Oh No, Not Again

It's that time of year again, that time when TV, radio and teh internets conspire to convince your man that all those disclaimers you keep tossing out regarding the lack of ostentation you prefer are of course nothing more than so much passive-aggressive bullshit, so if he wants to get any, he better make good with the diamonds, beeYOTCH!

Valentine's Day is nice in principle. Or maybe it used to be.

Other females, do you resent this? It just seems like we've come so far (skinny cigarettes notwithstanding) to be considered as rational human creatures. It seems unfair and downright sexist to have the mainstream media telling our men what we really want, blatantly overriding our own openly stated preferences. It's f***ing creepy, if you want to get right down to it. What's wrong with Mr. Here I Am In The Immediate Vicinity At This Moment tenderly bringing a single red rose to our homes, in appreciation for which we cook him, say, a lasange dinner, maybe bake a nice red velvet cake for dessert - he can bring the ice cream - then watch half a romantic DVD before becoming overwhelmed by runaway emotions on the couch? I mean, that sure sounds perfect to me, and nobody has to shell out any disposable income to 1-800-FLOWERS, Victoria's Secret, or Austin Land & Cattle (fine establishments though these may be) in the process. We won't even get into jewelry, God help us.

Chocolate, on the other hand, is always acceptable.

A Day at the Park

Bastrop State Park has gone all high-tech. Is nothing sacred?!?

Okay, so it's not actually high-tech, but they've reorganized the trail system since I was last there several years ago. The trails are all color-coded now, with signposts at each intersection indicating that, to stay on the red trail, you keep to the left. The blue trail is off to your right. The signposts have park maps with each trail indicated by a colored line. It's just like the Metro, only less expensive, and with slightly better odds of reaching your final destination, assuming you're trying to get back to your car.

They also have a cabin camping area. Cabins? We checked them out after our walk, driving among them slowly, scoping out our picks for some future weekend visit. Let me tell you what, those are some nice cabins. They are bigger than my house. They have fireplaces, too, and curtains. I haven't gone camping in several years now, but my dad used to take me all the time, so I know there are certain things that are a part of camping and certain things that are not a part of camping. Camping involves things like canned vegetables, Tang, collapsible 5-gallon water jugs, and (God help us all) pit toilets. It emphatically does not include curtains.

I've always hated pit toilets. I'm intrigued.

"Where would you recommend," asked my companion in the park office as he bought a year pass, "a good barbecue place in Bastrop?"

There was such a long silence that I wasn't sure the staffer had heard him. Finally her coworker piped up. "It's not a hard choice," she said, "there's only two."

"Billy's and Cartwright's," added the woman helping us at last.

"I saw Cartwright's as we were driving in," I said helpfully to my friend.

"Yeah," said the woman who had first spoken, "Cartwright's has a really big sign."

This didn't really strike either of us as a ringing endorsement. "So where would you go for barbecue?" pressed my friend.

There was another long pause. "Lockhart. I'd drive to Lockhart," they chorused.

Or Elgin, they went on to add, so we had dinner at Meyer's Barbecue there. I'd been to Southside Market once before, a year ago, on my work group's fam tour of Central Texas; and I thought it was really quite good, although a coworker of my friend's and mine, who lives in Elgin, was outraged that the tour took us there instead of Meyer's, which she insists is much better. So we checked out Meyer's, and I have to say, their sausage (for which Elgin is so well-known) really is tasty. At least I liked it, and I don't like sausage. But you can't go wrong with Southside Market either. I had a side of creamed corn and discovered that my companion thinks creamed corn is an abomination, which is something of a pity, as creamed corn, from a can, falls rather firmly into the things-that-go-with-camping camp.

But that's okay - so do marshmallows, a fact I don't have a problem with as long as the marshmallows are slowly immolated in flames until they drip, sizzling in sugary agony, into the glowing embers. Then you eat the chocolate and give the graham crackers to your kids: that's my recipe for S'Mores.

Happy New Year! 2010 is off to a good start. I'm looking forward to doing some camping.

You Know You're a Texan When...

...your first thought, upon catching sight of the Atlanta airport control tower, is, "Hey, that thing looks like one of these."

Now I want one. A chocolate frother, I mean, not a control tower, and not an airport, and certainly not the one in Atlanta.

Blinded with Science

Anna did a science fair project.

Actually - and pretty much any parent of a second-grader already knows this - Anna's daddy did a science fair project, in which she was somewhat peripherally involved, when not too deeply engrossed in furnishing and decorating her virtual bedroom on barbie.com. And, in finest green fashion, he actually recycled a science fair project that (cough, cough) Eric did some years ago, on making cupcakes with various different types of leavening, or with none. Anna, her friend Gracie, and Katie judged the results, and Anna typed up the final report.

Gracie lives four houses down, and is in first grade. Her parents are an advertising executive and a lawyer. She also has a natural flair for the dramatic. This makes her an excellent cupcake judge, because she says things like, "This one is unbelievably delicious, as soft and fluffy as a cloud" and "If I have to eat any more of this cupcake, I'll just die."

Anna follows her cue. "I can't take anymore," reads one of her results - on the cupcake leavened with yeast, I believe. I would say she was prejudiced by having read up on exactly how yeast works, but it was a blind taste test, so she didn't know she was chowing down on microorganism farts.

Katie is sixteen and no stranger to drama herself, but this is a second-grade science fair project, for heaven's sake. She gets right to the point. "Moist and dense, like a brownie," she says of the unleavened cake, which actually won the taste-test, although it didn't look the nicest. She didn't care for the yeast one either. "Tastes like chocolate dirt," she said.

Alas! this experiment, which garnered Eric a second-place result at his school, in eighth grade, I think, was not a winner for Anna. Partly, it's possible that the cupcakes might have been accidentally switched during the tasting, and the results therefore had to be slightly fudged (sorry). Partly, Eric's science fair took place in Corpus. But worst of all was that Anna's display - one of each of the four different cupcakes, cut in cross-section, and placed on a sheet of paper with each cupcake labeled and the words "DO NOT EAT" prominently displayed across the bottom - was mysteriously consumed some time before the judges arrived.

Eaten by whom? Perhaps a rival; and if so, one hopes the cakes caused at least a certain degree of guilty indigestion. At least the yeast one. But this was an elementary-school science fair, and the exhibits were on display in the cafeteria for half a day. Probably somebody was just hungry.

Well, there's always next year.

A Day at the Spa: Now Without Vibrators

Have you ever wondered what a day spa staffed and operated entirely by first-graders would be like? You haven't, have you? Well, I'm going to tell you anyway.

Anna's class set up an hour-long spa experience for their mothers today. Their teacher was very proud, and rightly so: the kids planned and organized everything themselves, made lists of needed supplies, and pilfered a few small items from home. "If you've noticed a few of your things missing here and there," laughed the teacher, gesturing at the tables, "this is why! Don't worry, you'll get them back."

It's probably worth noting here that there was, indeed, a vibrating massage tool among the secretly borrowed items, but no, it wasn't that kind. You sort of have to wonder, though. That could have been a bit awkward, you think?

The kids set up stations at each classroom table: a chair massage station, a nail salon, a gift shop with bookmarks, pictures, and paper flowers the kids had made, a day care in the middle of the reading rug for the toddlers who accompanied a few of the moms, and best of all (because this one was Anna's), the Blue Table Restaurant, which served fruit salad, carrot sticks with your choice of salad dressing, and chocolate croissants that Anna had made herself, plus lemonade and water.

Most good day spas offer wine, but that would probably be asking a little much.

Most good day spas also don't offer quite the type of manicure I got at the nail salon, where I sacrificed a fresh Beverly Hills to allow one of Anna's classmates to lacquer all my fingertips, from the knuckle up, in powder pink. That's motherhood for you.

The kids were great, but after the first half-hour they had about reached their limit - bouncing around the room from station to station, jabbering excitedly, and scrounging for food, while one of the masseuses began chasing the waitress around the room with the aforementioned vibrating massage tool. The staff at most reputable day spas generally do not squeal and giggle quite so much.

As things drew to a close, the clever teacher suggested that, so late in the school day, the departing mothers might as well just take their energetic little ones home with them. I waited while Anna washed out the lemonade pitcher and swept up all the crumbs from the reading rug. Do you know, she never does this at home. I wonder if I could get her teacher to come live with us? There's not room, but that's okay. I'll just spend all my time at the spa.

Getting all Eastered Up

When you get right down to it, isn't every Friday good?

I mean, assuming you like your home life better than your job, which (I realize) is hardly a given. But sleeping until you are not tired anymore is generally better than the alternative, isn't it? Whoever came up with the 8-5 workday, anyhow? If I ever meet that bastard, I'll kick him right in the 'nads.

The French don't have to work from 8 am-5 pm every day. They have full-time 35-hour workweeks AND get to drink wine at lunchtime, right there in their corporate cafeterias. Can we do that? No! Not that we'd want to. If they served wine at lunch in our office cafeteria, it would probably have winemakers' toenails in it. Certainly the scrambled eggs contain a high concentration of eggshells. I'm pretty sure this is in compliance with applicable state law.

Of course, the French have to say things like "Sacrebleu!" and "Ooh la la!" which is why people tend not to take them seriously. Look at Pepe LePew, for example - though, to be fair, he really is quite a great romantic figure; passionate, expressive, and devoted, if you don't mind the fact he smells like overripe Roquefort. Then again, most of the women he meets probably don't shave their pits. So why not?

But I digress. It's Good Friday! Many of us don't have to go to work. The kids get off from school. Traffic is light. The spectre of cholesterol poisoning adds a rakish note of peril to our otherwise staid lives, and chocolate may put in a welcome appearance. But stay away from the licorice jellybeans! They are the creation of Satan!

Sleep an extra hour for me tomorrow, if you can.