Rancho De Five and Time in a Bottle

This past Saturday was such fun!  Peggy helped me with a 'welcome to the ranch' breakfast brunch for our friends who've made the oh so wise choice of moving out to the prairie.  With fall in the air, somewhere up north I'm sure, weekends become premium because there is a ton of things to do.  I was so happy that this many could celebrate and welcome on a Saturday morning.  Peggy made lemon blueberry pancakes, Roy fried up the Midway Market bacon and cut up the fruit salad, I made Biltmore grits and Kay's Tea Parlour made the rest of our menu, quiche and strudel.  We had so much fun laughing and eating and laughing some more.  You might be looking at this picture and wondering when Lisa and Claire moved out to Rancho, but we invited them to enjoy their friendship but also to Cincotized them thus insuring a move out this way. 

This is Keely, Peggy's granddaughter who made a fun little fort and watched her movies after she ate.   

Thank you Kathleen and others who cleaned up the kitchen for me.  I think Roy was surprised and then most appreciative because he had committed to helping with the clean up. 

On Friday, I got my hair highlighted and cut and had a little down time between that and my pedi appointment.  Chris was at our home cleaning, so I called Dena and went over and hung out with her for about thirty minutes.  She fed me a delicious peanut butter sandwich.  At the salon several of us were trying to decide what colors we wanted.  On the left was a woman looking for maroon polish.  I asked her if she was an Aggie and she said yes.  On the right hand side the woman who was looking for school color polish said, I am an Alabama alumni.  Wow, stuck in the middle but that is when I told them I rooted for LSU because I married an alumni.  We were representing the SEC well in the salon.  They even set us by each other for our pedis. 

Which brings me to this point.... we do not root for Alabama in our home.  When you are married to a Louisiana boy and LSU graduate , who has a long memory and not a whole lot of love for Alabama, you learn to pull for the opponent Alabama is playing.  I do get confused though if Alabama and Notre Dame play because the hubs doesn't like them either.  When I played tennis, my partner in doubles graduated from Alabama and she and her family are huge financial donors with a long line of alumni coming before them and her sons were for sure going there when the time came.  She brought me back a really cute Alabama t-shirt and I wore it one Saturday.  Roy was all, why are you wearing that shirt?  Who gave you that shirt?  You know how I feel about Alabama...and he asked me to put it in the Good Will bag and so I did.  So you know this before reading the next paragraph, we are not in the Alabama camp and I have many good, good friends who are Aggies.

Like many of y'all, we watched the Alabama/Texas A&M game.  It was an exciting game, no doubt.  By the score it is obvious that defense wasn't a friend to either team.  The game and Johnny lived up to the hype.  After the game even Nick Saban gave proper respect for Johnny Football and the A&M team.  On Facebook, so many Aggie status updates said "our team just ran out of time," implying if there had been more time, they would have pulled off the win.  Twitter updates again and again repeated the lament of the lack of time.  Blog post...if we had more time....Someone from church took a point from the pastor's sermon or either he said this...we weren't at church and haven't watched the webcast yet; "yesterday, dear friends you did not lose, you simply were not provided ample time to show your talent on the field."  WHAT???!!!!  I am sure going in Kevin Sumlin knew both teams had sixty minutes to play.  His mismanagement of the clock in the last few minutes might have factored into this not having ample time to play.  But what a crock....not enough time?  What if last year Alabama had said the same thing about their loss to Johnny?  Really, you cannot discount the fact that the number one team in the nation played on your field and I am sure if they had more time or ample time, they could have scored more points as well.  The loss came down to the two interceptions.  It was a brilliantly played game by both teams, so don't cheapen the whole thing with this rationalization about time.  That statement, not having ample time is up there with these kinds of statements that plague our conversations with things that sound good but are so false; "God couldn't be everywhere, so that's why He created Mothers."  Here's another one; "God was lonely so that's why He called her home to Him." "Heaven needed another angel or another member of the choir."

I'm pretty sure if this week your kid doesn't get an assignment in on time or has a less than stellar grade on a test, you or the teacher would not accept the excuse, but mom, I didn't have ample time to show you my talent on the paper or test. 

I promise you when Alabama and Texas A&M play LSU and if and when they beat the Tigers, I will not use the 'if I could save time in a bottle' excuse.'