We were reminiscing like we do, Rosita and I, talking about old friends and good times. We perused through the topics one by one. Those things all tied back in some sort of way to one room.
Room 501…just up the stairs
Drama.
It was the room where we focused on theater arts instead of social drama. It was the only class where you left your high school status at the door. No one was the outcast…everyone was the star. It was a hodgepodge of students from nearly every group of the school, like a sociology experiment. There was a dose of football players, a hit of stoners, a few metal heads, a couple of honor rollers, some preppies, a share of trekkies, etc, etc. Some of us were there for a fairly easy grade but most were there because we were drawn to the stage whether we admitted it or not. More often than not, the drama class itself came secondary to the laughter and the friends we made there.
As I said, we reminisced. We laughed like we do about times we had…hanging out in the drama “closet” which was a small office that had been turned into a storage room for costumes and props. If those costumes could talk, they’d have some pretty R-rated tales to tell you. I used to think those tales belonged solely to my husband and I but I discovered that we weren’t the only ones making out on the prop sofa from time to time. Good thing I constantly sprayed that thing with Lysol when I cleaned up in there. Who knows what kind of high school cooties that thing would have been harboring? Does Lysol kill gonorrherpesyphilydia?
We reminisced about the star football player that ended up in our class…no doubt for an easy pass suggested by the coach. My friend declared him gorgeous. I agreed. He was pretty good looking. She said she ran into him recently. She referred to him as “man meat”. I was nearly in tears laughing. Then, she told me something that surprised me…flattered me. Mr. High School Stereo-type not only asked about me but proceeded to tell her how sexy he thought I was. Of course, he didn’t remember my name…he asked her about “that other white girl” as if her and I were the only white girls in the class.
She and I laughed because apparently we were the only white girls that mattered. Yeah, we were pretty awesome.
We reminisced about how people used to be and how many change so much after high school. She started telling me about the ten year reunion that I skipped and about one person in particular showing up with body guards not because she was attending a New Orleans event but because apparently that shit is required when you are on the BET show, 106 & Park. It’s sort of a big deal…I suppose even though I had to google it because I had no idea what or who Rosita was talking about.
And yes, it required digging out a yearbook because I didn’t recognize the woman at all. All I can say is I will spare all of you the year book photo (I’m sure Raquel…or Rocsi…or whatever she is going by now days will appreciate it as well) and I'll just say good for her. Her stylists are doing an amazing job.
Rosita told a tale of phoniness, not necessarily of our ugly duckling classmate (and I use that description out of awe…not insult). People are flat out fake when it comes to money, power, and celebrities and our average old school chums are no different. But it’s just silly when people trip over themselves when a star is near…especially something so low on the totem pole as a reality star.
Let’s face it. Reality television is taking over the televisions sets (and intelligence) of this country and these so-called “stars” are a dime a dozen. Pretty soon, there will be a reality show about a reality show. Can you imagine? Camera crews following camera crews…boom mics everywhere.
I can’t say from experience that I’d never be star struck. Of course, I’ve never ran into George Clooney or Brad Pitt. I can assume though if I ever ran into a Snooki, I’d head in the other direction.
So it seems, the tale of the high school ugly duckling (aka just your average teenage girl minus the stylist a la’ She’s All That movie montage) turned reality star hottie, I’m sure, is becoming an epidemic among high school reunions nationwide.
Even this topic about a girl not even in our drama class went back to Room 501. Rosita laughed as I gave my reasons for skipping the reunion…about how I have no interest in seeing people that I had no interest of seeing then. Maybe that makes me snotty. Maybe it does. I explained that there were roughly a dozen or so people I’d be interesting in catching up with and they were in that room at one time or another. One of which has started her own blog. Most people that mattered at all to me, I have regained some form of contact with all thanks to Facebook. Of course, there are some I could have done without.
Room 501 was like a teenage Las Vegas in a sense that what was said there, stayed there. The teacher was amazing.
She was the sort of adult that every teenager needs in their life. You were able to confide in her and she would give you a mature, sometimes motherly opinion without being judgmental. Each tidbit of advice was given with a side of understanding that made you feel confident in yourself that you were capable of making the right decision on your own. She was the only adult that ever made me feel that way other than my older cousin who was 30ish at the time.
That room was a haven…a sanctuary. I had never felt so safe, accepted, or understood. I felt free to be myself…even though I had no idea exactly who I was just yet. Room 501 assisted me in finding the Asha that I’ve become.
So, I never shagged the star football player or made it anywhere other than home video but I have found the adult version of Room 501 right here in my simple, little life. You know what? That makes me happy and no matter how much Rosita and I reminisce there isn’t a damn thing I’d change.
Another Friday arrives and with it brings the second installment of Fantastic Friday Five. Like I said last week, this is basically my lazy post of random filler that doesn’t seem to fit into a post on its own. Also, I feel like I owe it to myself to do something outright corny from time to time. So, without further ado, here is Fantastic Friday Five for your reading pleasure.
1.) My children have been home since Tuesday thanks to a lovely winter storm. Being a southern girl at heart, Oklahoma is the furthest north I’ve ever lived and it almost isn’t even Oklahoma. Seriously if I drive about forty minutes, I’ll cross the Texas border. When it snows in the south everything shuts down…EVERYTHING! Even though we barely have a half of foot of snow, I’m a New Orleans girl and have NO BUSINESS driving in the snow.
Not to mention somewhere Al Gore is dancing a jig and screaming “Suck it, bitches!” Cross your fingers, my friends, that Mr. Gore stays out of the mad scientist laboratory in his basement and my children return to school on Monday.
2.) Oh, Netflix, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Since my husband has been gone, I have gotten myself into the habit of going to sleep while streaming movies and television shows on my laptop. I’ve watched all six seasons of The Kids in the Hall already. Currently, I am venturing through the third season of Reno 911.
3.) I made ruined some Salisbury steak this week. As I said previously, I have no business driving in the snow so when we ran out of milk I improvised (and not in that clever way the folks on Who’s Line Is It Anyway do). Normally, I would use evaporated milk in place of regular milk but guess what; we were out of that too. So, instead, I decided to use almond milk. Well, word from the wise (err, experienced) apparently when you heat up almond milk it gets a bitter citrus taste that will devastate your gravy unless you were going for the whole rotten lemon lime beefy taste. It was no surprise when the kids turned their noses up at it but when the canine garbage disposal turned his nose up at beef smothered in gravy you KNOW that shit was rank.
4.) Two words…Blog Hop. I’ve been linking up to a few of these in hopes to find blogs to read and I’m amazed by the amount of blogs out there that are dedicated to free samples and reviewing stuff. I’m convinced that most people only link up for followers as I’ve gotten many comments basically saying things to the effect of “Hey, I’m following you. Please follow me.” *rolls eyes*
5.) Lastly, Tiffany over at Shhhhh! Just Between U & Me thinks I’m sexy and she gave me an award to prove it. Of course, I have to share my crown with four other ladies. When you get a moment, take a swing over and tell Tiff “Hi”. She’s pretty hot herself.
Well, friends, that about wraps it up for this installment of Fantastic Friday Five. More posts by yours truly coming soon.
I’d like to say there is a true excuse for my lack of posts lately but the truth is I just haven’t felt like blogging. Not that I was lacking anything to write about. Just the month of December and January up to now are full of tales of sheer “idiocracy” and devastating woe. To get myself back on track, I will indulge you with the fun filled adventure of traveling with my sometimes pain in the ass but always interesting children. Lest we forget the infamous bus trip (Part I and Part II).
For Christmas, we went home…as in back to New Orleans. Normally these fun-filled family trips are driven by my husband and I sit at his right hand navigating my ass off and annoyingly monitoring the gas gauge as I have some twisted fear of running out of gas in the middle of nowhere. Call it what you want. I call it shamelessly watching waaaaay to may horror movies. Not to mention, I am also in charge of occasionally reaching into the back of the car to threaten the offspring for bickering over who is taking up a larger percentage of the oxygen that fills the back seat. Well, my dears, this trip I played a dual role. I was both driver and navigator. Although, as you read earlier “navigator” seems to be a jack of all trades role just like “mom”. How convenient!!
The morning we left was a frenzy of childish excitement. The kids were bouncing off the walls like they had just downed a Red Bull. The boy loaded all the suitcases into the back of the truck and the girl was instructed to load the coats into the front seat with the laptop. We say our goodbyes to the roommate, Buddy and Deuce the dog and hit the road on the 724 mile trip. Since I’m not accustomed to driving for so long, I had decided that I would stop halfway and stay in a hotel both ways.
Almost into Wichita Falls, I glance over to the pile of coats in the front seat and realize I don’t see mine. So ask my daughter if my coat is in the back seat with her. She informs me that my coat is on the kitchen table. Why is my coat on the kitchen table, you must be wondering to yourself. I was wondering the same exact thing as I thought freezing my ass off with only the hoodie I was currently wearing. So I say, “Girl, I’m confused. I told you to put the coats on the front seat. They were all piled next to the suitcases. Why did you put yours and your brothers into the truck and put MINE on the kitchen table???” Then I got the answer that all parents LOVE to hear. She replies, “I don’t know.”
Great! So we are an hour away from home and already this trip is becoming more fun by the minute. All I could think about for the next few moments was how I was going to turn into a human popsicle. Then it dawned on me…I was going to New Orleans where the humidity will melt your face off. So no worries.
Dallas always scares the hell out of me. I learned to drive in New Orleans and those people are scary as hell but those crazy Dallas folks are INSANE!! It seems from the numerous trips we have taken back and forth through that city, there is never a good time to drive through there.
Jesus, Tom Cruise, Buddha, and Oprah help you if you find yourself in Dallas during rush hour. Those people drive like they are are playing Grand Theft Auto and/or think they are on fire a la Ricky Bobby-style. Luckily, I missed rush hour and I must not have been near a mall or shopping center because I didn’t hit any retarded amounts of holiday traffic. That was the quickest I ever moved through that city. EVER! I was sure to rub that in my husband face when I talked to him later that night.
My plan was to make it into Longview but since I didn’t run into any major traffic in Dallas, I made it into Shreveport. There I snagged a hotel room. The kids thought they were some sort of celebrities since the receptionist handed both of the kids goodie bags filled with candy and popcorn. I almost didn’t have the heart to tell them we held Priority Club memberships to the hotel chain. Later once the restaurant opened for dinner, I took them downstairs to feed them. I made sure to drink a few glasses of wine to settle my nerves. Hey! I just drove six hours in a vehicle with my children and now I’m stuck in a hotel room with them. Don’t judge me!!
After dinner, I made some phone calls and checked in with a few family members who wanted me to keep them updated on my whereabouts. Afterwards, we all took our turns showering and settled into the comfy beds. The kids fought over what to watch and I relaxed browsing the Cracked.com website trying to tune them out and convince myself NOT to call room service for an entire bottle of wine! It was hard but I managed.
The next morning we loaded up the truck again and headed to the restaurant for breakfast. Later we hit the road yet again. Most of the trip was smooth sailing that is until we got to Baton Rouge. I was sure we’d run into traffic once we were close to the Mall of Louisiana as it was December 23rd but this traffic was before the bridge even. I ended up discovering that the traffic was caused by a small amount to road construction and a whole lot of stupidity (i.e. people in southern Louisiana are not very educated in the ways of merging). Oddly enough, once I made it near the mall the traffic wasn’t too bad.
Finally we made it to our destination. We were set to spend about a week there, leaving just before New Year’s. We stayed in our normal spot at the Château Terry aka Nick’s grandparents’ house. Staying there was difficult though for both me and the children. In April Maw-Maw passed away. So other than the funeral, this was the first time we had made it back. Part of me kept expecting her to walk out of her room at any moment. The kids confided in me on a few instances about similar feelings during our stay. They would tell me they were scared and I would tell them Maw-Maw was nothing to be scared of and if there were any ghost in the world I would want to cross my path it would be her. They would calm down. Once my daughter asked me what was she supposed to do if she saw Maw-Maw, I winked at her and told her “Tell her I said ‘Hi!’”.
The boy had a more difficult time dealing with the issue. A few days before we left to head home, we found out a friend of his from back in Oklahoma was dead. The fourteen months we had preparing the kids for the likeliness that Maw-Maw would pass once we found out she had cancer NEVER could have prepared me for how to help my 10-year old deal with the death of his friend at the hands of his parents. Don’t worry. More to come about that in a later post. I told you I had a list of things to blog about during my time on hiatus.
Anyway back to trip…
While we were there we visited here and there with family and friends. It is sort of stressful trying to spread yourself so thin. Everyone wants to see you. The kids had a blast being spoiled from every possible angle. They ended up racking in enough Christmas money to buy themselves each a new TV and entertainment center. I was glad that most people gave the kids cash. That was less stuff I had to lug back to Oklahoma. At one point, my daughter got sick with some sort of stomach bug which is no shock considering the air is full of the aroma of piss and puke thanks to years of Mardi Gras, oh, and death courtesy of Hurricane Katrina. Good ol’ New Orleans!!
The kids received a substantial amount of money that I managed to convince them to spend on something worth a crap instead of useless toys. They obliged once we made it back to OK.
We attended the annual Christmas Eve Party at my parents’ house. My sister and I usually make broccoli balls and eggrolls together. This year she insisted that she could get Bayou Broccoli like Copeland’s through her restaurant. Unfortunately they were not as yummy as we had hoped and she still had to fry them herself. She nearly burned the house down. I made the dipping sauce so at least one thing would come in tradition. For some reason, I’m still confused we did not do eggrolls. Mrs. Turner made some kick ass spin-dip. That’s spinach and artichoke dip for those that don’t know what’s up! Everyone that came brought goodies.
We did Secret Santa for the adults. My secret cheap-o totally jipped me!! It’s time for a deep breathing exercise right about now.
Pause for some pictures highlighting our trip...
My mom who is usually completely on edge during events like these was unusually calm. I secretly wondered to myself if she was popping Xanax in the bathroom or sipping something funny when no one was looking. Maybe she was huffing paint…oh wait, that’s someone ELSE’s mother I’m thinking of.
We also had the pleasure of meeting Paw-Paw’s lady friend. While I want him to happy and she seems very nice, it is still something that I need to get used to. It seemed to happen fast but who am I to put a time limit on anything for anyone other than myself? The girl child seemed oblivious to what was going on but the boy took a more defiant stance. He informed me that he was NOT going to call her Maw-Maw. I had to have a discussion with him basically letting him know that no one expects that at all but I expect him to show her some respect just as he would to any other grown up which he agreed to. On another occasion my daughter crawled in my lap and after relating to me how much she missed Maw-Maw. She then proceeded to enlighten me of her fear of the new lady-friend being mean to her. I then had to de-Disney deprogram her by letting her know that every new person that seems to replace another person isn’t always necessarily bad. We talked about how no one could ever replace Maw-Maw in our hearts. We just have to stretch it out to make room to fit one more.
I’d be lying if I said after the adventures above I wasn’t looking forward to going home. I was anxious to once again be in my solitude and not be so “popular” anymore. I joked to my husband that I was going to turn my phone off for a week after I made it back. The adventure was not over yet. We still had the trip home to tackle. Fate was laughing at me…I could hear it.
We began the trek back to Oklahoma with the same plan in mind…drive halfway, stop for the night, drive the other half. Once again, we ran into traffic in Baton Rouge. This time in lieu of the road construction I was lucky enough to be caught behind not one, not two, but THREE trucks carrying wide loads being escorted by state troopers. People get stupid cautious when they see a cop. The constantly tap their brakes and do grandma speed under the speed limit. Speed limit is 55 mph? Let’s do 35 mph. Every time I would get to multiple lanes that would allow me to get around the wide loads, I would get a few miles up the road only to be caught behind yet another one.
I finally made it into Shreveport and we stayed in the same hotel. We did the same song and dance as I described above during the previous visit. When we left the next day I decided to stop at the Texas welcome center. The kids enjoyed picking out brochures for places they would like to visit when there dad came home. When we finally got back on the road, we ran into the worse traffic of the whole damn trip!
Somewhere between Shreveport and Longview on the interstate when we were not at a complete standstill, we were doing 5 mph…10 mph when I was really lucky! Of course, I assumed somewhere up there one of the lanes were closed probably due to an accident. AND of course, when I finally saw the sign to say what lane was closed I OF COURSE was in the wrong lane. I immediately put my blinker on and started to try to find and opening or some with enough courtesy to let me over. I was unfortunate enough to be driving next to the biggest assholes on the planet. You know the ones. They drive as close to the other person as possible because GOD FORBID you get in front of them and get somewhere first.
After driving like this for a good half an hour trying with no luck to get their attention aka get them to stop avoiding eye contact with me, I finally had that road rage feeling come over me. I refrained from grabbing the tire iron and smashing in their windshields. Although that would have made for an interesting tale, right? I rolled down my window and put my head completely out of it and began yelling at the driver of the SUV next to me. “I’ve been trying to get over for the past 30 minutes! How about you stop being a tampon and let me in?” She looked at me like I was a complete lunatic and made an opening. Fuck her!
As for the other jackass, he was now in front of me in a company vehicle complete with a “How’s my driving?” bumper sticker. Guess who called that number? This chick, right here!! I made sure to report that he was driving on the shoulder trying to avoid the traffic and he had a wolf on his roof dancing to what I believe was “Surfing USA” by the Beach Boys but who can be sure. Afterwards just to annoy the twat behind me, I began letting a car from the other lane in front of me every few minutes or so because I’m courteous and, ok, slightly vindictive too. What?!?! I told you I learned to drive in New Orleans.
Once we were out of the traffic from Hades, the ride was smooth and uneventful. Again, there was no suicidal traffic in Dallas. As we entered Oklahoma, I stopped at their welcome center so the kids could pick out some more fun places they want to visit. Home was about an hour away and the turnpike lets you do 75 mph. GLORIOUS!!
Finally, we made it home in one piece, with no blood on our (my) hands. So I’m back and ready to fill in the darkness of the emptiness I left you guys with during my absence.
