Poker Night.

During our time in Texas  I have become a hustler.

Ha!  Joking.  Apparently Mandy is the hustler, or so Jason says.  And Jody and Mel are the real poker players, which is why they have decided to start hosting poker night on a semi-regular basis.  Last time I had to work, but this time I actually turned down work in order to go to poker night.  Crazy, right?  In preparation, Jason has been training Jesse, and Jesse has been training me.  Jesse's training consisted of explaining to me what sorts of hands exist, and then saying "you know the hands?  Well you're fine, then" and telling me to download a poker game on my phone.  Super helpful.

Anyway, by putting together my knowledge of cribbage and yatzee, I had a small understnading of what he was talking about, and after playing some on my phone, I realized that poker really isn't my cup of tea.  I don't understand why people want to bet on cards that they haven't even seen, it stresses me out, and I just don't feel like it's really something I would enjoy.  So I didn't play, but I baked bread.

I was feeling so on top of things yesterday at about noon!  I had gotten up, taken Jesse to work, fed and walked Jlyn's dog, worked out, taken a shower, curled my hair, done the dishes, bleached my sinks, done a load of laundry, and was starting two different kinds of bread and a pan of lemon bars.  Domesticity is grand.  I used every mixing bowl in my kitchen, kept up on the dishes, was putting fresh rosemary from my own little rosemary bush in the bread...So pleased with myself.

"Pride goeth before a fall", I do believe I have heard somewhere.  The regular bread took two hours to rise, instead of one, and still wasn't very fantastic.  I used egg whites instead of whole eggs in my lemon bars, and the consistency was all spongey.  Then it was suddenly time to go get Jesse from work and I hadn't put either of the breads in the oven.  The rolls needed to bake for half an hour and the other bread for 40 minutes, but at different temperatures.  So I flaked on my wifely duties, and abandoned Jesse.  He didn't seem to hurt about it, he just went home with Jason and said he'd "meet me at Jody's or something".

While waiting for the bread to be done, I started voxing with Cristin and Bubba and everyone at the ranch.  It was lovely.  Bubba kept saying "you are at Texas" and talking about orange tractors.  

His voice sounds sooooo much like Joy's!  It's crazy.  They have the same little "heh heh heh heh!" laugh, and always say "helllooooo?" through their noses...I can't explain it.  I wish I could embed sounds in a blog, but I don't know how to do that, even if I could get them off my phone.

All that voxing caused two things to happen: my phone started to die, and I almost burned the bread.  At almost 5:00, I finally gathered up all of my various baked goods (which is when I realized that I had forgotten to put the garlic in the potato rosemary bread!), and went to Jlyn's house to feed Buckshot before going over to Jody and Mel's...

This story could get long and boring, so suffice it to say that I got there and discovered a large amount of feces in the hallway.  That was a smelly delay, and one more addition to my growing frustration at myself.  It was at about this point that I decided trying to be domestically awesome is not as awesome as it always seems.

Anyway...poker night!

Jody, Jesse, Jason, and James all work together, and were the four heads of the four families that converged for poker night.  The J's always seem to stick together...It really was a good time.  James came and BBQ'd ribs, Mel made spaghetti, Mandy brought snacks...and I actually socialized for a short period of time with Mel and Mandy.  Cray cray!  Jason and his family all think I'm weird and antisocial, and all that jazz.  For some reason my social awkwardness goes through the roof whenever we go out to Strawn.  I made an attempt to disillusion them.  I'm not sure if it worked.  But babies are great ice breakers.  I got to hold Eli for the first time!  I don't know why I never had before...I guess I didn't want to just walk into their house and take their baby.  You never know when people will take that badly.  But I hadn't held a baby since December, and it was past time.  I was at work the other day, watching someone hold a baby, and realized I had the bounce going on just watching.  It was bad.  Thankfully I managed to keep up my reputation as Baby Whisperer.

"I got the magic in me"

I picked him up and he fell right to sleep. And then he woke up.  But he was still pretty happy.  He's five months, so he's just at that point where he's trying to move around, and actually laughing a little bit and stuff.  I didn't play poker, so I was content to hang out with the baby most of the night.  And when I did pass him off I ended up doing puzzles with James' oldest daughter (she's 3) and almost falling asleep on the couch with Ashley.  But Kian started throwing train tracks around the room and pretty well killed that idea.

So I guess I don't have much to say about poker, really, except that it doesn't look that great, but it was good to be around people.  I definitely pumpkined, though, before we went home at almost 12:30.  Next time I will have to make it a point to go home before sprouting green tendrils.