Ain't chicken.

It was a firearms extravaganza around our house this weekend.

My husband decided that 12 years of listening to my reply of "Yes, but I'm the one in the family that owns the firearms" in response to all sorts of statements from him such as "Honey, you should go to the store and get some more Coke because I just drank the last one" was long enough.

Yes, he finally bought himself a weapon and, since he has a penis, he bought one with a larger caliber than mine. So we went shooting on Saturday and had a good time except for the fact that we both thought the guy at the range was pretty much a jerk-a-roonie. I think I had a better time than my husband because my target ended up with a much prettier pattern than his did.

He says that's because he was shooting a new gun and that he put most of his rounds out at 50 yards.

I said it was because I'm a better shot.

Oh, and because he bought me these incredible and yeah I really do mean freaking incredible if you have a gun go buy some of these N-O-W Hogue grips. They're the newer generation of rubber grips and they took my gun from being really a very nice gun to shoot to being an actual extention of my hand - a fantastic gun! I shot better with them than I've ever shot with this gun, and I've owned this particular weapon for more than 15 years. Love it love it love it.

On Sunday my brother was in town and he came to visit. I probably would have written about this anyway, but because he specifically told me not to, here it is.

OK, you have me, my husband and my brother. We're all in the living room talking. Do we get to talk about world peace or good music or fine frosting recipes? Hell no, we end up talking about guns. Husband and brother go back and forth and back and forth and "well my clip will hold 10 and I could get the pre-ban clip but it only holds 12 so it doesn't seem worth it" and "I bought mine pre-ban so it's bigger anyway" and then there was the "your gun is a direct geneological descendant of my gun" and blah blah freaking blah but then....in the middle of the whole thing...one of the strangest sentances I've ever heard came out of anyone's mouth.

My brother said: If you ever need a silencer in a pinch, just use some duct tape and tape an empty Pepsi bottle to the muzzle. It's not great but it works.

There's all sorts of things I could think about this - how to get the sticky of the duct tape off the gun, how I can't think of a better use for a Pepsi bottle - full or empty - but the best part of it - the incredible part of it - is that ANYONE would ever NEED a silencer in a pinch.

Like you spontaneously decide to go assassinate someone at a fancy luncheon or something.... I swear. The way men think will never cease to amaze me.

Sentances too strange to be real:
If you ever need a silencer in a pinch.
Hand me that piano.
You a have really beautiful uvula.

That insane mass of white tulle and lace I called a wedding gown a couple of years ago is hanging in the back of my closet in a clear plastic tulle-prison tied closed with bronze chiffon ribbon.

I was hanging up laundry last night and happened to glance to my right and I saw it there, in the corner. Rather, I saw it there, taking up that entire end of the closet, even strapped into a big bag and tied down for it's own protection.

Maybe it's because I usually just wear casual clothes and LIKE my life that way. Maybe it's because we got married at dusk instead of in the morning so I only got to really wear it for a few hours. Maybe it's because underneath it all I'm just a girly schmo.

But I want to put that damned dress on and prance around in it. I want to wear the veil while I shampoo the living room carpet. I want to be cinched back into that corset even if it DID stab my upper thighs and flounce around with those 20 pounds of white princess poofy skirt blocking everyone else's way. I want to wear that gown until somebody big and bad enough tells me I just have to take it off. I want to have mad crazy monkey sex in it. I want to sleep in it. I want to roll around on the floor with the dogs in it.

I've been thinking about renewing our vows, even though we've only been married not quite two years, just so I could get away with putting that thing on again. We're going to my husband's best friend's wedding in two weeks. I'm already jealous that that woman gets to wear hers and I don't get to wear mine.

So I read this story in the paper about a high school girl who wants to create a Caucasion Club. Now, whether she really wants to do this or whether she's trying to make a point, I don't know.

What's amazing is the last line of the story that refers to a statement made by an official from the NAACP: "One person who won't be signing up is Darnell Turner, first vice president of the local chapter of the NAACP. Turner says he thinks the club will create racial tension."

Well, we certainly wouldn't want to create any organization that would do that, would we, Mr. African-American Club Man?

Hey! You people on the East Coast! Get over it! It's a measly category 2 storm! Try being on the Gulf Coast, OK? Try a freaking tropical storm that brings the 4th largest city in the nation to it's bloody KNEES!

What is it with the national media? Houston was devastated two years ago by Allison and we rated two days worth of small stories. Even now, two years later, there are people who haven't recovered. There are still old women living in rv's in the front yards of their ruined houses.

The East coast is getting a hurricane (the kind that somewhere on the Gulf Coast gets just about every year) and it's The Sky Is Falling The Sky Is Falling! It's just not that big of a storm. It was a week ago - out in the damned ocean, away from all the people who are NOW freaking out - but today it was only sustaining 90 mile an hour winds.

The U.S. government called Allison "The Worst Natural Disaster Ever" in the U.S. in terms of people displaced and dollars expended, but this Isabel is totally freaking out anyone with a microphone and access to a TV camera.

Look - I'm glad that the national media forgets we're here most of the time - I like to think it keeps us off the international terrorist's radar a little bit - but this is nuts! All Isabel all the time. Gimme a break.

I met my sister for supper tonight. When we left the restaurant, she called me over to her car and started handing me stuff out of a bag on the back seat. Liver Nips. T-Bonz. BaconBacon Strips (2 bags of those).

I'm thinking - yeah, yeah the dogs love you but where the hell are the Oreo's, woman???

Even though we have access to cuisines from all over the world as Americans, we rarely eat True and Original recipes. Most of what we eat has been Americanized, made more palatable for our mainstream tastes. For instance, if we Americans think Italian, we usually think tomato-based sauces, but that couldn't be farther from the truth in most of Italy.

This is never truer than when talking about Mexican food. We think Mexican food and we think rice and beans and fajitas and cheese enchiladas.

And nothing will bring this truth closer to home than a stroll through the meat department of a culturally Mexican grocery store. Now, I grew up knowing about Tripe and Menudo, and even though it will never cross my lips, I understand that different cultures grow up with different foods and uses for various animal parts. (Ask me to tell you the story about Mother's Hog Head Cheese. Hint: they don't just call it that for no reason.)

But nothing - and I mean freaking nothing - will ever be able to make me understand why, in the meat department in the Fiesta down the street from me, right there next to the boneless, skinless chicken breasts is a neatly wrapped package of bright yellow chicken feet, claws and all. For sale. As a foodstuff.

So... for the second time in our lives, my husband has called me to tell me he has just exited a burning building.

He calls this time and says, "Honey, I just wanted you to know that if you try to call me at the office I won't answer because we just all ran out of the building because it's on fire in the back part." Then he tells me about how the smoke had made it up to the office part of the building where he works so he thought it would be best to evacuate. Someone had been working in the warehouse part of the building and a propane gas line had caught fire and that he was going to hang out behind a big metal dumpster just in case any of the propane tanks that were in the warehouse exploded.

Then he tells me - get this - not to come down there. He said things might explode, that they were still waiting for the volunteer fire department to show up and they didn't know how big it was going to get. Repeat - for me not to come down there.

I wonder - who the hell does he think he's talking to that he can say that and think I'm not coming down there? Thirteen years and he can say that?

I say yeah - ok. And I go put on some shoes and head out of the house. On the way, I call a neighbor who is a long time buddy of my husband and tell him that I had been told not to go watch the propane tanks explode. Neighbor says "So you're on your way there right now, eh?"

OH, OF COURSE I AM!!!!

Neighbor says "I'm coming, too!"

So we both end up fairly close (maybe two football fields away - closer than the ambulance that is waiting down the street on stand-by but far enough away so that more fire trucks can get through if needed). I of course have my binoculars and we get to watch the whole thing - it's both a good and a bad thing that nothing did indeed explode. No injuries which is 100% good of course. The firemen contained the fire, took care of the danger. But damned it would have been cool to watch one of those tanks shoot up in the sky.

Husband calls about 10 minutes after it's obvious the fire is under control from the greatly decreased clouds of smoke and says, "Hey honey - what you doing?"
Me (innocently) "Nothin' really"
Husband "Oh, yeah. You're here, aren't you?"
Me "Just me and Gary and we stayed out the firemen's way. Really!"

Today is like the Kennedy Assassination: everyone who was alive and older than oh say, 3, will forever on this day talk to other people or at least remember in their heads where they were and what they were doing, how they heard about it and who was around them.

I was driving. It was only about 15 minutes after the first plane hit. I was on the South Loop, going past the Astrodome on the way to a high school to meet a bunch of people from Continental Airlines for a Day of Caring Project. The radio was talking about a plane apparently having hit the tower. They thought it was a private plane, like what happened to the Empire State building.

About an hour later, I was driving again, going to pick up lunches for everyone. By then the people on the radio knew it was really bad. On the way back, they knew why - the second plane had hit, the Pentagon was on fire, they knew the fourth plane was missing.

When I got back to the school with the lunches, everyone knew something was up but not what had happened. These kids were hanging out the windows - they had seen me come in from the parking lot and they were asking me "Hey lady - what's happening? Do you know anything?" and - this is stupid - I didn't think I had the authority to tell them. I mean, what if they freaked? What if one of their relatives was there? Who the hell knows how teenagers are going to react, and I was just a visitor on campus - I didn't think I had the right to cause a panic or anything. So I told them I didn't know, but that it was something bad and they should just wait for their teacher. How incredibly lame.

So I get back into the classroom and I sort of pulled the main Continental lady and the teacher over to the side of the room and told them - I told them planes had been stolen and that Washington and New York had been attacked. It wasn't 30 seconds later that pagers started going off. It went right down the row of about 20 people from Continental. One after another their pagers started beeping and of course they all left right away, only the head lady knowing why.

I got out of there as soon as I could and got back to my office about 12:30. It was then that I saw the film on tv - I hadn't seen any pictures yet - just heard radio reports. I stood outside my vice president's office - they had set up a little tv - and watched the towers fall. I remember my first reaction was physical. It was like I had been punched - I literally had to step away from the screen and I remember covering my mouth with my hand - just total shock. I thought about my brother - he lived at that time in lower Manhattan. I tried to call but of course no one could get through. It turned out he was ok (or as ok as anyone who will always remember the taste of that ash in their lungs will ever be). We were lucky.

I remember how weird it was that day, that no planes were in the sky. There's a huge amount of air traffic over Houston, and it was surreal, there being nothing up there. And I remember how it was actually scary when they did go back up. For weeks I really really noticed the planes. And I was scared to go into any of the skyscrapers - something I have to do sometimes as part of my job. It's always freaked me out a little bit, the thought of the physics involved in an 80 story building. I always hate being near the top of one of them in a storm because they do actually sway back and forth in the wind.

Still, today, when I actively notice a plane, I wonder: Will it go to the airport?

New favorite restaurant in Houston: Panera Bread. Get the Coronado Carnitas - it's a sandwich made of marinated pork roast, mozzarella and a zingy, spicey, make-you-want-more-of-it-slathered-on everything ancho lime sauce with carmelized onions (ask for extra onions!) on this wonderful baked-on-site bread they call Ciabatta. I've had it twice now and actually crave it. Ask for a little cup of the ancho lime sauce on the side for dipping of anything - left over bread, their surprisingly good potatoe chips - your fingers - whatever.

This time I also tried the bakery side and got a - yes, there is apparently a real place called heaven and it's over on Tidwell & 290 - Chocolate Croissant. Also, got a round of Assiago Cheese Sourdough bread for the house and it's halfway gone - had it with pan grilled turkey breast and Ken's Caesar dressing for supper. Overall wonderful!

Can you tell I had a food day?

I don't know about where you live, but here in Houston there's a chi-chi mall called the Galleria. It's got your Tiffany's and your Neiman Marcus, it's got your Snooty This and your Overpriced That. It's chock full of the kind of store where, if you go in looking a little disheveled, you get dissed by the freaking retail staff (who probably work for minimum wage).

I had the dubious pleasure of experiencing Truck Concourse A-K and Dock J in the literal underbelly of the Galleria today and lemme tell ya - just the smell makes you want to immediately take one of those chemical showers that you see people taking when they come out of ebola contaminated wards. If the customers who were upstairs paying $3,000 for a pair of plastic shoes with a few beads sewn on the podiatrist's dream of a toe box had any idea that only 100 feet away there was a stench that could peel the paint off their Mercedes I wonder if they'd be so anxious to hang around.

My advise to the Galleria: A little soap and water never hurt a loading dock! Sheesh! Don't you every wash those dumpsters??? Maybe hang an industrial sized Glade strip or something! I don't think I'll ever get this smell out of my nose.

Today's work assignments, as dictated by my boss:

1. Call the retired president of ExxonMobil Production and set up his Segway machine training class.
2. Go buy 20 oversized, colorful blow up beach balls (note: the stores have had their Christmas displays out for a month).
3. Paint four 20 foot long signs on white butcher paper that say things like "Terry's Terrific!" and "David's da Bomb!" and "Stephen Sizzles!"
4. Get a bunch of volunteers to help inflate 2,000 Thundersticks on Thursday.

I love my job! Yeah - they actually pay me to do this stuff!