I already mentioned that I started my day on Friday by horribly disfiguring my thumb in an accident of idiotic proportions. In fact, I tried to dodge the “how’d you do that?” question from P because I didn’t want to see the look on his face that would confirm my brilliance, but eventually, there was no other way to explain how I’d sliced my thumb open in my car without telling some lie about huge shards of glass hidden under the drivers’ seat. I had to ‘fess up.
And the look? It did not disappoint.
Anyway, Caroline and I forged ahead with our morning o’ errands with our first stop being Cavenders Boot City. She has outgrown all of her boots and she has to have boots to wear to the ranch, not just because it’s the obvious fashion statement for a day in the country, but also something about tall grass, stickers and snakes. I was living in fear that the day would come when P would offer to take Caroline to the ranch for the entire day, and I would have to decline this offer of freedom because our child has no boots.
We walked into Cavenders and headed straight to the shoe section. I measured her foot on a handy little mat with various renderings of foot sizes, and figured out she’d need a size 9. I was looking through the array of size 9 boots, preferably in hot pink (only because snakes don’t like hot pink, not because they are the cutest) when a salesman came up to help me. He threw us into a state of confusion by showing Caroline way too many boot options and trying to convince me that she really needed an 8 1/2. I tried to explain that her foot grows at a rate of speed NASA wishes they could achieve, and therefore, I like to buy shoes a little bit bigger so that we can get more than 2 days of wear out of them, but he kept pulling down the size 8 1/2’s.
I expressed my sympathies over his apparent hearing problem and continued to try to find a pair of size 9’s. Finally, I found a pair that Caroline and I both liked and checked the price tag. $59.99. Oh, Cavenders, you’re not fooling me with that price tag, I can round up and I know that’s really $60.00. I’ve seen the state of Caroline’s boots after she’s been to the ranch and there was no way I was going to pay $60.00 for something that would be covered in mud and scratched beyond all recognition and cuteness. Money was no object to Caroline though, and she wanted those boots. I promised her, as God is my witness, that she would have a new pair of boots before the morning was over, and we headed to a new store that sells boots.
We walked into Target and went straight to the shoe section. Lo and behold, hot pink boots at 50%, bringing the grand total to $7.84, which even rounding up, means they were just $8.00. Caroline declared they were the best boots EVER and we happily took them up to the cash register. She is now ready for any spur of the moment trips to the ranch.
The rest of the morning was spent running other errands, most of which involved buying various Little Mermaid paraphernalia for her upcoming birthday party while thinking about how bad my thumb hurt. I could have used a granola bar and some Gatorade.
P has had a sinus infection due to allergies since last week, and on Saturday morning, I woke up and realized I had caught his “allergies”. My throat was sore and scratchy, my nose was all stopped up and I was tired and achy. Plus, my thumb hurt. So, I decided we’d have a pretty non-eventful day.
I spent most of the morning cleaning out the playroom. I took a garbage bag in with me and showed no mercy to the legions of Happy Meal toys that had taken up residence. I scraped dried playdough off various surfaces, put pieces of puzzles back where they belonged, and put clothes back on Barbie. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, that Barbie is a tramp.
Finally, the playroom was clean.
Elephant drawing on the chalkboard was done by Bops. You can have your own copy for $59.95. Today only.
Later on in the day, I realized that sad truth of motherhood, which is even though you may not feel good, your child has massive amounts of energy to burn. And since we don’t have a child-sized hamster wheel for her to run on, I decided to take her to the pool, even though I told her I was just going to sit on the side. And that’s what I did, I sat on the side. Did I mention it was next to two other mamas who are both 5’11 and weigh 98 pounds?
Oh, I’m exaggerating. They really weigh 105.
There is nothing that builds your self esteem like sitting between two supermodels while experiencing raging PMS, having braces on your teeth complete with snazzy rubber bands hinging your jaw together, and a head cold that causes you to sniff and rub your nose repeatedly. I have never felt more attractive or lovely. I was a Glamour Don’t caught between two Glamour Do’s.
So, after we got home, I decided it was a good time to make zucchini bread using what can only be labeled Gigantor Zucchini, which one of P’s customers gave him. This thing had been sitting on my countertop staring at me menacingly for days. It was intimidating. But realizing it was about to go bad (and who wants anything that size to go bad on them), I decided it was time to bite the bullet, or cut the zucchini as the case may be.
It made enough for two loaves of zucchini bread.
And still, there was enough left over to save for grilled zucchini for Sunday night’s dinner. It was the zucchini that would never end.
For Saturday night’s dinner, I spent hours getting dinner ready and this is what we had.
I know y’all are all very envious of this magnitude of culinary brilliance, but rest assured, you too can heat an oven to 400 degrees and have a pizza like this, with 100% REAL CHEESE, in 16-18 minutes.
I even managed to do it with my thumb covered in a Care Bear band-aid.
Let’s see if Paula Deen can do that.