Texas Lou

I’m notorious for having really crazy dreams.  As a little girl, I dreamt that my mom tucked me in at night and told me that in the morning, we would be trading in my little girl boobies for big girl boobies.  I thought the dream was reality and woke up the next morning disappointed when my mom had no clue what I was talking about.  In high school I used to entertain my friends with the elaborate stories my brain had come up with while I slumbered.  To this day, I still have these wild dreams and manage to remember them so that they may entertain my peers.

Lately, I’ve been having a dream with a similar theme over and over again.  In the dream, my family is packing up and moving out of the house that I grew up in, which shall now be referred to as the Katy House from here on out.  This isn’t so weird except that my mom and siblings moved out of the Katy House 3 years ago.  So why am I just now having dreams about it?  The dreams aren’t stressful, sad, happy, or have any strong emotional feeling to them.  It’s just weird that my subconscious brain seems to be obsessed with this topic lately when I never even think about it while awake.

If anyone has a talent for analyzing dreams, I’d love to know your interpretation.

Saturday night I went out with some girlfriends to a club called Three that hosts 80s Night every Saturday.  The most perfect part of the evening, besides hearing Journey off course, was getting to sing and dance with my ladies to “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper. 

You know how at parties, there’s always a drunk girl screaming, “It’s My Song!” at the top of her lungs when a certain song comes on?  Well that was me when the DJ started up “Girls Just Want To Have Fun”…except for the drunk part because I was designated driver on Saturday.  It’s my absolute favorite song of all time, has been my ring tone for 6 or 7 years now, and it is my number 1 song of choice when it comes to Karaoke!

I highly recommend checking out the Miley Cyrus cover of it as well. 

So next time you hear that song, think of me, the obnoxious, drunk girl in the middle of the dance floor belting out “When the working day is done, oh girls just want to have fun” like her voice doesn’t sound terrible and like no one is watching.  Hopefully that will put a smile on your face!  🙂

About a month ago, I had an accident at softball practice and got hit in the head with a softball.  Luckily I was alright, but I went to the emergency room just for those warm fuzzies (cause you never know with head injuries).

I was maybe in the hospital (which is actually not even a real hospital but an urgent care center being converted into an emergency room) for an hour and a half, was given no meds (not even ibuprofen), and didn’t even see a doctor (I saw a nurse practitioner).  The only instruments used on this visit were a sphygmonanometer to take my blood pressure, a thermometer to take my temperature, a flashlight to check my eyes, and a wheelchair because I wasn’t walking so well.  They didn’t even prescribe me anything and all this cost $411!  Imagine how much it would have been if I had actually seen a real doctor or required some sort of x-rays or an MRI.

Lucky for me I have health insurance which covered the bulk of the bill although I still have to pay around $120.  I just wish I knew what caused the bill to be so high.  Maybe those expensive laytex gloves?  They were a hot commodity in high school Biology…the teacher used to sell them for 50 cents a glove during dissections!

That’s how many blogs I’m subscribed to on Google Reader.  A bit much, no?

On occasion, I like to share with a random stranger, like the blackjack dealer at my table in Vegas, that when I give birth to my future children, assuming I’m still living outside of Texas, I’ll place a shoebox full of Texas dirt underneath the hospital bed so that I can say my children were born on Texas soil.  People usually laugh and think I’m kidding or drunk, but I’m totally serious.

Of course I can’t take credit for this idea myself.  I have Wikipedia and the father of Colt McCoy, the quarterback for the Texas Longhorns, to thank for this BRILLIANT idea!  According to Wikipedia and several other online sources,

 “McCoy’s parents were from Texas, but his father, Brad McCoy, was working just across the Texas border in Hobbs, New Mexico at the time of Colt’s birth. Brad McCoy reportedly brought a shoe-box of Texas dirt to the hospital and slid it under the bed so that Colt could be born “over Texas soil”. The story may or may not be true, as his father has chosen to “plead the fifth” when asked to confirm it.“

If you’re out there reading, Brad McCoy, I just want to say THANK YOU for this AWESOME idea!  I’m totally doing it!  As a matter of fact, I can’t wait to have kids, just so I can prove to everyone that I am actually going to go through with this!  It’s a helluvalot cheaper than flying to Texas to give birth.

I also plan on naming my first son Dallas.  Dallas Davidson has a nice ring to it, don’t ya think?

Saturday afternoon, I spent the day with a couple of friends at Hill Top Berry Farm and Winery in Nelson County, Virginia.  We did a tasting of the winery’s fruit wines and honey meads.  If you’re ever in the area, I highly recommend stopping by as the vineyard was definitely one of the more unique Virginia wineries that I have been to. 

They were sold out of many of the wines that I wanted to buy, but I did find 3 that I settled on:  the Raspberry Melomel, Strawberry Melomel, and the Pyment (made of grapes and honey mead).

After our wine tasting, we had a picnic lunch on the porch and then picked blackberries.  Hill Top offers a better deal on blackberries in both quality and quantity than the farmer’s market or the grocery store.  Plus you get to choose each and every blackberry that you want to buy.

I was hoping to make blackberry wine, but since I just started a batch of concord grap wine, I’ll probably just stick to blackberry preserves.

Texas Lou. It’s one nickname of many: Sissy, Les, Shorty, Junebug, Murloc Princess, Jane You Igorant Slut, Midget in a Bikini. The list goes on and on. But why TexasLou.com and not MidgetInABikini.com you ask? Well for one thing, Midget in a Bikini was never one of my favorite nicknames. I mean, seriously, I’m not a midget, and while I may be just 2 inches short of the legal maximum height to qualify as a midget (and I’m pretty sure they prefer the name “Little People” these days), I don’t even wear bikinis. But now I’m just going off on a tangent.

Texas Lou is a nickname very near and dear to my heart. You’re not really officially a part of the family in my clan unless you have a nickname. Why? Perhaps because calling someone by their real name is too boring…my family tends to crave excitment and humor. Regardless of the reason for all the nickname madness, it’s a tradition that has carried on for many decades now. My mother is Vote. My sister is Cat-Cat. My uncles are both referred to as Bruver or a collective “Tuba Brothers”. My aunt’s nickname, given to her by a former elementary student of hers, is Tiny derived from the originial “Tiny Head”. My boyfriend of more than three years, who shall be referred to as Ben from here on out (not because that is his nickname but because he is legally named Ben), was given his first nickname by the family this past July on a family vacation on a Texas beach. My mom and uncle named him Steve Irwin, after the late, great Crocodile Hunter, because through his fishing obsession, he caught what was first believed to be a Sting Ray but later proved to be a Skate.

“Texas” from the Indian word “teyshas” (meaning “friends” or “allies”), and later named “Tejas” by the Spanish, is my home. Born and raised in this great state, I have come to find it as one of the most important definitions of who I am. I am Texan, and even though I now live in Virginia and have been an official resident of the Commonwealth for 4 years now, I will always be Texan. It is who I am and where I came from. “Lou” is short for “Leslie Lou” or “Leslie Lou Go Tie Your Shoe”, two nicknames given to me by my family at a very young age. On a trip home to visit the family, not too long after my dreaded move to Virginia(dreaded at the time but no longer dreaded), my uncle and cousin began to call me “Virginia Lou”. I answered back in protest, deeply afraid of forming any kind of roots in Virginia, “I’m not Virginia Lou. I’m Texas Lou!” And there you have it, the complicated origins of my nickname and this blog.