Another day

  • Walmart, basketball, skunks: three words that sum this up

    There is so much I could write at this moment. Actually, that’s not true. I have very little to write about right now because we had a pretty non-eventful weekend. But I could write paragraph upon paragraph about the smell of skunk I smell outside my window right now. It is horrendous.

    This is the third time this week that I’ve been inundated with eau de frightened skunk. P says it’s because they’re mating right now. I’m all for love, but I wish they’d take their business elsewhere. Far, far away. Also, and it seems the skunk population should be aware of this, I live IN THE CITY.

    But enough about the skunks. On Friday I went to eat lunch with Caroline and stayed at the school because they were having a little program and an award ceremony. Caroline received an award and I told her that we could go pick out a new Wii game after school as a reward for a great report card and for the award. Which is how we ended up at Walmart.

    It wasn’t my first choice. We initially went to Target, but she had her heart set on Epic Mickey and they were all sold out. So we went to Walmart where I had the chance to renew my vows to avoid the Walmart at all costs. Especially on a Friday afternoon.

    Then we came home and she immediately wanted to play her new game. And this is where I have to admit that I do not understand these new high tech video games. The whole playing board is so dark and I don’t understand. I DON’T UNDERSTAND. Where is Mickey going and what is he trying to do?

    Fortunately, Caroline was able to do a google search and find a helpful site that explained the game. I didn’t even know she knew how to work the google. She has officially passed me by.

    On Saturday she had another basketball game and scored her first basket of the season. I wish I had it on video because she was just SO proud of herself and skipped all the way back down the court while looking in the stands to make sure we all saw it happen. It made me so happy. Of course I’m just impressed that she doesn’t put her hands over her head because she’s scared the ball might hit her which might be the way her mama always played the game.

    Later that night we had some friends over for dinner and then on Sunday morning we went to church. And that pretty much sums up the high points of the weekend.

    I told you. UNEVENTFUL.

    And now I’m going to make an awkward transition to ask a question because I know y’all will have some helpful suggestions. Gulley and I had a long conversation yesterday about good books for the kids to read or for us to read to them. Specifically, we were talking about Caroline and Jackson (He just turned 9). It’s not that we don’t think Will should read, but he’s five and we’ve crossed that bridge before.

    (I also feel like I need to disclose that our entire conversation wasn’t about books. We also discussed hair, a shirt I saw recently at Charming Charlie’s, the cold front coming in on Tuesday, something dead inside her wall, the frisky skunks at my house, chicken pot pie and twice baked potatoes. Clearly we have very stimulating and interesting lives.)

    Anyway, Caroline and I just finished The Magician’s Nephew and have big plans to read through the entire Narnia series. And I can’t tell you how fun it was to watch Caroline put the pieces together about how the first book ties into The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. But then what? I need to plan ahead. I want us to have reading goals and ambitions.

    So, I’d love for y’all to throw out suggestions for great books for second and third grade boys and/or girls to either read alone or have read to them. What books have your kids loved the most?

    Thank you. May your yard remain free of skunks looking for love in all the wrong places.

  • Just another day in paradise

    I am so happy to report that Caroline is much, much better. Ultimately, I think old school Benadryl helped her more than anything. I don’t know if it’s because of the antihistamine properties or the fact that it knocked her stone cold out, but I’ll take it. She took a turn for the better just in time because she was beginning to enjoy her ill health a little too much as evidenced by the multiple forts she asked me to build while she laid on the couch and watched movies.

    So it’s back to school for her and back to whatever it is I normally do around here for me. Which means I have a big day ahead of me because we’re out of paper towels and a little low on milk. I also have tentative plans to go to Michael’s to pick out a frame for my new map of Texas and perhaps Nordstrom to check out their selection of rainboots because I’m having a dreadful time deciding on the color I want by just looking online and I’ve decided I don’t care that the weathermen are saying we’re in the midst of a drought.

    In other equally unexciting news, I’ve been inspired to add Jenny From the Block to my Couch to 5K playlist because I am genuinely enjoying her on American Idol and I’m not fooled by the rocks that she’s got. Now I just need to make myself get out and, you know, run.

    Other than that, I’m processing the realization that I may not have been eating meat all those years I enjoyed crispy beef tacos from Taco Bell. I knew the hot sauce could take the tarnish off a penny courtesy of serious boredom in college, but it never occurred to me that I wasn’t eating real meat. All I know is it’s the best water, isolated oat product, wheat oats, soy lecithin, maltodextrin, anti-dusting agent, autolyzed yeast extract, modified corn starch with sodium phosphate I’ve ever tasted.

    And so that’s what’s going on here. How about you? Feel free to share with the group. Or with me. Whatever.

  • It’s Tuesday and I reek of VapoRub

    Well, Caroline’s cough that I mentioned in yesterday’s post decided to get even worse on Sunday night. And I’ll spare you all the details for now, mainly because I’m too tired to recount them. I need sleep. And to get the smell of VapoRub off my hands.

    On the plus side, after a long bout of procrastination, I finally hooked the Wii that Santa brought up to the internet on Sunday afternoon. (Do you hook something “up to the internet”? It’s like I’m writing a guide to technology for the Beverly Hillbillies. “And then we’ll all hook up our computing machines to the internet and go swim in our cement ponds.”)

    This turned out to be a good thing because we spent most of her day home from school yesterday making the most of our Netflix membership as we watched one movie after another. Although if I never have to watch The Care Bears Big Wish Movie again, it will be too soon.

    Then, at some point in the late afternoon, I began to explore the other Wii Shop features and discovered that I could download old school Donkey Kong right to our Wii. Like the kind I played on my Colecovision when I was in sixth grade and thought computers were only big machines used by the Department of Defense as seen in the movie War Games.

    “Would you like to play a game?”

    OH YES I WOULD.

    So I introduced Caroline to the wonder of old school technology and she was totally amused for about three minutes until she realized that 1984 Donkey Kong is totally lame compared to 2011 Donkey Kong because “all Mario does is jump over those barrels”.

    Whatever. Wait until she sees the level with those elevators.

    And I didn’t even mean to ramble along like this because none of this is the point of today’s post. It’s just a lot of nonsense you get because I might be a little high on the VapoRub.

    The point is that today is a giveaway day because I am continuing to be like Oprah and give things away.

    Everyone in the audience is getting A FREE JAR OF VAPORUB!

    Not really.

    But everyone is getting A CHANCE TO WIN A COPY OF FINDING GOD’S WILL BY GREGG MATTE!

    I am so excited to have a copy of Gregg’s book to give away. In case you missed it, I wrote all about it in this post I wrote back in December. It is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time and is just so thoughtfully written. I can’t recommend it enough.

    For a chance to enter the giveaway for Finding God’s Will by Gregg Matte, please click over to my giveaway page and leave a comment there.

    See y’all tomorrow.

  • Just another wild weekend

    Here’s a direct quote from P, uttered on Saturday night as we watched a repeat episode of Duck Commanders, “It’s Saturday night and I’ve taken my Zantac. The possibilities are endless. Bring on the Double Chocolate Milanos”.

    And that, my friends, is a glimpse into the glitz and glamour of our lives. Don’t hate.

    I think you can hold this truth to be self-evident, we had ourselves a pretty uneventful weekend.

    On Friday I went to Caroline’s school for lunch. They have opened a room by the cafeteria where parents can eat with their children without having to endure the entire school cafeteria experience which can feel a little bit like an insane asylum but without the peace and the tranquility and medication. Not that I’ve ever been to lunch in an insane asylum, but I’d imagine it might be the only other place where you see people drinking the juice from their pinto beans with a straw like it’s a perfectly normal thing.

    I brought Caroline a BLT from Subway since it’s her favorite right now for reasons I don’t really understand. I’ve never been a fan of Subway because I have a hard time smelling all those different meats when I walk in the door. But I’ve learned to tolerate their Veggie Delight with spicy mustard. I don’t know why I think you want to know all this. Stay tuned for tomorrow when I will list every fast food establishment I frequent and list the items I enjoy from the menu.

    As we sat and one of us enjoyed our sandwich, Caroline explained to me that this room was one of the rooms they would use “in case the school goes into lockdown”. She asked me if I knew what lockdown meant. I said I didn’t because I wanted to hear what she’d say and find out her understanding of a lockdown situation. She explained, “Well, we have to go into these rooms if the alarm goes off because something bad is happening. Like maybe a wild skunk or a robber has walked into the school.”

    You cannot be too careful when it comes to wild skunks.

    Friday night she spent the night with Mimi and Bops. P was at the ranch so Gulley and I ended up having a last minute girls’ night out where we caught up on all the things we hadn’t talked about during the last sixteen times we’d talked in the previous two days.

    On Saturday we didn’t do much of anything until it was time for Caroline’s basketball game. I continue to think that watching seven-year-old girls play basketball may be one of the most entertaining things ever. The sweet socks the team wear as part of their uniform definitely adds to the experience.

    Later that night we picked up Mexican food because I am embarrassed to say that I couldn’t even remember the last time I ate it and that’s completely unacceptable. It’s like I didn’t even know who I was. But I remedied the situation with some chile con queso and puffy tacos and the world seemed like a happy place again.

    And I believe you already know that P enjoyed Double Chocolate Milanos with wild abandon. That’s not even a euphemism for anything.

    Caroline had a cough all day Saturday and it got worse when she went to bed. I gave her some cough medicine and ended up sleeping in her room. Or, more appropriately, not sleeping in her room. Because when she wasn’t coughing, she was grinding her teeth. I don’t know why she grinds her teeth when she’s congested, but it happens every time. And I laid there and daydreamed about how peaceful it would be to sleep on the landing strip at an airport or anywhere else that might be quieter than next to my snoring, coughing, teeth-grinding princess.

    She felt totally fine the next morning and didn’t seem fazed by all her nocturnal respiratory goings-on, so I decided we should go ahead and go to church even though I felt like a lesser version of death on a paper plate. Truthfully, there might have been a moment when I bowed my head to pray during worship and realized five minutes later that I was in the middle of a catnap, as evidenced by the fact I’d begun to have a dream. I don’t think God took it personally.

    After all, between the Double Chocolate Milanos, the coughing, the reruns of Duck Commanders and the teeth-grinding, we’d had ourselves a pretty wild Saturday night.

    Albeit the version of wild that only applies to middle-aged married couples with children.

  • Maybe I really am Oprah

    It is with great joy that I tell you that, as of this writing, Caroline and I have dodged the stomach bug. However, I am feeling a little bit queasy but also accept that I can be a big hypochondriac with psychosomatic tendencies. I’m trying to be a big girl and mind over matter the whole thing. We’ll see how that plays out.

    Of course if the likelihood of Caroline or me getting through this whole thing unscathed is proportionate with the amount of bleach and Lysol I’ve used today, then we should be aces.

    In other news, I need to confess that our outdoor Christmas decorations are still up. It’s been weighing heavy on my soul, but apparently not heavy enough to actually do anything about it. I truly feel ashamed that our outdoor decor has outlasted not only Epiphany, but even Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. Especially because our sweet neighbors across the street called a few days ago to make sure everything was okay since they couldn’t help but notice our porch is still bedecked in red ribbons, garland and multi-colored lights.

    Shameful.

    But in our defense it has been very cold and rainy over the last few days. I have no excuse for all the days prior to that.

    And now you’re wondering why on earth the title of this post is Maybe I Really Am Oprah. Do I have some inside information? Does Oprah leave the Christmas lights up in her rose garden and her Chicago penthouse way too long? Is Oprah the scourge of her neighborhood?

    As far as I know the answer is no.

    But Oprah has a book club. And so do I. (At least for the next five weeks!)

    And Oprah gives things away. And over the next two weeks I have three different giveaways scheduled.

    Before you get too excited, I should warn you that none of these things are trips or cars or Tory Burch bags. However, they are a few things that I love and that’s why I want to give you a chance to win.

    So, everyone in the audience is getting A CHANCE TO ENTER A GIVEAWAY!

    It lacks a little something doesn’t it?

    But, seriously, you don’t want to miss the first giveaway. It’s a 12 x 12 gallery-wrapped canvas print of your choice from Red Letter Words.

    Click over to my giveaway page and leave a comment there to enter.

    It’s like Christmas came early! Or late!

    Just like my front yard.

  • Everyone in the audience is getting a post about OUR BOOK CLUB!

    After school yesterday Caroline and I went to the library. And before you think I’m a wonderful mother for taking my child to the public library, I need to confess that when we pulled up in the car she said, “Oh yeah. I remember this place.”

    And while we were looking at all the books and trying to make some selections, I remembered that I’d said I was going to announce my choice for our first (and maybe last) book club just like Oprah.

    Everyone in the audience is getting a 2011 VOLKSWAGEN BEETLE!!!!

    Except I’m not Oprah. So no one here is getting a 2011 Volkswagen Beetle unless you buy one for yourself.

    However, the book club thing is legit.

    After much debate and reading of summaries and reviews, I’ve decided on Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel by Jeannette Walls.

    It first called to me where most of my true loves do. The shelves at Target. The title drew me in and then I was almost completely sold when a partial review on the back cover billed it as “Laura Ingalls Wilder for adults”. And I do love me some Little House on the Prairie.

    Here’s an excerpt from Publisher’s Weekly:

    For the first 10 years of her life, Lily Casey Smith, the narrator of this true-life novel by her granddaughter, Walls, lived in a dirt dugout in west Texas. Walls, whose megaselling memoir, The Glass Castle, recalled her own upbringing, writes in what she recalls as Lily’s plainspoken voice, whose recital provides plenty of drama and suspense as she ricochets from one challenge to another. Having been educated in fits and starts because of her parents’ penury, Lily becomes a teacher at age 15 in a remote frontier town she reaches after a solo 28-day ride. Marriage to a bigamist almost saps her spirit, but later she weds a rancher with whom she shares two children and a strain of plucky resilience. (They sell bootleg liquor during Prohibition, hiding the bottles under a baby’s crib.) Lily is a spirited heroine, fiercely outspoken against hypocrisy and prejudice, a rodeo rider and fearless breaker of horses, and a ruthless poker player. Assailed by flash floods, tornados and droughts, Lily never gets far from hardscrabble drudgery in several states—New Mexico, Arizona, Illinois—but hers is one of those heartwarming stories about indomitable women that will always find an audience.

    So there you have it. Here are the details if you’re not afraid to dive into a novel that features life in Texas before there was air-conditioning.

    1. Go get a copy of the book or download it on your Kindle like all the cool kids are doing these days. Amazon has it on sale for $6.63 right now.

    2. Read the book. I feel that this is probably self-explanatory but I have a need to over-explain everything.

    3. On Thursday, February 17th, I’ll write a post with my thoughts on the book and some discussion questions. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to leave your thoughts, comments, insights, etc. in the comment section.

    4. We can respond to each other there in a polite, civilized way that doesn’t include comments like “YOU’RE AN IDIOT IF YOU ENJOYED THIS BOOK”.

    5. If all goes well and we have a good time, I’ll take suggestions and pick another book on Thursday, February 17th and we can start all over again.

    6. If it doesn’t go well then I will retire to my home in California, enjoy my rose garden, and start my own television network.

    7. Or I will just continue to blog about things that don’t involve discussing books.

    Y’all have a great day.