I will remember Saturday as one of the hottest days of my life. Although I’m sure I’ve probably survived hotter days. But those days didn’t happen forty-eight hours ago so I don’t need to complain about them at this juncture.
Saturday morning started off just fine. Except for the fact that Caroline doesn’t really get the concept that Saturday mornings are for sleeping in. I can’t figure out why I have to drag her out of bed Monday through Friday but yet she wakes me up at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday morning by leaning in as close to my face as she can get and uses a stage whisper to ask, “Will you turn on some cartoons for me?” After I peel myself off the ceiling, I lovingly say, “Go find your daddy”.
But P had to head out early Saturday morning to help a bunch of men cook about 8000 pounds of meat, give or take 7900 pounds, for our church’s fall festival and he wasn’t available to turn on cartoons and scramble some eggs. So I rolled out of bed, cooked some breakfast, and hoped for a cat nap during Phineas and Ferb before we had to leave for our soccer game.
The game was at 1:00. We got dressed and left for the fields by 12:30. This was a personal best departure time for me, especially considering that P wasn’t there to rush me out the door. It was my day to bring snack so I lugged the cooler across the parking lot and felt like I was about to die because it was approximately 132 degrees with about 204% humidity.
We met P at the field and the Cheetah Girls took to the field for what had to be the hottest, most torturous game of their little soccer careers. Bless their hearts, they all looked like they’d jumped in a pool by the time it was over. And meanwhile all the parents sat on the sidelines and complained about how we’d never been so hot in our lives. As we sat there. Drinking our water. Under our umbrellas. Cheering on our precious babies as they ran up and down the field.
After the game, Caroline and I drove out to the Fall Festival with P to see if I could possibly get any hotter without spontaneously combusting. As it turns out, I didn’t explode. But I wanted to. I would have happily exploded if it meant that I could have gotten out of the heat.
I spent Saturday night trying to hydrate myself and wishing I could pack myself in a bathtub of ice like they did to Almanzo in that episode of Little House on the Prairie when he was so sick and Laura showed up to take care of him and let him know she still loved him even though he’d said that no woman of his was going to have a job. It’s one of my top five favorite Little House episodes ever.
On Sunday Caroline ended up spending most of the day with Mimi and Bops. I was all excited about the alleged cold front that still hasn’t shown up as I type this (if it doesn’t make it here I will say horrible things about the weatherman for leading me on) and decided it would be a great time to really clean off our back porch and get it ready for all the dinners I envision us eating out there once the weather drops down to a crisp 85 this week.
P had planned to sit on the couch and do nothing all day, but I lured him into my cleaning scheme because he doesn’t trust me to mix the bleach in the little pressure washer thing. I mean, you kill the grass dead one or six times and everyone’s a critic.
Somehow cleaning the porch turned into bathing the dogs, taking the screens off all the windows and washing them from top to bottom and cleaning off all the outdoor furniture. I say that like we have vast amounts of outdoor furniture. We have a table. And four chairs. And a glider thing. Still, it was a lot of work.
I also discovered that we don’t have any grass AT ALL on the far side of our house. It’s just dirt. Dirt that turned into mud while I washed the windows over there. So I asked P, “How long have we not had grass on that side of the house?”
“About seven years.”
Clearly I need to get out more.
Later in the afternoon, Mimi and Bops dropped Caroline off. She handed me a Ziploc bag full of acorns and said, “Mama, I picked all these up for you so you can put them in the glass things on the dining room table”.
(The glass urns on my table are filled with pinecones, acorns and little pumpkins right now. Very festive.)
“Thanks, Baby. That’s so sweet!”
What a sweet girl. Always thinking about her mama and taking the time to pick up all those acorns just to make me happy.
“You’re welcome, but I’m going to need to get a few dollars for them.”
Okay, so maybe she’s not as sweet as much as she’s a capitalist.