Doodle

Road trip! With exclamation points!

On Friday, P and I went to Caroline’s school for a Thanksgiving Feast. And I’ll just go ahead and confess that my expectations were low. So imagine my surprise when I found the instant mashed potatoes with faux gravy to be delightful. If that isn’t a prime indicator of PMS, then I don’t what is.

Of course, considering that I’m a huge fan of Hormel chili and the occasional can of Spaghetti-Os, it’s not like anyone can accuse me of being a culinary snob even in the best of times.

Shortly after the feast was over, P headed south for the ranch and I went home to finish packing for the big road trip Caroline and I had ahead of us. There is nothing like the feeling of power that comes over me when I can pack a suitcase and limit Caroline’s wardrobe choices.

A little after 3:30, Gulley and the boys showed up at the house to pick us up and, after insisting everyone make one more stop in the bathroom, we hit the open road. The kids did not disappoint us. We’d only been in the car about six minutes before one of them asked, “How much longer until we get there?”

I replied, “We’ll get there when we get there. Don’t ask us that every five minutes.”

“Okay…but how much longer ’til we get there?”

The good news is they only asked about forty-two more times over the next three hours. And in between times they alternated which two of them were going to annoy the other one until that one decided to tell on the other two. Then they’d interrupt Gulley and me so they could rat out their fellow man. What they didn’t know was that Gulley and I decided before the trip began that we were going to have a strict policy of telling them “WORK IT OUT YOURSELVES” because we were too busy discussing wrinkle creams and the Aggies chances against Nebraska.

We finally arrived at Honey and Big’s house and I have never been so happy to be greeted with homemade chicken salad and some incredible artichoke cheese dip. I think I was in my pajamas in about 10.3 seconds with a plate of food in front of me.

The next morning the kids woke up at the crack of dawn and rode with Big to pick up Shipley’s Donuts. They came home with enough donuts to feed all of us and at least twelve of the neighbors. And then they went outside so Jackson could teach Caroline some of his sweet football moves as I reminded them, “REMEMBER THAT HE IS THREE TIMES YOUR SIZE. DON’T BE TOO ROUGH.” Because Caroline is a little bit like one of those pint-size fluffy dogs that thinks she can take on a German Shepherd and win. And then she’s surprised when she gets leveled.

By mid-afternoon we headed out to Kyle Field for all the pre-game festivities. Big and Jackson had tickets to go to the actual game, but the rest of us decided to just enjoy all the fun and then go home to watch the game on T.V. Not to mention that since there were 90,000+ people there, extra tickets were a little hard to come by.

When we showed up at Kyle, it was literally a sea of maroon. I have never seen anything like it and I kept Caroline’s hand in a death grip because I would have never seen her again if she’d gotten away from me.

We watched the band get ready to lead the football team into the stadium.

Then Gulley and I posed for a picture because we almost felt like we were nineteen again. Except for the kids. And the fact that our hair is significantly flatter. And neither of us were wearing a Leslie Lucks dress.

After a few minutes we heard the sirens of the police motorcycles escorting the team bus. The band began to march and the team made their way into the stadium while the kids lined up to give them high-fives.

That’s a terrible picture of the whole thing and I have no idea who that blonde kid is. Just thought you should know the whole thing was much better in person.

About that time, three fighter jets flew right over us and the kids were in complete overload that there were so many blessings to be had all in one moment.

After that, Will and Caroline insisted they needed to get their bounce on.

Then it was time to watch the Corps of Cadets march in. Caroline and Jackson stood at attention the entire time.

And then Jackson and Big went in to Kyle Field while we walked around a little bit more and then finally headed back home to make sure we got there in time for kickoff. I don’t know that I’ve ever been more proud to be an Aggie than when I saw how incredible Kyle Field looked on T.V. It was a vast ocean of maroon with Twelfth Man towels waving so much that it looked like snow falling.

We sat on the couch, we jumped up and down, we screamed and yelled and we watched the Aggies pull off the upset. It was glorious. I even used exclamation points on my Facebook status and I rarely use exclamation points. Especially in triplicate form.

But THE AGGIES WON!!! We are ranked. In November. And it feels pretty dang good!!!

As we drove into town on Friday night we were on University Drive, which goes right by the A&M campus. I looked over at Gulley and asked if she remembered that night almost twenty years ago when the Aggies had just beat the Longhorns and we were on University Drive in a car filled with friends and a trunk-load of Frito-Lay chips doing some serious backseat dancing to Groove is in the Heart and eating Cheetos Paws and maybe drinking cheap beer.

(I feel like I need to give a brief back story. Gulley has an uncle that used to drive a Frito-Lay truck and he always had mass quantities of chips to dole out. And we were poor college students and took full advantage. Her daddy had shown up at the game that night with his trunk full of chips to pass on to us if we wanted them. Which, OF COURSE, who turns down free chips?)

(Also, the Cheetos Paws were a taste sensation. I don’t know if they make them anymore but it was some cheesy goodness in the shape of a cheetah paw.

(It was a loose version of a cheetah paw. Kind of an abstract Picasso-type interpretation.)

(Also, if my dad is reading this then I’m just throwing in the part about the beer for literary embellishment purposes. We were actually on our way to the library after the game to study.)

(Oh, and on the way into town, Jackson asked if you have a locker in college and we explained that you don’t need one because you only have three or four classes a day and you just bring the books you need. He asked what you do with the rest of your day and we said that we treated it like a full-time job and spent all our free time studying so we could be prepared and make excellent grades. I realize you shouldn’t lie to your children but they really don’t need to know about that semester their mothers failed golf because we decided it was more important to lay out by the pool and get a good tan.)

Anyway, where was I? I’m just rambling to nowhere.

So I asked Gulley if she remembered that night and we died laughing because of course we remember that night and those idiots with big bangs and Brighton belts throwing back some Cheetos Paws. And I asked, “Would you have believed it if someone would have told us then that twenty years later we’d be driving down this same street in a decidedly family-friendly SUV filled with McDonald’s Happy Meals and three kids in the back telling each other to stop humming?”

We both agreed that neither one of those nineteen-year-old girls could have even fathomed such a thing. And it probably would have sounded terrible to us at that time.

But you know what?

It really is the best.

We wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Not even a bag of Cheetos Paws.

Gig’em Aggies. Beat the hell outta t.u.
S’mores

Apparently I used all my words yesterday.

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And she doesn’t pretend otherwise

Last night I was helping Caroline get ready for bed. Which, I’ll be honest, pretty much consists of me telling her, “Go put your pajamas on”.

But she still has issues with getting her freshly washed hair combed out into some sort of configuration that won’t lead to morning hair drama.

So I walked in her room and we sat in front of her mirror while I combed her hair out. It was one of those moments that caught me by surprise and was just too much. My heart was so full of love for that little girl in the mirror. I hugged her tight, kissed her cheek and said, “You know what you are?”

Because we’ve always had this thing where I ask if she knows what she is and she answers, “The light of your life!”

And I say, “That’s right, baby. You’re the light of mama’s life.”

But last night, I said, “You know what you are?”

She looked right at me, smiled and said, “HIGH MAINTENANCE”.

Well, yes. That too.

Is there anything sweeter than a seven-year-old girl whose facial expression seems to say, “WHAT UP, SUCKA?”
You can’t handle the dance

Because I think we’ve all been wondering, Caroline agreed to show us a few of her dangerous moves.

Dangerous from Big Mama on Vimeo.

Bless her heart, you can see that I had to twist her arm to get her to dance.

For the record, I think she inherited her moves from her daddy.

Although he usually doesn’t need a hat.
Trick or treat

I can’t promise that any of this is going to come together in any kind of coherent way today. I am suffering from the after effects of too much candy corn followed by a few fun size Snickers chasers.

Our Halloween festivities started bright and early on Friday morning as we got Caroline dressed and her face painted for her school’s dress up day. She was a butterfly this year. A sparkly pink and purple butterfly.

For the record, 7:00 a.m. is way too early to paint flowers and vines on someone’s face.

I dropped her off at school and then picked up AJ so we could grab something from Starbucks to give us energy before our day of shopping. The good news is the second dress she tried on turned out to be the perfect dress. But the bad news is I made her spend five more hours at the mall just to make sure it was actually the best dress. No dress left behind is my personal motto.

(That’s not really true. I don’t really have a personal motto. And if I did it would probably be something like “Never miss the chance to take a nap.” But that could just be because Caroline woke me up at 5:45 yesterday morning and I’m coming down off my candy corn high and feel like I’m about to drop.)

AJ and I finished shopping just in time for me to pick up Caroline from school and experience the Friday afternoon that tried to kill me dead. I was one of the first cars in the carpool line but Caroline’s class was late coming out of the school for reasons I still don’t understand. Which means I was that annoying car holding up an entire line of cars and I try very hard to never be that annoying car in any situation. I immediately felt the need to explain the situation to all the cars behind me but of course I can’t do that because then I would be that mother walking around outside of her car and holding up the carpool line.

Finally Caroline came out of the school loaded down with various pieces of her costume and her Black Beauty pumpkin which was much worse off after three days on display in the school library. She hopped in the car and began to melt down as she told me that some fifth grade boys made fun of her in her costume. Naturally, I was ready to put a hit out on some ten-year-old boys. Maybe they needed to wake up to find a Black Beauty pumpkin head on their front porch as a warning sign.

As I pulled out the rest of the story it became apparent that the fifth grade boys were making fun of all the second grade girls and not just Caroline. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they aren’t all juvenile delinquents who need a good spanking, but it did make it a little bit better. I explained that’s what boys do and it’s a good reminder of how important it is to be kind to everyone and remember how it feels when someone hurts your feelings.

We got home and I started to help her put all the pieces of her costume back on because we had plans to go to the Halloween Pixie Skate and the roller rink. And that’s when we realized her sparkly antennae were missing.

Heaven help me.

So we went back up to the school and searched all over for the sparkly antennae that were nowhere to be found. And then I had to start coming up with a back up antennae plan because OH BRITNEY, THIS IS NOT GOING TO END WELL.

Ultimately, she ended up wearing one of her tiaras as a temporary replacement and I tried to sell her on the coolness that is a BUTTERFLY PRINCESS, but I could tell she doubted me. Then we walked into the roller rink only to see her friend’s mama wearing Caroline’s antennae. As it turns out, Caroline had handed her the antennae as she walked out of school because they were falling off her head and the mama had told her she’d bring them to her at the roller rink.

All this falls under the category of things that would have been good to know before I desperately rummaged through all manner of forgotten lunch boxes and smelly sweaters in the school’s lost and found.

But the important thing is that my butterfly was reunited with her sparkly antennae and the world continued to spin on its axis.

Saturday morning, the Cheetah Girls played the best game of their soccer season. And, best of all, Jackson and Will were there to watch her play.

The rest of Saturday is a blur but the important thing is the Aggies beat Texas Tech. And Baylor beat Texas which probably means the end times are upon us.

On Sunday morning, Caroline woke up bright and early at 5:45. I don’t know why.

All I know is that before the day was over, I’d carved pumpkins while she gave me orders like I was working in some sort of Halloween sweatshop.

(What I lack in carving skill, I make up for in enthusiasm. Or at least Caroline makes up for in enthusiasm.)

I made popcorn balls and got a blister on my thumb and pinky finger.

I cooked a batch of chili to take to a Halloween party.

I painted yet another face on my little butterfly but couldn’t get her to really smile for the camera as opposed to making the dramatic faces apparently favored by pink and purple sparkly butterflies.

I channeled the version of myself who lived back in 1988 when my biggest concern was getting the proper height out of my bangs and the right amount of blue eyeshadow.

(Yes. That’s a banana clip in my hair. No. My bangs did not turn out like I wanted. Apparently getting the right height out of your bangs is an acquired skill that I have forgotten. Or maybe your bangs have to be trained over time. Or maybe I just didn’t have enough Aussie Sprunch Spray to get the look I was going for. Or most likely my hair is no longer fried on a steady stream of perm solution and AquaNet.)

I watched P let Caroline dress him up as a vampire.

(A vampire in Birkenstocks and cargo shorts. I don’t know that anyone is going to leave Team Edward for Team P.)

(I’ve only read one of the Twilight books and don’t really understand the hype. I’ll stick with Team P and his Birkenstocks. He’s like a laid-back vampire.)

But most of all, I watched Caroline have the best time making memories I hope she’ll never forget.

And that makes it all worth it.

I think.
Bibbity, bobbity, boo

Sometime last week (I can’t remember exactly what day because I have blocked it out) Caroline came home with a note in her homework folder informing parents about the upcoming literary pumpkin patch. She was beside herself with excitement about the whole thing and insisted that she just had to make a literary pumpkin for the literary pumpkin patch even though the note was quick to explain that the whole thing was totally voluntary. It’s just a fun thing that the librarian does every year because she has a lot of quiet time to sit amongst the books and think of ways to make parents’ lives more difficult.

And I know the librarian plans the literary pumpkin patch every year because we received a note about it last year when Caroline was in first grade. But that was back in the good old days before Caroline learned to read big words like “literary” and “pumpkin” and once I saw the word “voluntary” I threw that piece of paper away so fast it would make your head spin because I have long been aware of the levels of madness to which I descend when any type of craft project is involved. Dang that school for teachin’ my baby all that book learnin’.

A literary pumpkin patch, in case you’re wondering, is an event wherein one decorates a pumpkin to look like a character out of a book. Hence the words “literary” and “pumpkin”. The only conditions are that the pumpkin cannot be carved and must be smaller than a basketball. Also, each parent is limited to only three Xanax throughout the course of “helping” their child make the pumpkin.

When Caroline initially brought home the note last week, she informed me that she would like to make a pumpkin that looks like Junie B. Jones which seemed like a fairly easy choice. We’ll paint on a face, glue some brown yarn on top and call it a day.

However, she soon discovered that two other girls in her class were planning on making Junie B. Jones pumpkins and she wanted something unique. I tried desperately to think of books that feature an orange round ball as the main character, but there appear to be shockingly few that fit that description. Then Gulley suggested a spider because we could just paint it black and glue on some pipe cleaner legs. But, oh no. Caroline was not interested in a spider. A spider pumpkin clearly didn’t have the potential to push me to the brink of sanity.

So, after a weekend of much literary pumpkin debate, I finally told her Monday afternoon that she had to make a final decision so we’d have enough time to get it done. She came home from school, walked in her room to look through her books, and, after a few brief moments, walked into the kitchen triumphantly holding a copy of Black Beauty over her head.

Perfect.

I felt the blood drain from my head as I began to figure out on how earth you make a round pumpkin look like a horse head. Within seconds, I had gone to the Twitter for help and typed out a plea in 140 characters or less. And there were some decent suggestions, but no one actually offered to come to my house and do it for me.

The only thing I knew to do was to get out the black paint. I put Caroline to work painting our orange pumpkin with several coats of black paint and decided to go all Scarlett O’ Hara and think about the rest tomorrow. I also called Gulley to ask for some advice because, ever since she started teaching preschool last year, she has been known to get her craft on. She’ll try to deny it, but she knows way too much about all the aisles at Michael’s to act like she doesn’t enjoy the occasional craft challenge. Ultimately, she called a few of her preschool teacher friends and got back to me with a suggestion of one of those styrofoam cones, black Model Magic, and a wooden dowel to hold the whole thing in place.

After school yesterday, Caroline and I went straight to Michael’s to load up on supplies and then we came home to face our black pumpkin. And we got started. Right after I ate half a bag of Double Chocolate Milano cookies to give me strength.

I’ll be honest. At one point I was really concerned. I thought we were going to have to abort the entire mission and try to come up with a book that features a black bird. But slowly and surely, we actually made something that resembled a horse’s mane. And then I threw down the pipe cleaner gauntlet and figured out how to fashion some ears. My OCD cylinders were kicking in at all levels as I insisted it needed one more coat of black paint and a little touch up on the white diamond on its forehead.

But, ladies and gentlemen, we ended up with Black Beauty.

We turned a pumpkin into a horse just like we were Cinderella’s fairy godmother.

But with more Double Chocolate Milanos. And hot glue gun burns.

And possibly a pill for my nerves.