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You might be a redneck if..

You miss your cousin's wedding because it conflicts with the NASCAR event you have tickets for.

donwload vivaldi

I grew up in a small town, and have always been close to my cousins. Both my mother and her sister stayed in Teague and married right out of high school, just like you're supposed to in that town. Between them there were 5 children, 4 boys and a girl, and we were more like brothers and sister than cousins in many ways. One was in the same grade as I was in school, and we've always been especially close.

Any of you from a small town know how that works. I think about it a lot of times when Michele talks about being near her family. Even though that's not a small town, the neighborhood is a lot like the small town I come from, and her descriptions of her family are similar to the way we were.

I say were because my mother and her sister don't speak anymore. Tempers run hot in my family and, without getting into details, when my granny died things happened between them. Both are absolutely certain they are right, and I'm quite sure they'll never speak again. Frankly, I don't give a rat's ass about that. They've gone years without speaking before. Just as in that case, both are wrong and both are right, but both are acting like petulant children in deciding that being right is more important that having a relationship with their sister. Fine. None of the times that my aunt and mother fought in the past did any of us cousins let it affect our relationships. We knew better than to align ourselves either way since it was a fight that can't be won, and didn't involve us anyway.

Because of the venue Joy and I chose for our wedding, the number of people we can invite is somewhat limited. Not terribly so, but we can't have a huge wedding at that location. I have a huge family, and most of them still live in Teague. That's true of both sides of the family. If I invited all of my cousins and aunts and uncles on all sides, there's no way we could have the wedding where we wanted it. That really wasn't an issue though. Most of my family wouldn't really care either way, I don't think. The only issue was inviting some and not all of them. Even if they didn't mind not being invited, they still might mind if someone of the same 'rank' as them was invited and they weren't. This had me a little concerned, but not terribly. I wanted my cousing Melissa at the wedding, and frankly that was all of the Teague family outside of grandparents and immediate family I cared about.

I intended to invite Aunt Marla and Melissa. Ultimately, we decided on inviting a lot of the family, but that's beside the point. Melissa's daughter was who we had planned on being the flower girl in the first wedding, and in this one too. The first time Joy and I were engaged, Melissa was as excited as anyone in the family. She wanted to plan the whole thing for us, and assured us she could have it ready in a matter of a few months. It was because of her excitement about the first one as well as how close she and I had always been that I really wanted her there. Plus we did want her daughter to be the flower girl.

Now it gets confusing. My aunt told me when I first told her about the wedding that she thought it would be better if I didn't invite her. She didn't want any tension between her and my mother to carry over to that. I told her I'd intended to invite her but if she wasn't comfortable, so be it. A few weeks later, I changed my mind and told her she was going to be invited. I understood if she didn't feel like coming because of things with her and my mother, but that I wouldn't feel right if she wasn't invited. Especially since her oldest grandchild was going to be in the wedding. Melissa and I had spoken briefly when the wedding was first decided, but before a venue or date had been chosen, and it was just understood her daughter would still be the flower girl. I've since called several times to confirm with her, but for one reason or another could never get her on the phone.

Finally, last week, I talked to her. She told me that on the weekend of the wedding, she and her husband have NASCAR tickets, so they'll be away in Dallas the whole time. I didn't know exactly what to say. It actually took it a second to sink in. I was about to ask how she was going to get her daughter there for the rehearsal and the wedding if they were in Dallas, and it hit me. She's not coming to my wedding. I don't know the real reason. Either she's decided that because of tensions with my mom and my aunt, my aunt doesn't feel welcome and therefore she's not coming, or she honestly decided that attending a car race was more important than coming to my wedding. I don't know which would be worse.

Roger Clemens didn't betray anyone.

I'm not now, nor have I ever been a Roger Clemens fan. I wasn't crazy about the idea of Clemens signing with the Astros. I know that the Astros are better this year, at least on paper, than they were last year, and a lot of that has to do with the two ex-Yankees that have been signed recently.