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Have you ever noticed that the people at the airport gates look stereotypically like where they are going. The people going to Albuquerque (home of the meth addiction prevention billboard) are weathered and wearing those leather string ties. The people going to LA have on flip-flops, the state shoe of California.

The people going to Texas - NO, NOT BIG HAIR - they look friendly and sharp. When I boarded the plane I noticed that everyone smiled at me as I walk down the aisle. Okay, this may have been because I was grinning at them from ear to ear, but I also tend to believe that they are friendly people. A lady was struggling getting her bag into the overhead and a business man jumped up to help her. As he leaned over me to get the bag in, he said to me, "Excuse me ma'am" in his charming cowboy accent. (My husband, who lived in Austin but is from South Carolina, will say to me "yes ma'am" when I ask him to do something and I absolutely love it.)

I had a stop-over in Austin and I cried when we landed. Good God, I thought, I am going to be a mess (a hot mess, of course) when I finally make it to Dallas. I had been warned by friends who had experienced the same thing that home, indeed, would no longer feel like home. I was actually worried about the reverse - that is, I was worried that it would feel so much like home that I wouldn't want to leave.

Sure enough, when Dallas came into view, I felt like I was going home. As soon as I stepped off the plane, I noticed it wasn't strange at all. I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders and that my entire body that had been clenched up tight in the 9 years I had been gone finally relaxed. As I made my way into the city, it didn't seem like it had changed at all. I was home.

I cannot live here because I have joint custody of a wonderful son who loves his father who hates Dallas. Accordingly, there is no possibility of living here for a very long time. I will not take my son away from his father.

It's a strange thing, that - to be living someplace that doesn't feel like home. There's nothing wrong with where I live now. In fact, most people would love to live where I live. But Dallas is home, for reasons explainable and for reasons that escape my ability to find words.

The Franchise headquarters are right by the airport so I popped in to say hello before my day long meeting. Everyone knew exactly who I was when I walked in the door and greeted me like an old friend. I can't wait for tomorrow (today, by the time I post this.)

This post is long enough, but I can't sign off without telling each of you that part of my ability to get off the plane onto Texas soil without falling to pieces was because of all of your comments and good wishes and support through this blog. Thank you.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

On Friday, I will be at The Franchise headquarters in Dallas. I am, quite frankly, scared out of my wits by this whole franchise thing.

I wasn't scared when I took the California bar exam, or even the Colorado bar exam when the guy next to me said it was his 7th time trying to pass it. I wasn't scared giving birth. (The morphine drip may have helped. Oh, you're going to pull a baby out of my abdomen from an incision that's only 5 inches long. Good luck with that! Oh looky there - you did it. Good night.)

Although, of course, I have first amendment rights (At least, I'm fairly sure I do. Con law was one big snoozer - those Supreme Court guys sure do like to hear themselves write!) I will not be disclosing the name of the franchise until the franchise agreement is signed and it would be appropriate to do so. I will say that the store sells one type of dessert item and coffee.

Anyway, I am scared shitless because if I fail at this, I fail big. HUGE. Like, this is going to cost 4x as much as my law degree. However, I cannot underscore this point enough - I am assuming I get wholesale coffee.

And we have to think positively - what could possibly go wrong.

Defending Dallas

T minus 2 days until arrival in Dallas. I'm an anxious, excited wad of a ridiculous mess. (If anybody is new here, I lived in Dallas for 13 years but moved away the year my mom passed away, and I haven't been back since.)

One of the people I really want to see is my friend Gary. I love him likely family. He is my former hairdresser but we became best friends when he realized I was willing to go to the Mexican restaurant across from his salon to get margaritas while I was in foils. We're both the kind that doesn't do phone. Accordingly, we lost touch. I've called him 3 times now to tell him that I am coming in but I haven't heard from him. He's the one and only person that I absolutely have to see in Dallas.

Whenever Dallas comes up, so too the comments about big hair. Not one of my Dallas friends had big hair. Not. One. Dallas is a friendly, easy, more sophisticated place than you might think (except for the weirdos at the bar in foils).

First of all, Jane Aldridge from Sea of Shoes lives in the Dallas. She is hands down the most stylish person in blogdom. Check out her photo essay of Marfa (her March archives). I would put those pictures in my dining room right next to the Rauschenberg. And I note that girlfriend has the Prada shoes I have been lusting after this season.

Second of all, this is the line up at Trees (a totally cool concert dive in Dallas) from last weekend: Fair to Midland, Exit 380 and Serosia. Okay, I have no clue who those bands are but the point is they are not Alan Jackson or Dirks Bentley.

Third of all, margaritas in pitchers (like they are meant to be served) and Tex-Mex.

Fourth of all, Dallas is home base for the mothership (Neimans).

And home to this fine institution of higher learning on the left.
And also SMU.

Break for The Hills

Did anybody else notice that Heidi's parents seem to have made considerable strides in the Crested Butte real estate market?

Bitches No More

My arch-nemesis in high school was a girl named Brandi. She wrote on the bathroom wall that I was a fucking awful cheerleader. THE SHAME.

Now, we could debate the merits of giving your child a name that is most commonly associated with strippers, but the point here is that I was devastated.

One of my friends came to my defense on the same bathroom wall (something about Brandi not having been to cheerleading camp and not knowing what she was talking about- burn) and before I knew it, the entire stall wall was covered with a serious debate about my cheerleading skills. Later that year, somebody spray painted "Nancy is a slut" on the side of the school and the topic of debate shifted away from me.

However, both events left me absolutely reeling with the things that girls do to each other. My kind didn't impress me much more through university where I met too many girls openly proud to be getting their Mrs., and then during my pregnancy when a friend said that now I had an excuse not to get a job after law school. Ah, don't you think that if I was going to get pregnant as an excuse not to work I would have saved myself the six figure tuition and the 1L year without tv and just gone ahead and gotten pregnant.

Anyway, I was sceptical of my kind. Until recently. I have found that one of the absolutely glorious things about getting older is that we women are here for each other. We understand who we are and what we want, and we don't judge others for what they are and what they want. My stay-at-home friends offer to pick up my son if I am running late from work, and I offer to take their kids so they can get away for a long weekend.

More and more often I am meeting women who are entirely comfortable in their own skin. They have peace and confidence and self-awareness, and to be in their presence is truly inspiring. There is no force or beauty quite like it. You cannot find this type of girl in high school or university or even in her 20s. You can only find this woman many, many years later.

(P.S. I would like to state for the record that Brandi was a skanky ho.)

No I Wasn't Actually Hoping for a Girl

I have friends that asked me if I had wanted a girl. And I have friends that kept getting pregnant until they had a girl.

The only thing that I thought I might miss having a boy instead of a girl was the Saturday shopping trips. Everyone in the family would meet on Saturday for Saturday lunch, then my mom and I would go off together to shop. The purpose wasn't so much to acquire. Rather, it was walking through the Dallas Galleria that we had our best talks. Most times it was the effortless banter of a mother and daughter who were best friends, tackling topics ranging from being a wife to careers to career shoes. One time I was trying on a Dana Buchman top in the dressing room at Neimans and I got stuck with the top halfway over my head. No matter what I tried, I was stuck with my arms in the air, my torso exposed and my face covered with the shirt. My mom and I laughed pretty hard until I started to panic because I was truly stuck. My mom just kept right on laughing.

The other day I had switched out the winter Kate Spade to a summer bag I got at DSW. Try as I might, I could not find a single Kate to buy at the recent 30% off friends and family sale at katespade.com. This had me slightly worried about the state of the world but then I remembered that The Hills and The City both pick up this week and that made me feel that all was going to be okay. Except for Heidi, who truly did look better before. Much better. I predict that all is not going to go well for her.

Anyway, my son pointed out that my new bag wasn't a Kate and that I should just reuse the zebra Kate from last summer because that one was cool. God I love this kid. So then I asked him if he wanted some new clothes and we ran to the Gap and had a blast picking out jammies with sharks and a ringer t-shirt with a skeleton driving a motorcycle. And it was so much cooler than all the pink bedazzled shit on the other side of the store. Little girls are sweet, but sons rock.

Weekend Treat - Knives and Forks!

Weekend Treat is going to take a bit of a different turn. Instead of just posting pictures of things I want, I am going to post pictures of things I have and that I love. Why would I do that? Because I am a narcissist? Well, I taught my son 240 sign language symbols before he was one, got the highest grade in my business law class, personally started the Guess jeans fad in the early 80s, and can run 5 miles without breaking a sweat, but no. I'm not a narcissist.

Rather, I suspect a large majority of you read blogs for the same reason I do. I'm just plain interested in how other people live their lives and their stories and the things that make them happy. It's like when your husband is driving you to dinner and it's dark so you finally get a chance to look in all the windows of the neighbors who have left their curtains open. I love seeing what color people paint their dining room. This is infinitely fascinating to me. And it is infinitely fascinating to me what people hang on their walls and the lack of things they have to hang on their walls.

But I digress. I simply love it when people share things from their own lives that make them happy. It's interesting and, from time to time, I get an idea or two that I make my own. So, for those of you that feel the same way . . . I own this flatware and it makes me very happy. I own the tortoiseshell ones and have forever and they have held up in the dishwasher for years and years. If I didn't already have the tortoiseshell ones, I would get the orange ones. It would be impossible to stir your coffee with an orange spoon and not be happy. Sometimes I want the pink ones because I am surrounded by boyz (see yesterday's post). I have a gray dining room and an off-white living room specifically so I can add different bright colors as the mood hits.

Napoleon flatware. Horchow.com (Horchow is a division of the morthership [Niemans]).