In summary, Woody, Buzz, Aggies and popcorn

Over the weekend I reunited with an old love, Dreyers Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream. I’m not sure exactly how it happened, but on Friday night my car drove to HEB like it had a mind of its own and I couldn’t resist the call from the ice cream aisle. I blame the PMS.

P was at the ranch, Caroline was spending the night with Mimi and Bops, and the Dreyers and I cuddled up on the couch and watched Grey’s Anatomy together. It was a sweet reunion, but now we’re going to have to break up all over again…just as soon as what’s left in my freezer is gone. Which will probably be five minutes from now.

Obviously, I spent Friday night throwing caution to the wind in preparation for my big soccer coaching debut on Saturday morning. To be honest, I wasn’t all that concerned about the coaching, mainly because I’d thrown myself on the mercy of my sister’s husband, Chris, earlier in the week and he just happens to have coached several years of high school girls’ soccer. Let’s just say that he has been known to wear some track pants.

Chris isn’t coaching this year for the first time in several seasons and my sister mentioned he kind of had the itch to get back into it and what better way to cure that desire than to let him coach six-year-old girls? I mentioned to P that Chris missed coaching and I was going to ask him to help me on Saturday, P said, “That’s like offering a crack addict a puff of secondhand smoke”. I’m not sure why P doesn’t think the Mighty Rainbows take the game seriously, but it might have something to do with all the cartwheels they do during practice in between giggling hysterically and picking flowers.

On Saturday morning I woke up (at 9:00 a.m.!) to the sound of rain coming down and so I went to check the official soccer website to see if the game would be cancelled. The website offered no form of helpful information, other than to let me know that the referee for each game would determine if the game would be played. Which would be great except I’d received an email the night before letting me know that there were no referees available for our game and we’d need a parent or a coach to volunteer. As someone who referred to the referee as an umpire last week, I felt less than qualified to step into that role. Plus, I don’t really like blowing whistles because they tend to draw attention.

While pondering the weather dilemma, I received an email from the mother of a player informing me that her daughter had fever and wouldn’t be at the game, which would leave us with a grand total of three Rainbows. So I acted like a referee and called the game, meaning I called the dad who coached the other team and we agreed, between the rain and his fear of me bringing in my brother-in-law as a total ringer, it was for the best.

Which left Caroline and I with a long, rainy afternoon on our hands and nothing to do.

So we headed to the movie theater to see the Toy Story double feature in 3-D. We got there about thirty minutes early because I was convinced it was going to sell out. After we secured our tickets and our handy 3-D glasses, I told Caroline we could get some candy from the concession stand. Her reply stopped me cold in my tracks.

“I don’t really care for any candy”.

“What? You don’t want candy? Are you sure?”

“Yes. I’m sure.”

“Do you feel okay?” I began feeling her forehead and back for signs of fever because, in my world, no desire for candy clearly equals SWINE FLU.

“I’m fine. Why do you keep feeling my head?”

We walked into the theater and had our pick of seats. People like to say there are no benefits to being slightly compulsive, but I will bet you an aisle seat at the theater that they are wrong. Caroline and I chatted about the movie and I told her all about 3-D and that technically the way it works is through something I like to call “MAGIC”.

More and more people started to make their way into the theater carrying kids and buckets of popcorn that could feed every family in North America for a week. I asked Caroline one more time, “Are you sure you don’t want anything?”

“No, Mama. I’m fine. How much longer ’til the movie starts?”

“About eight minutes.”

The manager came in to welcome us to the show and announced there would be free refills on any large item during the ten minute intercession. Yes, because two large vats of buttered popcorn are totally necessary if you’re aiming to have a heart attack in the next forty-eight hours. Then, just as the lights were about to go down, Caroline turned to me and said, “I think I want some candy now”.

Of course you do. Because when you’re six you have no appreciation for the coveted aisle seat and the fact that it will be GONE by the time you spend fifteen minutes waiting for the privilege to drop $25.00 on a pack of Nerds and a “Value” drink.

But we made it back in time for most of the previews and even found another aisle seat.

We loved seeing Woody and Buzz in 3-D and decided to end the evening with dinner at a Chinese food restaurant. I was so thankful that I’d remembered to record the A&M vs. Arkansas game just in case we were running late. As we were enjoying our lo mein, a man came into the restaurant to pick up some food to go and I heard someone ask him if the Aggies were winning, he said, “Yeah, they look great!”

I know now that he’d only watched the first five minutes of the game.

But, bless my heart, I went home, put Caroline to bed and began watching that game with all the optimism of a kid on his way to see Santa Claus until it got to about midway through the first quarter and I began to feel instead like I’d just been kicked by Santa Claus and he was wearing a red shirt that read, “WOOOOOOO PIG SOOOOOIE”. It was hateful.

I may employ my daddy’s new game-watching strategy. He records the game, waits to see if his team won. If they did, he watches it. If they lose, he deletes it. It saves him heartache, stress, and a fortune in antacids.

Much like limiting yourself to just one bucket of large popcorn at the movies.