Doodle

I always say that the posts I write on Sunday nights are the hardest ones to write. Of course now I’m wondering what I mean when I say I always say that because no one really asks me that question since, odds are good, nobody really cares. So I guess it’s just something I tell myself. And P has to listen to it because he has the misfortune of sitting next to me on the couch while I lament about my inability to come up with anything interesting to say. He usually says something helpful like, “When has that ever stopped you?”.

He’s hilarious.

So I went to Virginia this weekend. Originally I thought I’d never been to Virginia before, but then I remembered that I took a class trip to Washington D.C. when I was in eighth grade and we went to Arlington National Cemetery. I also think we may have visited Mount Vernon, although I’m not totally sure since my motivation to go on the trip leaned more towards the social benefits, as opposed to any type of yearning for historic knowledge. However, I do have vivid memories of seeing Fonzie’s leather jacket and Archie Bunker’s chair in the Smithsonian, so it’s not like I didn’t have any grasp of important moments in U.S. history.

Anyway, I left on Friday morning and arrived in Richmond about 3:00, headed to the coliseum, passed out approximately 15,043 copies of Homelife magazine at the LifeWay booth, wished I’d worn my hair back in a ponytail because I was so hot, listened to Beth teach an amazing lesson from John 1, went back to the Marriott, realized I’d forgotten my sound machine, panicked, remembered I had a white noise app on my phone, tried unsuccessfully to sleep for the next six hours, got out of bed, went back to the coliseum, drove my rental car back to the airport, ate a terrible cheeseburger, bought the new InStyle magazine, and got on the hottest plane I’ve ever been on to fly back to San Antonio.

It was a lot of stuff to cram into an twenty-four hour time period and I was exhausted.

P and Caroline picked me up from the airport. They’d spent the day at the ranch and were full of stories involving blood and gore and snakes. We stopped at California Pizza Kitchen to pick up dinner (I’m not sure why you need to know this. We ordered the Sicilian! And the Pepperoni Mushroom!) and as soon as we got home I rolled my suitcase into our bathroom to unpack and change clothes because I suffer from some sort of sickness that compels me to unpack my suitcase the minute I walk through the door. But when I walked in my closet, this is what I saw. Actually, I didn’t see it as much as I just stepped on it because I wasn’t paying attention.

In case you can’t tell, that’s a huge snakeskin.

Clearly my family wants me dead.

To say that I screamed and began to hyperventilate and had a complete out of body experience seems like a bit of an understatement. I ran back into the kitchen in time to see my sweet, precious baby girl doubled over and laughing hysterically. It was all her idea. Honestly, I don’t know that I ever seen her more proud of herself.

Which is great.

Except for the fact that I may have to burn down my closet.

Well the first thing I need to tell you is that I found my power cord after an exhaustive search. And it wasn’t in the trash which I’m going to claim as a victory. Instead, it was safely tucked away in an outside pocket of my suitcase. A pocket I didn’t even know existed except for apparently I did because I decided it was a good place to put my power cord when we left for the beach last Thursday. Honestly, I don’t even know why I checked my suitcase one last time, but I think it was related to the sheer agony I felt every time I thought about doling out $80 for something I already owned.

But, now! Just think of all the cute stuff I can buy with the $80 I saved by finding my power cord in my suitcase. It’s like I just found free money.

(I’m not sure why my version of economics frustrates P so much. Clearly, it’s very sound and logical)

In other news, Caroline had her first day of school yesterday and it turns out she was totally ready for second grade.

And it turns out that I wasn’t.

I truly thought I was ready. We got home from the beach on Sunday afternoon, packed and labeled all the school supplies we bought a month ago, and discussed what she wanted in her lunch the next day. We’d even gone through her closet trying to find an appropriate first day of school outfit that we both deemed acceptable. The whole wardrobe issue was filled with drama and tension and “WHY DON’T I HAVE MORE CLOTHES WITH SEQUINS?!”, but we ultimately reached a compromise. However, in the end, I should have just dressed her in sackcloth and ashes to match her pathetic mama who spent the rest of the day after drop-off in a state of mourning and wailing and hand-wringing.

P woke us up about 6:45 and I staggered into the kitchen to fry an egg and heat up a frozen waffle. Caroline ran in her room to get dressed and brush her teeth, then came back out holding her hairbrush and asked if I’d curl her hair with a curling iron. So I meticulously curled her hair only to have her decide it was too poufy and request that I pull it back in a ponytail even though P tried to convince her that the humidity would cause it to fall after about two minutes outside. (How much do I love P and his ability to be in touch with the issues that face women?)

By the time I finally got her dressed and ready, I had approximately twenty-eight seconds to pull my hair back and throw on the first thing I found. We walked to her new classroom, met her teacher, kissed Caroline goodbye and headed back home. As soon as we walked in the back door, P took one look at me and said, “You’ll feel better after a good cry”. And then I just fell apart like a big old sentimental sap that I would have totally made fun of less than ten years ago because PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER, NANCY. IT’S SECOND GRADE, NOT VIETNAM.

I’m not sure why second grade hit me so hard. I have theories that involve things like getting a teacher that we don’t really know anything about, only knowing one other child in the class, and the way Caroline seemed so apprehensive when she kissed P and me goodbye, but I think the ultimate cause may be more related to the perfect storm of getting home from a fabulous trip to the beach, my ever present hormonal fluctuations, and OH MY WORD MY BABY IS A SECOND GRADER AND I’M NOT SURE HOW THIS HAPPENED AND I AM GOING TO NEED TIME TO STOP IT.

Because when I picked her up yesterday afternoon, she could not have been happier. She hugged her old friend and a new friend goodbye and strolled to the car while announcing it had been a great day. Although she did tell me that during reading time she traded books with one of the other kids in the class because the teacher didn’t say they couldn’t trade books. But then her teacher said they couldn’t trade books with each other and Caroline told me, “I wanted to tell her, ‘Then you should have told us that in the first place, GIRL’.” Which probably would have been an opportune time to explain why you shouldn’t refer to your teacher as “GIRL”, but I didn’t want to kill her first day of school buzz.

And so it begins. Tomorrow I’ll drop her off again and we’ll wash, rinse and repeat for the next I-don’t-really-want-to-think-about-how-many days.

Here’s hoping I can get through the rest of them without crying every five minutes.

You’ll probably be glad to know that today isn’t any kind of celebration for my family because, seriously, how much more IT’S MY CHILD’S BIRTHDAY, IT’S MY BIRTHDAY, IT’S MY ANNIVERSARY can you stand? This happens every August and I start to feel like it’s all me, me, me and then I remember that technically this is my blog and it stands to reason that it’s about my life and all the major events of my life are crammed into a two week span in August. Had I known that I’d have a blog one day I might have spaced them out a little better. Nevertheless, all the celebrations are over until it’s time for our family’s big Arbor Day blowout.

Yesterday Caroline and I went shopping for back-to-school shoes. I’ll have to tell you about it in more detail some other time, but we canvassed the entire San Antonio area looking for a pair of flats to fit her narrow little foot and by the time we arrived home we were exhausted and hot to the point of melting.

Caroline said, “Mama, you know what I really need? Some cucumbers to put over my eyes. I really need to relax.”

And so.

Help me.

I think I’m raising Zsa Zsa Gabor.

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My second post is up as part of the Kellogg’s sweepstakes. Don’t forget to click over to my latestKellogg’s page for a chance to win $100 gift card.

Does anyone remember when I went to New York back in April? (It’s fine if you don’t. I certainly have no expectations that anyone is keeping up with my lame schedule.) Somehow I ended up in first class and I’m about 82% sure that I was sitting next to Javier Bardem. He was wearing a tweed sport coat with a red bandana sticking out of the pocket. Which I thought was a little odd, but totally makes sense now that I realize it was Javier Bardem. Everyone knows how all the Hollywood types like to wear red bandanas as pocket squares.

Anyway, I mentioned it to Ree and Sophie that night at dinner, but didn’t feel totally sure about it so I didn’t want to walk around claiming that I sat next to Javier Bardem on a plane when it might not be true and three people might care. But a little while ago I was watching David Letterman and he had Julia Roberts on and they showed a clip from Eat, Pray, Love with Javier Bardem and my certainty increased from a mere 43% to 82%. And now I’m just sick that I didn’t engage him in some sort of conversation because, next thing you know, we could have been vacationing with he and Penelope Cruz.

Assuming they are big fans of the beach at Port Aransas and wouldn’t mind spending all day hanging out under P’s version of a beach cabana.

You can only imagine my delight at the thought of Javier and Penelope being photographed hanging out under that piece of tarp and featured in US Weekly under the “Stars! They’re Just Like Us!” section.

I don’t know why I’m telling you this, other than the fact that I am functioning on about three hours of sleep and desperately need to go to bed but also desperately need some quiet time to myself where no one is asking me to help them put on their new roller skates for the thirty-eighth time or to assist them as they weave a potholder. P can be so high maintenance.

So, Caroline had a pool party this year. She was originally against the pool party idea which is unfortunate because she was born in August and that means she can either choose a pool party or something that involves air-conditioning. But at some point she came up with the idea to give all her party guests disposable underwater cameras as party favors so they could all take pictures of each other while they swam. I immediately agreed to this since I was ready to do anything to avoid Chuck E. Cheese.

The cameras were a big hit once I showed all the kids how to use cameras that aren’t digital. They kept trying to see the picture and I had to explain that back in the 1900’s all cameras required you to wind the film after each picture. And they looked at me wide-eyed and asked, “What’s film?”

Which may explain why later on that night at the slumber party, as we watched Mary Poppins and I explained that suffragettes were women who fought for the right to vote because women weren’t allowed to vote until the 1920’s, Caroline said, “DID YOU HEAR THAT? WOMEN WEREN’T ALLOWED TO VOTE WHEN MY MAMA WAS A LITTLE GIRL!”

I’m like a walking, breathing antique.

We took Caroline and some of her friends to dinner at The Magic Time Machine. They were so hyped up on cupcake icing that not a one of them remembered that there is such thing as an inside voice. P said he kind of felt like we ought to offer to buy dinner for the table that had to sit next to us, but I don’t feel like anyone can complain about the noise if they choose to dine at a restaurant where Batman is your waiter and Indiana Jones leads you to a salad bar made from a car.

And the slumber party.

Who knew that four little girls could be so loud? And have so much energy? And be so particular about all the different colors they need for their pedicure?

I did. I discovered it at Caroline’s birthday slumber party last year, but had blocked the memory from my mind because I knew we’d have to do it again. And again. And again.

And again.

I think it was about 1 a.m. when I officially turned into what Caroline described as “Miss Hannigan”. It was at that point that I may have made a vague threat about no more sleepovers for a long time if everyone didn’t get quiet and GO TO BED. And then I sang a song about little girls and took a drink from my flask while demanding that they scrub the kitchen floor until it shines like the top of the Chrysler building.

They all fell asleep and woke up around 7 a.m. asking what I had planned for the morning. The answer was NOTHING. I’m serving breakfast, calling your parents and then stumbling to the couch to lie down for the next three days.

And then I’m done with socializing for about a week.

Unless Javier and Penelope call.

You’ll have to bear with me here because I’ve never been very good at math. Not to mention that it’s 1:00 a.m. and I have been breathing nail polish fumes for the better part of two hours.

This is just my own personal working theory.

If a good birthday is determined by the absolute value of fun had in the pool

plus the velocity with which you propel out of the slide

divided by the square root of cupcakes

and the distributive property of candy contained in one horse pinata

divided by a fun night out with your best friends

multiplied by making sixteen necklaces and having your toes painted eight times

with the greatest common factor being the sheer and utter exhaustion of your mama?

Then someone had themselves a very happy day.