Texas - so you need to enjoy those long sleeves while you can. He's got a kind of chronic condition when it comes to getting dressed that has him walking out the door looking kind of unsettled. I suppose I should help him. After all, he has asked me to shop with him every single time he needed anything - even though my opinion gets overlooked again and again. But he needs me now. I see this. And as it turns out, I need me now, too. If only to get up to the standard casual, forget the starch.

This is How Our House Looks

Emptied stockings on the ottoman next to a book from a Bubba's best friend from High Schools Mom, two animal puppet body bath scrubbers from Oregon Uncle and Aunt, a colorful soft stacker fallen on its side on the floor, Jack Johnson playing through pandora.com, my white Michelin man jacket on the sofa arm next to the door that we try to keep from opening and closing over and over as the girls come in and go out to the new sandbox. Three colorful plastic "sensory" balls with nobbies and bumpies all over them migrate from room to room. It's been this way since yesterday at 9am when all the presents had been opened. We put away the wrapping paper and left the empty boxes up against the wall. We'll clean later which means we'll clean either when someone comes over, or Monday morning shows up and I realize that I'm the clean up crew.

Ninety percent of our Christmas was second hand this year. Second hand clothes, second hand toys and second hand furniture. All of it is gorgeous but cost us about a fourth of the same item new without taxes. And the furniture was even delivered to our house.

We feel blessed this year in so many ways. Mostly, I feel so lucky to have landed next to Bubba and get to ride along with him for the next so many years in life. He's such a good husband, friend and father. There are stretches of time that I can lose my gratitude and take him for granted. And then having him home, I remember how lucky I am that I can call him from work just to talk, that he will always answer and if he can't, he'll call me back as soon as possible. I'm lucky and blessed for the consistency he brings to my life, stability which is foreign and occasionally uncomfortable. Just yesterday as we were riding home on our bikes from the park, I thought of how different that we aren't moving. It's been two years in this house now. We should be moving. Instead, we're finally getting the house fully furnished. No more happenstance occasional tables, our clothes stacking up on the floor or on a closet shelf because there's no furniture. Instead, we have a place to put our things and in our bedroom, it feels like a real home. It makes me happy to stay a little longer and enjoy the ambiance.

Etched in my Memory

Truth be told, I just want to go home. This Texas thing isn't quite all the rage. Lots of shopping out here. Pretty houses and pretty cars. No poetry readings. No open mic nights at a family owned and operated cafe where the air blows in every time someone opens the door, and even though it's cold, you cozy up to your warm mug of chocolate and pull your jacket a little tighter and stay put. It's all Starbucks and Macy's out here. Designer flip flops in the rain. I can get Mexican food, but not at a taqueria. I have to sit down at a restaurant with their silver forks and spoons, a green linen napkin and be served. No soccer for women. Actually, there's not much recreation for anyone over 18. Up until 18, the place is kind of a playground with parks every mile, swimming pools whose slides twist and turn before spilling you out into the chlorinated water. My daughter goes nutts and after just an hour and a half, is ready to go home and be still. That's all good and fine. But no open mic nights? No taquerias? Take me home again.

I want to go home where our freeways skate in between hills that go from green to the color of sand, the color of a camels sun drenched back. The San Francisco billboards larger than life propped next to the freeway, the silhouette of a dancer with their Ipod blasting into their ears. They are listening perhaps to Rodrigo e Gabriella while strolling the headlands of the cliffs just above Ocean Beach where the concrete bones of the former sutro baths is etched on the shoreline. Suburbia, out there, mingles here and there with the city. It does not stretch on for the length of an entire city. Suburbia is the city where I now live. I live in a city of suburbs. Brick homes whose design and architecture seem to be in repeat format - one mimicking the other, except perhaps this one is turned a bit to the side, this one has an angled doorway. Like wearing a daisy on your otherwise black and white starched uniform, we are all the same - living by someone else's carefully architected design.