P left town on Thursday to go guide some hunts for a friend. Technically, yes, this was work since he was getting paid, but it’s essentially the equivalent of someone telling me they’ll pay me to go shop at Anthropologie.
And if any of y’all know how I can get that job, then hook me up.
So, anyway, it was just Caroline and me this weekend. I could tell by how hard she cried when P left that she had totally bought into my promise that we were going to have an AWESOME girls’ weekend, just the two of us. She just knows that time spent with me isn’t going to involve any dead animals (God-willing) and WOW, who can blame her for thinking I’m a big pile of NO FUN?
We got our girls’ weekend off to a roaring start by going to eat Mexican food with Mimi and Bops on Friday night. Caroline wanted to sit outside but it was too cold. Of course she doesn’t care about shallow things like temperature, so she spent the first half of dinner pouting into her chips and guacamole. Finally, I’d had enough and we headed to the ladies restroom to have a little discussion about the consequences of anymore pouting, which may or may not have included serious threats like leaving without eating our cheese enchiladas. I don’t play around.
Saturday morning she woke up bright and ready to conquer the world. I, on the other hand, had no idea what we were going to do with the twelve hours that stretched before us. But, after 853 times of her asking, “What are we going to do today? Where are we going? What’s our plan for today?”, I realized I better come up with a strategy, because, apparently her plan was to keep asking until my brain leaked out of my ears.
We called and invited her friend Emily to go see the new Veggie Tales movie with us. Emily was thrilled, her mama was even more thrilled, and Caroline was the most thrilled of all. We packed my purse full of Sour Patch Kids and went to pick up Emily.
And here’s why I like Emily, she brought her Barbie purse packed with her own supply of Sour Patch Kids. Her parents are raising her right and it warms my heart to know Caroline has befriended a little girl whose family has values so similar to our own.
The girls seemed to like the movie. I’m just going to go out on a limb and risk total ostracism by the parenting community and confess that I don’t really like Veggie Tales. I think all that produce hopping about and wielding swords when everyone knows cucumbers and asparagus don’t have hands is just unnatural. All that fighting and rescuing is going on and all I can think is who cares about a green pea in a pirate’s hat? And why is there a blueberry? Aren’t blueberries a fruit?
I realize the Veggie Tales are worth some kind of Christian mega-fortune and obviously I don’t know a clever marketing scheme to save my life. I’m just being honest. I don’t want to talk to tomatoes. I think they’re a marginally decent vegetable at best.
Anyway, we came home from the movie and the girls played in the backyard. I’m not sure what they were playing but it involved carrying all the firewood off the back porch and loading into a wagon. There was also some sort of elaborate trap using a Little Tikes lawnmower and the dog leash.
Caroline and I had plans to go to dinner again with Mimi and Bops. I got us all cleaned up and then she ran in her room to pick out her own outfit. It took her the better part of thirty minutes to get dressed and then she finally came out wearing a sundress with spaghetti straps over a pair of capri pants. It was 50 degrees outside.
I told her she absolutely couldn’t wear that, it was too cold and those were summer clothes. She threw herself on her bed and I am not kidding, said, “THIS IS THE WORST DAY OF MY WHOLE LIFE!”
Which immediately made me feel so good. Because if we’ve managed to make it four and a half years only to have the worst day of her life be a day that involved getting to go to a movie, eat massive amounts of candy and popcorn, and have a friend over to play, then I am doing a fabulous job with this whole motherhood thing.
In spite of the fact that I don’t like the Veggie Tales.