Author: Big Mama

Maybe you’ve already seen this. And I’m not sure what it says about me that I think it’s so funny.

I’ve just always been a fan of Cookie Monster.

On Monday Caroline and I packed our bags and headed to Houston on a little road trip to see Mimi and Bops. They’d been in Houston for about a week already and we’d planned to visit after the fourth of July festivities were over but we had to wait until sometime after Friday because Caroline had an appointment to see the Orthopedist about her arm.

The doctor said she could quit wearing her splint which is fortunate considering I was about to declare it a health hazard. P said he thought she might give herself a staph infection.

Then of course I was very busy making pickles over the weekend and so it was Monday morning before we struck out on the open road to Houston. Actually, it was 12:30 before we left San Antonio because it was raining and I didn’t want to load the car in the rain.

Caroline was playing on her iTouch in the backseat and I was thinking about how boring I-10 is when all of a sudden she said, “Mom? Do you have something I can spit my gum out in? I need to spit out my gum.”

I searched frantically around the front seat and in my purse while attempting to still drive, looking desperately for a stray receipt, a napkin or a kleenex for her to use. I had nothing. Not one thing. Which is breaking like forty-two laws of motherhood.

I finally found half a movie ticket stub in the door of my car and handed it back to her. I figured it would be just big enough, but what I didn’t count on was the fact that she’d apparently shoved fourteen pieces of gum in her mouth when I wasn’t paying attention.

And then I heard her say, “Something is wrong with this gum” as I glanced in the rear view mirror in time to see her attempting to spit an enormous pink hunk of something into the tiny movie ticket stub. And inexplicably there was some sort of foam all around her mouth. It was like she’d contracted rabies in the back of the car.

“Where did you get that gum?”

“From the drawer in the kitchen”, she replied.

Yes. About that drawer in the kitchen. It’s where I store everything that I don’t want sitting on the kitchen countertops. It’s a great place to find three “D” batteries or a hot pink Sharpie, maybe a few pieces of pipe cleaner or some googly eyes left over from a craft project, but it’s not really the best place to find a fresh piece of gum.

A pack of three year old Juicy Fruit?

YES.

And so the gum made a horrendous mess and dripped down the front of her shirt and I wondered once again why I’m not capable of carrying any sort of wet wipes in my car. Nope. I just carry around ticket stubs to movies I saw six months ago. They are much more handy.

I went into MacGyver mode and suggested that she use some water from her water bottle to wipe the foam off her mouth along with part of a tote bag that she’d packed with books and movies which resulted in her pouring water down the front of her shirt and not really helping with the mess at all.

The good news is we only had two and a half hours left in the car and in the middle of nowhere.

By the time we made it to the next town her shirt was almost dry (Hurray for synthetic fabric!) but I felt like we probably needed a DQ Blizzard, an order of fries and a large Diet Coke to get us through and improve our general outlook on life.

Nutrition is very important.

Which is why I ordered Caroline’s Blizzard with extra Oreos and mine with extra Reeses Peanut Butter Cups.

Eventually we arrived at Bops and Mimi’s house and Caroline immediately went outside to catch lizards and frogs in their back yard. It’s her favorite hobby. I can’t really think about it too much, but I do my part by smiling and giving a thumbs up each time she comes to the back door with a new victim.

And in the last twenty-four hours we’ve eaten delicious Italian food, met friends at an indoor trampoline park (You will probably hear more about this tomorrow in a post entitled “Why I Can’t Walk Today” or “Forty-Year-Old Bladders Aren’t Meant for Jumping”.), ate some Mexican food, shopped the huge sale at Anthropologie and spent at least an hour in the enormous three-story Restoration Hardware where I experienced a bad case of couch infatuation.

Alas, the couch and I are not meant to be because my bank account would disown me.

And maybe P too.

But I could drag my beautiful couch to the street where I’d be living alone.

I’m not sure what we have in store for tomorrow, but I bet it involves a delicious meal somewhere. And maybe more shopping.

And definitely more fun.

Assuming I can walk.

I just hope there won’t be any gum involved.

So remember about two weeks ago when I went to the lake with some friends?

No. You probably don’t.

I went to the lake a couple of weeks ago with some friends. And when we arrived my friend Jen Hatmaker gave us all our own cute little jars of pickles.

That she made.

From scratch.

Like from cucumbers she grew in her garden.

(Side note: Jen has a book out called 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess. Maybe you’ve heard of it. If not, you need to buy it and know it may change your life a little bit.)

I feel like I need to clarify she didn’t make the jars from scratch. Just the pickles. Although for all I know she may have some sort of glass-blowing set up in her garage.

Anyway, the pickles were delicious. I’m pretty sure we ate most of them before we ever made it home and I wasn’t even a little sad that Sophie and Angie were afraid to try to take their jars home on the plane for fear of the airlines throwing their luggage and thereby wreaking pickle juice havoc on all their clothing.

I think I may have said, “Oh, I’m so sorry you can’t travel with them” as I packed them in my car and drove away. Because I have a weakness for a good bread and butter pickle.

Which is why I was amazed when Jen explained that they were easy to make. Up to this point in my life I’d always believed making your own pickles was for people who fell into one of two categories:

1. Pioneers

2. People who would rent a shovel and think it’s fun.

But it turns out there is a way to make pickles that doesn’t involve the traditional canning method. Not that I know what the traditional canning method is. I just think it involves things like a pressurized device that could blow up your house if you use it wrong.

So when I got home I got on the Google to find this easy way to make bread and butter pickles. And then I went to the store and bought actual mason jars and celery seed and something called turmeric.

I also bought cucumbers.

(Rome wasn’t built in a day, my friends.)

(I’m going to see if I can keep the plants on my front porch alive for a whole summer before I subject a bunch of innocent vegetables to homicide.)

And on Sunday I made pickles.

Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I felt this level of accomplishment.

Which might be a sad commentary on my life, but whatever because, dude, I MADE PICKLES.

(And apparently now I say “dude”.)

Is it just me or does the summer seem to be going by really fast? I mean it’s already the week after the fourth of July which always feels like some sort of halfway mark even though the truth is we don’t go back to school until August 27th and have miles to go before we sleep. Or go back to school. Or whatever.

But I got so distracted last week by all the patriotic festivities that I totally neglected to mention I saw a man at our pool wearing gloves. I have no explanation for this. He wore them in the pool and then took them off when he got out of the pool. I know this because Gulley and I were in the midst of an in depth conversation and were distracted by the loud “CRCKSHSKKKS” sound his gloves made as he ripped off the velcro closures.

(That’s right. They made a CRCKSHKKKS sound. No vowels whatsoever.)

P asked me later if maybe they were some sort of hand flippers but I don’t think so. They were full on gloves. With separate fingers. I’d think if they were flippers then they would have been webbed. But these were like gardening gloves. I bet they leave one heck of a tan line.

(And yes. These are the sort of riveting stories I tell P after he returns from a long day of work. “TODAY AT THE POOL A MAN WAS WEARING GLOVES!”)

(Somehow I doubt this is really key to our marital success.)

(But it may explain why I sometimes feel like he’s tuning me out.)

Anyway, that was on Tuesday afternoon. We hadn’t planned to go to the pool on Tuesday because we wanted the kids to be in full pool mode for the fourth of July, but they assured us they would have fun if we went both days.

But we started our Independence Day by walking in the neighborhood parade. Actually, P and I walked while Caroline rode her electric scooter.

I always love the parade because it just feels like Smalltown, USA. And not just because there was a shark who showed up.

Even though everyone knows a person in a shark costume makes everything better and it’s totally what John Hancock envisioned when he signed the Declaration of Independence.

I also know that several of us dated ourselves by yelling out “LAND SHARK” which is a joke no one gets unless they’re over forty.

And this is my friend’s little boy who wasn’t really all that enthusiastic about being part of the parade even though he was being pulled in a cushy wagon with a pillow while the rest of us (me) complained that our flip-flops were giving us blisters.

We felt like maybe he was having a hard time finding joy because the U.S. economy is in the toilet and we’re in debt up to our eyeballs to China.

And then P upped the festivity quotient by putting two flag pinwheels in his hat.

(I have no idea why I’m standing like a duck. Don’t be afraid to bend your knees, Susie.)

After the parade we came home to rest for a few hours before we met friends at the pool. Caroline had really hoped to defend her watermelon seed spitting title and her belly flop championship but it didn’t work out. I think her spitting form was off since because front teeth came in since last summer and all hillbillies know that nothing throws off your spitting like a full set of teeth.

As for the belly flop, she led with her head. It was very graceful but lacked the whole necessary component of sounding like a turkey hitting the cement after being dropped from a helicopter.

But after she got over her defeat we all had a good time. There was even a DJ at the pool. The official pool email announced there would be “A DJ SPINNING RECORDS FROM 3-6 P.M.” The only problem with that is no one has invented a time machine that allows you to travel back to 1983. So instead there was a man selecting playlists on his computer that was hooked up to some large speakers.

But he still played “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” so all was forgiven.

Later on that night we cooked hot dogs at our house and the kids ran around with sparklers while occasionally yelling “OWWWW” because one of them would get hit with a random spark.

(I attempted to take pictures of this portion of the evening but my limited photography skills just produced a few hazy photos with random streaks of light.)

And then on Thursday we spent the day recovering. Honestly, I can’t even remember what we did. It’s all a blur but I think it involved a nap and feeling disoriented that it was Thursday and not Monday.

So that’s what we’ve been doing around here. Along with feeling like summer is half over when we’re actually only about a third of the way through.

At least I think that’s right. I don’t really like to do math in the summer.

Or wear gloves at the pool.