I’ve just come down to the den from getting cleaned up while Lex put the kids to bed.  I figured, as long as I embarrassed myself in public, I might as well do it here, too.

You all know what a Renaissance Fair is, right? In case you don’t, it’s like a county fair with a few exceptions.  The entertainers are dressed up as wandering minstrels and try to sing like minstrels did in the middle ages.  Men, women, and children dress up in period costumes, wear all manner of wigs and make up, and party like it’s 1499. There is jousting, food cooked in kettles, home made ale and honey mead.

Once in awhile you see  Star Trek aficionados who blame their costumes on some kind of worm hole they claim to have gone through. The food is okay, the costumes are eye-openers, and hand over eye closers when your child points to a codpiece and starts giggling.

The trouble started when I said I was thirsty and Lex pointed to a not too far off beverage vendor.  They were selling mead. Just as we got there, the person who’d been selling the mead left and a very buxom woman took his place. She watched us walk up to their table; rather, she watched LEX walk up to the table and barely noticed the rest of us.

Okay, so I think that my wife is gorgeous and I agree with anyone who thinks she’s an eyeful.  A “cleavage full” is a different story.  How she could mistake Lex asking for a small cup of mead for “Can I stick my nose down your boobs,” is beyond me.

Did I mention that I’ m banned from ever attending this particular Renaissance Fair again?  It was only a jousting lance.  Could I help it if she was determined to wear it up her butt?

Amanda.

It constantly amazes me how someone as intelligent, accomplished, and business savvy as my wife can be such a menace in the kitchen. Today,  I have the stomach flu and was too sick this morning to take care of things at home. Martha also had been under the weather and sent Charlie over to tell us that we were on our own.

Rather than call in the reinforcements, a.k.a. my Grandma and Grandpa Cauble, Lex took the day off and said, “It’s just feeding you guys. How hard can it be?”

I was too sick to try to talk her out of it. The kids were happily setting their mom up for failure, too.

“How about oatmeal, Momma?”

“And raisin toast.”

Baby Eddie didn’t say anything. He just sat there in his highchair making spit bubbles and laughing.

Before she had even begun to boil water, the girls were covering their ears and admonishing their mom about the words coming out of her mouth.

I suppose, for some individuals, cooking acts like a trigger for Tourettes-like behavior.

From the den, where I was lying down on the sofa, I could hear her say something about a pan, then getting the right pan, then why don’t we have the right pan for oatmeal, then a loud metal crash, loud cursing, something about why the right pan had to be all the way back in the cabinet, and a “Dammit Freckles!”

I heard the sound of the back door being slammed. More cursing. Sweeping sounds, children saying, “Oh Oh, Momma,” more cursing. And the smell of burnt toast and what I think was an oven mitt.

My Grandma and Grandpa hurried over to help  take care of Baby Eddie and me. Lex loaded the other two kids in the car and headed to town for breakfast. If she’s smart, she’ll bring back lunch and dinner, too.

Amanda.

Let me say this so that you’ll understand where I’m coming from. It’s about where I came from as opposed to where I am now.

I live in Texas. You all know that. Do you remember that I came from a particularly spoiled rich kid life in Southern California? When we want snow, we pay ridiculously high resort costs and go to the snow. It does NOT come to us. No how, no way.

Flash forward to my life now in Texas. The part of the state that our ranch is on is exempt from snow. DO YOU HEAR ME, WEATHER?

If we wanted snow, we’d go somewhere where people are equipped to drive, walk, and exist in it for more than a day. Not here on the ranch.

Yeah, yeah. Let’s talk about that movie I saw on TV the other night. Maueen O’Hara and Juliet Mills brought their “Champion” Heresford bull to Texas to start a new line of cattle by breeding them with the Texas Longhorns. Yeah, it snowed in the movie and many of the calves froze to death. Where exactly was that supposed to be? Squaw Valley have a sister resort in Texas or something?

Well, apparently, it’s here. The ranch is socked in with ice and snow. Lex and the ranch hands have gone off to deliver bales of hay to the livestock that are out in the pastures and making sure their stabled horses are all warm and cozy.

When she gets back, it’s a hot bath and hot chocolate for her. I saw that in another movie once, and I suppose its how you make cold people warmer.

There is another way I’ve heard about. How to warm Lex up when she gets home, after that hot bath and cocoa. I’m sure we can create enough heat together. Makes me smile to think about it. Yeah. Maybe snow isn’t so bad after all.

The kids are having a blast trying out their snowman making skills. Martha is keeping the girls at her place so that she can stuff them full of chocolate chip cookies and other hot tasty treats. Eddie is still young enough to require many naps, so…

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Amanda.

Lex is upstairs asleep. Lorrie and Mel are curled up beside her. The tears have dried and all is right with the world. Lex didn’t mean to break down like that, but the children were so heartsick at causing the flooding that Lex couldn’t help herself. Soon, she was crying harder than they were. Talk about wrapped around her daughter’s fingers. Sheesh!

Lex had a successful business trip and arranged for the butchering and aging of the beef that we’ll supply to restaurants in the Austin and San Antonio areas. She’s really taken this ranch to new heights. Not to say that we are financially in the clear.

“We’ll be fine,” Lex said as she brushed her black hat against her jeans. “We just have to watch our spending for a while until we recoup our start-up expenses.”

“Um, how much ‘watch’ is ‘watch’?” I asked, dreading the answer.

Lex pulled me down onto her lap and gave me a kiss. Did I say I love my wife? Oh yeah!

“We have enough for our normal expenses and some money set aside for improvements and repairs.” She nuzzled my neck until I barely remembered that I was dreading telling her about the children flooding our ranch house.

“Uh, Lex?” Trying to keep my thoughts on track was getting to be impossible.

“Where are the girls?” Lex waggled her eyebrows suggestively and started pulling my shirt from my jeans.

“Shopping with Grandma and Grandpa. They decided to make barbecue tonight.”

“Good, why don’t we…”

I never did mention the floor to Lex. But as soon as our two little girls hit the front door, they were all over Lex, confessing everything, asking to have their allowances held until the floor was paid for, and asking if their mother still loved them.

By the time they got the whole story out, Lex was sobbing right along with them, distraught that her girls could think that they could ever do anything to make her stop loving them.

Well, they are asleep now. And I didn’t have to tell on Mel and Lorrie. I’d be with them, too, but at the moment, Mr. Edward Walters is in need of some strained peaches.

Gotta love ’em all.
Amanda.

It’s hard to believe that nearly eleven years have passed since Lex pulled me out of that storm ravaged river and brought me to her home to dry off and recover. Through rain and mud and exhaustion, we persevered until we made it to Lex’s ranch home. To our home. Our ranch. Our life.

Eleven years later, we have three children, formerly estranged relatives who have become family again, and family members who used to be strangers to us. Lex has changed from the lonely woman who bore the burden of running the ranch with only Martha as her calming influence to becoming the center of all our universes.

Lex is our life. She’s the reason we all became a family. We are all better because she took us into her heart. And she is better because she has been able to see herself as a loving, capable woman who means the world to each one of us. The one we want to be on our side when times are hard. The one we want to celebrate with when times are good. The one we’d protect to our last breath.

Still she doubts herself sometimes. Or doubts that she is enough for us. Or that she is giving us the lives we truly want. For years and years, only Martha was able to penetrate her thick head to let her know that she was precious and wonderful, and deserved a better life than she allowed herself.

But all that began to change when she went out to fix a fence on the far side of the property and ended up plunging into the swirling dangerous waters of that rain swollen river and brought my unconscious body out of my Mustang’s back window. She was my hero then and she is my hero now.

Most of all, she is my life. And each year that goes by is more precious than the last. Each addition to our family gives her even more of an opportunity to know herself as the generous center of our world that she is. And if we both survive parenthood, I hope she gets to see our children give to their families the same love, devotion, and spirit that she gives to ours.

The children. They want to stay up tonight to wish everyone a Happy New Year. Martha and Charlie will be coming over from their cottage. Martha complains that she’s a bit too old for such late hours. But Charlie ratted her out and told us how, on the cruise they took awhile back, that he had to drag her back to their cabin in the wee hours of the morning each night.

Ronnie and Nora are already here. Dad and Lois are on their way over, bringing much appreciated snacks and desserts for tonight. Ellie and Kylie, Jeannie, Rodney,and Teddy, my grandparents, and Roy and Helen will be welcoming in the new year with us. Hubert and Ramona promised to call.

The girls have made baby Eddie a Happy New Years hat our of construction paper. They even made a spare since he’s teething again and will probably slobber his first one to bits.

I may be older, see new gray hairs sprouting where I was all blonde all those years ago, but to me, each hair represents another moment and another memory of the love, laughter, and unrelenting joy that Lexington Walters brought to my life. To all our lives.

Amanda.

Every school kid I ever heard of has had to catch grasshoppers and other insects for their first science project of the year at least once in their life. For years, in most places, the kids all flocked through their neighborhoods or wildlife areas with their bottles that contained cotton balls soaked in formaldehyde. The idea was to catch the bug or insect and seal it in the bottle to numb the little critters into not caring that their little bodies were about to be pinned to a piece of Styrofoam board.

It was different in the upscale Los Angeles area we lived in when Jeannie and I were kids. The bugs had all pretty much departed for other locations due to the smog and the lack of a favorable environment. In fact, the only two critters that seem to have not minded the population growth are ants and roaches. Given that we were from a more affluent area, it was nearly impossible to collect anything without Mother having a hissy fit at the idea that any such animal might be present on their property, and Dad wondering why the servants couldn’t do the collecting for us back in their, less pristine, neighborhoods.

If a kid brought in a display that contained both an ant and a roach, then they might get a higher score than, say, a kid who only brought in ants. But nobody was going to be visiting their house soon. And there were no points for head lice.

So after our meager collections were presented, the teacher would organize a field trip to the natural history museum so that we could see more expansive bug and insect collections there.

Living in the country means we have ants and other various creepy crawlies, ants, and ants. My littlest child, Melanie, really got into the spirit of bug collection, quite to our surprise. Usually, Lorrie is the more adventurous of the two, but once she pointed out an ant colony to Mel, Mel was in heaven, dreaming of the award she’d get for bringing in the biggest collection of ants.

Once she had a jar full of ants, she branched out to pill bugs, palmettos and just about any creepy-crawlie thing that couldn’t run fast enough to get away from her. As for the formaldehyde, they don’t use that anymore. What’s toxic for the bugs is also toxic for the kiddies. So they just collect them and let them slowly die from lack of oxygen in the collection bottles.

Scene II: Martha and Charlie’s kitchen.

Martha was fixing lunch and chatting with me while Lex and Lorrie were heading towards the house to clean up after fixing up the tack-room in the stable. Charlie was keeping Mel entertained and asked what she’d been up to lately.

The next thing I knew, I heard a “I’ll be right back, Mommy!” and the back door slam.

“She said she wanted to show me what she was working on,” Charlie offered. Then he shrugged his shoulders and reached for the newspaper.

A few minutes later, the back door slammed again. “Here it is, Granpa Charlie!” Mel tripped over her own feet and dropped her bundle, which included glass jars full of insects.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up as I realized that the only reason Mel would have glass jars would be her insect collection. “Mel!” It was too late. Fire ants and palmetto bugs that were newly caught swarmed from the broken mayonnaise jar Mel had confined them in. Charlie grabbed Mel and took her out back to hose her off. The ants spread quickly and headed for the kitchen. Martha and I grabbed the lunch she had just prepared and ran.

Lex and Lorrie, cleaned up and in clean work clothes, were coming down the stairs when Martha and I flew through the front door with Charlie and a completely soaked Mel right behind us. Everyone was talking, shouting, and laughing at once. Mel was crying for her lost insect collection.

Lex and Lorrie just stood there at the bottom of the stairs and took it all in before turning toward each other and slapping hands in a “high-five”. “For once, it wasn’t us, Lorrie!” Then Lex and Lorrie stuck their tongues out at the rest of us and ran back up the stairs until the smell of food lured them back down.

That’s okay. Lex can write the note to Melanie’s teacher.

Amanda.