Come Mess with Texas! or Everything IS Bigger Here

I love Texas.
I didn't think I would.
But the term 'friendly Texan' is true to the letter.
And everything really is bigger here: 

The Hospitality
My Hair,
& ahem...

My new Texas home at The Rosen House Inn, no biggie

Allow me to explain -
I have been blown away by the way I've been welcomed.
The Texans are rolling out the red carpet in a very big way.
And I'm joyfully dancing on it in my cowgirl boots.

I love it here!  'Mom' gives me a hug with breakfast every morning.

There was a friendly wave from each person I passed on their porch during my run this morning.
Then a delicious breakfast and warm hug from my 'Mama' hostess at the Rosen House B&B here in Fort Worth.  Not to mention that I already have a new local best friend.  His name is Elio, or Horatio, or Eliodoro, depending when you met him.  He writes a poetry blog called Fat Boy Speaks Fresh.  It's an ironic title given that he's almost as waifish as all the other artists I've ever met.  He wears all black, excepting his Star Wars t-shirt leftover from Grade 3.  And he has a hip haircut.  He's showing me all the coolest things in Fort Worth.  And there are many.  I want to wear a head camera when I'm with him to capture everything he says.  He's that funny.  I'm reminded of Aryeh, a man I met in an igloo in Colorado.  I wanted to record him as well.  In fact, I did.

Aryeh explains his near amptutation after an injury sustained on an extreme ski film in Alaska

Elio, on whether someone actually likes you, or they're just being 'Texas friendly'

The hospitality here extends to perfect strangers - my server when I arrived was named Honey - and she was one. I sat outdoors at Mijos on the very cool Magnolia Street.  She simply delivered to my table everything she thought I'd like to eat and drink.  Salmon fish tacos and Thai basil sake. Amazing.  This Canadian girl is loving it here! The bank clerk actually seemed devastated that she couldn't think of a nearby drug store to help with my hair problem.

Which brings me to my hair problem.  Texas is a bad hair state for me.  My red curls act as a barometer.  They increase in volume with humidity.  Here, they've gone wild - and like all things Texan, big.  My face is barely visible through the fuzz of frizz.  A euphemism would be to call it a halo.  I'm calling it a....nightmare?  It was awful when I first visited Houston at age 17.  I think it may actually have soured my experience.

I had to bring in the heavy hair artillery in anticipation of a return to Houston, bad hair city extraordinaire.

*a warning to curly-haired readers:  Houston is the worst hair city I've encountered to date.
Specialists in the emergency room of the extreme-curl-makeover salon I visited in crisis today concurred.  They gave me this product.  It went against every green grain in my body to buy the aerosol can filled with questionable chemicals, but hey, a girl's gotta look good on stage.  I'm not sure that it's helping.

I went to Houston visit my much older, much cooler, on-a-full-ride-tennis-scholarship-at-Rice-University-cousin while I was still in high school.  I really wanted to fit in and seem cool.  This is very hard to do when your hair's so big that you can barely make it through the door.  Somehow, in spite of this, I managed to enjoy the state enough to return for this year's Radical Reels tour of Texas.  The big hair is a problem, but I'm learning to live with it.  The generous engaged audiences and perhaps the most friendly people on earth are offsetting the aforementioned issue.  But truth be told, I've most likely stayed in Calgary for over a decade not because of my friends, family or the excellent bike paths, but because my hair generally looks fabulous there.  I'm that vain.

But back to Texas.
It's fabulous.  Despite my left-leaning, environmental bent, I've recently developed a thing for trucks.
There are many of them here. Trucks.  And Texans.  Neither of which are things that my progressive, tree-hugging and way-left-of-liberal self expected to love.  I do.  I love them. 
It just goes to show you.  Stay open.
And come to Texas.

Oh, and as for EVERYTHING being bigger in Texas, well...

my Southern breakfast was HUGE this morning.