Doodle

  • Day of the field

    Yesterday was Field Day at Caroline’s school. I wasn’t exactly sure what Field Day entailed but felt fairly certain it was teacher code for SCHOOL SHOULD GET OUT BEFORE MEMORIAL DAY AND WE ARE KILLING TIME BECAUSE OH MY GOSH WHEN WILL THIS YEAR END.

    My suspicions were confirmed.

    Field Day is an all-day affair where the different grades take turns doing a series of wacky events (Yes. I just said wacky in a non-ironic way.) in a muddy field. Needless to say, I was thrilled that first grade gets the short end of the Field Day stick and our events were scheduled from 1:30 – 2:30. Otherwise known as the time of day when both the temperature and the humidity levels hover above 100.

    There were sack races.

    And fake pony races.

    There were ice pops.

    And muddy feet.

    But most of all there was joy.

    And water.

    Lots and lots of water.

    Then we came home and made snowcones the same way they make them in hell.

    But the teaspoon of shaved ice we procured after an hour of turning the handle on the Snoopy Sno-Cone maker helped us combat the heat.

    Or at least I thought it did until I suffered heat-induced hallucinations and thought I saw Hall and Oates perform on American Idol last night. And that’s not even the worst of it. I could have sworn that Janet Jackson sang Nasty Boys and P told me he’d never heard that song before.

    Obviously I was crazy from the heat. There’s no way any of those things could have actually happened, right?

    Because, if so, DANG.

  • My own little fly lady

    The other night I’d gotten Caroline out of the bathtub and sent her into her room to put on her pajamas. I was busy whipping up a nutritious dinner of sloppy joes and Ore Ida fries (I know. Pitiful.) so it took me a few minutes to realize she’d been in her room for a really long time.

    I’m always a little suspicious when too much time passes without her wandering into the kitchen and delivering a thirty minute monologue without taking a breath.

    About the time I started to wonder if she’d packed her bags and left for college, she walked into the kitchen and asked if she could have two pieces of paper. I handed them to her and she headed back to her room with the paper and some Scotch tape she’d managed to find in the junk drawer.

    A few minutes later it was time for dinner and I walked into her room to let her know she needed to come eat only to discover that she was in the midst of an organizational frenzy. She’d arranged all her shoes neatly in her closet. She’d put all her hair accessories in a plastic container. She’d folded her clothes and put them away. She’d put the lid on her laundry hamper.

    I couldn’t believe what I was seeing so I asked, “Baby, what are you doing?”

    She said, “I’m organizing all my stuff. It was one of my goals for the summer and I’ve finished it already.”

    Then she handed me a stack of headbands and said, “Will you please get me a Ziploc bag to put these in?”

    “Well, I think they’ll be fine just loose in your drawer.”

    I also think that aliens have invaded your body.

    “No, Mama. I really prefer a Ziploc. It keeps things neater.”

    Dazed and confused, I went to retrieve a gallon-size Ziploc from the kitchen. I’m usually stingy with the gallon-size Ziplocs but I felt like she’d earned it.

    (Also, what has happened to me that I even think about things like our usage of Ziplocs? Next thing you know I’ll be running my foil through the dishwasher to get a second use.)

    When I returned she thanked me and said she needed to show me something. (What? That the real Caroline is tied up in the closet?) She walked over to her chair and pointed out two shoeboxes, neatly labeled and stacked on top of each other. This is what they looked like.

    And this is what was inside.

    Those are “shoos” that are missing their mate and they now reside in a labeled shoebox. Of course their mate is probably somewhere under her bed, but she was so proud of her organizational system that I didn’t want to screw it up by finding the matching shoo.

    As we sat down to our nutritious dinner I told her how proud I was of her efforts and how great it was that she’d already achieved one of her summer goals. She looked at me and said, “What I’d really like to do is clean out the refrigerator. Can that be one of my new goals?”

    Of course I said yes. Because I believe there’s nothing more important than helping my child achieve her dreams.

    And if she thinks she can get our refrigerator clean, she’s clearly reaching for the stars.

  • Everybody’s a comedian

    There are so many things about this video that make me happy. Maybe it’s the cuteness of the pigtails. Maybe it’s when she gets annoyed and tells me that the jokes are for “the people from there” as she points out in the distance.

    The Joker from Big Mama on Vimeo.

    Or it might be hearing myself get so overly excited about guessing the right answer to something that wasn’t even a real joke.

    It’s confirmation that motherhood really does turn us into a person that we might have mocked before we had kids of our own.

  • How we roll

    There is nothing

    that makes a girl feel sassier

    than some foam rollers

    and the promise of good hair.

    Unfortunately the rollers didn’t make it through the night and so we’ll never know what could have been.

  • Mental toughness and lavender shirts

    I’m writing this while I sit on Caroline’s bed because P is in the living room watching T.V. and I can’t concentrate for all the gunfire. But it’s important because he’s watching In the Line of Fire with Clint Eastwood and he’s only seen it about twenty-six other times.

    And Caroline isn’t in her bed because she’s in our bed. So, basically, I am a woman without a country.

    Although I did watch The Patriot and part eight of The Pacific tonight and have never felt more patriotic and proud to be an American than I do at this moment. But there is a high probability that I will suffer from some sort of fake war flashbacks in my sleep tonight and wake up screaming, “I’VE BEEN HIT! I’VE BEEN HIT!” Which shouldn’t be disturbing at all and if people don’t like it then maybe they should sleep in a different bed. Like the one that’s decorated in hot pink and in their own room.

    As for P, he has only himself to blame for sucking me into the vortex of war movies.

    Speaking of war, the Cheetah Girls just barely survived our weekend of soccer. You may think that soccer is nothing like war and I shouldn’t even try to make that transition, but to you I say that you obviously didn’t see us get completely destroyed by the Red Dragons on Sunday afternoon.

    Our weekend of soccer started on Saturday morning at 9:30 a.m. We played the Dragonflies who had beaten us earlier in the season. P and I wore matching lavender shirts that our players’ parents bought for us. The fact that we were dressed alike, IN LAVENDER, can only be described as a total gift of self-sacrifice and love. I asked him if he’d ever felt closer to me than at that moment and he just rolled his eyes, which I’m pretty sure meant NO. But I do love a man who isn’t afraid to wear a lavender shirt and coach some six-year-old girls.

    Six-year-old girls who never quit moving.

    Or talking.

    “I really like your hair today.”

    “Thanks! I like your hair, too!”

    “What do you think we’re having for snack after the game?”

    “I don’t know. Is the game over yet?”

    “Did you know that a million plus one gazillion equals infinity?”

    “Why is Coach P yelling at us to get on the field?”

    After the game was over I declared that we beat the Dragonflies (even though there is no official score or any official winners or losers), but P corrected me and said that we’d only scored two goals. I could have sworn we scored three and I don’t know why he couldn’t just let me live under that delusion. He believes it was a tie, but between you and me I still think we scored three goals.

    But, ultimately, the glory of the victory or the tie or whatever was short-lived because we faced the Red Dragons at 12:30 on Sunday and were promptly destroyed. Of course I feel I should mention that we were missing half our team due to prior conflicts so we only had one substitute while the Red Dragons had a full team. Don’t get me wrong they still would have killed us, but it was hot and our girls were exhausted.

    During the last few minutes of the game Caroline twisted her ankle and came out crying. She said she couldn’t even walk on it, but, while she inherited her daddy’s eyes, she inherited my flair for drama and we weren’t totally convinced if she was actually hurt or just completely frustrated by the game. As it turns out, she limped the rest of the day and was treated to my inspirational rendition of Kerri Strug doing the vault to lead her team to Olympic Gold in 1996 as an example of mental toughness. I figure it will give her a lighthearted anecdote to share with Bob Costas someday when he’s ninety-six and interviewing her for the 2020 Olympics.

    “One time when I was six I twisted my ankle during a game and my mom thought telling me some story about Kerri Strug would make it better when all I really wanted was an ice cream sandwich. I mean, I WAS SIX.”

    Listen, Bob Costas, I did the best I could.

    I’d also like to note that I believe I will retire from coaching after this season. I just think some folks are meant to wear the lavender and others aren’t. And I’m okay with that. In fact, I will embrace my role as a parent on the sidelines. Even though I’ll probably still give lectures about Kerri Strug and mental toughness in my spare time.