Guilty Pleasures: The Wide Open Spaces Edition

in Guilty Pleasures

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The Dixie Chicks. She needed… wide open spaaaacessss. This month’s Texas Monthly ran with the cover Who Killed The Dixie Chicks? And did they really have to die?” (It also has a pretty awesome looking onion ring recipe!) (Another good piece from CNN is here.)

For the record, I know the answer to both of those questions. And I won’t get all preachy here about it (I save that for Margarita Tuesdays and for Facebook on days when the Supreme Court is hearing muy grande significant cases) so I’ll just leave it like this:

What happened to them – that was a [radio edit] shame.

I remember forcing my grandpa to stop and flip back to Austin City Limits to watch The Chicks. He was probably expecting something more like the Spice Girl torture that my girl-cousins (like I have to tell you they were girls) subjected him to. Instead, The Chicks managed to win that old, dusty cowboy over inside 30 seconds: “That little lady plays a mighty fine fiddle.” Do you know how hard it is to impress a deep-East-Texas 60-something with music not written & performed by other 60-somethings named Merle or Waylon? Yeah.

Their 4 albums rank in my all-time top 10. If you ever see me jamming at a stoplight like I’m the only person in the entire world, you now know for sure that it’s not to Taylor Swift.

Matching With Friends

Matching with Friends.
Hi. My username is shawndah and I’m a “With Friends” addict. (^ Best score ever, by the way!). I’m also a fierce scrambler (my husband called me a freak of nature when he watched me play a round, use no bonuses, spot him 60 seconds, and still beat him).

(He also stopped playing me after that.) (But somehow we’re still married.)

I frequently hit the “Sorry, you have to finish your current games before you can bog down our server with another. Why don’t you put your phone down for a few minutes and mop that kitchen floor, m’kay?” limit.

That limit is 30 games, by the way 😳

HEB Barracho Beans

HEB Barracho Beans. Many of my friends and family still seem to think that I’m some food snob that won’t eat anything I didn’t grow, harvest, and cook myself. Totally wrong – I eat store-brand boxed mac & cheese just like all the normal people who don’t take a photograph of their every meal. That said, I am completely a margarita snob. And completely in love with HEBs new Barracho Beans.

And not just because they’re made with Shiner Bock. (But in large part because they’re made with Shiner.) They taste almost like my mom’s beans, but spicier and just a hint of beer. The Little and I nearly had a cage fight for the leftovers the first night I “cooked” them. I gave in.

It just felt like the right thing to do.

Dogfish Head Tweason'ale Lip Balm

Dogfish Head Brewery Tweason’Ale Strawberry Lip Balm. My good beer friend Laura sent me a couple of lip balms in her last goodie package, one for me and one for The Little. One of those lip balms now has teeth marks in it. And that’s how we know which one isn’t mine.

But it tastes like strawberry and for some reason that immediately reminds me of the 3rd grade when my all-time favorite teacher Ms. Hooker (I swear!) would bring in her NASA boyfriend to talk to us about shuttle launches and astronaut training. Just one of the many perks to growing up in Texas.

supernatural

Supernatural. “Dammit Sammy!” Think X-files, with more apocalyptic/biblical overtones. And hotter lead actors. Ghosts, goblins, angels, and leviathans. That’s Supernatural. We frequently joke that we should drink everytime Dean drops a “Dammit Sam,” but let’s be honest here. We have a little one to think of and we’re not that young anymore.

Also, do you know how hard it is to pull off Drinking-Game-TV on a Wednesday night? (Hint: it’s exactly as hard to do as it was on Fridays before the show moved.)

I’m pretty sure that there are a few episodes where we wouldn’t make it out alive. But we’ve watched for 8 seasons now – which completely blows my mind because we’ve actually known each other longer than that.

Emmaline

Violette Field Threads Emmaline Dress. Speaking of getting old… I’m going to try to sew that dress! (Stop laughing.) Partly because I’m no-carbing it through April which means alcohol is off limits and what else left is there to do besides make clothes for my daughter.

But mostly because there is no part of me that could ever ever ever spend $88 for an everyday dress for a 3 year old. My stain-removing skills are just not advanced enough to support that kind of investment. And for the price of one pre-made dress, tonight I downloaded the pattern and ordered enough fabric for 3 chevron maxi dresses! It only took my mom like 7 hours to teach me how to thread the old sewing machine that she gave me so I’m confident that this will turn out well.

(It’s hard to tell through the load of sarcasm there, but I am super excited about this.)

(That was not more sarcasm.)

17 comments… add one
  • Jami

    Haha! I love what you said about how your husband won’t play you in scramble because you’re too good…my husband won’t play me either! 😉

  • Delia

    A) loved the Dixie Chicks. What Texas girl didn’t? B) that dress is freaking adorable. C) good luck seeing. It always sounds like a great idea until I need to actually pull the machine out of the box.

  • We love boxed mac n cheese too!!! I dont know what it is about it…

  • Not to get all weird on you – but I think we totally must have an ESP connection! I was listening to Wide Open Spaces this week, and thinking about how their first 2-CD’s were so influential and important at that time in my life. I had just moved here to the Shore from “the big city” – a road that I’d traveled as a child, wide eyed and grinning – I never tired of it, and I still haven’t. So basically, completely and totally related. Also – it still doesn’t get better for me than “Goodbye Earl”.

    I was also thinking – where are they now? How could you abandon us Dixie Chicks?

    So freaking weird that you mention it!

  • Also, I need those beans! Yum!

  • Love that cute little dress! I can’t wait to one day try making some kids clothes to save money.

  • I was just thinking about the Chicks this week. For all the drama and their disappearance, I really wish they’d come back. They were/still are, I’m sure, amazing.

    Dixie Chicks. Beer. HEB. Pretty dresses. Great round up!

  • Aw, the Dixie Chicks. I remember listening to them obsessively in high school, then once again as an adult in CT. Of course, the second go around was mostly me crying while listening to “Wide Open Spaces” because there were none to be found in Connecticut and I was so homesick. Good times!

    The only way to get better at sewing is to haul that machine out and mess up a few times. What a beautiful dress!

  • Goodbye Earl! Great roundup. You’ve almost convinced me to check out Texas if only for the beans and chapstick 🙂

  • My roommate in college and I watched Supernatural RELIGIOUSLY. And then…we stopped when we graduated. I think I need to reconnect with Dean and Sam.

  • OMGosh…I love that dress! Is it bad that I want to make one for me? LOL!

  • Ellie

    The Dixie Chicks did themselves in. Should of stuck to music not politics. It just doesn’t sit well with Americans if you go to foreign country and bad mouth our President.

  • I live in Texas and haven’t heard of Dixie Chicks before! I must see what it’s about.

    PS: I’m a new food blogger on Chinese/Italian/Korean/Japanese/American recipes and restaurant reviews. Feel free to browse around my page.

  • Ellie – From a PR standpoint, it was a terrible move and terrible timing. But I couldn’t disagree more with the “shut up and sing” mentality.

  • Tracey

    From a girl born and raised in the Lubbock area, I totally get what Natalie Maines had to endure (watch The Education of Shelby Knox for another look at it). Wasn’t a fan of their singing, but thought what they said was right on. Now that I have finally moved out of Texas I see they were even more right. 10 years on it’s funny how most people see the motivation to go to war for what it really was….I guess hindsight is 20-20. I wouldn’t be ready to make nice either after all that B.S.

  • I, too, am a forever fan of the Chicks 🙂 And it was a damn shame what happened…I still have to SMH about it. Now…off to listen to, “Not Ready to Make Nice”!

  • LOVE the Dixie Chicks, in fact, I believe somewhere out there is a home video of me and some high school classmates performing one of their songs at the talent show! We auditioned with Earl’s Gotta Die, but the school didn’t let us perform that one. It was badass anyway 🙂

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