Doodle

  • Helicopters and hogs

    I’m sure that y’all have been on pins and needles wondering what we did this past weekend. Good news. The wait is over.

    It was actually a long weekend for us because Friday was a school holiday. What holiday, you ask? Battle of Flowers.

    No, you didn’t miss a memo. It’s only celebrated here in San Antonio as part of the ten day extravaganza known as Fiesta where faux royalty zoom at high speeds down neighborhood streets with a police escort to get the faux king to various elementary schools on time so he can hand out faux medals. Viva Fiesta.

    Anyway, there’s a big parade and a lot of whoop-de-do, but we missed all that because P and Caroline headed down to the ranch for their annual helicopter hunt. For those of you who may be new, I should probably explain that P has a good friend who’s in the military. This friend makes it into town about once a year and a rancher friend of P’s always takes this opportunity to rent a helicopter so they can do a big helicopter hog hunt because wild hogs can turn into a big problem on ranches if the population isn’t controlled. They tend to party way too much and tear things up and wear lampshades on their heads while wandering around looking for their beer bong.

    I know it will shock you to learn that I usually choose to stay home.

    Plans for the helicopter hunt began to take shape a few weeks ago when P confirmed that his friend was going to be able to make it into town before he gets deployed next month. There were emails and phone calls and strategies about ammo and weaponry. P heads up a small group geared towards hunters for our church. (Is it just me or can you guess he also watches Nascar just from that last sentence?) A large part of their purpose is to use the wild game they kill to provide meals for the homeless so P invited the sportsmans’ group to the ranch for the hunt to help out. One of my happiest moments of last week was when I read an email he’d sent out to the group. I’ll spare you the whole thing and just share my favorite excerpt:

    “As soon as the hogs break cover we will take a knee and ready ourselves. On command we will rise and shoot. WE WILL ONLY SHOOT OUT IN FRONT OF US. AS SOON AS THE HOGS BREAK THROUGH OUR LINE OR TURN OFF, THE FIRING WILL CEASE. AT NO POINT WILL YOU BE ALLOWED TO SHOOT AT HOGS IN THE FIELD!!!! The reason for this is we will have LOTS of people, livestock and vehicles out and about. This not negotiable. If this rule is broken we will shoot you, process you and feed you to the homeless!”

    And he signed it “Grace and Mercy in the name of Jesus, P”.

    Not really. But it makes me laugh to think about it.

    It would appear though, that for all our differences, we share a love of the ALL CAPS to make our point.

    Caroline was able to be a part of the helicopter experience for the first time last year and she’s been begging to do it again ever since then. Naturally, she was FIRED UP about the whole thing. I would really prefer that my dear family remain on the ground the way God intended when he gave us feet and not wings, but I realize I cannot let all my irrational fears rule our lives or there’s a good chance we could all end up living inside a bubble like John Travolta did in that movie. Providing that bubble had access to reality television.

    So I spent the week taking deep breaths and reading Psalm 91 and, really, I was feeling okay about the whole thing.

    Until Thursday night.

    You may remember that I attempted to bake a cake with an antiquated cake mix and then had to resort to cookies only to discover I was out of vanilla. I was not going to be deterred from my cookie mission so Caroline and I walked across the street, bowl in hand, to borrow two teaspoons of vanilla from our neighbors. They invited us in and Bill asked Caroline what she was going to do this weekend. She answered, “Ride in a helicopter and shoot hogs.”

    Well, sure. I have no doubt that’s exactly what he was expecting her to say.

    He replied, “Wow! I’ve never even been in a helicopter. Does it have doors and seatbelts?”

    She thought about it for a minute and said, “Nope. It doesn’t have doors or seatbelts. Just a big pole in the middle that I have to hold onto.”

    And that’s when I passed out and dropped my bowl of newly acquired vanilla extract.

    We walked back across the street as I breathed into a paper bag and were barely in the house when I asked P, “Does that helicopter not have doors or seatbelts?” He looked at me like he felt sorry for me and said, “Of course it has seatbelts, why would you think it didn’t?”

    I looked at Caroline and she looked back at me with a sheepish grin on her face. Apparently she appreciates the art of creating some drama to make a story better.

    They left the house about 6:00 a.m. on Friday morning. I wanted to be worried but I fell right back asleep thanks to the hefty dose of Benadryl I’d taken the night before in an attempt to fight off the pollen. A few hours later I woke up to the sound of a text message on my phone and was relieved to see this.

    And this.

    What does it say about me that it makes me want to say, “That’ll do, Pig. That’ll do.”?

    They returned home at the end of the day, dirty and exhausted, but with big smiles on their faces and one of them was jumping up and down with excitement over all the fun. That P. He gets so keyed up.

    That’ll do, Pig. That’ll do.

  • Hanging on by the skin of a tooth. Literally.

    So the big news around here is that one of Caroline’s top front teeth is on the verge of coming out. The fact that she’s held onto them for seven and a half years seems pretty remarkable considering most of her friends lost their two front teeth at least a year ago and are already sporting the big permanent awkward teeth that are a right of childhood passage. It would appear that Caroline is a late dental bloomer.

    Her front tooth has been loose for about a month. And for the last month I’ve talked about getting her picture taken while she still has her baby tooth because PRECIOUS MOMENTS FLYING BY. But like with all things in my life, I procrastinated until it was too late.

    She got in the car after school yesterday and immediately showed me how loose her front tooth had become during the day. I mean the thing is literally twisting in the wind. (I’m using Rachel Zoe’s definition of literally here. The tooth was not, in fact, actually twisting in the wind. But it could have been.) As soon as we got home, I made her stand in the yard so I could take one last picture of her with her top baby teeth intact because I’m a sentimental sap and the whole thing made me feel a little emotional because I’m going to be forty this year, I have a new wrinkle above my eyebrow and my baby is going to have big teeth.

    (Yes. I also have PMS. Why do you ask?)

    Here is what could possibly be the last picture of Caroline with her baby teeth.

    I don’t know if you can tell but the tooth is so loose that it kept getting caught on her lower lip when she talked. Essentially she spent the rest of the day looking increasingly like a hillbilly.

    A very cute hillbilly, but a hillbilly none the less.

    You may also notice that we are in the midst of an attempt to grow out her bangs. It’s taking every ounce of restraint for me not to grab the nearest pair of scissors and go to town, but instead we’re resorting to various clips and bobby pins that don’t really work so well by the end of the day.

    I have only myself to blame because I was the one who suggested it might be a good idea to grow out her bangs for summer so they’d be easier to keep out of her face while she swims or whatever. After contemplating my suggestion for a few moments she said, “Well, the thing is, I know I look adorable with my bangs so I’m sure I’ll look adorable without them.”

    If only I could walk in that kind of bangs victory.

    Anyway, by dinner time her Billy Bob tooth was hanging by a thread but P and I didn’t want to anger it. And by “it”, I mean Caroline and/or Billy Bob. So we took the advice of The Beatles and let it be.

    Personally, I’m hoping she’ll run into someone at recess or during soccer practice and it will literally get knocked out.

    And this time I’m using literally in its literal sense.

  • If you give a cat a camera

    You have no idea how much I am struggling with what to write about since there is no way I can make a weekend spent cleaning my house, sorting my laundry and reading a book sound interesting. I’m not a word Jedi.

    I don’t even know what I mean by word Jedi. I just know we’ve watched A LOT of Star Wars here over the last four days. In fact, you could say we’re in full-blown obsession mode.

    On Friday morning, we watched Star Wars. Again. Actually Caroline watched it while I laid in bed next to her and slept a little bit longer. Which is why the end of Spring Break is going to kill us all. Eventually we got up and tried to figure out what to do with our day. Sadly, all of her friends ended up leaving town at the end of Spring Break instead of while we were gone. This caused much sorrowing and pain and complete amnesia about all the fun we’d had at the beginning of the week.

    Ultimately we ended up going to see Mars Needs Moms. The popcorn was delicious and the movie was okay. I thought it had potential to be better and I was a little creeped out by the thought of Martians abducting mothers in their sleep, especially since I am a mother. However, I don’t believe in Martians so I guess it’ll be okay. It was also one of those movies where the animation is so realistic that you forget you’re watching fake people and then you occasionally remember and it freaks you out that you totally forgot they were computerized and you wonder if it’s all part of some vast government conspiracy to replace humans.

    Or maybe that’s just me.

    Saturday morning Caroline hopped out of bed and announced she wanted to go fishing at the ranch. So I did the only thing to be done in that situation and said, “Go tell your Daddy”. About thirty minutes later the truck was loaded with fishing poles, assorted snack foods, the dogs and my peeps as they headed south with hopes of catching some big catfish.

    I also threw the camera in the backpack so they could take a few pictures. When I went to upload the pics last night, here is a sampling of what I found.

    I immediately suspected that Toonces had gotten ahold of the camera. And my suspicions were confirmed when I saw that she’d taken the liberty of recording some video of herself. When I asked her about it, she said, “I thought it would be nice for the people on the blog”.

    The Ranch Trip Project from Big Mama on Vimeo.

    Well sure.

    (I’d like to add that it makes me so happy that she pronounces “shrimp” like “strimpt” just like my great-aunt Fina)

    Thankfully, P was able to get the camera while Toonces was catching fish and was able to document the catch of the day.

    I feel that those pictures illustrate why I prefer to believe that catfish magically appear on a plate with a side of hushpuppies.

    Because, yuck.

    But that smile on her face? That’s a keeper.

  • Toonces

    P texted me this picture of Caroline driving his truck at the ranch on Saturday.

    I immediately texted him back with “It’s our very own Toonces” because I knew he would get the reference. That’s part of the reason I married him.

    But for those of you who aren’t familiar, I present you with the greatness that is Toonces the Driving Cat.

    We have a very sophisticated sense of humor around here.

  • In her own words

    A few days ago, Caroline’s teacher gave the kids an assignment to make an acronym using their name.

    Here’s what she came up with.

    C – Can shoot a gun

    A – A good soccer player

    R – Runs fast

    O – Osome girl (I’m pretty sure she meant “awesome girl”. Hooked on phonics works for her.)

    L – Likes choclet ice cream (Once again, I think she meant “chocolate”.)

    I – I like science

    N – Not a party pooper

    E – Every day fun happens at my house

    One thing is for sure, she knows herself.

  • I’d have given her a piece of my mind if I had one to spare

    On Monday morning Caroline had a little bit of a tummy ache. That’s right. I just called it a tummy ache. It sounds so much cuter than gastrointestinal issues. I wasn’t sure if I should send her to school or not, but she insisted she felt fine and didn’t want to stay home.

    Thanks to my indecisiveness we arrived at the school about ten minutes after the tardy bell rang. So I walked her to her classroom and told her teacher that if Caroline complained of a tummy ache she should send her to the nurse and I would come pick her up.

    (As a disclaimer I’m pretty sure I didn’t say “tummy ache” to the teacher because I wanted to appear mature and mom-ish. I used the more sophisticated “stomach ache”.)

    Meanwhile I went back home, changed into my workout clothes and continued my never-ending quest to run three miles without stopping. The truth is I’m still much closer to the couch than the 5K, but the warm weather and the realization that I’ll have to wear a swimsuit out in public in only two months is providing a much needed kick in the running shorts.

    I was at the furthest point from the house when the school nurse called my cell phone to inform me that Caroline was in her office complaining about her stomach. The nurse did not call it a tummy ache. I immediately said I would come get her and the nurse replied, “Well, she said you told her you’d come get her. She may feel fine but just want to come home.” I responded that I would feel better if I came and got her since I knew the tummy ache had been a legitimate issue earlier.

    I huffed and puffed back to the house, drove up to the school, and walked into the nurse’s office expecting to see Caroline lying on one of those green cots. Perhaps with a cold compress on her forehead to make her feel better. I know all about the green cots and cold compresses because I was a wee bit of a hypochondriac/drama queen throughout junior high and high school and spent many hours in various nurses’ offices with maladies ranging from cramps to the flu to my boyfriend broke up with me and I can’t quit crying in English class.

    But Caroline wasn’t in the nurse’s office. She wasn’t lying comfortably on a freshly Cloroxed cot. I walked in to where the nurse was sitting at her desk and said, “Hi. I’m Caroline’s mama. I’m here to pick her up.”

    She looked at me and said, “I sent her back to class.”

    I can’t remember for sure but I think I just stood there with a blank look for a few minutes before I asked, “Why did you send her back to class? Did she want to go back to class?”

    “No. But if you sent her to school with a stomach ache, then I can send her back to class with a stomach ache.”

    I’m sorry. Can you repeat that? Because I couldn’t hear you over the sound of me biting the inside of my bottom lip until it bleeds to keep me from giving you a lecture about tummy aches and seven-year-old girls who are sick and want their mama to come pick them up from school. Seven-year-old girls who have never EVER gone to the nurse and asked to come home.

    Instead I said, “Well, I want to take her home.”

    “You’ll have to go to the front office and have them call her to come in.”

    And so that’s what I did. While I talked myself down from the ledge of righteous indignation and thought about the days of yore when nurses were like sweet, compassionate Cherry Ames R.N. with her dark black hair, rosy cheeks and twinkly eyes.

    (Please tell me I’m not alone in my love of Cherry Ames books. Anyone? Anyone?)

    Caroline came walking down the hall with her little book bag slung across her shoulders and said, “OH MAMA. I KNEW YOU’D COME GET ME. THANK YOU.”

    Then we went to HEB to load up on Gatorade, Sprite and saltines. And then we came home and spent the rest of the day watching movies while intermittently complaining about an upset stomach. Mine started feeling a little queasy as well, but I think that was when we started watching Land Before Time and I have a hard time tolerating dinosaurs that speak in baby talk voices. It’s not natural.

    Not that it’s natural for dinosaurs to speak at all. But still, baby talk seems like a big stretch.

    I’m happy to report that the tummy woes only lasted about twenty-four hours and all is well once again. Caroline went back to school and I went back to doing whatever it is I do around here. Which largely consists of using a lot of Clorox wipes on countertops in an attempt to look productive.

    It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.

    Kind of like being a school nurse.