Happy belated Cinco de Mayo!
I hope you all had a wonderful and meaningful celebration as you gathered around your beautifully decorated Cinco de Mayo tree.
What? Is that not a tradition in your family?
Yes. Mine neither.
I’m just rambling as I try to figure out how to begin this post and what all we’ve done over the last three days because I am tired to my bones. But it’s the good kind of tired like after you’ve had a ton of fun and not enough sleep.
As an indication of how tired we are and, thus, easily entertained, I’ll confess that P and I just spent six minutes of our lives watching a YouTube video of Spidey vs. The Yeti from The Electric Company. I have no explanation except to say we sometimes go off on random childhood tangents and the next thing you know we’re watching an orange sing opera from an old episode of Sesame Street.
The 70s were a simpler time, man.
Now you’d have apples crying discrimination that they weren’t chosen to sing and Yetis believing they’re being profiled.
Anyway, our weekend. That’s what this is supposed to be about. Not to in any minimize the plight of Yetis.
Friday morning, Caroline woke up with a sore throat and a headache so I let her stay home from school. I think there was a better than average chance that it was a combination of allergies and exhaustion and a May cold front that dropped temperatures into the 40s, but it felt like a good call to have a day on the couch.
However, I wasn’t on the couch with her because we had friends coming in for the weekend and I needed to clean the house and finish getting the playroom/guest room ready for company. I also made a trip to HEB where I bought every onion and potato and ear of corn they had on the shelves in preparation for our big Cinco de Mayo crawfish boil.
My friend Michelle arrived on Friday night and I’d warned her we were going to be totally lame because it had been a long, busy week. Fortunately, Michelle embraced the lameness and we picked up burgers for dinner and were all asleep by 10:00 p.m. The only way we could have been less fun had been if we’d chosen to subject her to YouTube videos from 1970s children’s television shows.
However, we had to get a good night’s sleep because Caroline had a soccer tournament all day Saturday. Which meant we had to get up at 6:30 a.m. and be at the fields ready to play by 7:30. This is not my optimal way to begin a Saturday. Or really any day.
We arrived at the soccer fields, in our fleece jackets because the weather is INSANE right now, and watched Caroline’s team lose the first game. And then a couple of hours later we watched them lose the second game. And then a few hours after that we watched them lose their third game. It was more than slightly disheartening. Especially when Caroline scored an amazing goal and it was called back because the referee said she was offsides. Which she totally WAS NOT because even the opposing coach agreed it was a terrible call.
But what are you going to do when a soccer referee decides to take out the frustration of wearing socks that are pulled up way to high and tight on a nine year old girl?
So we believed we’d reached the end of our tournament hopes and dreams even though we were told there was a slim chance we might make it to the next round. However, I eliminated that as a totally impossible scenario because how do you advance without winning even one game?
We drove home and began to get everything ready for the crawfish boil. My friends, MK and Kelly, flew into town and we picked them up at the airport just in time for all the festivities.
And then we spent the next few hours eating and laughing and peeling little crawfish as fast as we could.
There is really not much I enjoy more than a good crawfish boil. And I also have to mention that I made Pioneer Woman’s Tres Leches cake for dessert and it was so good. Like the kind of good that I haven’t been able to quit thinking about it. You should totally make one sometime soon.
We stayed up way too late talking and catching up on life. Which was why it was such a shock when P woke me up Sunday morning at 8:30 to announce that Caroline’s soccer team had made it to the semi-finals of the tournament and we had a soccer game in three hours.
What is happening?
How do you advance in a tournament when you haven’t won a game? I have no idea. It’s something about a point system. I’d try to give a better explanation but it might involve math and then CHECK, PLEASE.
So we all headed back out to the soccer fields to watch the semi-final game. And. We lost. But they played really hard and Caroline was thrilled to get to play one more game. Sadly, while you can make it to the semi-finals with all losses, it doesn’t help you make it to the championship game.
Then I ran up to Barnes and Noble for a book signing smelling like outside smell and sweaty soccer hugs. I’m sure someone will bottle that fragrance up in no time and sell it for no dollars because blech.
And the rest of the weekend and most of yesterday was spent eating Mexican food at various restaurants in various forms until I put my sweet friends back on a plane to Tennessee. Then we ate cereal for dinner because it felt like some detox was in order.
Cinco de Mayo isn’t for the weak. Only the fittest and those who can eat the most chips, guacamole and crawfish survive.