Doodle

  • A girl and a her bike

    On Caroline’s second birthday, two momentous things happened. The first was that Mimi and Bops moved from Houston to San Antonio. You can’t appreciate this if you don’t know them, but the fact they left their beloved Houston with its many fine restaurants and other cultural offerings is akin to a miracle. Caroline will never understand how much she totally caused her grandparents to become people they didn’t even recognize. And I’ll try not to think about the fact I lived in San Antonio for ten years prior to having Caroline and they never once mentioned relocating.

    The second momentous thing was that Mimi and Bops gave her a little bicycle and a helmet for her birthday. I wish I had a picture of her trying out her new bike in her little zebra-print dress, but that would require me to get off the couch, locate the right photo album and scan the picture in. Then I’d see all the other pictures of her at two years old and get caught up in a wave of nostalgia and the passage of time and P would find me in the morning, passed out with a photo album clutched to my chest with dried tears on my cheeks.

    When she first got that little bike she could barely reach the pedals, but eventually grew into it and was completely happy to pedal around with training wheels. The thing is, we don’t really live on a bike-friendly street. There aren’t cul-de-sacs or endless sidewalks like we had when I was little. Not to mention that the world doesn’t seem as safe as it used to back in the days when I would hop on my bike and ride the eight blocks to the pool wearing just my swimsuit with a towel wrapped around my neck.

    (Was there really a time when I was so confident that I felt free to ride a bike wearing only a swimsuit? Because that sounds like a scenario that I might have nightmares about tonight.)

    When she started first grade last year we realized it was probably time for her to learn to ride a two-wheeled bike. We pulled the little bike out, took off the training wheels and discovered that KIDS GROW over the course of four years and the bike had become a wee bit small.

    Mimi and Bops bought her a new bike that Christmas and I began last year with a renewed determination to teach her to ride it. It lasted for about two minutes, which is how long it took me to realize that she viewed riding a two-wheeled bike as an activity comparable in danger to feeding live sharks while wearing a suit made of tuna.

    The bike issue didn’t come up again until about a month ago. I knew that most of her friends had left their training wheels behind and began to encourage her it was time to do the same, especially if she wanted to participate in the Bike Rodeo this year. I picked her up from school one day and told her I was going to teach her to ride her bike.

    The whole thing went very differently in my head. In short, the “lesson” lasted approximately four minutes before I decided I was not mentally or emotionally equipped to teach my daughter how to ride a bike. Largely because she said, “I DON’T WANT YOU TO TEACH ME HOW TO RIDE A BIKE” and I may have had to put my head between my knees and count backwards from ten.

    When P came home from work that day I handed him a Xanax and told him the good news. He was now solely in charge of Caroline’s bike riding lessons.

    And that’s when it got serious.

    He took the pedals off her bike and began to teach her how to keep her balance. But she had a total mental block. She was so afraid she might fall that she couldn’t make herself balance. I told P that I had NO IDEA where she gets her ability to get so worked up over something that hasn’t even happened yet. NO IDEA.

    She said she wanted to be in the Bike Rodeo but would just ride her scooter instead. We explained they don’t allow scooters because it’s not a Scooter Rodeo. She said she’d wait until she was eight to learn to ride her bike. She said it was too cold outside to practice. Or too hot outside to practice. The Bike Rodeo form came home in her folder and I threw it away. I did. I’m a betting girl by nature and my money was on the bike to win this round.

    (I’m not really a betting girl by nature. I don’t even know what that means.)

    Sunday afternoon P came in and announced it was time to practice on the bike. And she said she didn’t want to. But he said she had to learn sometime and today was as good a day as any.

    And so the bike-riding lesson began.

    I don’t think I can do this.

    Are you letting go? Don’t let go. Are you letting go?

    I’m scared.

    Wait. Am I doing it?

    I’m doing it! My streamers are whipping in the breeze just like God intended.

    She is so proud of herself. And we are so proud of her. It was a big day.

    And I might have cried a little.

    P was proud of himself too. He took a celebratory lap.

    Just like The Bandit. He did what they said couldn’t be done. The purple Schwinn Dee-Lite did not beat him.

    (If I ever write a book I want that picture to be on the cover.)

    When I tucked Caroline into bed last night she was reliving the glory and said, “Mama? I know how to ride my bike now, don’t I?”

    “You sure do! I’m so proud of you!”

    “All I have to do now is learn not to be afraid of the dark and I’ll be finished with all my little kid stuff.”

    And then I might have cried a little again.

    And reminded myself to pick up a new form for the Bike Rodeo.

  • Here’s what happened so long ago that I almost forgot about it

    I’ve already started this post once and then WordPress decided to delete it just about the time I was halfway finished. Or maybe I pushed the wrong button. I’m not sure, but it feels better for me to blame WordPress.

    So I never talked about what we did last weekend. And now it’s Wednesday which is almost the next weekend and it seems kind of pointless to write about something we did almost a week ago. But given that there is nothing new and exciting going on here, I’m going to go with it. Plus, what if a day comes when Caroline pulls up the blog because she is desperate to know how she spent the weekend of February 11, 2011 and is left with lingering questions regarding her whereabouts.

    The San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo is in town right now. Otherwise known as one of my favorite times of the year. Normally the kids get out of school at some point during rodeo season, but that isn’t the case this year for reasons known only to some bigwig administrators who probably scoff at the thought of chicken-fried bacon and moon pies. Fortunately for Caroline, P and I believe strongly in the importance of teaching our child the merits a good ferris wheel ride, the proper way to eat a funnel cake, and a hands-on example of why you don’t want to grow up to be a carny.

    (Carnies. Circus folk. Nomads, you know. Smell like cabbage. Small hands.)

    We picked her up early from school on Friday under the guise of an appointment. Yes, she had an appointment. An appointment with fun.

    Every Friday is dollar day which means admission and all rides only cost a dollar. This helps offset the sting of paying $50 for a couple of corndogs and a lemonade. I’d complain more about the rodeo food price gouging, because I may not be a smart man, Jenny, but I know the cost of making a corndog, but I have to admit that those corndogs are worth every penny.

    After a quick stop for a nutritious lunch of corndogs dipped in diamonds and rolled in gold, Caroline wanted to check out the rides. She decided to start small.

    The inclusion of the carny in this picture is just a bonus.

    She quickly realized she was ready to move on to bigger and better things and pointed out the Gravitron, intrigued by the spinning and loud music coming from the inside. P and I were quick to regal her with horror stories involving the loss of recently eaten corndogs because there was no way either of us was going anywhere near that sucker. If I wanted to be spun around so fast that gravity becomes a non-issue, I’d have been an astronaut.

    We all decided to ride the ferris wheel instead and I hung on for dear life as we moved around and around at two miles per hour while P kept telling me to look down at how high we were and I tried not to hyperventilate while I wondered why we were married. I’m not sure what’s happened to me since my childhood days riding the Texas Cyclone repeatedly at Astroworld, but I’ve become a bit of a ride coward. They mess with my equilibrium or inner ear or something. Caroline and I rode the Tower of Terror last year and I wasn’t right for about six days after the fact.

    I decided to be a carnival spectator while she and P went on a series of rides that featured things like spinning around in circles at terrifying heights.

    I feel sick.

    I can hardly bear to watch.

    After they rode several more variations of rides that go fast and defy gravity, including one called Crazy Mouse, we decided to move on to my area of rodeo expertise. Eating funnel cakes and walking around through the barns to look at the cows and the pigs and the baby chickens. Which is where Caroline totally scored a set of pig’s ears.

    We finally headed back home after a big day of fun and all went to bed with stomachs that felt just a little bit off. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the corndogs or the funnel cakes or the rides that spun us upside down.

    The next morning I went to HEB because we were having some friends over for dinner and we believe that food is an important element of any good dinner party. And then I came home and Caroline helped me clean the house before we left to attend Will’s birthday party. I’m sure it will come as no surprise that he had an Ugly Doll birthday cake.

    After a big time at the party, we went straight to Caroline’s basketball game where she scored two goals. And then she smiled so big her face was probably sore the next day.

    Our friends came over for dinner later that evening and we had a great time. And then I fell into bed where I could have stayed for the next three days.

    But instead I got up for church the next morning. Ate Chinese food for lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon helping P work in the yard because our yard looks like a testing site for nuclear weapons. It would be nice to call a landscape company to come take care of it for us, but P owns a landscape company which meant we had to rake it all ourselves.

    On the plus side, I believe we worked off a little funnel cake.

    And that’s what we did last weekend.

    **Don’t forget that tomorrow is Book Club day. Can’t wait to hear y’alls thoughts!***

  • My pancake was a broken heart

    Yesterday morning as I got Caroline ready for school, I told her, “Tonight we’re going to have a special family Valentine’s dinner and there might even be a present!” She said, “Okay, but I thought I usually get my Valentine’s presents in the morning.”

    Yes. Yes, you do. But only when Mama actually remembers that it’s Valentine’s Day.

    I should have remembered. I spent a good portion of our weekend helping her make homemade cards for all her classmates while practicing the art of glitter management. Which is just a fancy way of saying I tried to limit the spread of glitter to one small patch of the dining room. Although based on the fact I just walked to the kitchen for a glass of water and came back with a bedazzled foot, I may have failed at my task.

    But I procrastinated on a Valentine’s gift all last week and, thus, had to make a run to Target before attending Caroline’s class party later in the afternoon. I secured a gift and made a quick swing through the Whataburger drive-thru line because I was in need of lunch before all the cupcakes. The girl at the window informed me it’s FREE JALAPENO WEEK at Whataburger and asked if I’d like my jalapeno on the side or on my burger. It seemed like too much to think about and so I made the decision to forgo my free jalapeno. And, may I just say that FREE JALAPENO WEEK seems like kind of a lame marketing strategy.

    Once I arrived at the class party, I helped set up the tables and the party craft. All of Caroline’s classmates began to file back in the room after recess and I was immediately greeted by my child and a little girl I’ll call Mabel. Mabel wrote Caroline a Valentine’s letter that read, “Dear Caroline, You are a nice friend that is wite” which is ironic because Caroline just asked last week if we could please adopt a kid with dark skin so she’d have someone in the family that looks like her. Apparently the fact she tans well has caused some racial confusion.

    Anyway, Mabel also told me, “I really like the way you talk. It sounds like a cowgirl.” In other words, MA’AM, YOU SOUND LIKE A COUNTRY BUMPKIN. It made me so happy.

    I decided it might be fun to cook breakfast for dinner and make heart-shaped pancakes because I am nothing if not a culinary optimist. You’d think the Gingerbread Man Pancake Fiasco of Christmas 2009 would have made me own my inability to properly cook pancakes in a specific shape. But you would be wrong.

    (On a total tangent-y sidenote, the mention of heart-shaped pancakes reminds me of the time in college when one of my roommates decided to make a Valentine’s Day gift basket for her boyfriend. She put in things like a mix CD, a new t-shirt, and a pack of his favorite gum or whatever. And, last but not least, she lovingly made a giant Rice Krispie treat in the shape of a heart and wrapped it in foil. She came home later and told us that he named each item as he took it out of the basket. “A pack of gum, a t-shirt, a CD…” and when he pulled out the foil-wrapped Rice Krispie treat, he said, “A big pork chop”. I think about it every Valentine’s Day and laugh because, seriously, a pork chop.)

    The first error of dinner occurred when I looked in the refrigerator and discovered I only had three eggs left in the carton. That’s the kind of thing that tends to put a damper on a dinner consisting of eggs, sausage and pancakes. So I headed to HEB to procure more eggs. Like I told Gulley on the phone on my way there, nothing says I HAVE HOT VALENTINE’S DAY PLANS like a trip to HEB at 6:00 p.m. to buy a dozen eggs and some cake flour while wearing a pair of faded yoga pants and an Old Navy t-shirt that reads “St. Patrick’s Day 2003”.

    But eventually I managed to make at least two out of six pancakes look remotely like hearts. And P cut me some slack and said he’d be content with just average round pancakes.

    And, let’s be honest, that’s what real romance looks like.

    We had a great time, drank milk out of the crystal stemware I only use once every three years, and laughed a lot. Or maybe just P and Caroline laughed at me. Especially when I asked her if someone played the guitar during worship at Sunday School or if they played the music on a tape player.

    A tape player.

    Yes, they magically transport all the children back to 1985 each Sunday and play Petra songs on the tape player.

    If that church existed, I would totally go.

  • Stanley the snowman was a jolly, spicy soul

    So last week was all about the ARCTIC BLAST hype. Temperatures in the teens and twenties. ICE. SNOW. PERIL. WRAP YOUR PIPES. FROSTBITE. HUMANITARIAN CRISIS.

    At first I didn’t believe the talk of snow because I’ve lived here long enough to know that it’s an annual winter tradition for the weathermen to talk about the possibility of snow and then crush your hopes and dreams to the ground. It’s also rumored they tell kids the tooth fairy isn’t real in their spare time.

    But as the week went on and they continued to talk about 3-5 inches of snow, my ice cold, cynical, grinchy heart couldn’t help but melt a little. And I rang my little bell and whispered, “I believe, I believe, I believe” to myself over and over again. Suddenly, I had no doubt that we would see snow by the end of the week even though there hasn’t been an accumulation of snow in San Antonio since 1985. I was in eighth grade. And didn’t even live here. I lived in Beaumont and remember feeling bitterness towards all the San Antonio children who were experiencing a snow day while I toiled away diagramming sentences in Mrs. Cohen’s English class.

    By last Thursday night, the weathermen were starting to back off their 3-5 inch snow predictions like rats leaving a sinking ship. They all changed their estimates to a trace to 1/2 inch of snow. And we all know that “trace” is just fancy weatherman speak for “covering our rear ends”.

    We went to bed around 10:30 that night, just as icy rain began to fall. That’s all fine and good, but icy rain isn’t snow. No one has ever built a snowman out of icy rain.

    Friday morning I woke up early and looked out the window. At first glance I couldn’t really see anything that looked like snow, mainly because there wasn’t really enough accumulation from BLIZZARD 2011 to cover the grass. But then I checked the Twitter and saw that school was cancelled. About that time, Caroline rolled in and said, “PLEASE TELL ME THERE’S NO SCHOOL TODAY. NO! WAIT! I DON’T WANT TO KNOW!”

    I walked her to the kitchen windows and showed her that there was, in fact, snow covering our sidewalks, the street, my car, and a few little patches scattered in the grass. And that was how we ended up dressed in our version of South Texas snow attire by 7:30 a.m.

    We made snow angels.

    We threw snowballs.

    And, of course, we used a plastic washtub as a sled.

    Finally, we made a snowman.

    He was a very jolly, yet diminutive, snowman.

    Caroline named him Stanley. His facial features were made of jalapeno Cheetos.

    Which seems fitting since Stanley was only hours away from the Mexico border.

    And finally, before the snow melted away, we took a walk down to the creek by our house and Caroline spent the next thirty minutes using her boots to break the shallow layer of ice.

    It was all fun and games until she found a patch that was slightly deeper than three inches and the water splashed over the tops of her rainboots. And then it became all ICE. SNOW. PERIL. FROSTBITE. HUMANITARIAN CRISIS.

    We took that as a sign it was time to head back to the house to thaw out, drink some hot chocolate and maybe eat some jalapeno Cheetos.

    Ultimately, Caroline summed it all up when she declared it “ONE OF THE BEST DAYS OF MY LIFE, EVER!”

    It was a great day.

    And I’m glad we made the most of it because, at the rate San Antonio normally experiences accumulated snowfall, she’ll be twenty-five years old the next time it happens.

    But I can’t think about that or I’ll have to go climb in bed with a box of Kleenex and a bag of jalapeno Cheetos and cry.

  • All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray

    Well, the weathermen are saying that we’re about to get hit with the coldest weather of the season. AND, there is even talk of snow. Or at least snow flurries. I realize that many of y’all have had your fill of snow this year, but I would welcome snow with open arms because we’ve had approximately between zero and none inches of snow. Nary a flake.

    But I’ll believe it when I see it because our meteorologists tend to get a little bit excited at the thought of an Arctic Blast. They even originally predicted we might have some snow by tomorrow, but by the next night they recanted with a “there have been rumors of snow but they are false” at which point P talked out loud to the T.V. and said, “YOU’RE THE ONE STARTING THE RUMORS”.

    I also made the mistake of mentioning the possibility of snow to Caroline and now she is convinced she needs a snowsuit. Bless her heart.

    In other non-weather related news, I cannot thank you enough for all the book suggestions yesterday. I seriously started to get stressed out that we won’t have time to read them all before her childhood is over. Clearly I don’t have enough things to worry about.

    Also, while I was out yesterday afternoon, I noticed that our entire neighborhood smells like skunk. I don’t know why that made me feel better, but it did. Stinky misery loves company.

    Lastly, I’m going to leave you with a few pictures I took of Caroline playing in the leaves last week on one of the days she was home sick from school. What can I say? The weather was gorgeous, the yard was full of leaves, and it just seemed right. Croup or no croup.

    If you want to really make these pictures come alive, just imagine a little voice yelling, “MAKE THE PILE BIGGER! KEEP RAKING, MAMA! KEEP RAKING!”

    And that’s why I sent her back to school the next day.

  • Just another wild weekend

    Here’s a direct quote from P, uttered on Saturday night as we watched a repeat episode of Duck Commanders, “It’s Saturday night and I’ve taken my Zantac. The possibilities are endless. Bring on the Double Chocolate Milanos”.

    And that, my friends, is a glimpse into the glitz and glamour of our lives. Don’t hate.

    I think you can hold this truth to be self-evident, we had ourselves a pretty uneventful weekend.

    On Friday I went to Caroline’s school for lunch. They have opened a room by the cafeteria where parents can eat with their children without having to endure the entire school cafeteria experience which can feel a little bit like an insane asylum but without the peace and the tranquility and medication. Not that I’ve ever been to lunch in an insane asylum, but I’d imagine it might be the only other place where you see people drinking the juice from their pinto beans with a straw like it’s a perfectly normal thing.

    I brought Caroline a BLT from Subway since it’s her favorite right now for reasons I don’t really understand. I’ve never been a fan of Subway because I have a hard time smelling all those different meats when I walk in the door. But I’ve learned to tolerate their Veggie Delight with spicy mustard. I don’t know why I think you want to know all this. Stay tuned for tomorrow when I will list every fast food establishment I frequent and list the items I enjoy from the menu.

    As we sat and one of us enjoyed our sandwich, Caroline explained to me that this room was one of the rooms they would use “in case the school goes into lockdown”. She asked me if I knew what lockdown meant. I said I didn’t because I wanted to hear what she’d say and find out her understanding of a lockdown situation. She explained, “Well, we have to go into these rooms if the alarm goes off because something bad is happening. Like maybe a wild skunk or a robber has walked into the school.”

    You cannot be too careful when it comes to wild skunks.

    Friday night she spent the night with Mimi and Bops. P was at the ranch so Gulley and I ended up having a last minute girls’ night out where we caught up on all the things we hadn’t talked about during the last sixteen times we’d talked in the previous two days.

    On Saturday we didn’t do much of anything until it was time for Caroline’s basketball game. I continue to think that watching seven-year-old girls play basketball may be one of the most entertaining things ever. The sweet socks the team wear as part of their uniform definitely adds to the experience.

    Later that night we picked up Mexican food because I am embarrassed to say that I couldn’t even remember the last time I ate it and that’s completely unacceptable. It’s like I didn’t even know who I was. But I remedied the situation with some chile con queso and puffy tacos and the world seemed like a happy place again.

    And I believe you already know that P enjoyed Double Chocolate Milanos with wild abandon. That’s not even a euphemism for anything.

    Caroline had a cough all day Saturday and it got worse when she went to bed. I gave her some cough medicine and ended up sleeping in her room. Or, more appropriately, not sleeping in her room. Because when she wasn’t coughing, she was grinding her teeth. I don’t know why she grinds her teeth when she’s congested, but it happens every time. And I laid there and daydreamed about how peaceful it would be to sleep on the landing strip at an airport or anywhere else that might be quieter than next to my snoring, coughing, teeth-grinding princess.

    She felt totally fine the next morning and didn’t seem fazed by all her nocturnal respiratory goings-on, so I decided we should go ahead and go to church even though I felt like a lesser version of death on a paper plate. Truthfully, there might have been a moment when I bowed my head to pray during worship and realized five minutes later that I was in the middle of a catnap, as evidenced by the fact I’d begun to have a dream. I don’t think God took it personally.

    After all, between the Double Chocolate Milanos, the coughing, the reruns of Duck Commanders and the teeth-grinding, we’d had ourselves a pretty wild Saturday night.

    Albeit the version of wild that only applies to middle-aged married couples with children.