I am sitting here right now trying to come up with words for the weekend and feeling an enormous sense of accomplishment because I managed to make a fire in the fireplace all by myself. And, yes, our fireplace is a real fireplace that actually requires things like wood and kindling. I would be lying if I said that the whole scene doesn’t feel a little bit like something right out of Little House on The Prairie, assuming that Ma Ingalls lit her own fire and then sat on her couch while she watched the lights twinkle on her Christmas tree as she typed on her laptop.
So, when we last spoke or you last read or whatever, I mentioned that I’d nearly burned my house down in an attempt to microwave some mac and cheese and also possibly broken three of my toes. The update is my house still smells like the seventh circle of sulphuric hell, particularly when I use the microwave, and I’ve downgraded my injuries to just one broken toe. I feel certain it is broken because I kind of want to throw something across the room any time I step on it the wrong way combined with the fact that it is a lovely blue color with some black thrown in.
In spite of my toe injuries, however, life must go on. Although it is going on while I complain incessantly about my toe. Which kind of reminds me of how I was at the Compassion Bloggers’ Reunion dinner after Deeper Still and was going on and on about how HARD AND STRENUOUS it was to work the merch table and sell all those $2.00 t-shirts. Then Shaun Groves introduced me to Dan Woolley who happened to be sitting two seats away from me. For those of you who may not know, Dan was the Compassion employee who was trapped in an elevator shaft buried under rubble for sixty-five hours after the Haiti earthquake last year.
This is why I should just stay home and work on my fire-building techniques. I’m really not suited for public gatherings.
Anyway, I’d promised Caroline a month ago that I’d help chaperone her class field trip to the Witte Museum and even though I was in a lot of pain and at a complete loss as to appropriate footwear, I knew that just like they say in the entertainment industry, the toe must go on.
(I am so sorry. I could not help myself.)
I hobbled my way around the museum looking at all the animal habitats and bug exhibits while Caroline basically acted like she didn’t care one way or the other if I was there. And I spent most of my time realizing that I’ve always been bored by most types of science and that my tall brown boots were a bad choice.
After the field trip was over, I went back to Caroline’s classroom because I’d volunteered to watch the class while her teacher attended the teachers’ holiday luncheon. Before she left the classroom, the teacher asked everyone if they learned anything at the museum that morning. Every hand went up except for Caroline. She said, “Caroline? You didn’t learn anything this morning?”
“Nothing I didn’t already know before I went.”
I’m not sure how we’re going to survive the next fifteen plus years of formal education.
Eventually all my field trip/chaperone/volunteer duties were over and it was time to get ready for the annual Christmas shopping weekend. Mimi and Bops picked up Caroline around 3:30 and I spent the next hour icing my toe and popping Advil in preparation for Gulley and me to hit the mall.
By the time Gulley got to my house I was all psyched up on the rush of adrenaline that comes with the prospect of shopping and temporary freedom from motherhood. I felt like my toe and I were invincible. And we were. Until I got to the entire other side of the mall from where Gulley and I had parked and realized I was actually in a lot of pain.
Poor Gulley ended up having to haul my large packages and her own through the mall as I pitifully hobbled back to Dillards. A lady in Sephora even stopped Gulley to tell her she felt sorry for her that she had to carry so many large bags. Which made us completely hysterical.
And that was the theme for the rest of the weekend. We were completely hysterical. I can’t even count the number of times I laughed until I cried. We covered topics from the PTO to her recent trip to Vegas to Brett Favre to our fear of sending text messages to the wrong person to playing blackjack to how no one is really sad when your pet dies except for you. There was also a moment on Saturday night when Sophie texted me to ask if we’d heard that Will Muschamp had left Texas to take the head coaching job at Florida. Gulley and I admittedly got a little high on schadenfreude.
I’m just being honest.
Anyway, by the time we finished shopping on Saturday we’d visited just about every store in the San Antonio area with a significant portion dedicated to the aisles of Target. We were exhausted but thrilled at the accomplishment of being finished with our Christmas shopping and headed back to my house to wrap all the gifts.
We wrapped and talked and laughed and eventually discovered that VH-1 was airing Top 100 Songs of the 90’s. I don’t think I need to tell you that it felt like the programming team at VH-1 reached into our very souls at that moment. And so we continued to wrap (and sometimes rap) as we listened to the songs that were the music of our lives as we survived college, found jobs, wore denim vests with wrap skirts, mended broken hearts, learned that wine shouldn’t come out of a box, discovered Ross and Rachel, and eventually met our husbands and got married.
My only regret of the weekend is that we finally wore out and went to bed around 2:40 a.m. after discovering that M.C. Hammer’s Can’t Touch This was number sixteen on the list. Gulley had already fallen asleep on the couch so she asked me the next morning, “What was the number one song of the 90’s?” And I had to admit that we hadn’t made it.
And now we’ll never know.
I’d be willing to be money that Sir Mix-A-Lot made it to the top ten though.
So that was the weekend.
It was good.
Now I’m going to go take more Advil and get some ice for my toe while I sit in the glow of the fire I built with my own two hands, several pieces of wood, and more lighter fluid than is probably safe.
_____________________________________________________
Today is the Christmas Tour of Homes over at the Nester’s blog. I guarantee there will be tons of gorgeous homes to check out. I didn’t do a post because all my stuff looks the same as last year and it seemed redundant. However, here is my post from last year in case you’re new and are overwhelmed with curiosity.
There is a chance to win a $200 gift card from BlogHer as part of a new Chef Boyardee program. Click over to my giveaway page to leave a comment for a chance to win.