Estoy Nueces

The parental units have been here since Thursday and I am enjoying their company. They are in bed now and I just got in from some Saturday night work (no, not down on Lamar and 290--legitimate stuff) and I'm going to head to bed myself. I'm enjoying their visit a lot but would certainly love to have 24 hours completely alone. Mark is in Houston tonight.

I had my grandmother and aunt over for lunch today for the first time. They oohed and aahed over the house and it was fun to show off. Mamma lives in her own little world and hardly listens to our conversations and then will pipe up with something completely unrelated. She has her trigger words, of course. I could hardly avoid talking about the beautiful bluebonnets already in bloom at the Wildflower Center although I knew bluebonnet is a trigger. "That boy up there was out there in that front and a neighbor came over and told that boy 'You'd better not mow this, it's bluebonnets' and that boy knew that and mowed down ever' last one of 'em." It's her oft repeated tale. Bluebonnets are rarely in the Panhandle around Amarillo. You don't see them up and down the roadsides like we have become so accusmtomed to in Austin and Dallas. Mamma was/is a great gardener and she had gotten a patch of bluebonnets started in her front yard near Amarillo that were an amazing site. I have a picture of her standing in the middle of them that was printed in the Amarillo Globe News in about 1986 or so. They really were something. Yes, we all know you have to let bluebonnets pop their seed without mowing them for them to reseed and come back year after year. Mamma sold her house and moved to Austin in about 1987 and the new owners mowed that bluebonnet patch and she's never forgiven them and never will. It's one of her many complaints about them.

Must crawl off to the futon. The folks will be up earlier than I am used to and I'd better get some sleep while I can.