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| | Mother's Day 2008I slept in my own bed at home each of the last two nights. I haven't done that in forever, and I'd forgotten how comfortable it was. There wasn't anything at home that I wanted for my breakfast this morning, so I got a breakfast croissant from Burger King, and stopped by Brookshire's on the way to get mom a rose for Mother's Day. This is the 26th Mother's Day of my lifetime and my mom has been there for all of them, but this was my first without a grandmother.
We drove down to Dublin this morning and went to the church service at my grandmother's old church. I've been there over a hundred times, but this was the first time I've gone since my grandmother's funeral in December. It was strange sitting in a spot we've never sat in, and not seeing Mimmaw on her normal row on the right side of the congregation. I got very tired during the sermon, which was about the power of the tongue. As far as sermons by that pastor go, it wasn't much better or much worse than his usual.
After church we drove up the road to the old family house, which was originally built by I believe my great-great grandfather, but has been expanded several times and has grown into a fairly large house. It's where we have all our family meals during holidays like Mother's Day, Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. The meal included the usual wares, roast, chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, corn, salad, carrots, rolls, and a few other dishes I didn't try. For dessert there was a great frozen strawberry margarita pie and a dish that was tastefully named Better Than Sex cake. Dad's cousin Steven makes it once or twice every year, one of those times usually being on Mother's Day, though I'm sure that's just a coincidence. I've never liked coconut and that cake has a lot of it, which I think means its name is invalidated.
During lunchtime conversation, dad's cousin Amy (who works for the Dallas County DA's office) mentioned all of the wrongly-convicted prisoners who have been set free recently after being exonerated by old DNA evidence. They were convicted because of overzealous prosecutors whose goal seemingly was more to just get a conviction than to make sure they convicted the right person. This lead to a discussion about corrupt prosecutors and District Attorneys, which culminated in this awkward exchange:
Steven (dad's cousin): Didn't that one prosecutor go to prison?
Pat (old family friend): Yep, he did. He's having a gay old time in prison.
Dad: Well, prison isn't a place where you have a "gay old time".
[amused laughter around the table]
Steven: Well many do, it just might not be by choice.
[laughter, and assorted comments playing off that statement]
Me (trying to change the subject): Hmm, anyways... I'm just gonna go back to my Better than Sex cake.
At the end of the meal all 5 of the women present got a series of gifts, since they were all mothers. Steven had wrapped packages for each of them. They each got a different scented lotion, scented candle, and air freshener. I couldn't help but be entertained by the way they all beamed at seeing their respective gifts and excitedly sniffed the scents of their lotions and candles and passed them around the table for all the other women to adore and take a sniff themselves. A scene like this has no true male equivalent.
A few of us spent part of the afternoon watching Raiders of the Lost Ark on USA Network. We'd all seen it before but not in several years. During the long chase scene where Indiana Jones catches up with and takes control of the truck transporting the Ark of the Covenant, I couldn't help but notice that while he was swerving across the road and running Nazis over cliffs and knocking them off the truck by driving near trees with low-hanging branches, he seemed to drive through about 3 different environments. He appeared to be in a jungle in one shot, then in a desert in the next, then back on a tree-lined road, then on a road overlooking high cliffs, then back to the desert, before he drives the truck into a city and the natives help hide it from the Nazis. I'd seen that chase scene before numerous times but hadn't noticed how it seemed to take place in about 3 or 4 different places. It's a fun movie, and one that requires much suspension of disbelief. I can't wait for the new Indiana Jones movie in two weeks!
We (me, my parents, and my brother) had dinner with my sister and her husband at Cotton Patch in Stephenville, which marked my second time to ever visit that restaurant (the first time was during my senior year of high school). I wasn't very hungry so I only had some mozzarella sticks. When we finally got home mom asked me to teach her how to take pictures with her cell phone, which was slightly less frustrating than teaching my grandmother how to use email. She'll get the hang of it after a while, but for never having done it before it was a process with a few too many steps to walk her through easily. I showed her how one would send a picture to another phone with bluetooth though I'm not sure how much of that she understood. She's pretty good with technology but has never used her cell phone for anything besides making calls. She did take one good picture with it though, which I decided to make my new Facebook profile picture.
Hope everyone had a great Mother's Day, and to all the mothers among my friends, hats off to you! | | | Posted 5/11/2008 11:17 PM - 1 comments
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