Life with a Side of Serious

As many of you know, my Mom and Rodger live in Bastrop. They have 10 acres of land with a beautiful home that Rodger built with his own 2 hands. He built all the cabinets, the beds, the dining room table- if he COULD do it, he DID do it! Below are pictures of the outside and inside during Christmas this past year.

A little over 2 weeks ago, we got a phone call from my mom that the fires in Bastrop were on their property. She was driving in from work, and only made it half way up the road before a police officer told her she couldn't go any further. Rodger saw the fire coming and did what he could to water the house down, and just when the flames got too hot (which happened VERY fast) he grabbed their 2 dogs and headed out.

They got out of the house with nothing but the clothes on their back, their 2 dogs and one guitar that happened to be close to the door of Rodger's shop. That's it! He had to leave their 22 chickens behind, couldn't find the cat, and of course no paper work, pictures, clothes... all of it was left behind.

For nearly 2 1/2 weeks, they have been staying with Tony and I. Waiting and wondering. They were the very last group of people to go in to their property. They FINALLY just returned on Thursday morning to see what was left. To say it was overwhelming to see would be an understatement. Below is a picture of Rafi looking at what was left of the house.

It was hard to see this. All of the memories we had created in the house, as well as all of the items that meant so much to us. I started going through every room in the house remembering what was there. Pictures of my grandparents who passed away 11 years ago, an entire refrigerator my mom spent years filling with magnets from every state she had visited, all of Rodger's wood work that he had spent so much time on- gone in just a matter of moments.

We are so incredibly thankful that mom and Rodger are safe. We are so grateful for all of the people who have sent food, gift cards, clothes and encouraging words to them through the last several weeks. Not to mention, 6 of the 22 chickens did actually survive! 

Mom and Rodger have truly been inspirational to watch through all of this. They were the ones telling us "don't be sad. we just move on and make more memories from here." God has been so kind in allowing us to spend time with our family that we have so missed in the "busyness of life" in the last several years.

And unlike many others who were effected by the fires, they will be able to rebuild and move on. Our prayers go out to those who are less fortunate, without insurance and still staying in shelters all over the area.

Thanks to everyone for your support and prayers. Your words have been so comforting. Below is a picture of one of the only items still standing on their property. I believe this says it all.

Classic Maria

My Aunt Maria is one of the funniest people I know. At 64 years young, she is so adventurous and full of life. There are often times she makes me laugh to the point of tears. I don't know why I don't share more stories that involve her, so everyone can benefit from her humor. So I am going to share 2 of my favorite Maria stories for now. There will be plenty more to come.

Scene 1:
Headed out to spend the day at the park with the family. It is Summer in Texas so we know its going to be hot and sunny. Maria is going to ride with me in my car but said she needed to get something out of her car first. After a few minutes she comes over to jump in the back seat and says "I forgot my sunglasses at home, so I'm just going to wear these." I start to turn to look at her thinking that she will be wearing a hat, or maybe even some crazy shades just to get by, but instead I see that she is wearing 3D sunglasses that she got at the movies. 

Scene 2:
My brother Chris is a gun guy. He loves to teach people about guns, how to shoot, safety, etc. As we are all having lunch one day at my house Chris starts to tell us how he wants to do a class for just our family to teach us basic gun safety. Maria chimes in and says. "I don't need to know how to shoot a gun because I would never buy a gun." She pauses, then continues "Well, I guess I should learn about how to shoot it just in case I ever FIND a gun." I start to ask her where in the world she is hanging out that she would have the potential to find a gun, but she starts up again... " Or I guess if someone came at me with a gun and I overpowered them, I would need to know how to shoot after that."

Not sure what goes on in that ladies head, but I sure do love it.

Survivor: Galveston Island

The Beach. A place to relax, catch some sun and not have a care in the world....

We arrived at our hotel in the early afternoon Sunday. We could not wait to get in the water so we changed as soon as we got there, and headed downstairs.  We looked over the brown bath water that we call a beach in Texas with excitement. After lathering up with sun block (now in our late 20's Caitlin and I have traded in the baby oil for SPF5000) we went leaping into the water.

The waves were pretty strong so my mom, Rafi and aunt Linda stayed playing in the sand while Caitlin, my aunt Maria and myself took our floats and headed to the deep water. After only a couple of minutes in, I start to feel a little itchy. I thought it was a tag on my swimsuit so I moved it out of the way. No luck. I started to see all of this plant stuff in the water so I thought it must be that. I started moving it away, and still- no relief. Finally I look over at Caitlin and say "Hey- I'm really itching. Are you itching?" She says yes. Thinking we are going crazy we yell over at Maria.
"Hey Maria- are you itching?" As she looks over she is already scratching and assures us that its only in her shorts that she is itching. So that of course makes us feel better.

We immediately start running out of the water. As we get to the shore Caitlin pulls something off her leg that is a small blob with a dot on it. We now know something is in our swim suites and start freaking out. The only thing we have to rinse off with is ice cold water which is now being poured down our swim suites as we jump around screaming.

Upon research we realize we have been "attacked" by sea lice. YES, Sea Lice. These are jelly fish larvae and are abundant in warm beaches from April-August. Are you freaking kidding me. Sea lice. Who the heck gets sea lice. I had never even heard of this and I have been in Texas Beaches my whole life.

Needless to say after the itching had been washed away, we make the easy decision to not get back in the water. We will stick to laying out in the sand.  I was sitting with Rafi digging a sand castle and trying to get over the sea lice situation when all of a sudden something hits my leg. I look down to find a 1 foot snake jumping around in my lap. In a split second I am screaming, throwing the snake away and running with Rafi to get away from it. Ok- now, how in the world did a snake end up in my lap?!? A seagull. Yes, a kind seagull who I suppose felt that I needed a gift after being infested with sea lice, dropped a snake out of the sky onto my lap.

So, now we have sea lice and snake- beach is over! We go to our hotel, burn our skin in hot water to make sure everything is dead and walk down the Sea Wall to go to an uneventful dinner. After lots of laughter and stories we are walking back to our hotel when suddenly this group of kids come speeding past us on bicycles. We hear some shouting, turn around and see a fight has broken out right behind us. My mom and Linda start running toward us to get out of the way, just as we see my Aunt Maria inching closer to the fight. Not sure if she was trying to get a better look or maybe throw some money in for a bet, but she was right in the action. After screaming (theme of the trip) at her, she finally gets over to us and we watch these kids go Street Fighter on each other. And I mean that literally. Traffic was swerving around them as they threw punches at each other in the middle of the busy street. Finally some guys run out to stop them, and then the police.

Realizing that nothing else we could do would top our triple threat of sea lice, snakes and UFC fighting, we called it a night, and in our world "a successful vacation."

My favorite sign in Galveston

The Interpretation of Dreams

This is the dream I had today...

-I was in a Chinese Prison.
-My "cell mate" was a super sweet Zombie who was really scared of me.
-When the guards were angry, they would release a sea creature to chase after us and try and sting us. It looked just like Patrick on Sponge Bob Square Pants, except with an angry face.
-I woke up each day with no memory of the day before. So each morning I would scream in fear and the Zombie would sit across the room and explain where I was.

Ummmm.... WHAT?!?

Take that Sigmund Freud!

My Problem Child

Just when I thought my neighbors couldn't hate me anymore- Izzy proves that anything is possible...

Izzy, as many of you know is my very large, very sweet and very unstable 3 year old boxer. At times I believe that she may be my very best friend in the world. And other times I daydream there is a famine in the land and I have to use her as survival food.  I have said from the day I brought Rafi home, I would have assumed that kids were hard if I had never had Iz, but after a few years with her, a baby was a breeze!

A few weeks ago we had my family over for a casual weekend hang out. We are mexican so this means there are like 30 people who just showed up randomly to kick it. In the middle of the afternoon we all decide we are going to head out to Pflugerville lake and swim, bike, run- just get out and enjoy the sunshine.

As a few of us are headed out the front door, Izzy is still roaming the house. Nobody is paying attention to the fact that my neighbor is walking past our house with his very small, well manicured dog in tow. I mean really well manicured. Like pink bow in the front of her hair type manicure.

Izzy, who usually misses large pieces of food that you are throwing right at her, somehow sees this dog. She pushes through the opened door and charges at the man and his dog. My neighbor who I have only waved to in passing is now standing in my yard, screaming. High pitched freak out screaming. I see a whirlwind of hair, pink bow included, flash past my face. My neighbor has his dog flying in the air by its leash, twirling in circles, screaming.

I imagine that the little dog looked like the best interactive chew toy ever to Izzy,  who of course was in a full circle sprint, leaping in the air trying to get the dog.

Finally my nephew runs out and grabs Izzy, picking her up like a harmless baby and carries her into the house. I tried to play it off with my neighbor like Izzy was worried about the safety of the dog because maybe she thought he was choking it. My lame attempts at humor were met with a very unhappy face and mumbling under his breath.

At that point I decide it is best to look at the ground and walk as fast as I could to my car, and speed away.

Guess I won't be getting neighbor of the month... again...

 

No Hablo Espanol

I was out running errands yesterday and I decided to stop off at Juarez Bakery on my way home for a little sweet treat with Rafi Cat. For those of you who have not been there, Juarez is alway jam packed with people and yesterday was no exception.

After grabbing my sweet bread I sat down at a table with Rafi and was minding my own business, when this older white man comes over to me. He starts talking to Rafi and saying hello, telling her she is cute, nothing out of the ordinary when people see babies. Then he starts telling her she has really big beautiful eyes. He looks at me and says the same thing. I of course had a huge bite of bread in my mouth so I smile and nod since I couldn’t really say anything at the moment. Then he gets louder. “She has BIG Beautiful Eyes.” I start to try and say thank you, not really sure why he insists on yelling at me when he takes it up one more notch- this time with hand movements. HER (points at Rafi) EYES (points at his own) are BIG (stretches out arms). Then he starts chanting Ojos, Ojos while he points at his eyes. I start to look around, wondering what was going on, only to realize that everyone in the restaurant, other than him was hispanic. Finally it hit me- he thought I didn’t speak english, and apparently that I was also deaf.

After I recovered from the shock of it all and discovered that everyone was now staring at me, I said “Thank you, her eyes are beautiful.” I may have even tried to throw in a little country twang when I said it. He then just turned around and walked away, I suppose he was disappointed that I could not keep up the spanish conversation with him.

I guess the last few days in the sun have started to bring out my ethnic side and cover up all traces of my maiden name- Collier.

These are a few of my LEAST favorite things

Before you proceed, let me go ahead and answer a couple of questions about this blog.

Q: Will this blog offend me?
A: Sure it might. Most things I say or write often offend people. Fair warning.

Q: Will I agree with all of the things Jessica is annoyed by?
A: No, of course you won’t. But for the purpose of this blog- your opinion will be wrong.

Q: Can I post things that I find annoying in the comments section of this blog?
A: YES! Please do. I would love to hear the things that bother you as long as they don’t conflict with any of the things that bother me. That would be really annoying.

Ok- there will probably be a part 2,3,4... to this blog. Just sharing a few with you today.


# 1- People who say “I hate drama!” I don’t find this annoying because I like drama, it is really because the people who make this statement are ALWAYS the people who are creating the drama!

# 2- People who don’t discipline their children. Let me give an example on this one. I was in the grocery store one day and this kid (about 2 1/2 yrs old) was going CRAZY in the shopping cart. He is hitting his dad, screaming in his face- total flip out.  I am minding my own business trying to buy some meat when I hear the dad saying,  “ I can tell by how you are acting, you are in a bad place. I will wait until you are ready to use your words so we can talk about this.”  Uhhhh, what?? The kid of course, not ready to use his words, continued the madness for another couple of minutes. After realizing that I had been staring at the same package of chicken for a while because I could not even focus, I leaned over and said “Hey, it’s really cool that you want him to use his words and all, but for the sake of everyone involved- can he use his words outside?” The dad looked at me like I was crazy, and for a split second I thought I may have gone too far this time- until the lady next to me leans over and says with relief “Thank you sooo much!” Everyones style is different, I get that- but please discipline your kids in a way that it does not put a damper on me shopping, eating, getting my hair done- whatever!

# 3- When someone says “I don’t mean this in a bad way...” And then say the rudest crap ever. Seriously, the only way you mean it - is in a bad way when you start a sentence out like that. If you want to say it- then say it. Embrace the mean person that you actually are. OR write what you are thinking on Twitter. Use the # sign and then don’t put any spaces between your letters. Then you can say whatever you want and it’s not even rude anymore- in fact, it is a trend. #ithinkyoulookfatinthatskirt   Oh and add a : ) that makes it totally acceptable.