It's great to live in Austin.  Absolutely wonderful, especially when you read stories like the one in today's Style section regarding in our city.  Austinites are friendly, outgoing and believe in offering a helping hand in many avenues of life.

  But as I read the article, I was struck by the reality that each mom interviewed was a married woman. 
What about the women in our town who for a variety of reasons, find themselves unexpectantly single and the biological clock close to running out?  The women who are forced to examine the question of "how badly do I want to be a mom"?

  Those of us who need to decide if we will regret not taking action on our own but who have just about run out of time to wait for a life partner with which to start a family?
I've started to examine my options and I'm amazed at the number of other women in my same shoes.  Yes, I could simply stay the fun aunt (or tía, as my family calls me) and shower my nieces, nephews, great nieces and great nephew with adoration, attention and, of course, gifts.

  But as a woman whose maternal longing started more than a decade ago, I firmly and completely know that I want a child of my own. 
But what's a single girl to do? 
There is the possibility a male friend would find the idea of co-parenting attractive.

  It is the best of both worlds, isn't it?  A family with a mother/father that you don't have a romantic relationship with but whom you respect and care for all the same.  It's like the best divorced parents in the universe, with no quibbling over child support and visitation.

  The lines are clearly drawn from the beginning, and all expectations reviewed, clarified and agreed upon.  Probably in writing.
Then there are the sperm banks.

  It is shockingly inexpensive to purchase the necessary ingredient to become pregnant.  Not as easy is deciding on what background, education and physical characteristics you prefer in a donor.  And you will spend more money having your OB/Gyn perform the but after all, you do want it placed in the best possible area for the desired result.

 
Insurance would cover the doctor cost if you were medically infertile, but women choosing to become pregnant via IUI pay out of pocket.  Better to pay out than the cheaper, easier yet medically dangerous method of shopping the known meat market nightclubs for a man in the mood who won't ask about birth control.  Don't want to be exposed to any nasty diseases, do you?

  Or struggle with the ethical questions obviously certain to crop up in this scenario.
Adoption is another alternative.  I love my adopted nephews.

  My life wouldn't be the same without them in it.  Private adoption, especially foreign adoption, can be quite pricey.  Tens of thousands of dollars spent to bring baby home.

  Adopting through Texas' is very inexpensive but time consuming. 
CPS requires attending an initial informational meeting, then a meeting to consider whether you are a suitable candidate for the program, homestudy discussion with social workers, hours of parenting classes prior to being told if you have been approved to adopt, fire and safety inspections of your home, and ultimately, placement.  Then there's the social worker visits, both announced and unscheduled, and the back and forth flurry of phone calls and emails in the months leading up to legal adoption.

 
After CPS adoption, if you want to remain on their books as a potential future adoptive parent for more children, you will have parenting classes continuing education requirements each year to the tune of some 20 hours.  Still, even with the amount of time and effort, it is not terribly costly to adopt through CPS, with the added benefit of bringing a local child home.  There are more than 3,000 Texan children of all ages waiting to be adopted.

Aside from the how of having children, then there is the how am I going to do it?  How am I going to juggle finances and a single parent work schedule?  And, how am I going to find someone wonderful to fall madly and desperately in love with me when I'm spending all my free time at home with my new child?

  How am I going to handle the "who's the daddy" questions, much less the inevitable negativity I will face from the folks who believe my decision to become a single parent is selfish, wrong and hurtful to my child?
The single biggest hurdle is financial.  Have you priced infant daycare lately?

  A 2007 Lexus payment is less than daycare.  I am convinced that a nanny would be preferable, but again, who has the paycheck for that kind of expense? Not me.

 
It's a dizzying array of pro's and con's, potential problems and possible solutions.  And when you're physically under the gun, it's just plain and simple stressful.  Do I or don't I?

  Will I have regrets if I don't?  I certainly won't have regrets if I do, but life won't be as easy as it can be in a two parent household.  The choice remains to be made, by myself and many other women in Austin.

Miss USA, Tara Connor, will not relinquish her crown but will have a happy rehab holiday. Yet another sign that we need to re-examine parenting in the modern world.
After allegations of drug use, immoral behavior and underage drinking, Miss USA had a tearful meeting with pageant owner Donald Trump.

The Donald ultimately dismissed her actions as nothing more than a small town girl caught up in the allure of the Big Apple.
The reality is that her inappropriate behavior is a just the tip of a larger problem. Our children are growing up exposed to role models who are in no way, shape or form even close to being moral or ethical.

Ask any child under the age of 15 who Paris Hilton is and they'll tell you she's a star, a wealthy, wealthy star. Doesn't matter that the hotel chain heiress gained popularity after a video of her having sex hit the market.
We have drug abusing high profile athletes, adulterous ministers, teachers engaging in sexual relationships with students and almost monthly a different movie or television star under arrest for DWI.

Miss USA is just a symptom of the larger illness eating away at the foundation of our nation--our youth.
I'm not stating that a "Leave It to Beaver" lifestyle would work in today's world, but I do think we need a return to basic values. We should be a society that promotes basic civility, polite conduct in public but instead end up listening to public profanity laden cell phone conversations.

What has happened to the Golden Rule? And what is so wrong with telling a child that they a) will not wear that in public, b) must be home by curfew, c) may not have free access to all areas of the internet and d) must obey the rules?
When will we stop wondering 'what happened?

' and start taking action? When our teenaged daughters ditch their belly baring halter tops and low rise jeans for skimpier clothes that would make a stripper look conservative? When our sons continually refer to their girlfriends as "ho's" or "biyatches" instead of by name?

As a nation that has a need for the term "babymamma" much less popularizing it is a nation in trouble.
This year procrastination has grabbed me by the waist and flung me to the floor in front of my Christmas tree. Yes, my tree is up, my outdoor lights are blinking merrily at dusk and the halls are decked.

But where are the presents?
Aside from a few small purchases, my shopping list is still waiting to be checked off. I will be battling the crowds of last minute consumers in search of the perfect gifts.

Even so, I've vowed not to hit the 24 hour Wal-Mart or the kitchen gift aisle at the grocery store.
Instead, I'm carefully making a list, checking it twice and paring down the number of stores I need to visit. I'm choosing the most unique and thoughtful gifts imagineable, with the least amount of mileage driven.

Sound impossible? We'll see.
I'm searching out just the right books online before heading over to my favorite bookstore, with alternate titles in hand in case I can't find the exact ones I want.

I'm keeping a list of music and movies in my purse so that a quick trip won't turn into me wandering the aisles trying to remember what my friends and family want versus items they already have. I'm narrowing down my purchases, categorizing them by store and going in with blinders on so as not to distract me from my mission. I have no time for aimless searching.

So although I've started extremely late, I am confident that by Christmas Eve my gifts will be wrapped and ready. And I'll be sipping a glass of wine, relaxing in front of my Christmas tree.
If you're craving fried catfish, head on over to .

The South Austin restaurant anchoring a slightly seedy shopping strip at the intersection of Manchaca and Stassney is tops when it comes to frying up the seafood.
The down home friendliness and "Keep Austin Fried" tee shirts are sure to make you smile. You'll keep the grin on your face when you peruse the menu.

Not only offering fried catfish, the restaurants's shrimp and oysters are delicious as well. I can't say I've ever had a bad meal at Cherry Creek. There are alternatives to fried fish on the menu such as blackened or grilled fish and the boiled shrimp dinner.

For non-seafood folks, try the ribs. There's also chicken fried steak and chicken finger baskets, sandwiches and po' boys. The appetizers are consistently good, from the fried green tomatoes to my favorite, the basket of fried crawfish tails.

Side items are usually french fries, excellent pinto beans and some of the best cole slaw I've tasted outside of my Aunt June's kitchen. The secret to the slaw is the tiny amount of pineapple added for a well balanced tanginess. And hushpuppy lovers, the pups at this joint are perfectly fried cornmeal and jalapeño delights.

A friend recently blogged about the meals his mother cooked on the very few times she manned the stove in their house. Laughing through his descriptions of hot tuna casserole and Spam salad inspired me to take a walk through my childhood food memories. My mother is Hispanic and my father is Anglo.

My mother didn't know how to cook when she married Dad, but after a few weeks of cleaning up the disaster he can make of a kitchen she called her mother and sisters and begged for help. As a result, my childhood meals were heavy on the Tex Mex side, light on mainstream American fare.
Mom made flour tortillas once a week, usually on Sundays.

I'd watch her as she measured out the flour, shortening and water, mix the dough and section it off to be rolled out. She always made perfect circles. My tortillas pretty much come out the shape of Texas.

I'd be her tortilla flipper, waiting by the cast iron comal for just the right time to flip the tortilla over. When I was young, I used a spatula. As I grew older, I did it the way she did, with my fingers.

I'm convinced my grandmother probably had no feeling left in her fingertips by the time she passed away. The nerve endings were cauterized by decades of tortilla flipping.
The tortillas lasted us almost all week, and we used them in place of bread.

If they ran out, or became stale fast (summer) then we'd turn to regular bread. I'd butter a tortilla and smear jelly on it, or slather it with mustard and add cheese and lunchmeat. Mmmmm.

I can remember fighting over the last tortilla with my sister.
We had carne guisada, enchiladas, tacos and always, rice and beans. We had chili in the winter and chalupas with refried beans, cheese, lettuce, tomato and guacamole on Fridays during Lent.

I don't think I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich until I was in junior high school.
When we'd travel from Louisiana back to San Antonio to visit both sets of granparents there would be even more interesting foods. My abuelo would buy barbacoa and fresh corn tortillas to have after mass on Sunday.

We'd sprinkle the tender and rich meat with salt, pepper and salsa and enter gustatory bliss. My madrina, my Aunt Marian, made the best menudo in the family. At an early age I was sitting down to a bowl of the tripe and hominy stew, squeezing lemon into it and adding a spoonful of diced onion.

No matter which one of my Mom's relatives' homes we were visiting, there was always pan dulce. I'd reach for the marranitos, the ginger bread pigs, to beat my sister to them. In turn, she'd steal the last pumpkin empanada.

I can turn my nose up at doughnuts but put a bag of Mexican pastries in front of me and my resistance melts.
My Mammy (great-grandmother on Dad's side), Granny (grandmother) and whichever one of her seemingly endless stream of husbands had vastly different foods at their house on the other side of San Antonio. Granny's idea of breakfast was a slice of white bread buttered with margarine or oleo and liberally sprinkled with white sugar.

She fed us mustard, cheese and onion sandwiches, too. I'm certain I can credit her for my love of strongly flavored foods. And alcohol.

Mammy was the first to introduce alcoholic beverages to my twin and me. In fact, I'm sure she was responsible for contributing to the delinquency of all my cousins, too. She gave us juice glasses of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill wine at naptime and bedtime, and prescribed peach brandy for our coughs.

The first time I got drunk was when I was a toddler. My father and uncles were enclosing the back porch to make an additional room at Mammy Granny's house. They left the beers they were drinking on the floor while they went out back to saw more lumber.

Big mistake. My sister and I found them. All of them.

We must've been in foul tempers when we woke up after that "nap".
It wasn't all about white bread, sugar and alcohol, though. The Anglo side of the family were good bakers, too.

My Granny made the best tea cakes ever. Kind of like a thick, softer sugar cookie, tea cakes were my favorite homemade cookie. Before she died she wrote down the recipe she kept in her head.

Unfortunately, she did not write it down before the Alzheimer's set in and now we have no family heirloom cookie recipe. It died with her memory.
The single best thing my Anglo relatives introduced to me is seafood.

My aunt and uncle lived on the Texas coast and every visit to see them brought fresh fish and shellfish. I was probably 4 when I ate my first raw oyster, standing in ankle deep water in the bay next to my uncle's boat. He shucked it in front of me and I tipped the contents into my mouth and fell in love.

The wonderful tang of the ocean and the tenderness of the meat is unforgettable.
I'm sure I probably ate meals that weren't great or as nutritionally sound as they could've been, but not often. And the memories of hot, honey coated buenuelos or the sweetness of creamed corn that a few hours ago had still been on the cob and in the garden far outweigh the times I ate frozen pizza.

We were poor but we ate better than most wealthier families.
Of all the items one could imagine for use in the midst of a war, is not foremost in my mind. The aerosol cans of colored foam strings are being used to safely check for nearly invisible trip wires attached to bombs.

One soldier's full of cases of Silly String, destined for a flight to the Mideast. Because aerosol cans are considered hazardous materials, she has lined up a pilot who will fly the cargo to Kuwait where it will then be distributed in Iraq. With the support of two priests from her church, she has collected 1,000 cans of the colored party string from the community.

The makers of the string, Just For Kicks, Inc., has contacted her to discuss a factory donation.
What can Silly String do for our soldiers?

Troops spray Silly String from doorways into buildings they're searching. The ultralight foam string hangs suspended from the wires without tripping the bombs. Because the cans shoot string up to 12 feet out, the soldiers can complete their search faster while staying safe.

You have to hand it to the Young Conservatives of Texas. They are not your average student political organization, content to hold voter registration drives and invite state politicos to speak at their meetings. These are the young guns who brought us "Border Security Ball Toss" a game in which participants gathered at Gregory plaza to attempt to toss a ball through a hole in the middle of a giant cut out of the United States.

Now they're showing their Christmas spirit via an ACLU-themed nativity scene on campus on Monday and Tuesday of this week. Protesting what the group says is the systematic removal of Christmas from the public domain is a nativity with Joseph and Gary, instead of Joseph and Mary. Because the organization believes the extremist views of the ACLU have a direct negative impact on religious freedom of expression, they also feature a terrorist shepherd and Nancy Pelosi as an angel with the Three Wise Men depicted as Lenin, Stalin and Marx.

Pictures can be seen .
While I think it is important to retain religious expression and the right to display holiday ornamentations related to your religious celebration of choice, I'm not so certain everyone would agree, especially conservatives. If this particular nativity scene had featured a completely pro-homosexual marriage and family angle, the ultra religious factions would be screaming like Lucifer himself had a family portrait on display.

What about a display commemorating the most important Muslim feast day, Eid al-Adha, which starts on December 31st? Can you ensure the decorations wouldn't be vandalized by some ignorant person who believes all Muslims must be evil terrorists?
If we are going to fight for freedom, we need to be able to uphold the rights of all Americans, not just the ones whose beliefs most closely match our own.

There are 40 million people in our world who are living with HIV. Please support the fight to end the spread of AIDS. Do what you can to help.

Wear a red ribbon, educate others, speak out, donate, practice safe sex, get tested regularly and encourage others to be tested as well. Don't become a statistic.
In memory of David, Cam, Amy, Todd, Mark and others who have touched my life and my heart.

Your suffering may be over but you have not been forgotten.
Learn more about what you can do at the official site.