Friends

  • The big toe reveal

    If you ever meet Gulley, don’t let her try to tell you she doesn’t like to get her craft on. Because look what she did.

    I give you Exhibit A, BIG TOE.

    This wasn’t actually on Halloween. It was on Saturday and Will agreed to try it on for me. He said he plans to be very careful with it because he’d like to wear it all year long. And who can blame him?

    I’ll have you know that the top of that costume has part of a foam pool noodle velcroed into it to help hold its shape. And there is a lifejacket attached to the torso to keep the whole thing in place while Big Toe wandered the neighborhood in search of candy and the occasional plastic spider ring.

    To which I can only say, WELL DONE.

    It’s so much better than my suggestion of a blue sweatsuit and some face paint.

    _____________________________________

    There’s some great discussions going on over at BlogHer about kids and texting. You can check them out here.

  • She’s clearly not doing the safety dance

    On Friday morning, Caroline woke me up bright and early whispering in my ear, “Mama! I see lightning outside!” As soon as my heart rate returned to levels of non-cardiac arrest, I mumbled, “No you don’t. It’s just the security lights outside”. But then I heard the rain and realized she’d actually seen lightning.

    And then I secretly hoped that it would mean the field trip to the zoo would be cancelled because I totally lack the motherhood gene that allows you to love the zoo, especially the zoo with three buses of second-graders.

    Don’t get me wrong. I have done my time at the zoo. We’ve even had some good times at the zoo. I think the fundamental issue is that I’ve never been very good at the proper timing of the zoo departure. We always stayed too long and by the time we got to the car, all hot and whiny and covered in melted ice cream, the precious memories of the elephants and the lions have faded away. And most of what I remember involves a meltdown and how bad the hippos smell.

    Seriously. What is up with the hippos?

    As it turned out, the thunderstorms were just passing through and the field trip was able to go on as scheduled but now WITH MORE PUDDLES! AND SAUNA-LIKE CONDITIONS!

    I was in charge of a group of four girls including Caroline. Their teacher had given them a scavenger hunt sheet to fill out with information about various animals and things about them. Our group kept up that painful process through about five animals, but I felt my soul dying inside by the time I had to spell “mammal” for the eighth time in four seconds. Plus I realized I was the only parent who was still actually making the kids fill out the sheets which BUZZKILL.

    So I ended up putting the sheets in my purse and forgot to give them back to the kids before they got on the bus. Then Caroline came home from school on Friday and told me her teacher wants the sheets back and the Ziploc bags they came in. Which I would be more than happy to return except for the fact that I threw them all away in a trashcan outside of Joseph’s Bakery after I ordered myself a celebratory hot chicken salad sandwich and large Diet Coke when the field trip was over.

    Basically, chaperone FAIL.

    And now I guess I have to go in and explain what happened and hope that I am allowed to chaperone future field trips even though I basically participated in the elementary school version of the Enron scandal.

    In other news, my friend Paige was in town this weekend and we spent the whole day together on Sunday. Caroline and I picked her up in the morning and we met P at church. Then we all went to breakfast at Taco Garage where she got to experience the wonder that is chilaquiles for a late breakfast. After that, P knew to make his escape and the girls headed out with the sole purpose of finding Paige a pair of cowboy boots.

    I am happy to report that after visiting three different boot establishments, we returned to our original destination of Cavender’s Boot City and Paige bought some boots that will cause me to have boot envy anytime I see them.

    But one of my favorite parts of the day was when Paige, Caroline and I were all sitting around the food court at La Cantera taking a quick snack break. There was a little Madonna playing on the overhead speakers and Paige was kind of dancing in her seat. She asked Caroline, “Little gal, do you like to dance?”

    Caroline answered, “Yes, I love to dance. I have some good moves.”

    Paige said, “Oh, I’d love to see your moves.”

    To which Caroline replied, “Oh, I’d show them to you but they’re too dangerous for the mall”.

    Too dangerous for the mall.

    I don’t even know what else to say.

  • Houston and back

    So Gulley and I left for Houston around 1:00 on Tuesday afternoon. The only stop we made was at the Whataburger in Schulenburg where she ordered some chicken fingers and I had a Whataburger Jr. that was entirely too salty. I don’t know why I’m filling you in on completely meaningless details of our trip except that the massive sodium intake might have something to do with the fact that my wedding rings feel entirely too tight even twenty-four hours later.

    Someone asked in the comments yesterday what kind of music we listened to during the trip and bless your heart for assuming we ever quit talking long enough to listen to anything but the sound of each other’s voices. The last few weeks have been so hectic for both of us and this was the first time we’d had in forever to have more than a few ten minute conversations pieced together in various code languages so that our little eavesdroppers don’t understand every word we’re saying and repeat it back at some unfortunate time.

    Here’s a non-comprehensive list of some of our conversation topics:

    good hair highlights
    public school education
    the upcoming elections
    marriage
    wearing belts
    television, both reality and scripted
    what God is teaching us
    the holidays
    boots vs. booties
    our current breakfast food of choice
    movies we’d like to see

    I know.

    It was all fascinating. And most all of these things were discussed as we bounced from one subject (the challenges of marriage!) to another subject (laundry detergent!) and then back to the original subject (marriage!) before winding up somewhere in the vicinity of what we’d like to do with our hair.

    The three hour drive totally flew by and we had just barely made it to Houston before we decided we better head over to the church because I was completely paranoid about the parking situation and felt like the whole evening might be derailed if I had to find any type of alternate parking because it might mean I’d have to look at a map to find some sort of overflow lot and the whole thing just stressed me out. Fortunately, my obsessive tendencies totally paid off and we were about the second car to pull in the completely empty lot.

    (On a totally unrelated note, I still have a lingering cough from my bronchitis. P told me earlier tonight that he doesn’t like the way I cough. LIKE I CAN CHANGE IT. And just a few seconds ago, I started coughing and he paused the T.V. in the middle of an Ultimate Fighting Championship fight until I stopped. As if somehow my coughing was detracting from watching the men on T.V. trying to kick in each other’s heads. Sure, my cough is the most annoying component in this scenario.)

    Anyway, we had the best time. Tuesday night Bible study was amazing. Beth taught on the image of God and I’ll be processing it for days. Christy Nockels led us in worship and the whole thing was just so dang good. And her hair looked great.

    And then came the moment where I became socially awkward.

    After it was over Gulley and I were going to go get something to eat with Amanda. We were standing around and there was Christy Nockels. And I wanted to say something to her. Something like “I have loved your music for years” or “I listened to your song Glory Baby a million times the summer after I had a miscarriage” or “Your song Captivate Us makes me cry every time I hear it”. You know? Something normal.

    Christy looked at me and graciously asked, “Do I know you? Have we ever met?”

    I said, “No” and then stuck out my hand to shake her hand while I formally introduced myself like we were at a corporate business meeting.

    Then I felt like I had to explain who I was or why I was waiting around, so I said, “I have a blog”.

    The whole thing was very reminiscent of that scene in Dirty Dancing when Baby tells Johnny, “I carried a watermelon”.

    But she was just lovely and smiled and nodded at me like I was a normal person instead of some kind of socially awkward internet-type person who sits around in my pajamas and writes stuff on the computer.

    Even though, let’s be honest, if the shoe fits.

    Gulley and I set the alarm for 5:00 a.m. Wednesday morning and literally rolled right out of bed and into the car. We made a quick trip through the Starbucks drive-through for some serious caffeine and drove back to San Antonio.

    And, yes, we talked the whole way home.

    Because, fortunately, I am not socially awkward when I’m in the comfort of my own car.

  • I dedicate this post to Eye of the Tiger

    On Friday morning I packed up Caroline, my bangs and myself and drove to Houston for the weekend. Yes, I have bangs.

    Again.

    I blame Reese Witherspoon and her perfect bangs that aren’t hindered by a cowlick and an overall spirit of stubbornness.

    And I count the bangs as their own entity for the weekend because I am constantly aware of them right now. Where are my bangs? What are they doing? Have they rebelled and gone two separate directions while I wasn’t paying attention?

    It’s not that I don’t like them. In fact, I’ve been plotting to get bangs all summer long. I was just waiting for the humidity to drop somewhere below 152%. I think I just need them to grow out a tad bit longer which is my fault because my sweet hairstylist cut them perfectly the first time and I said I thought they needed to be a little shorter.

    I bet Reese keeps her mouth shut when she’s getting her hair cut. I bet she doesn’t offer her own amateur opinions to a professional.

    So, not only does she have better bangs than me, she’s also smarter than me.

    But enough about Reese.

    The trip to Houston has been on my calendar since sometime around last February. Several of Sophie’s college girlfriends wanted to get together to celebrate her birthday and decided to have the festivities in Houston where one of them lives. And they invited me to join them for all the big fun.

    I’m so glad they did. Not only did I get to spend the weekend celebrating Sophie’s birthday with her, but I got to hang out with seven other sweet girls that made me laugh until I cried as they told stories from their college days. And you know what I have to show for it?

    A picture of the cupcakes I bought on Saturday afternoon from Crave Cupcakes. I think the banana one may have changed my life. And I’m not even normally a huge fan of the banana flavored baked goods, but I took a risk. A risk that totally paid off.

    Sometime last week I saw something on T.V. that showed how your heart beats after you eat a meal that’s high in fat and I’m so sorry I saw it. Because it’s a wonder my heart didn’t just up and stop after everything I ate this weekend. But there are probably worse ways to go than sitting around sharing massive amounts of the beef fajitas from Lupe Tortilla while singing Total Eclipse of the Heart with eight other girls.

    The whole weekend was so much fun. There were pedicures and cheeseburgers and college football games and shopping. Oh the shopping. We debated the merits of various booties and the practicality of the open-toed bootie. And Sophie’s friend, EK, found a dress at Marshall’s that I’m still thinking about. The only thing that soothed my disappointment over the lack of additional dresses was the fact that I bought a really cute shirt at Nordstrom Rack for $4.00. FOUR DOLLARS.

    In the meantime, I’d dropped Caroline off at a hotel where she spent the weekend with Mimi and Bops. She told me she “wasn’t sure how she was going to make it until Sunday” without seeing me, but I think she felt better after she bungee-jumped at The Galleria for about her fourth time. Bless her heart, it makes me so sad to think of how she had to endure being spoiled rotten all weekend long.

    And so on Sunday morning, I said goodbye to my new friends and went to meet Mimi, Bops and Caroline for breakfast. You’ll be glad to know she survived the weekend and found comfort for her soul by jumping back and forth between the beds in their hotel room.

    We headed back to San Antonio and I was so tired that the only thing that kept me going was a steady rotation of 80’s Hits on Pandora. I owe Eye of The Tiger a debt of gratitude for giving me a little pick me up sometime around Seguin when I hit the wall and felt like I couldn’t go on anymore.

    Now I plan to sleep for about four days. And dream about banana cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.

    And to my dear friend, Sophie. I’m so glad I was able to spend your birthday with you and some of your oldest friends. Thanks so much for including me in all the fun.

    Even though it sounded like we found each other through EHarmony every time we told the story of how we met.

  • Maybe Halloween Oreos are the key

    I’ve no doubt that you will all be relieved to know that W.C. Fields has been captured. They found him at some kind of Concept Therapy Institute which appears to be a place designed to help people deal with stress. Clearly life at the monkey compound got to be too much for him. I wonder if it was helping his child study for a spelling test that finally pushed him over the edge and made him seek out mental help?

    So I never managed to write about what we did last weekend. And, honestly, consider yourself spared because it was a lot of blah, blah, blah with some boring and college football squeezed in for good measure.

    But there was one moment that I wanted to record for posterity.

    We ended up spending Saturday afternoon over at Gulley’s house. The kids played in the backyard while we solved several of the world’s most serious problems. At one point I even offered to pay them a nickel for every stick they picked up out of the yard because I harbored some grand delusions about turning them into a fall centerpiece for my dining room table.

    Jackson and Caroline were all over this. They picked up every stick they could find. As opposed to Will who looked me dead in the eye and said, “I hate nickels.” Caroline told me later that he told her he hated money and she declared that his wife was “GOING TO BE SAD ABOUT THAT”.

    Preach it, sister.

    Anyway, around 4:00, Gulley’s husband announced that he was going to go dove hunting and said the boys could go with him if they wanted to. Will immediately jumped at the chance and ran to his room to put on his favorite shark t-shirt before he rethought that decision due to his concern that the shark would scare away all the doves.

    Jackson initially said he wanted to go as well, but I’d also told him he could come over to our house for dinner so he and Caroline could hang out a little longer. He was torn. It was an eight year old version of Sophie’s Choice and he declared that he was going to flip a coin to make his decision.

    Caroline yelled out that she wanted to be tails as Jackson found a quarter in Gulley’s purse. He flipped the coin, looked at it, and Gulley and I both watched as he nonchalantly flipped it over to where it revealed tails as opposed to heads. He said, “Looks like I’m going home with y’all”.

    And so he did.

    We ate dinner and dipped mass quantities of Halloween Oreos in glasses of milk until Gulley came to pick him up around 8:30.

    Caroline has no idea what an achievement it is to get a boy to stay home and hang out with her instead of going hunting.

    It’s a feat I’ve never managed to pull off in thirteen years of marriage.

  • Some days at the beach

    I can sum up my day in two words:

    Pretzel M&M’s.

    Sophie mentioned them a few days ago and I’d just seen them that morning at Office Max. They seemed to be the culmination of every PMS dream I’ve ever had and I finally bought a bag at HEB. I never knew heaven had a taste.

    The unfortunate thing is that I’ve spent most of the summer vowing my workout and eating healthy regimen would begin again as soon as school started. So I’m going to have to eat the pretzel M&M’s in moderation.

    Right.

    It reminds me of a story my family used to tell about my oldest cousin. When she was a little girl and got in trouble for doing something wrong she immediately began to wail, “But just yesterday I gave my heart to Jesus.”

    That’s kind of how I feel about the pretzel M&M’s. Just yesterday I gave my heart to pursuing some physical fitness goals.

    It’s going to take some willpower.

    Mainly because we spent most of last week at the beach. The beach experience isn’t complete for me unless it includes Fritos and bean dip. And apparently a variety pack of Corn Nuts. I didn’t even realize that was an odd thing to haul down to the beach until my friend E looked in the pantry and asked, “Who in your family can’t live without Corn Nuts for four days?”

    That would be me. Not on normal days, just beach days.

    That makes it better.

    Anyway, early in the summer, our friends W and E invited us to come stay at the beach house they’d rented for a week. They also invited our friends Cat and Dave and we were all excited to get to spend a few days together with our kids.

    So last Thursday we loaded up P’s truck, along with the Polaris and everything else we own, and headed to Port Aransas for a long weekend. I’m not kidding when I say we looked like the Clampetts, but not as refined.

    When I went to HEB on Wednesday to buy groceries for the trip, my cart was so full that the bag boy asked if I had a lot of kids. Yes. Yes I do. Kids who eat a lot of Corn Nuts. The back seat of the truck was piled so high with groceries that every time P made a right turn I was concerned Caroline might get knocked out by a rogue can of bean dip.

    As soon as we got down there, we hit the beach. And look! We upgraded our accommodations this year!

    Granted, it still looked a little like a refugee camp, but it was an improvement over last year’s tarp held up with rusted rebar. What I really wish I could show you is the moment the brown canopy caught a big gust of wind and began flying down the beach. We watched with a mix of horror and wonder, yet no one thought to grab their camera.

    The fun thing about the trip, other than the canopy flying with reckless abandon down the beach, was that we’ve known W and Dave since they were fifteen years old and began attending a weekly Bible study that P led after he came back to San Antonio from College Station. And we’ve known Cat since she was about ten. We first met E six years ago when she visited the ranch with some friends who thought she might be a good match for W. Is any of this making sense?

    The bottom line is that we’ve watched them all grow up, become real people, fall in love, get married and have babies. And now we’re just all friends that take vacations together.

    And watch our kids dig big holes in the sand.

    So that they can make a baby pool for one of the littlest ones.

    Shortly after, they crashed her pool party and she decided to make a getaway.

    To go in search of bigger and better things.

    There were water fights.

    And trucks.

    And running down the beach.

    And much borrowing of Caroline’s fancy goggles to make a fashion statement.

    The majority of the time I looked up from my lounge chair and magazine, I saw Caroline attached like a little sea monkey to her daddy.

    The fish we caught weren’t quite as impressive as the sharks we caught last year.

    And by we, I mean P. I don’t really believe in putting bait on a hook and heading out to become part of the oceanic food chain.

    It was the perfect way to end the summer. Friends, laughter, sun, Fritos, bean dip, Corn Nuts, sun and seaweed.

    And jumping because we were just so happy to be there.

    (This is how I’ll always remember Caroline at age 7. All arms and legs. All energy. All the time.)

    ________________________________________________________________

    There is a new Kellogg’s post up on my giveaway page. Click over there to leave a comment for a chance to win $100 gift card.