I don’t have kids, and I’ve never been terribly good with them. I like babies, I think most kids are cute and can be counted on to baby-sit in a pinch, but as a general rule I don’t really know what to do with them. I’m good with older kids and teenagers, because I can talk to them like adults. But I don’t really know how to talk to kids. I don’t know what to talk about, and I’m not good with baby talk. I don’t have a good happy voice. It’s awkward for me.

That said, when a kid in a restaurant (such as, oh I don’t know, Chik-Fil-A) is sitting at another table and talks or waves to me, I engage them. I think it’s cute. I say hi and ask their name and make faces. I know how to do all that.

What I don’t know is what to do when said kid then gets out of his seat, waddles over to my table, and takes a fry off of my tray. Or what to do when his mom, who can see everything that’s happening, stays in her seat and just laughs and calls out, “Loooooogaaaaaaaaaaan! Those aren’t yours!” I do know that when the kid goes for your nuggets and you grab his hand because he’s about to fall over, said mom will give you a look, come get her child and walk away with him while telling him what a silly boy he is. And she will not say a word to you, apology or otherwise.

I don’t know whether or not it’s appropriate to speak up when, for example, a mother lets her couldn’t-be-more-than-two-and-that’s-being-generous child into the play area and tells him to be careful before joining her friend back at their table to loudly discuss all their friends. But I do know that when that kid wants out of the play area but isn’t strong enough to open the door and is about to cry, I am going to get up and go help him, lest he get stuck between the door and the wall. And I know that when I do that, his mother will lean around the corner to see what’s going on and ask, “Is he trying to get out?” like I’m her hired babysitter and she’s just checking in to see how I’m doing.

Now, like I said, I don’t have kids, so maybe I’m missing something. Maybe these are totally appropriate mothering tactics and I am judging something I know nothing about. Maybe it’s en vogue in parenting circles these days to just let your kid roam free in a public place and to use the playground and surrounding customers for child care. Maybe she was teaching him to fend for himself? Toughen up? Find his own food? I don’t know. Apparently I have a lot to learn before I start having kids.

Because Jennie told me to. (And it’s easier than actually thinking of something to write about!)

1. Egg nog or hot chocolate?
Between the two I would choose hot chocolate, but in general I don’t like hot drinks. I always burn my mouth.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?
Oh, that Santa. He’s so crazy with his special wrapping paper and his mystery gifts. Every now and then he leaves something unwrapped. He likes to mix it up.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?
White white white. But I like the way my dad does stripes of red and white so it looks like a candy cane.

4. Do you hang mistletoe?
No, but my parents used to.

5. When do you put your decorations up?
Today! We leave for Texas in three weeks, so I need to get as much enjoyment out of my decorations as possible. I. LOVE. CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish?
Mawmaw’s chocolate pie.

7. Favorite holiday memory as a child?
My parents worked really hard to make Christmas morning special for us, so a lot of my favorite things happened every year – waking up at 3 am and sneaking to the living room to see if Santa had come yet, eating burnt cinnamon rolls, reading the letters Santa wrote back to us on Christmas morning. I have a pretty distinct memory of Chelsea and I riding new bikes in the street wearing jean jackets and New Kids on the Block t-shirts, but that’s more embarrassing than anything else. Although not as embarrassing as the video of us dancing to “Christmas in Hollis” by Run DMC. Oh how I wish I was joking about that.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
I told this story last year. Santa paper is very important in our house, and I heard my mom talking about how she still needed to buy that year’s paper. Also, to steal from Jennie: “If my mom and dad are reading this, I STILL BELIEVE.”

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?
We started a new tradition last year. We opened all our gifts from each other on Christmas Eve, and did Santa presents Christmas morning. It worked out really well as far as time goes, but I don’t know if we’ll do it again. It’s hard to change how Christmas works!

10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree?
For the past several years, we’ve gone to Crate and Barrel the day after Christmas and stocked up on discount ornaments. We’ve got a pretty big collection now of jewel-toned and silver ornaments, and I love them all. It’s always so fun to pull them out and remember the ones you bought the year before.

11. Snow! Love it or dread it?
I love it as long as I don’t have to go anywhere.

12. Can you ice skate?
I’m… okay. I can get going pretty good, but I am really bad at stopping.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift?
I don’t know that I have a favorite gift. When I was little I had this really sweet She-Ra castle… it was a big purple mountain that opened up and She-Ra and her friends lived inside. I think that same year we got She-Ra swords and headgear AND Jem and the Holograms nightgowns, so as you can imagine the photos from that year are really flattering.

14. What’s the most important thing about the holidays for you?
Being with family. Also, making sure the Christmas Village gets put up in time!

15. What is your favorite holiday dessert?
CHOCOLATE PIE.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition?
Listening to “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” (Brenda Lee version ONLY) while trying to actually rock around the Christmas tree. It’s hard work.

17. What tops your tree?
A blue star.

18. Which do you prefer, giving or receiving?
Giving. I am so good at Christmas.

19. What is your favorite Christmas song?
Andrew Peterson’s “Labor of Love”.

20. Candy canes! Yuck or yum?
Yum! But I only like the fruity ones… just say no to peppermint.

Football wasn’t a very big part of my life growing up. Even though I went to a large high school in Texas with a good team and lived with a Dallas Cowboys loving dad, I never got into it. It was too complicated, the games were too long, there were better things to do.

I knew going into it that being with Aaron was going to add a lot more football to my life. His dad was a coach, all three boys played in high school and his brother played in college. It’s not just a passive hobby in their house. It’s a lifestyle.

I’m not sure exactly when things started to change. The first couple of years, I think, it was just something Aaron did. I knew (roughly) when the season started. I knew we would miss church if the Cowboys played at noon and were on TV. I knew how hard it was to catch a Cowboys game in Nashville (though I didn’t know what I know now about AFC/NFC markets and blackout games and stuff like that.)

But as time has passed, my knowledge has grown. The past couple of seasons, I’ve known not only known the date the season starts, but when and who the Cowboys play. I’ve spent Saturdays watching the draft. I know who is in our division and which games are important and that we hate the Redskins above all. I know that after we beat the Colts on Sunday the 1972 Dolphins got together and drank champagne.

And I don’t just know about the Cowboys. I know about football. Now, I’m no expert, but keep in mind that in high school I didn’t know (or care) how downs worked. Now I know what a safety is. (That has, for some reason, been my go-to point when talking about how much football I know. Surely I must be an expert – I know what a safety is!) I can follow along relatively unassisted by Aaron (though he loves to answer my questions, sometimes with diagrams), but I do need the yellow line and the box at the top telling me where they are on the field and which down we’re on.

Football has gone from being something I could not possibly care less about to something I actually enjoy. I still fall asleep during games I don’t care about, and I almost always prefer How I Met Your Mother to Monday Night Football. But I’m learning. I can yell at the TV with the best of them now.

Tomorrow I am doing something I have never done before.

I am taking a day off for no reason at all.

I’m going to grocery shop for Thanksgiving, maybe do some baking. See a movie. Go shopping. Or maybe I’ll sleep super late and watch the 14 episodes of What Not To Wear I’ve got on the DVR. That sounds pretty good.

I am very, very excited.

Well, since it’s been almost three weeks now, I guess it’s time to tell y’all about our trip to LA.

Thanks to my job, we get to go to some cool events every now and then. They’re usually local things, but this time we got to hit the west coast. I’d never been west of Colorado, so I was pretty excited. We flew to LA at the end of October to see the live taping of CMT Giants, honoring Reba McEntire. It was at the Kodak Theatre, which also hosts the Oscars. That was pretty awesome.

(Set your Tivos! We were on the fourth row and I am convinced we’ll be on TV.)

The show was incredible. Even Aaron, who doesn’t work in country and doesn’t know many Reba songs, thought it was great. My favorite performances were Kelly Clarkson and Martina McBride singing “Does He Love You” and Megan Mullaly singing “You Can’t Get A Man With A Gun” from Annie Get Your Gun. She was fantastic.

We got to attend the after party, which was cool for two reasons: we got to eat food by Wolfgang Puck, and we met Kelly Clarkson and Tiffany.

That’s right. Tiffany. If you were a girl in the 80s, you know what I’m talking about. You probably had a dance to “I Think We’re Alone Now” that you did all the time and totally wore out the cassette tape, too, right? Right? Was that just me?

It was really fun to get all dressed up and go to a fancy event. We felt very cool.

Because the event was on a Thursday night, we decided to stay in California through the weekend and take a little mini-vacation. On Friday, we slept waaaaaaay in, then headed to Rodeo Drive for lunch, shopping and people watching. And it did not disappoint.

I’m kind of a girly girl when it comes to that stuff, so I was pretty thrilled just to be there. We didn’t go into many stores (didn’t want to reenact that scene from Pretty Woman), but it was fun just to walk the streets and see all the cool shops and storefronts. My favorite was Prada – it didn’t have windows or a door, just a staircase that went up from the street. The sidewalk out front had these tunnels covered by plastic, and when you looked down into them there were mannequins holding Prada bags and wearing Prada coats. Very cool.

We spent the rest of Friday just driving around LA and taking pictures. We walked Melrose Avenue, which is totally where I would shop if I lived there. Lots of funky shops and secondhand stores and cool little restaurants.

Saturday we got up and went to The Grove, which we were told was really cool but is actually just an outdoor mall. It’s right next to the Farmer’s Market, though, so we headed over there for lunch. They had food stalls for every kind of food from every country you can imagine. I’ve never seen anything like it. Aaron (shockingly) went for tacos, and though I had intended to branch out a bit, once I saw the women in that stall I had to eat there. There were four of them – one making the tortillas, one shredding this amazing smelling meat, one chopping avocados and one making hibiscus tea. Holy moly, y’all. They were the best tacos I have ever eaten in my life. Seriously. I want to fly to LA right now and get some more.

After lunch we drove through LA on Santa Monica Boulevard all the way to Santa Monica, on the coast. I hadn’t been to a beach since our honeymoon, so I was thrilled to be there. We walked along the water for a while, marveling at the fact that people can still go to the beach and lay out and swim at the end of October. It was wonderful. We went to the pier for ice cream and more people watching, and to let our jeans dry after the waves that smacked us when we were trying to take pictures. SNEAKY OCEAN!

The Pier

From Santa Monica we drove up the coast a bit to get on Mulholland Drive, which took us all the way back to Hollywood through some really cool canyons and hills and some fat daddy homes. We were told the best views of the Hollywood sign were from Mulholland, but this was as close as we were able to get:

Looking down from Mulholland

Saturday night we went back to Hollywood and Highland, where the Kodak is. Graumman’s Chinese Theatre is also there, as well as the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a few other things. We had dinner and just walked around a bit, being tourists.

We had to get up crazy early Sunday morning to catch our flight. The alarm went off at 3:45, and we were just about to leave when it hit me – we forgot to fall back. It was daylight savings weekend (or whatever it’s called in the fall), which meant we’d actually gotten up at 2:45. In the morning. Oh my word. We made it to the airport (with plenty of time to spare) and our flights home were relatively uneventful.

Overall it was a pretty great trip. Thanks to jury duty, I didn’t have time to research and plan the way I would have liked, but I think we did a good job of seeing the cool stuff without being too touristy. (You can see the rest of the photos here.) I would really love to go back now that I kind of have a feel for the place. And also to get more of those tacos.

Dear Tennessee,

I don’t understand. Did I do something to offend you? Did I talk about Dallas too much? Because I certainly wasn’t trying to hurt your feelings. You’ve been a great home to me and I appreciate how hospitable you are.

But I have clearly upset you. I can’t think of any other explanation for why, election after election, I watch everything I didn’t vote for win. I consider myself a relatively intelligent person, but I must be missing something because I am never, ever right.

Sure, I voted for Bredesen for governor and he won. But who didn’t see that one coming? Bryson and his JIM signs may have swayed a few people, but with 70% of the vote, Bredesen was a lock.

But Ford? Lost. Mary Parker? Lost. (Which, duh, but I was really holding out hope. I wish someone would gerrymander us right out of the Williamson county state senate district.)

The same-sex marriage amendment passed. Not shocking, really, but frustrating all the same. I don’t really understand how a constitutional amendment banning something that is ALREADY ILLEGAL even makes it onto the ballot. The property tax freeze for the elderly passed. I’m not sure why a) owning property, and b) turning 65 somehow makes you unable to plan for the future, but apparently it does and now the rest of us are going to have to make up the difference. Or not, since the referendum on property taxes also passed. So now we have voted both to limit the property tax for people over 65 AND put any future property tax raises on the ballot for the public to decide. I hate paying taxes as much as the next guy, but that money pays for our schools and roads and stadiums and convention centers. I’m okay with the people who plan and build and run those things determining how much they need to make it happen. Joe Schmoe off the street just wants lower taxes. If you don’t like how the money is being spent, put different people in office. Don’t stop the flow of money.

I’ve come to the conclusion that you, the state of Tennessee, don’t actually count votes. Instead, you just take my ballot and call the elections for the candidate I did not choose.

And I don’t appreciate that very much.

A little bitter on Music Row,

Brandi

Because Aaron and I had to wait almost three hours (for a mid-term election! I did not see that coming!) to vote this morning, we had plenty of time to kill. We filled it composing the following list:

IDEAS TO MAKE VOTING BETTER

1. The voting machines should be programmed to call out who you vote for as you push the button. The waiting experience would be much more lively if the crowd could react everytime the machine said “Harold Ford, Jr.” or “YES on the marriage ammendment”.

2. Voter races. In an election like this one, there are several things to consider once you’re actually in the voting booth. This game would light a fire under the slowpokes and get the whole process moving much faster. The first five people in line race to the booths and vote as quickly as they can. Maybe some hurdles could be involved. The last one finished doesn’t get to have his vote counted. He also does not get an “I Voted” sticker, which is really the whole reason anyone votes anyway.

3. Umbrella jousting. Perfect for a rainy day like today. Pit two people with opposing viewpoints against each other, preferably on some kind of Gladiator-style jousting pedestals. They use their umbrellas to knock the other person down. The loser doesn’t get to vote. This would both shorten the line and give the people waiting something to watch.

4. Umbrella toe-squashing. Similar to the joust, but contestants use the tips of their umbrellas to poke the toes of their opponent. Person with the most toes left at the end of the match wins. Loser doesn’t get to vote.

5. Other reasons people should be disqualified from voting: smelling like a combination of mouthwash and cigarettes; having no concept of personal space; responding outloud to conversations you are not involved in; not understanding how a line actually works; snorting randomly and wearing a Tweety Bird t-shirt.

Hey folks -

Some friends and I have started a new blog called The Corner Table, where we talk about whatever interests us… music, sports, tv, etc. We’re just getting off the ground, and my first article just went up. Check it out!