san antonio, you're so good to me...

seriously, i am just so full of gratitude right now. i have the best friends in the world who are just so much fun...i mean, i wish you could know my friends, they're just downright AMAZING! i got hired with the best school district in town and i can't wait to shape the lives of my little bilingual babes. i have the best church, which feels like a second home to me. i have this man in my life who is such a rare breed and i have no idea what i did to capture his attention?! i have a family who is so unbelievably supportive and they have so much faith in me. and i get to live this life in such an EXTRAORDINARY city that i happen to love with all of my heart! WOW!

i want to apologize for those of you reading this post, thinking, "whoa, she is just way too ecstatic, she must be trying really hard to compensate for something." i'll admit i've been guilty of having that attitude towards others myself, but a positive, optimistic outlook is so much better. the other thing to note is that nobody's life is perfect and there is a natural ebb and flow to the way life works. if you go back and read this blog nine months ago or even three months ago, you can infer that i was in a very rough place in my life both personally and professionally...and believe me, that's the understatement of the century...but i always possessed the core belief that that was temporary and that God would bring me through it...and he did, with better results than i could have ever imagined. what i'm getting at is you have to acknowledge Him in both the good and the bad and give thanks when things are good. and right now, THINGS ARE GOOD!!

okay i'll get off that train, i initially started this post to tell you about why i love SA so much and how i had the best day yesterday exploring the city...

the day started with eating hamburgers at chester's, which claims to have the best burgers in town and they aren't lying! then my studly outdoorsman took me to the bexar county gun club!



we got to witness the marion 4-H club's annual fundraiser - "redneck triathlon" where a three-person team competes in skeet, washers, and bowling. after that, we took a nice hill country drive in his big chevy truck rocking out to hayes carll, roy orbison, and CCR. then he took me to check out an old deserted dancehall (cibolo creek country club) where we walked around and talked about the possibility of buying it, fixing it up and running the place ourselves...that would be AWESOME!



while driving along the backroads, i spotted a ginormous fireworks stand and talked my man into stopping for some firecrackers! thank you, theron, for indulging me in my pyro childhood nostalgia...



after that little excursion, we went and toured the new jw marriott hill country resort (which is GORGEOUS and the site of the new PGA tour) and we sat out on the golf course and drank blackberry mojitos (ha well for me)...shiner for the gentleman. if you haven't been yet, i HIGHLY recommend it...it's texas luxury at its finest! i'm pretty proud of myself for coordinating an outfit that can transition from the gun club to a five star hotel!



as if all of that weren't enough, we still went out and watched a full rodeo out at tejas and THEN met friends at copa wine bar at midnight! ah it makes me exhausted just thinking about it, but it was WONDERFUL. i love living life and really experiencing all that it has to offer. very thankful for EVERYTHING!

it's summertime...

and the livin's easy.

i apologize that i've been blog absent, but all for a very good reason of course. very fortuitously and EXTREMELY unplanned, a man came into my life who likes to do ALLLLL the same things as me, can play ANY instrument you throw at him, possesses a razor sharp intellect, radiates goodness and kindness, has a heart the size of TEXAS, credits his name to a literary character in an old western novel, LOVES his family, LOVES to dance, makes me laugh hysterically, and the best part - he just so happens to think i'm the bee's knees and treats me better than i ever thought possible for a man. oh yeah, he's easy on the eyes too...almost a dead-ringer for ryan gosling/noah from the notebook...yeah, i'm a lucky girl, i know.

the best day EVVVVEEEEEER...

literally. yesterday will probably go down in my memory as one of the best of my life. ahhhh it was incredible! probably not everyone's idea of paradise, but if you love music (especially of the texas variety) like i do, then i think you would understand.

first of all, i spent the entire day with the brilliantly talented theron pfeifer who is recording his debut album (and it's gonna blow you away!!!!) theron's recording his album at the legendary cheatham street warehouse in san marcos and he so graciously let me hang out at the studio to give my expert opinion. (haha not needed.) for those of you that don't know, san marcos/new braunfels is really the mecca of the texas music scene and there is a fantastic little community of singer/songwriters there. after we spent allll day in the studio, theron took me over to cheatham where you can get your beer in a mason jar and he introduced me to all of the musicians who call the place home. to my surprise, kent finlay - owner of cheatham/HUGE name in tx music/helped george strait get started/incredible songwriter whose credits include RR's "they call it the hill county" - was in the building and we had the best conversation with him! so there we are, talking to KENT FINLAY about the night that ace in the hole band played their very first show. UNBELIEVABLE!!!!

theron and i then met up with chuck & daphney and went to TWO TON TUESDAY at GRUENE HALL. if you've never seen two tons of steel, you MUST! they're this great rockabilly/country/swing band out of SA and they play the BEST dance music. theron and i took a swing dance lesson on monday so we're trying to practice...continual room for improvement of course, but we're havin' a blast!

ahhhhh i LOVE hill country summers, good music, and even better company!!!!!


woodshed studios. such a cool place. it's insane what all goes into recording an album...such an intricate process.


theron's sound engineer, russ, showed us this old beat up thing which he casually threw in, "oh yeah, this was george strait's first tour bus..." as if that were no big deal. these boys don't know about my GS appreciation yet...


living piece of history right there...


pickin'.


the one. the only. CHEATHAM STREET WAREHOUSE.

it feels so good, feelin' good again.

had the time of my life last night...as the lyrics above suggest. seeing a robert earl keen show at floore's country store will just do that to you. he's a legend and every time i see him live i remember why. to me, REK is just the embodiment of texas and he just seems so darn cool. his songwriting is killer and his guitar skills are seriously underrated. plus, the guy plays it off like he's a dumb aggie dropout from college station, but i get the impression that he's actually incredibly intelligent. i MUST talk with him someday.

LIFE IS GOOD. loving this summer already...

new column

in other news, i'm writing a new column for a small hill country publication...it's not texas monthly, the new yorker, or vanity fair...but it's something! i'll post the link when it comes out next month, for now, here's a sample:

I hope everybody has a place…

A place that they call their own. You know, where you can just get away from it all.

I went out to the lake again this past weekend, because that’s my place. I hesitate to even tell you about it at all, because it’s something sacred, yet I cannot keep it a secret. I don’t know what happens when Pecan Creek Lane meets Ranchette Drive, but it’s some kind of wonderful. It’s at this worn out, old intersection that liminal moments happen.

Don’t know what a liminal moment is? I didn’t either until I read Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time in the fourth grade and became fascinated with quantum physics, time travel, and other such preposterous notions dreamed up by a precocious young girl with her nose always stuck in a book. You see, a liminal moment is when the whole wide world just stops on a dime and the serendipitous instant lingers and is suspended in time. It’s as if you are the only person on the planet whose presence registers and all other worries, transgressions, and obligations fade into a vacuum.

In these moments, I don’t worry about the stack of bills piling up on my kitchen counter. I don’t worry that I should really get a new car because my beat-up, ailing SUV is probably on her last leg. I don’t worry about job security or how I’m going to support myself or how the money I intend for the savings account just seems to disappear into an unidentifiable black hole. I don’t worry that my great-grandmother, who has always been such a pillar of strength and wisdom, doesn’t even know who I am anymore thanks to the Alzheimer’s that has set in. I don’t worry that I could stand to lose a few pounds, that I should probably get my eyebrows waxed, that my stained teeth need a good bleaching. I don’t worry that my dreams could be construed as stupid, infantile, or fanciful at best. I don’t worry that I’m approaching my mid-twenties like a freight train and I’m not where I thought I’d be at all. I don’t worry about coming home to an empty house and spending the night eating alone in front of the TV. I don’t worry about the fact that there may not be a man in existence who will stay up late to watch The Godfather Trilogy Marathon with me; a man who is that elusive combination of unmistakable humor, genuine kindness, and honorable character; a man who thinks to himself, “she’s strange and hard to handle, but when the sunlight hits her just right and she smiles with her eyes, I’m glad she’s mine.”

In these moments, there is no heartache, there is no pain, there is no insecurity, there is no combativeness, there is no inadequacy, there is no despair. It’s almost as if they are God’s way of giving us a fleeting glimpse of what heaven will be like.

When I sit out on that boat dock, nothing bad can touch me. Nothing else matters. The only thing that matters is whether the rods and reels are in good condition and whether we can make it to Thomas’ Bait Shop before they flip their discolored window sign to closed. The only thing that matters is throwing a baseball cap over my wet, unruly hair, grabbing my flip flops at the bottom of the stairs, and applying Burt’s Bees Lifeguard’s Choice chap stick to my sun burnt lips as I sprint out the door. The only thing that matters is catching a good wave on “Big Mable”, wading down by the creek to catch turtles and skip the perfect rock, letting the mist wash over my face as I float on my back in the middle of placid, cleansing water. The only thing that matters is loading up all the kids on the golf cart to go down to the 7-11 for popsicles. The only thing that matters is waking up to the smell of coffee, bacon, biscuits and gravy, then sitting out on the overhanging back deck to experience the renewal of a sunrise and the symphony of the hummingbirds. The only thing that matters is yelling, “turn that Tom Petty up!” and “you wanna go to pie happy hour at Bluebonnet?” The only thing that matters is feeling young, free, and alive. The only thing that matters is that I finally feel safe.

I’ve been coming to this same spot off of Highway 281 that perpetuates an endless summer my entire life. I’m lucky to have it, I know. I don’t take one little piece of it for granted. My hope is that you have a place like this. A particular city, a house, a cave, a cliff, a parking lot, or even a tree stump, but find your place. Keep it close to your heart. And when the world wears you down, go there and remember that life is still simple. Let it remind you that everything’s going to be alright.

confession

i don't know about you, but as a child of the 80's, i absolutely love hair bands...yes, i own the critically acclaimed "monster ballads" collection and i listen to it often. whether it's poison, aerosmith, foreigner, guns 'n roses, white snake, or motley crue...i'm definitely a sucker for some cheesetastic pyrotechnics, overly dramatic lyrics, and sensitive bad boys. come to think of it, sometimes i could fit right into one of these old music videos when my hair gets over-bleached and ratted out and i can't resist wearing leather. yikes, terrible i know!

what can i say...sometimes you just gotta get in your girlfriend's convertible, speed down an empty road, raise your hands in the air, turn up the radio, and let your hair blow in the wind. today is one of those days.