Yesterday morning I dropped Caroline off at Vacation Bible School. This is the first year she’s been old enough for VBS and I wasn’t sure if she’d like it or not, but we walked in the church and there were bubbles everywhere and music blaring over the speakers. She looked at me and said, “OH, I AM GOING TO LIKE IT HERE!”
She is such a wallflower.
Anyway, after that I had to take my car in to get the windows tinted. P had made an appointment for me at Four Wheel Auto Parts. You know what you don’t see a lot of at places named Four Wheel Auto Parts?
Volvos.
And also women.
Unless you count the pictures of women in bikinis posing by monster trucks in various literature throughout the store.
I know anytime I put my bathing suit on I get the urge to visit a Monster Truck rally.
They asked me how I wanted to get my windows tinted and all I knew to say was “the normal way”. I mean are there other options? Maybe my name cut out in calligraphy across the back window?
I didn’t really care about tinting my windows, but P felt strongly about it. In fact, we couldn’t go anywhere in my car without a discussion of the INTENSE HEAT blasting through the clear windows. According to him, it raised the temperature in the car to equator-like levels.
But, when I picked my car up an hour later, I could tell a noticeable difference.
So when I got out later in the afternoon to go to HEB, I was optimistic that perhaps my car wouldn’t be too hot.
I have never been more wrong.
The digital thermometer read 120 degrees when I started my car.
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY DEGREES.
It is the middle of June.
Which means by August I will have to stay indoors twenty-four hours a day in a bathtub filled with ice or someone will die.
Not from the heat, but rather from my rage caused by the heat.
I arrived at HEB in the form of a wilted, sweaty flower. It took every ounce of strength I could muster to drag myself into the store.
Immediately, I made my way to the frozen food section and stood there for a good ten minutes until one of the employees asked me to please get my head out of the frozen vegetables.
I walked down the aisles and picked up the things we needed, including milk and Dreyers’ Loaded Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream. The heat was stressing me out and I needed some relief.
By the time I drove the ten blocks home, the milk had already turned to blue cheese and the ice cream looked like chocolate milk with chunks of peanut butter cups floating around.
I can’t tell you how hard it was to suck those peanut butter cup pieces through a straw.
And as if all that wasn’t enough to bear, after we got home from the store Caroline rediscovered her Baby Born doll that I may or may not have hidden sometime right after Christmas.
She brought it to me to see if I could make it cry real tears like the one in the commercial. Because, yeah, I perform miracles.
I squeezed various appendages trying to make something happen and it finally did.
Baby Born peed all over me.
Some kind of stale, leftover since Christmas pee.
At least it cooled me off.
Needless to say, this is how Baby Born spent the rest of the afternoon.
I’m hoping she’ll escape through the drain.