Those Brenham Blues

It is a rather simple concept that is done every year by thousands of Texans. Who doesn't go to see the blue bonnets in Brenham? While our timing was a bit premature in the season, we woke up and decided to go today - Easter 2008. Normally it is an easy going fun filled afternoon, but this time we we have a 3 month old.

We load Jazzy up shortly after her mid-morning meal. Then we drive out to Brenham. Marianne suggests that we stop and ge sandwiches. Nonsense, we will eat out.

When we get to Brenham we never know where to eat, and are lucky if we can find "historic" downtown. Well we found it easy enough this time, but we were still plagued with the "where to eat" question. This invariably begins the ten minute "cruise" around the town square a hundred times. There is only a couple of places to eat in the "historic" downtown anyway - you'd think we would have learned by now the futility of going there for lunch. The one place that was open was flooded with Easter lunch eaters. I say that we should move on and find something else. Marianne = no happy.

So we take a right (somewhere) and head in some direction and it is trees on every side. Marianne said to turn around and I turned onto a street so that I could safely turn around. Why are there fifty cars coming out of the street I just turned down? Congrats. We are pulling into a massive church just as it is letting out. Good one. Now I turn around and join the church folks in the line waiting to get out of there. The baby is stirring and her tummy is starting to think "empty". Marianne = not happy whatsoever.

Then we decide to turn the way we were headed to begin with (Marianne's brilliant idea). I sure wish one of these trees was a restaurant. Now we are headed toward Somerville. One u-turn later and in a few minutes we are back on 290 - heading the worng direction (again Marianne's idea) unless we were going to Austin (maybe we should have).

The idea is to eat while the baby sleeps and the prospect of finding a place to do that before she wants to eat again is slipping away at a rapid pace. U-turnus secondus.

Now we exit and find a plethora of restaurants and it is peak lunch time. The baby will surely not make it if we try to eat a whole meal. Nothing screams fun like a crying baby in a restaurant. We decide that we want no part of an over stuffed restaurant with a crying baby. After twenty more wasted minutes driving in that area we devise the plan to snack now, feed the baby, then go eat. We grab a couple tacos from Taco Bell (of course in the future every restaurant will be Taco bell) and then make our way to the Applebee's parking lot. We have been in Brenham for well over an hour. Number one on the agenda was to find a place to eat. We are both college grads, but it takes us that long to find a place to eat...in Brenham.

Now we park and wake the baby who realizes how hungry she is and starts telling us all about it in a non-quiet fashion. Marianne rigs a blanket in the window to hide her bottles of milk from the public. She changes the little girl (who has not pooped in days) and it is just wet (whew!). Then she feeds the little girl who is now happy and sleepy looking, and most importantly she is quiet. Now we go into Applebee's.

The restaurant is still full, but it is too quiet. We sit at the table next to the bathrooms, but we are soon surrounded by other late lunchers. They don't have kids, why are they at lunch so late? Anyway, Jazzy is beginning to voice her displeasure at our attempt to have lunch at a restaurant. Now we are taking turns holding her so as to keep her calm. You can't really eat when one arm is holding and the other is patting. If you stop patting to grab a bite, the child protests. Now I am ready to take off my shoes and give my toes a chance to hold a fork, but instead Marianne feeds me (awe).

Now the patting is not working and she is bringing out the big guns. People are starting to look so I get up and go outside to walk it off (which does nothing but delay the inevitable return of her crying as soon as I step foot back inside the restaurant).

So as I am outside patting Jazzy (who is now silent and peaceful), Marianne's old friend and roomate, Rachel, walks up with her husband Trent and a couple of their friends. After we get past the mutual "what are you doing in Brenham" greeting we all go inside and see Marianne. Shortly after coming back inside the novelty of the new friendly faces has worn off on the little girl and she starts up again with her previous protest. Our friends go and get a table and Marianne and I agreed that it was time to abort the mission. She took the little girl outside and I boxed it all up and paid the bill with tip. He should have given us a tip for leaving.

Trent & Rachel

Now we are off to the perfect blue bonnet place that no one knows about. We get there and it looks freshly mown. What?!?! There are more blue bonnets in my yard than there were at our secret spot, and we don't have even one! I reckon that was a bust, but we did pull over and finish our lunch, and of course Jasmine slept the whole time. Why didn't we just get Quiznos?

Then we headed for home, but Marianne saw a sign that was pointing to a lavender farm that was only a few minutes away. Why not? Few minutes meant thirty minuets. Marianne wanted to abort this mission many times, but I said I don't care if it takes an hour to get there we have gone too far to give up. Besides, there were signs every mile telling us that it was a few minutes away. The signs were encouraging, even the fifteenth time we saw one.

We finally make it to the lavender "farm". I am convinced that the people that run it are named the "Lavender's" because there were only a few lavender plants. Then we went to the gift shop. It was a tiny room with only two or three small lavender pillows (Marianne calls them "sachets"). The rest were soaps and knick knacks that you certainly don't go to a lavender shop to buy. Seriously. Why are they selling plates and wreaths that have nothing to do with lavender? My advice to any who would dare make the trip to the lavender farm - skip it.

In all this Jazzy at least spared us the giant poo. What a sweety pie!

Anyway, we decided to go home and maybe try again next week. Hopefully we will read this post before we go as a reminder of why we should stay home. Of course I wanted to go out of town for the whole weekend. I need to have my head examined.

A field of yellow wildflowers