The Salt Lick; or, Why Life is Funny

Mmmmmm. Excuse me. I'm still thinking about brisket....and blackberry cobbler....

My first trip to The Salt Lick in Driftwood, TX was back in the 1990s. I was living in Indiana and had flown to San Antonio to visit my best high school pal Leila. I know it was a long time ago because I only had one baby and she *only* had four! We hopped in the car one morning and took a memorable drive to visit the old TX missions outside of San Antonio. From there we took the back way through the Hill Coutnry to tiny Driftwood TX to eat the Best Damn BBQ Ever. The old stone building had a huge fire pit just inside the door and the hole place smelled like wood smoke. Leila gently mocked me for wanting to order bbq chicken when we got there, but frankly I was suspicious of this thing called brisket. Long story short: she ordered, we ate, I never forgot it.

Why life is funny: It's a dozen years later and I now LIVE in Texas with my hubby and two kids! And Leila does NOT live here! And I have just taken my best college pal Nancy (who lives in PITTSBURGH with her excellent husband Mike!) on their virgin trip to The Driftwood. My husband and the babies came along ... our teenager even brought her boyfriend.

To my heart--and my nose--this trip was mere days after my first visit to The Salt Lick with Leila. I do feel different than I did in my late twenties when I was last here--I'm calmer now, more level, more contented than I have ever been. But do I feel OLDER? No. Do I feel like twelve years have passed? No. I don't understand time. I don't think I ever will.

But here's what I know for certain:
Life is an amazing and unexpected journey, folks. And along the way, there's great friends, wonderful loves, beautiful babies, AND bbq!

36 Hour Vacation!

Our family specializes in the micro-mini-getaway road trip vacation. It comes from years of graduate school living! This weekend we did one of our signature trips with a 36 hour outing to Gruene, Texas and San Antonio. We had a blast, as we usually do when confined in near proximity for several non-stop hours. I am so lucky to live with these people!

Thought you'd enjoy some pictures.

When did this happen?

Parenting

Here's the thing about being a parent: the kids are watching you and learning. Yes, we all know that children learn to speak and socialize and use a fork by observing the parental bigjobs (Terry Pratchett speak makes me happy!). But the little ones are learning a helluva lot more than that from us.

Sometimes this is beautifully enlightening, like when your child bends down to tenderly look a crying child in the face and ask if they are OK, and you recognize the gesture as your own.

All too often the realization that you are being learned from is horrifying, like when your child curses in public, or expresses insecurity about having big feet, or has an overwhelmed with schoolwork freak-out in which you hear your own voice coming out of her mouth.

Recently, my roomate H-bomb said something that made me recognize the trickledown of my personal desiire for LESS. He was doing a word problem for math homework, one designed to make the student use simple division. He read it out loud to me. "Adrienne has 150 CDs," the question began. Then, in sublime parenthetical judgement, he added "which is ridiculous" before continuing, "and she wants to store equal numbers of CDs in two containers. How many go in each?" He thought for a moment and then summized, "That would be 75 CDs each. Which is still too many."

:)

My Rehab

I slept! Yeah!

After being awake for 40 consecutive hours due to the accidental ingestion of high doses of anti-narcolepsy medicine, I finally felt sleepy and went to bed. I slept hard! Saturday I had low energy and today I could use a nap. Otherwise, I seem OK.

My SINCERE apologies to any and all of you who were subjected to my obnoxious, fast, and LOUD mania on Friday.

Today, I am once again drug free. Unless you count coffee--and then I'm in really big trouble.

I celebrated my recovery by attending church where I had the very good pleasure of hearing this mini-concert. The musicians are Rachel, Andrew, and Henry:

Gustav

My brother and his wife are New Orleanians. They have safely left the city (with their cats and assorted friends in need) and are currently riding things out in Baton Rouge. Katrina upset their lives three years ago but thankfully did not cause severe damage or flooding their property. This time could be different. It's scary.

To distract them a bit from CNN, we e-mailed them some stupid homemade video. Several were of the pets. But I think we peaked with what we are calling the "Nutter Butter" series. You must watch them order!

Episode 1: Peace Out



Episode 2: Peace Out...Thirty Years Later




Episode 3: Meta "Peace Out"