You know you're a redneck if your flatscreen is bigger than your trailer

The house is kind of a work zone right now with baseboards, paint buckets, tarps and boxes of laminate flooring piling in different spots. James has been busy all week stripping Lil Bro's old room and preparing it for baby River. You'd be amazed how fast the smell of teenage boy disappears when you rip up the carpet! God only knows what that room has seen over the last 3 years, but it's starting to get its innocence back!

All this remodeling has made me want to do all kinds of things to other parts of the house. Over time we will do some things, like laminate floors throughout, more paint. But i'm also a realist. This is our first house, we won't live here forever, and there's only so much you can (and should) do in a 1,100 square feet.

But not everyone feels that way. I'm not naming names (maybe it's because they are related to me), but some folks have a champagne decorating style in a beer house! We all know that person who is decking out there starter home in granite, wood floors, marble tiles, gawdy fountain. Yeah yeah, it all sounds good in theory, but seriously, if your neighbors might be cooking meth, there's no reason for you to have granite counter tops!

Ain't nothing funnier that pulling up to a trailer and walking into a mansion. I love the folks who have champagne taste on inside, but beer decor on the outside. I'm talking old cars (and car parts) strung across the yard along with broken garden gnomes, but inside new flooring, stainless steal appliances and furniture from Martha Stewart Living.

Grown-ups who do this make me wonder if when they were in their early 20s if they were the kinda folks who had nothing in their living room but a huge TV. Remember going over to a homie's house and he had wack furniture (like old school lawn furniture), plastic cups and plates (that he reused), but he had a slammin' TV and sound system!

I'm not gonna lie, the Brown House (that was my college apartment. a black girl and two mexicans) had some ghetto flavor going on. We had lawn furniture in the spare room -- but it was the nice kind. And a mattress in the living room (we have real furniture too) that came in handy for last-minute overnight guests. But i'm happy to say that my 2 roommates and I did not carry that decorating style over to adulthood!

Thank heaven for little girls...

First let me say that we are safe. Tornadoes hit pretty close to us, but they missed our area by a several miles.

So how did i spend my night of storms? Huddled in my bathroom? In my closet with a radio? Holding on to a light post outside? None of the above. I was at the hospital with Lil Bro. For a couple of hours, Lil Bro, his girlfriend (who i was kind to -- even though it's hard) and I were huddled in a dark hallway on the 4th floor of Norman Regional Hospital. Lil Bro was the youngest patient on that floor by 70 years and the only one who was not in a hospital bed (he was in a gown, hooked to an IV).

Why was Lil Bro in the hospital you ask? Well, lets just say that when you don't know how to walk away from a fight, you risk the chance of getting your jaw broken in to places. Yes, Lil Bro and a former-friend decided to play Fight Club on Saturday and for two days Lil Bro was walking around with a broken jaw.

He is still awaiting surgery (it was supposed to happen yesterday, but the storms and injured folks pushed him and his jaw to the back of the line). Lil Bro's incident is just another reason why i'm beginning to hope that Pumpkin Seed is a girl. Boys are rough. My mama, bless her soul, raised two of them. And i can honestly say they had WAY more bumps and boo-boos than i ever did.

Here are a few things i WON'T be dealing with if I have a girl (*note: all of these actually happened to Middle Bro, Lil Bro or both):

• Getting a call from school because tiny privates were accidentally zipped up.
• Getting bit by a mysterious bug. Beating it to death -- so badly that to this day the type of bug has never been identified.
• Breaking a toe just months after learning to walk -- and then taking only 5 minutes to learn how to hobble around in a tiny dinosaur cast.
• Setting a couch on fire.
• Setting a bunk bed on fire.
• Setting your big sister's room on fire.
• Putting the pomeranian in the dryer.
• Feeding the fish dryer lint
• nearly poking an eye out while trying to cut off your eyelashes (lashes your sister would kill for).
• Taking a pair of clippers to your own 3 year-old head. cutting so far down that the hair still does not completely grow there.
• Trying to jump over your little brother with your bike, but landing on him instead (leaving Lil Bro with a tire-track scar across his belly).
• Getting in trouble for throwing black cats at your 2nd grade teacher.
• Eating a spider -- another fun trip to the ER
• Piercing your ear with a vice grip and a needle

I'm sure there are tons more things these boys did over the years, but i've either forgot them or blocked them out (and this list does not even include the teen years).