I know y’all probably get tired of me talking about the heat, but look at this.

And that was after we’d been in the car for a few minutes. It originally read 126.

I’m not kidding.

Also, the yellow hazard light is lit because the stay wag was having brake light issues that have since been remedied. I know you’re so relieved.

Anyway, we have even been under heat advisories. That kind of thing doesn’t generally happen in Texas because, well, it’s Texas. It’s supposed to be hot. And as P likes to remind me (multiple times!) every summer, when you live in San Antonio you’re practically living on the edge of a desert.

But yet I continue to complain about the heat.

Needless to say, we’ve been spending a lot of time inside this week for two reasons.

1. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but it’s hot.

2. I still haven’t recovered from our pool grill experience on Friday night and so we haven’t been back.

3. Plus, we’ve been busy doing other things like going to Target and my niece, Sarah’s, birthday party. Oh, and going to see Mr. Popper’s Penguins.

(Two thumbs up on Mr. Popper’s Penguins, by the way. Normally I have a hard time watching Jim Carrey because his face moves about in an unnatural way that I find disturbing.)

(Yes, I realize I listed three things but I didn’t realize there would be three things and now I don’t want to go back and change it.)

And so, in the midst of this heat wave, P and Caroline have discovered a new hobby.

Face painting.

It all began one afternoon when Caroline decided to give me a makeover, which turned into my face being caked with enough makeup to make Tammy Faye Baker weep. Then she asked P if she could paint his face. And, ultimately, he ended up painting her face.

That’s when we discovered that P has a hidden talent.

A cheetah.

A warthog.

A dying warthog.

A bass.

I know.

You’re most likely speechless from the display of talent. I’ve been married to P for almost fourteen years and had no idea.

But I think I may start hiring him out for birthday parties.

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I’m sure that y’all have been on pins and needles wondering what we did this past weekend. Good news. The wait is over.

It was actually a long weekend for us because Friday was a school holiday. What holiday, you ask? Battle of Flowers.

No, you didn’t miss a memo. It’s only celebrated here in San Antonio as part of the ten day extravaganza known as Fiesta where faux royalty zoom at high speeds down neighborhood streets with a police escort to get the faux king to various elementary schools on time so he can hand out faux medals. Viva Fiesta.

Anyway, there’s a big parade and a lot of whoop-de-do, but we missed all that because P and Caroline headed down to the ranch for their annual helicopter hunt. For those of you who may be new, I should probably explain that P has a good friend who’s in the military. This friend makes it into town about once a year and a rancher friend of P’s always takes this opportunity to rent a helicopter so they can do a big helicopter hog hunt because wild hogs can turn into a big problem on ranches if the population isn’t controlled. They tend to party way too much and tear things up and wear lampshades on their heads while wandering around looking for their beer bong.

I know it will shock you to learn that I usually choose to stay home.

Plans for the helicopter hunt began to take shape a few weeks ago when P confirmed that his friend was going to be able to make it into town before he gets deployed next month. There were emails and phone calls and strategies about ammo and weaponry. P heads up a small group geared towards hunters for our church. (Is it just me or can you guess he also watches Nascar just from that last sentence?) A large part of their purpose is to use the wild game they kill to provide meals for the homeless so P invited the sportsmans’ group to the ranch for the hunt to help out. One of my happiest moments of last week was when I read an email he’d sent out to the group. I’ll spare you the whole thing and just share my favorite excerpt:

“As soon as the hogs break cover we will take a knee and ready ourselves. On command we will rise and shoot. WE WILL ONLY SHOOT OUT IN FRONT OF US. AS SOON AS THE HOGS BREAK THROUGH OUR LINE OR TURN OFF, THE FIRING WILL CEASE. AT NO POINT WILL YOU BE ALLOWED TO SHOOT AT HOGS IN THE FIELD!!!! The reason for this is we will have LOTS of people, livestock and vehicles out and about. This not negotiable. If this rule is broken we will shoot you, process you and feed you to the homeless!”

And he signed it “Grace and Mercy in the name of Jesus, P”.

Not really. But it makes me laugh to think about it.

It would appear though, that for all our differences, we share a love of the ALL CAPS to make our point.

Caroline was able to be a part of the helicopter experience for the first time last year and she’s been begging to do it again ever since then. Naturally, she was FIRED UP about the whole thing. I would really prefer that my dear family remain on the ground the way God intended when he gave us feet and not wings, but I realize I cannot let all my irrational fears rule our lives or there’s a good chance we could all end up living inside a bubble like John Travolta did in that movie. Providing that bubble had access to reality television.

So I spent the week taking deep breaths and reading Psalm 91 and, really, I was feeling okay about the whole thing.

Until Thursday night.

You may remember that I attempted to bake a cake with an antiquated cake mix and then had to resort to cookies only to discover I was out of vanilla. I was not going to be deterred from my cookie mission so Caroline and I walked across the street, bowl in hand, to borrow two teaspoons of vanilla from our neighbors. They invited us in and Bill asked Caroline what she was going to do this weekend. She answered, “Ride in a helicopter and shoot hogs.”

Well, sure. I have no doubt that’s exactly what he was expecting her to say.

He replied, “Wow! I’ve never even been in a helicopter. Does it have doors and seatbelts?”

She thought about it for a minute and said, “Nope. It doesn’t have doors or seatbelts. Just a big pole in the middle that I have to hold onto.”

And that’s when I passed out and dropped my bowl of newly acquired vanilla extract.

We walked back across the street as I breathed into a paper bag and were barely in the house when I asked P, “Does that helicopter not have doors or seatbelts?” He looked at me like he felt sorry for me and said, “Of course it has seatbelts, why would you think it didn’t?”

I looked at Caroline and she looked back at me with a sheepish grin on her face. Apparently she appreciates the art of creating some drama to make a story better.

They left the house about 6:00 a.m. on Friday morning. I wanted to be worried but I fell right back asleep thanks to the hefty dose of Benadryl I’d taken the night before in an attempt to fight off the pollen. A few hours later I woke up to the sound of a text message on my phone and was relieved to see this.

And this.

What does it say about me that it makes me want to say, “That’ll do, Pig. That’ll do.”?

They returned home at the end of the day, dirty and exhausted, but with big smiles on their faces and one of them was jumping up and down with excitement over all the fun. That P. He gets so keyed up.

That’ll do, Pig. That’ll do.

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On Caroline’s second birthday, two momentous things happened. The first was that Mimi and Bops moved from Houston to San Antonio. You can’t appreciate this if you don’t know them, but the fact they left their beloved Houston with its many fine restaurants and other cultural offerings is akin to a miracle. Caroline will never understand how much she totally caused her grandparents to become people they didn’t even recognize. And I’ll try not to think about the fact I lived in San Antonio for ten years prior to having Caroline and they never once mentioned relocating.

The second momentous thing was that Mimi and Bops gave her a little bicycle and a helmet for her birthday. I wish I had a picture of her trying out her new bike in her little zebra-print dress, but that would require me to get off the couch, locate the right photo album and scan the picture in. Then I’d see all the other pictures of her at two years old and get caught up in a wave of nostalgia and the passage of time and P would find me in the morning, passed out with a photo album clutched to my chest with dried tears on my cheeks.

When she first got that little bike she could barely reach the pedals, but eventually grew into it and was completely happy to pedal around with training wheels. The thing is, we don’t really live on a bike-friendly street. There aren’t cul-de-sacs or endless sidewalks like we had when I was little. Not to mention that the world doesn’t seem as safe as it used to back in the days when I would hop on my bike and ride the eight blocks to the pool wearing just my swimsuit with a towel wrapped around my neck.

(Was there really a time when I was so confident that I felt free to ride a bike wearing only a swimsuit? Because that sounds like a scenario that I might have nightmares about tonight.)

When she started first grade last year we realized it was probably time for her to learn to ride a two-wheeled bike. We pulled the little bike out, took off the training wheels and discovered that KIDS GROW over the course of four years and the bike had become a wee bit small.

Mimi and Bops bought her a new bike that Christmas and I began last year with a renewed determination to teach her to ride it. It lasted for about two minutes, which is how long it took me to realize that she viewed riding a two-wheeled bike as an activity comparable in danger to feeding live sharks while wearing a suit made of tuna.

The bike issue didn’t come up again until about a month ago. I knew that most of her friends had left their training wheels behind and began to encourage her it was time to do the same, especially if she wanted to participate in the Bike Rodeo this year. I picked her up from school one day and told her I was going to teach her to ride her bike.

The whole thing went very differently in my head. In short, the “lesson” lasted approximately four minutes before I decided I was not mentally or emotionally equipped to teach my daughter how to ride a bike. Largely because she said, “I DON’T WANT YOU TO TEACH ME HOW TO RIDE A BIKE” and I may have had to put my head between my knees and count backwards from ten.

When P came home from work that day I handed him a Xanax and told him the good news. He was now solely in charge of Caroline’s bike riding lessons.

And that’s when it got serious.

He took the pedals off her bike and began to teach her how to keep her balance. But she had a total mental block. She was so afraid she might fall that she couldn’t make herself balance. I told P that I had NO IDEA where she gets her ability to get so worked up over something that hasn’t even happened yet. NO IDEA.

She said she wanted to be in the Bike Rodeo but would just ride her scooter instead. We explained they don’t allow scooters because it’s not a Scooter Rodeo. She said she’d wait until she was eight to learn to ride her bike. She said it was too cold outside to practice. Or too hot outside to practice. The Bike Rodeo form came home in her folder and I threw it away. I did. I’m a betting girl by nature and my money was on the bike to win this round.

(I’m not really a betting girl by nature. I don’t even know what that means.)

Sunday afternoon P came in and announced it was time to practice on the bike. And she said she didn’t want to. But he said she had to learn sometime and today was as good a day as any.

And so the bike-riding lesson began.

I don’t think I can do this.

Are you letting go? Don’t let go. Are you letting go?

I’m scared.

Wait. Am I doing it?

I’m doing it! My streamers are whipping in the breeze just like God intended.

She is so proud of herself. And we are so proud of her. It was a big day.

And I might have cried a little.

P was proud of himself too. He took a celebratory lap.

Just like The Bandit. He did what they said couldn’t be done. The purple Schwinn Dee-Lite did not beat him.

(If I ever write a book I want that picture to be on the cover.)

When I tucked Caroline into bed last night she was reliving the glory and said, “Mama? I know how to ride my bike now, don’t I?”

“You sure do! I’m so proud of you!”

“All I have to do now is learn not to be afraid of the dark and I’ll be finished with all my little kid stuff.”

And then I might have cried a little again.

And reminded myself to pick up a new form for the Bike Rodeo.