This one thing will speak volumes about my weekend.
I was in bed at 9:45 p.m. on Friday night.
I know. This fast pace is going to kill me.
The truth is we all went out to eat Mexican food for Bops’s birthday on Friday night and then called it a night early because Caroline had a soccer game at eight on Saturday morning. Which meant we had to be out at the soccer fields forty minutes before game time. And the soccer fields are about thirty minutes away from our house. For those of you doing the math at home, this means we had to be up at an hour that is way too early for a Saturday.
I brought my coffee and did my best to pretend I was awake but at some point my dad tried to call me on my cell phone and I just hummed along to the tune until P asked, “Are you going to answer that?” And I realized I wasn’t just hearing a song in my head. Sometimes it’s hard not being a morning person.
But the nice thing about an early morning soccer game is that you have the rest of your Saturday free. And I also found it to be a nice emotional break that the Aggies weren’t playing, even though I’ve claimed to be less emotionally invested. I still know myself well enough to know that I won’t be able to help with the hand wringing and the pacing and the fretting once they play again. So it was nice to have a Saturday when I had no real emotional football investment, although I was happy for LSU. I know I say that Les Miles is Lord Voldemort in a purple windbreaker, but he is a very endearing Lord Voldemort and, when I realized he’d just lost his mom the night before the game, I was all in for an LSU victory. When he was interviewed after the game and did his rambly thing about the stadium and the fans and ended with a sweet “Martha Miles” it just about did me in.
Anyway, that was a nice moment but it wasn’t the highlight of my weekend. That moment came on Saturday afternoon. Gulley and I had made plans to spend the whole day together with the kids because our husbands were going hunting. And so after Caroline’s soccer game, we made a stop for breakfast tacos and then made our way to Gulley’s house. The goal for the day was to make Gulley a tutu. A tutu? Yes, I said a tutu. She’s going to be Wonder Woman for Halloween, but she teaches preschool and felt a tutu version of a Wonder Woman costume is probably more appropriate than the Lynda Carter version which, let’s be honest, is essentially a very patriotic swimsuit.
So our first order of business was to go to Joann’s Fabrics. What we didn’t factor in was that whole free world was going to be getting their craft on this Saturday and the place was packed. I had no idea that many people still sewed and crafted. I thought that’s what Etsy is for. But there is a huge fabric contingent out there and I can only blame Pinterest and all the delusions it creates. Fortunately, we only needed eight yards of royal blue tulle and there was a separate line for amateurs who only needed one cut. Apparently “one cut” is what you call it when you only have one bolt of fabric. I don’t mean to dazzle you with my fabric store acumen.
(I also need to tell you now this isn’t my first rodeo putting together a Wonder Woman costume because Caroline was Wonder Woman when she was five and it required me to spray paint some boots red.)
We knew exactly what we needed because I took some time that morning to watch a video on how to make an adult tutu because that’s a real topic that someone took the time to explain. God bless the internet. So we made it back to Gulley’s house with tulle, elastic, safety pins, white sparkly felt and hot glue sticks and went to work. This is exactly the kind of task that awakens every compulsive impulse I have and I was determined to make the most perfect tutu ever.
After a couple of hours (We took a break to make chocolate chip cookies. Actually, Gulley made the cookies and I just ate the dough by the spoonful.) we were putting the final touches on the tutu, including gluing on some white sparkly stars. This required hot glue and explains why I have what I believe to be at least a second degree burn on my first finger. Apparently, it’s a bad idea to use an appendage to help adhere felt to tulle because tulle is porous and the hot glue will end up on your finger and cause you to hop around and yell profanities. Which is behavior I thought I was going to avoid this Saturday since the Aggies weren’t playing.
I realize that none of this sounds like the makings of a high point of the weekend but, wait, there’s more. The kids were milling around the living room and driving us crazy so we sent them outside to burn off some energy. And then we finished Gulley’s costume and she decided to go try the whole thing on so we could see how it all came together. She came out of the bedroom in full Wonder Woman regalia including the golden lasso of truth and we oohed and aahhed over our skills until I suddenly saw her face completely change as she looked out through the sliding glass doors into the backyard.
I followed her gaze and quickly saw what she was looking at. Our three kids. Covered in mud. Those fools had turned on the hose and made a mud pile and were taking turns running through it. Do you know how many times over the years we’ve sent them out in the backyard and told them not to turn on the hose and play in the mud? Too many to count. That’s the answer. Too many to count. It has been one of our standard mantras ever since they were five, four and two and we found them wallowing like a family of pigs in a mud pile they created when we turned our heads for thirty seconds.
But at some point in the last year or so, we quit telling them that. Because we believed (wrongly) that it wasn’t really a concern now that they’re twelve, eleven and nine. Oh but we were wrong. It’s like they were waiting for the day they could legitimately claim, “But you didn’t tell us not to!”
And that’s how Wonder Woman ended up yelling at three muddy kids late Saturday afternoon while I watched through the glass door, thoroughly tickled by the whole scene.
It’s just lucky for them that she doesn’t actually know how to use that lasso of truth.
Maybe the real wonder of Wonder Woman was to wonder why her kids thought making a mud pit in the backyard was a good idea.