Listen.
I have lived in Texas my whole life, MY WHOLE LIFE, but over the last few days I have constantly thought that I can’t ever remember it being this hot this early in June. Then our weatherman confirmed it earlier tonight when he announced we broke the record high temperature yesterday that was originally set in 1948. And I felt vindicated to know that I can legitimately complain about the heat. It is sucking the soul right out of me.
But enough of the complaining about the temperature.
For now.
This is also where I kind of want to put it out there that I am committed to enjoying this summer. I want us to relax and make the most of it and therefore I am giving myself permission to not feel like I have to blog every single day. That doesn’t mean I won’t blog every single day because there are several factors at work:
A. I am compulsive.
B. I’ve been doing this for five years and have developed quite the habit.
C. I actually enjoy writing at the end of the day 99% of the time.
D. There is no D.
It just means that I may take the occasional day off because sometimes the summer feels like a steady stream of IT’S SO HOT combined with WE WENT TO THE POOL combined with IS IT EVER GOING TO BE COOL OUTSIDE AGAIN.
And on that note, have I mentioned that it’s hot?
Anyway, Thursday was Caroline’s last day of school and we celebrated by, SURPRISE, going to the pool. We ate some victory nachos and paid $5.00 for a pizza that was smaller than the majority of bagels I’ve eaten throughout my life. And then the kids all swam until we shut ‘er down around 8:30 p.m.
We slept in until a glorious 9:15 on Friday morning and then got up to wait for the AT&T guy to show up sometime between his appointed 8-noon time slot. He must have heard that all the good repairmen play hard to get because he didn’t actually arrive until around 2:00 p.m. I wanted to be irritated but the truth is it was a good excuse for Caroline and I to spend the day at home cleaning the house. The dust was embarrassingly thick and there were so many blue toothpaste remnants on her bathroom counter that it looked tie-dyed. Not to mention that the playroom had been overrun by half-naked Barbies and sparkly horses and was a little too reminiscent of Lady Godiva.
The good news is I think AT&T fixed our problem. The nice repairman gave us some super high-powered modem and the internet appears to be all better.
(I realize you probably don’t really care about our new modem but I felt like I had to tell you how the whole thing was resolved because I’ve complained about it more than several times.)
(Also, no one will ever be able to hijack our wireless access because our new code is approximately 124 characters long.)
Late Friday afternoon Caroline went to a sleepover birthday party for her friend Sadie. I wasn’t sure if she’d actually stay the whole night because she isn’t a big fan of sleeping away from home, but she’s known Sadie since birth so I thought she might make it. And she did. They’d gone to get pedicures and I’m sure you want to know that neon nail colors appear to be all the rage for seven and eight-year-old girls.
I picked her up on Saturday morning because we were heading to College Station to meet Gulley and the boys to watch some Aggie baseball. But before we could get on the road, she insisted that I meet Sadie’s new pet hamster. Personally, I’ve never been a big fan of hamsters. Or anything that is small and rodent-ish. But I faked some enthusiasm since it seemed like the polite thing to do.
(I also need to point out that Sadie is my friend Julie’s daughter.)
(Julie is my friend that had Johnny Cash in a shoebox.)
(Johnny Cash was a baby bird. She didn’t have the real Johnny Cash in a shoebox.)
(What I’m trying to explain is that Julie appreciates having a menagerie of animals whereas I just sort of prefer a dog.)
But as Caroline and I hit the open road for College Station, it quickly became apparent that it was going to be one long three hour sales pitch for a hamster. Actually it vacillated between a pitch for a hamster and wanting to know all the reasons I won’t let her watch the third Star Wars movie. (Not the third one from the old movies, the third one from the new ones.) And I had to explain that hamsters have cages and they poop and scratch and are eerily similar to rats and also that Anakin Skywalker turns to the dark side and gets thrown into a fire and burns up and it’s all very disturbing.
The hamsters and the burning in the fire. Just to clarify.
And she hasn’t even watched the first two Star Wars yet and her beloved pet fish has been dead for over a month and she has yet to notice. I know this because I am conducting a very unscientific experiment to see how long it takes her to realize Scissors (that was the fish, God rest his soul) is no longer with us.
The bottom line is we spent three hours in the car debating about things that are irrelevant at this point and time because A) she can’t even watch the third Star Wars if she hasn’t seen the first two and B) if, and that’s a BIG IF, I even consider a hamster it would be a birthday present and her birthday isn’t until August.
However, when I explained all this to her about six different times throughout the car ride, she’d look at me and say, “Oh. Okay.”
Which was immediately followed by, “But if you had to guess if you were closer to a yes or no, which would it be?”
And then I couldn’t even remember if we were talking about the hamster or Star Wars.
But I do know that she plans to name her VERY HYPOTHETICAL hamster, Princess Leia.
Now I’m 1047 words into this post and I haven’t even gotten to the part about College Station and Aggie baseball. And so it’s going to have to wait until tomorrow.
This is why I really need to write something every day.
Otherwise I have too many words stored up inside my head.