My weekend in a nut shell

Here are a couple of things from this weekend.

I had my first speaking engagement.  I’m considering it an audition for the two I have at the Tucson Festival of Books in March.  I think it went alright.  Mostly.  I tried REALLY hard to speak slowly.  I have a tendency to get manic when I’m nervous.  I don’t know how anyone can tell my regular manic from my nervous manic besides maybe Kelli and my mom, but there is a lot more parched mouth in a manic moment. 

Kelli is my new assistant.  Really.  She’s serious about this and I’m her biggest fan.  More about that later.  The point of my mentioning it was due to the fact that if anyone liked what I had to say at the library that day, it was because Kelli wrote my speech which included reading from one of my favorite novels – even going to far as to mark the pages with “breathe here.”

Kudos to her.

I almost forgot this part, someone asked for my autograph.  Isn’t that hysterical?  I giggled the entire time I wrote down my name.

Finally an employee asked us if we needed help.  We told him who’s party we were attending and he grinned sheepishly and told us the best news I have heard in weeks, “Yeah, about that. It seems there was a mix up and the party was yesterday. The wrong date was printed on the invitation.”

I swear I would have kissed that pimply-faced kid square on the mouth if I hadn’t been afraid his braces would cut my lip.

“Can we still stay and play games?” my kids asked.

“No!” I answered forcefully and shoved them towards the door.  “Get in the car.” 

Honestly, I was certain Alan Funt was going to pop out behind a booth and yell, “You’re on Candid Camera!”  I wasn’t taking any chances so I made them sprint to the parking lot.

***

In the car, Sassy and I were talking about friends.  I really wish I could help her wade through the shark infested waters of girl relationships but, alas, I can’t.  I can merely only offer advice.  I attempted to do just that when I tried to help her see she shouldn’t invest all her hopes into one girl she knows.  This particular girl is very immature (and that’s saying something for seven year olds) and really has no idea how she hurts Sassy’s feelings. 

I don’t know what I was thinking when this came out of my mouth, “I wouldn’t put all your eggs in her basket.”

There was silence from the back seat.  I glanced at her in the rear view mirror and her eyebrows showed she was perplexed.

“But Mom, I like my eggs scrambled.”

***

Our little berg is recovering from the vicious cold snap that blasted through here last week.  All the prickly pear cactus in my neighborhood is dying from the freeze.  Huge pads are wilting and falling off and whole sections of the plants are laying on the ground.  The neighbor who shares our back fence on the South side has a huge prickly pear that has grown to about twelve feet high.  It’s very heavy and My Honey is constantly battling with it as it droops over the wall and bends the fence.  A big clump fell over into our yard this weekend and broke our back flow valve. 

In the course of trying to repair the plumbing and get rid of the cactus, the Idiot Dog tried to eat a giant, thorn filled pad and then lick the blow torch.

Ava is always telling me the dog is really very smart.  I beg to differ and I keep amassing proof.