Another day

Well, let’s see. This weekend was fairly uneventful. We went to movie night at our church on Friday night and then Saturday Caroline went swimming with some friends and then she and P went to the ranch. I went to Banana Republic and found a cute top on sale for $15.00 (It really was $15.00. I know I say that all the time, but this time it’s the truth. I’m like the clotheshorse who cried wolf.) and then picked up veggie tacos and watched a movie. Oh, and I turned forty yesterday.

And woke up having a hot flash and had to pluck three gray hairs out of my head before I left for church.

Then I got home from church, checked my email and had an e-card from my dermatologist.

Offering me $50 off Botox treatments.

Perfect.

But, honestly, I’m okay with forty. Yes I have some gray hair and, sure, my metabolism seems to have picked a fine time to leave me Lucille, but I’m happy with where I am right now. The thirties were all about settling into married life, becoming a mother, learning how to get the smell of rotten sippy cup out of my car, and trading in corporate life to be a homeroom mom. They were about finding my way and getting used to being called “ma’am”.

So I guess the forties will be about helping Caroline through her pre-teen and teenage years, following where God leads, taking multiple vitamin supplements in an attempt to hold back the hands of time and getting reacquainted with Jillian Michaels and The Shred. A friend of mine, who is in her forties and very wise, says the forties are like a crossing over for a woman. It’s a new beginning of sorts.

I choose to believe that.

A few weeks ago I read a quote by Max Lucado that I’d never read before. “The difference between mercy and grace? Mercy gave the prodigal son a second chance. Grace gave him a feast.”

I feel like when I turned thirty I’d accepted God’s mercy and was so grateful that he’d saved me from myself and a steady stream of bad decisions.

But yesterday, as I spent some time by myself and thought about all my thirties have brought me, I realized it was the decade God showed me what grace really looks like.

Because when I look at life, even with all the ups and downs and good and bad and things that haven’t turned out the way I wanted, I realize he has blessed me with so much more than I could have imagined. My friends, my family, P and my baby girl.

He has given me a feast.

It’s 1:21 a.m. and my summer schedule is officially out of control. I’ve totally reverted to the same schedule I kept in college, up until 2:30 a.m. and sleeping in until 10:00. The only difference is I’m not skipping Biology Lab.

However, tonight I have a good reason for being up so late. Gulley and I went with her mama to see a 10:20 showing of The Help.

Let me just say that y’all will not be disappointed. I know sometimes movies fall far short of the book, but they got this one just about as close to perfect as it could be.

In fact, I may go see it again before the weekend is over.

Yesterday was the day I’ve been dreading since April 25th. Why April 25th? That was the official deadline to sign up for the pre-packaged school supplies provided by the PTO. All I had to do was write a check and we could show up for Meet the Teacher and receive a handy, shrink-wrapped package full of all our necessary school supplies.

But I didn’t do that.

Mainly because I was totally scarred by a heaping dose of mother guilt when Caroline was in first grade and her teacher handed her a generic red notebook from her pre-packaged supplies and Caroline said, “No way would my mom buy me a plain red notebook.” And she’s right. Because I appreciate that sometimes a girl needs a notebook featuring a baby seal or a kitten snuggled up with a ball of yarn.

However, her second grade teacher wasn’t a fan of notebooks with horses sidled up next to ponies and all that frivolous baby seal nonsense and so we were forced to live through a year filled with generic red, green, and blue folders. Nary a dolphin or a puppy or a chimpanzee wearing a jaunty hat to be found.

This year is different. I haven’t talked about it because it falls under the category of things too good to be true, but Caroline’s beloved first grade teacher is moving to third grade and we were allowed the option to automatically be in her class this year. And her first grade teacher is a firm believer in finding the fun in school, as evidenced by the time she let her students push her down a ramp in her rolling desk chair. Needless to say, she’ll probably be okay with a loose variation of the standard school supplies.

I printed out the required list of supplies and we headed to Target. Actually, we stopped by Academy first to look for tennis shoes and walked away empty handed, primarily because some genius at Skechers thought it was a good idea to invent tennis shoes with wedge heels and some sort of ballerina spinning device on the sole. What is wrong with just a simple shoe that allows a person to walk or run or engage in athletic activities like God and Nike intended?

After our tennis shoe fail I was disheartened but pressed on to win the prize for which God had called me, which in this case was school supplies. We wandered the aisles in search of purple glue sticks and 5 inch scissors and wide-ruled notebooks in green, red, and blue. And along the way, one of us found Pipsqueak markers and three ring binders with a unicorn flying through a peace sign and all manner of superfluous things that weren’t on the official list.

By the time we actually checked out I was worn down. I’d agreed to a new blue thermos and some sort of monkey ice pack. We also ended up with a pencil sharpener shaped like a flower and after that I think I blacked out. The good news is I rallied enough to turn down the request for a multi-colored neon cheetah-print backpack that I declared perfect for someone who’s color blind and can’t see patterns.

The problem was all other backpacks paled in comparison. She’d had her heart set on a glittery backpack from Gap, but it was way too small to carry all her things so our search for just the right bag continued. At one point she tried to convince me to buy her a sequined duffle bag that we found at a local gift shop. By that time I’d lost my sense of humor about the entire thing and probably scared everyone in the store when I announced, “YOU CANNOT CARRY SPARKLY LUGGAGE TO SCHOOL EVERYDAY.”

Ultimately we resorted to online shopping and agreed upon a very bright, yet tasteful, messenger bag with matching lunch box. And so, between that and all her purple glue sticks, she’s officially ready to start third grade.

Except she still doesn’t have new tennis shoes.

But I can’t think about that right now. So instead I’ll focus on happier things, like chimpanzees who wear jaunty hats.

Some of you may remember that I’ve mentioned once or eighty-four times that we are in the midst of a drought. And by we, I mean pretty much the entire state of Texas. Let me present this map of the United States as a visual aid.

Oh yes. For those of you who have always wondered when I would bring the educational visual aids to enhance my blogging, let me just say, it has been BROUGHTEN.

In case you can’t tell, Texas is colored almost completely maroon which indicates EXCEPTIONAL drought. Not mediocre drought. Not NEEDS IMPROVEMENT drought. EXCEPTIONAL. Drought like I foolishly bought a new pair of rain boots back in January and have worn them one time. WHEN IT SNOWED.

And so between the drought and the extreme heat wave, I have spent much of the last six months claiming, and perhaps whining, that what we really need is for a hurricane or a tropical storm to hit somewhere in the vicinity of Corpus Christi. No offense to my peeps in Corpus. I wish you no harm, just some gusty winds and rain that would eventually move through Texas and dump about ten to forty-six inches of rain in the vicinity of San Antonio.

Some of you may know (and the rest of you probably don’t care) that I’ll celebrate my 40th birthday in a little over two weeks. I’m not really stressed about turning forty because I hear it can be your best decade ever. Granted, most of the people who tell me this are in their seventies and possibly senile, but I choose to believe them. The only thing I have against forty is that it seems to have already hurt my metabolism’s feelings and I think they may have had a dump.

Anyway, many, many months ago, like back in January, my group of girlfriends known as Birthday Club began to talk about the fact that Julie and I were both turning forty this year. And we decided that a girls weekend was in order to mark the occasion. This was perfect because I could think of no other way I’d rather celebrate my 40th birthday than on a trip with some of my best girlfriends since a big party would only cause me to hide in a corner and some people might feel that is antisocial behavior.

On a semi-related growing older note, a few years ago Gulley and I went back to A&M for a Diamond Darling reunion and decided to go to the Chicken later on that evening. She decided it would be a fun game to ask various college age kids how old they thought we were. All of them guessed twenty-seven. Gulley was ecstatic and took it as a sign that we’re aging extremely well. And then I had to point out that when you’re in college you can’t fathom an age older than twenty-seven. If we were any older than that we surely wouldn’t have been at the Chicken for fear of missing Murder She Wrote and keeping our dentures in too long and needing to curl up under an afghan after we made our way home in our Cadillac with the box of Kleenex stuck in the back window next to the WWII Veterans baseball cap.

But back to the birthday plans.

We spent months discussing various destinations and decided it would be best to go somewhere within driving distance but where we could truly feel like we’d gotten away from all our responsibilities and people who may want us to cook dinner for them or wipe their bottoms.

So now you may be wondering what on earth this has to do with the aforementioned drought. Well, I’m glad you asked.

We ultimately decided to rent a condo for the last weekend in July in Port Aransas, Texas which is right by Corpus Christi. At this point I feel like I should provide you with an additional visual aid.

Perfect.

Even factoring in THE CONE OF UNCERTAINTY, it looks like God has heard my prayer for a tropical storm to hit somewhere near Corpus Christi. Unfortunately, I forgot to add a disclaimer that I’d prefer it be a weekend other than the last one in July.

As we watched the news last night and realized there was a storm headed right for the Texas coast, P said, “There is no way I’m letting you go down there if that thing turns into a hurricane. That would just be stupid.”

And I nodded my head and agreed with him because that’s the best thing to do in these situations. But Gulley and I agreed that while we aren’t dumb enough to head down there if it’s a hurricane, we are absolutely not going to let some little tropical depression named Don keep us from a good girls weekend even if it means we spend the weekend holed up in the condo with a few bottles of wine and sixteen different kinds of chips and dip while we watch plastic beach chairs fly past the windows.

However, like Gulley said, if we make a run to Super S Foods and happen to see Jim Cantore, we’ll know it’s time to get the heck out of dodge.

Right after we get our picture taken with him.

I’m sitting here on the couch next to P and just told him I had absolutely nothing to write about. He looked at me and helpfully uttered a “Huh”. Which I think is a sign of two things:

1. He isn’t concerned about my lack of material.

2. He doesn’t have any plans to help me come up with something.

The problem is we didn’t do much of anything yesterday. Actually, take nothing and subtract even more nothing and that sums up our day. Caroline and I stayed in our pajamas until almost noon and then Gulley dropped off Jackson while she took Will to a friend’s birthday party.

I was going to take the kids to see Cars 2 (again) but they got caught up watching Swamp People and who am I to deprive them of the experience of watching a bunch of Cajuns hunt alligators in Louisiana? If that isn’t educational, then I don’t know what is.

The rest of the afternoon was spent listening to Caroline debate whether or not she should get her ears pierced. She REALLY wants to get them pierced. We went to lunch with my sister and my niece Sarah the other day. Sarah just got her ears pierced which only heightened Caroline’s obsession with the whole thing. And, truly, I’m fine with it. I just want her to know that it’s going to hurt and she’s going to have to let them pierce BOTH ears after she does the first one.

Of course she asked Jackson for his opinion on getting her ears pierced and he said, “I don’t know why you would want to do that. Earrings are for fancy parties and going out on dates and you don’t do any of those things.”

I believe that’s the nine year old boy equivalent of looking at your wife after she tells you she has nothing to write about on her blog and saying “Huh”.

Yesterday was all about easing back into the real world. Well, the summer version of the real world. The REAL real world won’t happen until school starts next month or, as I like to think of it, that time we have to be up at the crack of too early for nine months in a row.

I made a grocery list along with a list of errands we needed to run, specifically a trip to the drycleaners’ to see if they got the spaghetti sauce out of my brand new ivory blouse. (Yes, they did. However, it also came back missing a button. But they’ve promised to replace it. The button, not the blouse.) We also needed to go to TJ Maxx in search of new sheets for Caroline’s bed and make a run to Borders since they are going out of business and everything is marked down up to 40% off.

(Please note that everything is not 40% off. That’s what I originally thought because I failed to read the “Up To” portion of the sign. Comprehensive reading has never been my strong suit.)

Can we talk about Borders closing? I feel like I’ve been in a state of mourning since I heard the news.

From the earliest time I can remember, one of my very favorite things has been to go to the bookstore. Any trip to the mall ended with me browsing through B.Dalton Booksellers or Walden Books and picking up the latest Judy Blume book (Starring Sally J. Freedmen as Herself is still one of my favorites) and, later, the most recent edition of Sweet Valley High so I could keep up with the Wakefield twins, Enid, Todd, Bruce Patman, and Lila.

Eventually it seemed that most of the bookstores in the mall closed down and it was a new day of Borders and Barnes and Noble with in-house coffee bars and train tables for the kids. In my day, you had to drink coffee at home and walk uphill both ways IN THE SNOW to find a train table. But I adjusted and grew to love the new fancy version of bookstores.

Now it seems like we’re just one step away from our kids telling us, “Oh Mom. I read To Kill A Mockingbird last year when I downloaded it on that chip embedded in my brain” and that makes me sad. I know people love their Kindles and their Nooks and their whoozee-whatzits, but you can’t tell me that’s better than the smell and texture of a real live book with actual pages.

Actually, you can tell me that. I just won’t believe you.

And I know you can still buy books and that Barnes and Noble is still around. For now. I just hate to think that Caroline might grow up in a world where she’ll never know the thrill of looking through all the books on the shelves of a real, live store and discovering some hidden treasure that she never would have found online, like Sweet Valley High #3 Dangerous Love.

What if, by the time she’s a teenager, she reflects back on the books of her childhood and says, “Remember when books were made of paper and you had to turn the page?” Much like I have vague memories of the days when I had to find the perfect line on a record album to get it on the song I wanted to hear. Or when I had to listen to “Beauty School Dropout” on my Grease eight-track tape to get to “Greased Lightning”?

On a total sidenote, I went to elementary school with a girl named ZZ and she had an eight-track player that was shaped like a square and had a pump you pushed like a detonator to change the tracks on the tape. Oh I coveted that eight-track player. Even though I had a very fancy one with speakers that looked like the pockets of blue jeans.

I realize that one of these days I’ll probably give in and get some type of electronic reading device, but I’ll always prefer my books. And I’ll miss the days of running in the bookstore just to see what I can find.

Am I alone in this? Do you feel like you just read a post by your MaMaw? Does anyone else have fond memories of Sweet Valley High? And, most importantly, did anyone have that eight-track player with the detonator?

I need to know these things.