There are eleven days of school left.
I just thought you might want to know.
That means I have eleven more mornings where I have to cobble together whatever meager offerings are in my refrigerator for Caroline’s lunch box. I used my last Lunchable yesterday so there’s a good chance she’ll go to school tomorrow with an overripe tomato and a leftover cinnamon roll.
Oh I’m just kidding.
I’m going to eat that last cinnamon roll myself.
Several weeks ago, I promised our little friend Kate that I would pick her up from school and take her with me to pick up Caroline from “big girl school”.
(Hold on. P just interrupted my train of thought to ask where Albany, Texas is. Clearly this is much more important than the blog post I’m trying to write.)
(Albany is 135 miles west of Dallas.)
(Also, Kate is three years old. That’s what I meant by “little” friend. Just wanted to clarify that she isn’t abnormally small or anything.)
Time got away from me and I realized this is Kate’s last week of school so it was now or never. I made arrangements with her mom to pick Kate up from school, then gymnastics with Caroline and then, for the grand finale, Chick-fil-A for dinner. Let it never be said that I don’t know how to show a three year old a good time.
So yesterday I picked Kate up and spent the rest of the afternoon confirming that it’s probably for the best that I only have one child. Mainly because that seems to be all my brain is equipped to handle. Or maybe it’s just that I am so used to having only one fairly self-sufficient person to keep up with that I forgot small children don’t know how to buckle their own carseats or wipe their own bottoms or avoid traffic.
Anyway, I picked Kate up and lugged her 150 pound carseat across the parking lot and then spent about fifteen minutes in the blazing heat trying to remember how to secure it.
(Wait. Now P wanted the computer so he could look up a snake he saw yesterday. Very pressing matter.)
(He’s pretty sure it was a bull snake.)
(I didn’t ask him where he saw it because I’m afraid he’ll say our yard.)
(Having one computer is terribly convenient and enjoyable.)
After I sweated all my makeup off trying to get Kate in the car, we drove to “Big Girl School” to pick up Caroline. She had requested that Kate and I walk up to get her because I think she was hoping for the chance to impress Kate with an up close look at the big leagues of elementary school.
It totally worked. Kate was very impressed and even intimidated by all the big yellow school buses and screaming kids running to catch them.
We spent the rest of the afternoon getting ice cream, playing dress up, attempting to get dressed for gymnastics, changing hairstyles 843 times to match each other and then actually arriving at gymnastics ten minutes late. The girls went in to their classes while I sat in the waiting room and attempted to catch my breath and wipe the chocolate ice cream off my white shorts.
What I really wanted to do was lay down and take a nap.
But then my friend Julie came in with her kids and a shoebox. Initially I didn’t think much of the shoebox until she sat down next to me and I noticed part of the top of it was cut open. She had a baby bird in it. A baby bird she rescued from her dog’s mouth.
She has christened the baby bird Johnny Cash for reasons that are unclear other than maybe he was lost and now he’s found. I don’t know. She had to bring Johnny Cash to gymnastics because it was time for him to eat. And so we sat and visited while she fed Johnny Cash some sort of mix she bought at the pet store, like it was all perfectly normal and people bring in birds in shoeboxes to gymnastics every day.
You might be a redneck if you bring a bird named Johnny Cash in a shoebox to gymnastics. Or if you’re friends with a person that carries around a bird named Johnny Cash in a shoebox.
The girls finished with gymnastics and I attempted to corral Kate and Caroline toward the car but first Kate wanted to change out of her leotard and back into the nightgown she wore to school that day because it was pajama day. And so we did a quick wardrobe change and then headed to Chick-Fil-A.
Which is where our food arrived just in time for Kate to need to go to the bathroom while Caroline wanted to stay in the playplace and I just wanted to make sure our chicken nuggets didn’t get thrown away. And then Kate hurt her toe and Caroline didn’t like her chicken wrap and I self-diagnosed myself with strep throat or a migraine headache or something.
The bottom line is I SALUTE YOU MOTHERS OF MORE THAN ONE CHILD.
Especially my friend Julie because she not only has three kids but a bird in a box named Johnny Cash.
And, in all seriousness, I adored having Kate and can’t wait to do it again.
After I get some sleep.