Doodle

I am writing this with a Disney Princess ice pack on my foot.

Why?

Because we are big fans of the Disney Princesses around here. That Princess Jasmine is a ball of fire.

Oh? The reason for the ice pack?

Because I’m about 92% sure I broke my toe around 2 a.m. on Sunday morning. There is 8% of me that’s not entirely sure it’s actually broken but mainly because when I showed it to P before church on Sunday morning and announced it was broken, he glanced at it and said, “Doubtful”.

It’s easy to be a skeptic when it’s not your toe.

Caroline slept in our bed on Saturday night and P slept in her bed because we are big fans of musical beds at our house. She was really congested and woke up asking for a Kleenex so she could blow her nose. I got out of bed, threw on my robe (because I have an 80 year old woman inside of me who likes a robe to ward off the chill), and started to make my way to the bathroom to get the aforementioned Kleenex.

Apparently, I was still a little groggy because I forgot about a chair that has been in our room since the dawn of time. I ran right into it with my ring-finger toe bearing the brunt of the impact. I wish I had it on video because I went down like I’d been shot. In fact, I think I might have blacked out from the pain.

I hobbled into the bathroom to get the Kleenex, fully expecting to turn on the light and see my toe at a 90 degree angle to the rest of my foot. Mercifully it was in line with all my other piggies, just slightly red and angry. And who can blame it after what I’d just put it through all for a lousy piece of tissue?

Caroline had no idea I’d sacrificed my metatarsal health just so she could blow her nose and immediately went back to sleep while I laid in bed with my throbbing toe. I kept thinking I should get up and take some Tylenol or maybe a shot of tequila with an Advil chaser, but that would have required me to get up and walk.

I must have finally passed out from the pain because next thing I knew it was morning. I limped my way into the kitchen to discover that my toe now looks like a big fat organic purple grape. It’s every bit as attractive as what you’re imagining. I’d take a picture but I’m going with the assumption that there are some things that need to remain hidden beneath a sock.

Anyway, you can imagine how thrilled I am to have a broken toe (it’s totally broken according to the internet, otherwise known as the gospel diagnostic truth) a mere week before I leave for the Dominican Republic.

In other weekend news, it was the big debut of the Wonder Woman costume and the spray-painted red boots.

The good news is that Caroline LOVES her Wonder Woman costume. The bad news is that spray paint doesn’t really adhere to synthetic pleather boots. They looked great for about thirty seconds. I’m just going to call it a crackle finish and pretend it was intentional unless I can figure something out by Friday.

In other bad news, she didn’t win the costume contest. I’m not the kind of mother to talk about how my kid was robbed but, between you and me, she was robbed. Apparently the judges had no appreciation for red boots with a crackle finish and a golden lasso of truth made out of drapery tiebacks from Bed, Bath and Beyond. The important thing is that she thinks she won because they gave all the kids a bag of candy and I certainly wasn’t going to tell her any different because why would I do that to myself?

Sometimes the lasso of truth is better as a lasso of you don’t need to know the truth.

Did I mention that Caroline and I baked Halloween cookies on Sunday afternoon after we got home from the grocery store? And by Halloween cookies, I mean that I bought a roll of Pillsbury Slice and Bake sugar cookies while we were at HEB along with a tub of Duncan Hines frosting.

If you thought for a moment that I meant homemade sugar cookies, then I feel compelled to ask what part of PMS you don’t understand. I was hanging on by a very fine thread, my friends.

When we got home I realized that I don’t own any Halloween-themed cookie cutters so we ended up just cutting the dough in slices and baking round, boring cookies. By the time they cooled enough for us to ice them, she had forgotten they existed. However, she conveniently remembered they existed about three minutes before bedtime.

I told her that we’d ice them when she got home from school on Monday.

Which explains my horror when I walked in from running errands yesterday morning and found only an empty Ziploc bag and a few stray sugar cookie crumbs. Apparently P missed the sugar cookie conversation and helped himself to eight or two dozen un-iced sugar cookies.

Obviously he’s on a diet again or he wouldn’t have left the crumbs.

My life is hard.

Fortunately, I still had to make a run to the new Fancy Target (oh all the additional stoplights make me tired!) and was able to purchase not only a new roll of Pillsbury Slice and Bakes, but also found fall-themed cookie cutters on the dollar aisle. Needless to say, it was a triumphant moment.

When Caroline got home I announced we were making new and improved Halloween cookies. I will be forever grateful that she didn’t seem to care where the other cookies had gone, not because I would have had any problem completely ratting out her daddy, but because somehow it still would have been my fault.

Anyway, we got to work rolling out the slice and bake dough.

Please note that the outfit she has on is an indication of how worn out I was from the weekend. I meekly submitted three outfits yesterday morning and they were all dismissed. I didn’t have the will to fight, so I pulled this one out. The rastafarian look is always the ace in the hole.

The cookie dough wasn’t providing enough sugar, so she began to dig into the Halloween candy.

We live by the belief that less is never more, especially when it comes to sprinkles and frosting.

And we also feel strongly that we need to taste our finished product.

I’m pretty sure that bare feet in the midst of the baking area violates about 132 health code laws, but it’s really a minor thing compared to the fact that she licked most of the cookies before she iced them.

Here’s our finished product.

In case you can’t tell, they are in the shape of ghosts, pumpkins, bats and the occasional acorn.

Have I mentioned I’m the ghetto Martha Stewart?

I think I gave myself too much credit.

This weekend was full of big fun and fall festivities around here.

And, I’ll be honest, I don’t know if I’ve ever been so glad to see Monday.

P was out of town so it just Caroline and me for most of the weekend. I could tell she was tired and not necessarily feeling all that great. The constant runny nose and the endless whining about the cruelty of life clued me in. The problem is that she will never admit when she doesn’t feel good, if anything it just makes her go into some kind of frenzied overdrive as if to prove that she is okay and feeling fine.

I assure you she doesn’t get this from me. All it takes is a couple of sneezes and I’m in the bed waiting for someone to bring me some chicken noodle soup. Which usually turns out to be a long wait.

On Saturday I decided that we needed to get out of the house, plus we had to go buy a birthday present for a party on Sunday afternoon. Clearly I had some sort of mental lapse because you know what’s a bad combination? A tired, cranky five year old in a toy store, especially when you tell her that you aren’t buying her anything.

As we left the toy store, I attempted to put my brain back in my head so that I could drive to Sonic and get a Route 44 Diet Coke. Mama needed some caffeine because our day wasn’t nearly done. I had already told her that we could go to a Fall Festival at a local church because unfortunately I am not clairvoyant.

The good news is that once we got to the festival she forgot about her harsh existence as a pampered only child whose mother endlessly strives to ensure she doesn’t have to wear faux red boot covers on Halloween, and she actually began to smile and have a good time.

She jumped in the bouncy castles, got her face painted, decorated some trick-or-treat bags, and participated in the cupcake walk. I’m not going to lie, I totally convinced her to do the cupcake walk because I thought it meant we’d get to take home some kind of chocolate iced cupcakes and I was suffering from raging PMS. However, this was some kind of lame cupcake walk and all you got was one cupcake when you won. So I made her do it until we had an even dozen to take home.

We waited until right before we left to pick out a pumpkin because I didn’t want to tote around a big pumpkin the whole time. My hands were full enough with all those cupcakes. So we walked over to the pumpkin patch where she tried to convince me to buy what can only be described as a pumpkin on steroids. I had to explain that Mama isn’t some freak of nature and can only lift things that weigh less than me. And then the whining began because her life is hard and why can’t I sacrifice my spinal health to allow her to have the biggest pumpkin in the history of the universe?

By the time we got home we were both exhausted. My goal was to get us both in our pajamas and heat up some dino nuggets for her dinner as quickly as possible. I figured I’d just eat the cupcakes because, hello, PMS.

However, she had different plans. “Can we order some food to be delivered, Mama?”

Oh no. Think fast.

“Baby, Mama doesn’t have any money. We’re just going to eat something here.” (I know. But, technically, it was true because I didn’t have any cash.)

“Okay. I’m going to put on my pajamas.”

That was easy.

About five minutes later she comes walking in wearing her pajamas, holding money that she has gotten out of her piggy bank. She hands me a $1.75 and says, “Now can we order some food?”

Bless her sweet heart. I am the worst mother in the world. Plus, she’s probably going to tell her whole Kindergarten class that her mama doesn’t have any money to buy food. We’ll end up being part of some fundraising effort.

Oh the guilt and the hormones are a deadly combination. I ended up helping her put her money back in her piggy bank and we headed to Whataburger (her choice) to pick up cheeseburgers for dinner because I was so filled with guilt. I really wanted to end the day on a good note, but I think we were both too tired. There was more whining, some crying, and finally I got her to bed.

On Sunday morning, she cried all the way to church because I had the audacity to put her hair in pigtails instead of a ponytail. And her legs were cold and I forgot to feed her breakfast even though I did feed her breakfast and she just didn’t remember it.

By the time we got home from church it was time to go to the birthday party. I’m not a big fan of the birthday party even on my best day but my PMS was in full swing, not to mention that I was wearing the most uncomfortable bra that I own. Sadly, it’s the only bra that I’ve ever been professionally fitted for and it wasn’t cheap so I feel like I need to wear it every now and then to justify its existence. It makes me feel a little like Scarlett O’Hara after she had her baby and Mammy is trying to pull in her corset. Either my ribcage has expanded or that saleslady at Nordstrom took some bad measurements.

Or maybe it’s just my hormones. Or the cupcakes.

Anyway, we survived the birthday party and capped off the day with a trip to HEB because I like to push myself to the very brink of insanity and peer over the edge. What better way to do that than to take a tired, whiny child all hyped up on My Little Pony icing to the grocery store?

The weekend. It beat me.

Did I mention I’m glad it’s Monday?