After the last twenty-four hours of living through the ARCTIC BLAST ’07, which so far has consisted of intermittent cold rain, I now realize why God made me a southern girl, other than the fact that I have a tendency to like big hair and good manners.
If I lived in the north and was cooped up all winter long, I wouldn’t just be a Big Mama, I would be an enormous two ton Mama. I cannot quit eating. It’s like I have turned into some sort of mammal that is stocking up before the hibernation.
I’m not sure how much is due to the cold weather and how much is due to the complete boredom of being stuck inside for over twenty-four hours, but either way I have got to stop the madness, especially in light of the fact that the really bad weather that they keep forecasting hasn’t even hit yet. At this rate, P and Caroline will be rolling Mama out to play in the snow on Tuesday.
Yesterday, I had two breakfast tacos, a chocolate chip cookie, peanut butter crackers, two diet cokes, more chocolate chip cookies both in dough and cookie form, and a bag of Sour Patch Kids.
I’m planning out my dinner menu for the next three days and the common ingredients are butter, cream of whatever soup, cheese, and more butter. It is like I’ve turned into Paula Deen, but with better hair.
The stir craziness has also led me to completely clean out the playroom. I dug deep and packed up toys that haven’t been played with in over a year and wouldn’t you know that those are the toys that Caroline spent all morning trying to find. It’s like she has some kind of radar. Would it be wrong to tell her they died and went to toy heaven?
I also cleaned out her closet. In the top of her closet, I keep a small, plastic crate that serves as a home for a few college/newlywed/pre-child mementos. There are cards from my grandparents, notes my dad wrote me in college letting me know he was working hard to keep me in the style to which I’d become accustomed, and tons of photos.
There are a few of Gulley and me with hair so big that I can’t believe we both fit in the picture. Seriously, someone should have told us to step away from the teasing comb and the hairspray. Of course, I can blame some of our big hair woes on our roommate Meredith who shared with us her secret for great hair which was, “You’ve just got to tease the sh*t out of it”. We listened. We listened well.
Anyway, as I was looking at the pictures, I came across a framed photo that was taken right after P and I started dating. Seeing as how that was twelve years ago, we look a little different. P weighed 155 the day we got married and he’s 6 feet tall, so you might say he was a little on the thin side. Over the course of the years, he has filled in a little. He still looks good, just a little meatier than he used to be back in his bachelor days.
I showed Caroline the picture and asked her if she knew who it was. She didn’t, so I told her it was Mama and Daddy. She said “Oh, look at Daddy! He looks brand new!”
Yes sweetie, that’s when Daddy was brand new, before Mama wore him down and showed him how to hibernate and consume mass quantities of cream based soups and chocolate products.