Another day

I am so glad that y’all like the kitchen. I mean I wouldn’t have changed it if you didn’t, but I appreciate the validation. My kitchen felt like Sally Field at the Oscars all day yesterday. “You like me! You really like me!”

Honestly, I don’t know how my kitchen felt. It may have been more along the lines of “Hey! Don’t be afraid to push that self-clean button on the ovens” or “Any time you can sweep the floor in here wouldn’t be a moment too soon.”

Anyway, a couple of questions came up so I thought I would answer them in a handy numerical format. And I’ll probably add a few other things for good measure.

1. Several of you asked about the picture hanging on the kitchen wall. It is with probably too much pride that I inform you that it’s a magnetic chalkboard.

I had long dreamed of a magnetic chalkboard because we have a stainless refrigerator which doesn’t take kindly to magnets and yet I needed somewhere to post all manner of homemade art and party invitations. But I never found anything that wasn’t plain and boring and ugly.

Then, one day six years ago, I walked into a local store and saw this chalkboard hanging on a wall. And I fell in love. I told the salesgirl I had to have it and she took it off the wall as she said, “Did you know it’s also magnetic?”

LORD, YOU ARE TOO GOOD TO ME.

2. Okay, here are the links to the fabrics I showed you yesterday.

Aviary (It also comes in a beautiful blue and a yellow)

Richloom Cornwall Garden

Duralee Perch Fabric

3. I kept my nephew yesterday while my sister ran a few errands.

I tried not to gnaw on his cheeks, but it was very difficult because he’s like a real live muppet.

4. After I left my sister’s house I ran by Hobby Lobby to look for a couple of things, namely some fall decor and perhaps a faux pumpkin or gourd. But I left empty-handed because I get totally overwhelmed in Hobby Lobby and before I know what has happened I have a cart full of glittery pumpkins and a pewter ghost and I’m not even sure I like glittery pumpkins and pewter ghosts.

Not to mention that all the Christmas decorations totally threw me off.

In summary, I really have no business in any type of craft-oriented store.

5. Caroline has been obsessed with looking through catalogs looking for the right Halloween costume since my suggestion of a black cat with a tutu is TOTALLY LAME. The other day she excitedly pointed out a costume and said, “LOOK! I CAN GO AS SAINT LUKE!”

Speaking of lame.

But then she showed me the photo she was looking at in the Chasing Fireflies catalog.

Ultimately I think she’s decided to be a purple butterfly as opposed to a beloved symbol of America or the patron saint of physicians.

6. I need to go to bed because it’s school picture day tomorrow which means we’ll have more wardrobe changes before 7:30 a.m. than J. Lo will have in her entire first season as a new judge on American Idol.

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

I went to bed Monday night at an unprecedented unless I am dying of the flu NINE O’ CLOCK. And I woke up yesterday morning feeling like I’d been run over by a truck. A large truck. A large truck full of people wielding baseball bats that they beat me with as they drove by.

So it’s a good thing that I am in love with the new color of my kitchen because I am never painting it again.

And I can’t tell you how much it delighted me that so many of y’all completely underestimate the extent of my OCD and actually believed that I’d leave the piece of the wall under the desk painted turquoise. If you could have seen the way I used a q-tip to meticulously get brown paint into every corner of the crown moulding, then you would have only been left wondering why I didn’t immediately paint that spot under the desk when I discovered it at 8:45 p.m. on Monday night. The answer is that P would have declared me insane.

But you’ll be glad to know that it was fully painted by 9:00 a.m. yesterday morning. When I may have also gotten out a few more q-tips to touch up some miniscule edges that no one will ever see.

I have a sickness.

You may have noticed that there’s a white bag sitting on one of the barstools. Or you may not have noticed because you’re like me and oblivious to your surroundings. Anyway, the bag is from Steinmart. I stopped by there yesterday because sometimes a lady who has just painted her kitchen needs nice things and found the best BCBG sweater with dolman sleeves for $29.99. According the price tag, it normally retails for $149, but I always suspect that they just arbitrarily make up those numbers to make you feel good. It kind of looks like this.

Except the sleeves are long. And it doesn’t have pockets. And it has a cowl neck. So basically the only thing it has in common with the sweater featured above is that they are both black.

I did the best I could. It’s not my fault that Steinmart doesn’t really feature anything on their website.

Anyway, I just wanted you to know in case you’re in the market for a great sweater with dolman sleeves.

But back to the kitchen.

I really do love the color. It goes so well with the rest of the house and it feels like a neutral palette that can be accented with other colors according to the seasons. It’s a perfect example of why I love working with Holly Mathis. Because even though she’s never stepped foot in my home (much to my sadness and dismay), she was able to look at a few pictures that I emailed her and know that all my kitchen ambitions could be fulfilled with the right shade of chocolate brown paint.

Then when I decided I was set on Plantation Brown by Sherwin Williams, she suggested that I might like Chocolate Truffle by Martha Stewart better and she was right. It was just a little bit softer or had more cool undertones or I have no idea what I’m talking about but it just seemed like the right choice. And it totally was.

I still have dreams of finding large whitish-creamish pottery pieces to put on top of the cabinets. Holly suggested that I can just go to Goodwill, find cheap pieces and spray paint them if they aren’t the right color since they’ll just be decorative. See? BRILLIANT.

I also sent her a picture of this fabric because I want to make an inexpensive window treatment and maybe some cushions for the barstools and the desk chair.

And then she suggested several other fabrics, but these two were my favorites. She said this first one was so me and she’s right. It is so me.

And then I love this one because I clearly feel some need to incorporate birds into my kitchen decor.

Which is ironic considering how I feel about having to deal with poultry in an eating situation.

(Did I just type “in an eating situation”? As opposed to what? A social situation?)

(I just hate cooking chickens, but they are delightful when you have them over for afternoon tea.)

(As if I drink afternoon tea.)

Anyway, I’ll keep you updated on the kitchen situation. And I’ll also let you know if I find any more cute sweaters at Steinmart.

Heaven forbid I stick to one topic per post.

So I started the day yesterday with a kitchen that looked like this.

And then it basically looked like some version of this all day long.

Finally, after eight excruciating hours that took years off my spine, it was finished.

And it was perfection.

Until I saw this.

I forgot to paint under the desk.

And then I cried.

What I possess in enthusiasm, I lack in attention to detail.

The end.

I knew going into this past weekend that we had absolutely no plans other than Caroline’s first soccer game and I could not have been more delighted at the lameness of our social calendar. And I’ll have you know that it lived up to my expectations. It was everything I dreamed of and so much more. There were naps on the couch, movies, rain, college football, Mexican food, naps on the couch, college football, more rain, and barbecue.

And more naps on the couch.

Other than the fact that the Aggies came within minutes of losing to Florida International University, it was perfection.

(If you’re thinking to yourself, “Florida International University? I’ve never heard of them.” Yes. That’s my point.)

On Friday afternoon I pulled up to pick up Caroline from school and noticed that the Kona Ice Cream truck had descended on the premises. It’s not that I begrudge the Kona Ice Cream man the American dream and capitalism in the form of school children begging their mamas for snow cones. I admire his business savvy. I bet he got an A in his Marketing 301 class, unlike someone else I may know.

The problem is that the Kona Ice Cream truck only takes cash. And I never have cash. And so I’m forced to dig in every corner of my purse and the floorboards of the stay wag in the hopes of coming up with $2.00. Fortunately I had a stockpile of quarters hiding out in my makeup bag because Caroline was so excited to see the truck across from the playground playing “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” that she tripped and fell as she walked out of school. Normally this would turn into a scene out of a Greek tragedy but SNOW CONES.

We met up with some of her other friends at the truck and somehow I ended up with a car full of four seven-year-old girls all hyped up on snow cone syrup and the thrill of a Friday afternoon. They came over to the house where they spent the next two hours ridding my pantry of Halloween Oreos and trying to break the sound barrier. At one point they were loud enough to scare our dog Scout. Which is saying something because he didn’t even hear me open a bag of Sun Chips last week.

Saturday morning marked the fall debut of the Cheetah Girls. You will notice that we are sporting some sassy maroon uniforms this year.

Some people thought we chose maroon on purpose because we’re Aggies, but the truth is that P went to the meeting and the other coaches grabbed the pink and the purple first.

And it turns out the maroon fits us this season because the Cheetah Girls came to play. They were fierce.

The game ended just as the rain started and we spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out at the house. Which gave me a lot of time to look at my turquoise kitchen and contemplate all my complex feelings regarding both the color and if I had the strength to paint it all over again because OH THE TRIMWORK AND CABINETRY THAT HAS TO BE TAPED OFF.

Ultimately I think the turquoise kitchen has been like a summer romance. It was good in theory, but we just didn’t have what it took to make it last. We were too different. We wanted different things. We were headed different directions.

We were like Sandy and Danny.

“I’m going back to Australia; I might never see you again”

“Don’t talk that way, Sandy”

“Is this the end?”

“Of course not; it’s only the beginning”

Except it is the end because the turquoise kitchen, no matter how pretty the color may be, doesn’t fit with the rest of the house. And part of me wishes I could change the rest of the house to match the turquoise kitchen but who can afford all those hot pink neon signs that say “TACO TUESDAY!” or “CERVEZA!”

So I’m all “What happened to the turquoise I met at the beach?” and “You’re a fake and a phony and I wish I never laid eyes on you”.

And then I throw down my pom-poms, stomp off in tears and end up spending the night with the girls where I let Frenchie attempt to pierce my ears using only a needle and an ice cube.

Except none of that actually happened.

Instead, I took Caroline with me to Home Depot yesterday and I bought sixty-four rolls of painters’ tape to tape off the entire kitchen and a gallon of Martha Stewart’s chocolate truffle paint. Then I spent part of the afternoon removing switch plates and taping off everything that I didn’t want to become chocolate truffle.

And now it looks like this.

Because you didn’t actually think I got to the painting part, did you?

Looking at that photo makes me realize I should probably take the pictures off the wall before I get started.

Which will happen later today.

Because today?

We rumble.

Or we paint.

Or whatever.

Yesterday morning I drove to Kerrville to speak to a MOPS group.

(This is where I’d like to insert my standard joke about how P likes to call it “Mothers Against Preschoolers” but I’m pretty sure that I’ve already made that comment about fifteen different times here. Not to mention that I referenced it in my talk yesterday. I need some new material.)

I talked about the challenges of being a mother and felt a little bit like MY LIFE IS SO HARD WITH MY SOLITARY SEVEN-YEAR-OLD CHILD WHO DRESSES AND FEEDS HERSELF because, seriously, if there is a group of women who are singlehandedly populating the Earth, it’s the women in MOPS groups. I mean they are smack dab in the thick of potty-training a toddler while fighting morning sickness and hoping their oldest child doesn’t cry during the Kindergarten drop-off. They make me weep with envy at the thought of their multi-tasking skills. Mainly because I operate on an organizational system that consists of sixteen different Post-It notes with important dates written on them shoved into the bottom of my purse.

Anyway, I offered my limited amount of wisdom with the disclaimer that my child is only seven years old and the verdict is still out on how this whole thing is going to turn out. Then I got in my car and drove back to San Antonio and listened to the following songs over the next hour:

The Happy Song by Chris Tomlin
Jesus Saves by Travis Cottrell
Peaceful, Easy Feeling by The Eagles
Heart of Glass by Blondie
Wanted: Dead or Alive by Bon Jovi
Jolene by Dolly Parton
Gold Digger by Kanye West
Our God by Chris Tomlin
Looks Like We Made It by Barry Manilow

I feel like something about this list speaks volumes about my personality, but frankly I’m frightened to examine it too closely.

As soon as I got back to the house I crawled over to the couch and slept for about an hour. Mainly because I didn’t sleep at all the night before because I never sleep the night before I have to be somewhere important. It’s a sickness. And I usually take down every one around me because P didn’t sleep either thanks to all my deep sighs and fake coughs and tossing and turning.

I am a joy to live with.

Finally it was time to pick up Caroline from school and we went to Gap to buy her a new pair of jeans because she is dying to wear jeans even though it’s still 146 degrees outside and her legs have grown about seventeen inches since last spring.

My goal for tomorrow is to clean my house from top to bottom. I’ve been putting it off for about the last week because I get so overwhelmed with the thought of having to clean two bathrooms. I KNOW. It’s pathetic.

But when we moved in this house thirteen years ago, it was only a three bedroom, one bath house. Apparently people didn’t spend a lot of time in the bathroom in the 1920’s. Probably because the curling iron hadn’t been invented.

(Please don’t email me to tell me that the curling iron had been invented. It may have been for all I know but it’s late and I’m too tired to look it up on Wikipedia or the Google.)

The point is that for six years I just had to clean one small bathroom. Then we moved out and added a master bedroom and bathroom. For those of you playing at home, that means we moved on up Jefferson style to two bathrooms total. But it didn’t matter because I had a baby two weeks after we moved back in and we hired a maid to do all the cleaning.

I’ll be honest. It was a blissful existence. But then I quit my job three and a half years ago and we had to tighten the proverbial belt and the maid had to go. And now I can never face the task of cleaning my house without feeling complete dread at the the thought of those two bathrooms, one of which has a shower stall AND a bathtub. OH THE HUMANITY.

Truth be told, we could probably work a maid back into our budget at this point, but I haven’t done it on principle. I should have time to clean my own house. I have one child in school all day and no real job. Well, technically, I guess I kind of have a job as a writer but it looks eerily similar to just sitting around in my pajamas all day looking at Twitter.

Although during our road trip with the kids this summer, Gulley’s son Jackson declared that I didn’t have a job and Gulley was quick to defend me with “She writes. That’s what she does.” And from the back seat, her youngest son, Will, piped up and said, “AND SHE BUILDS FLOATS FOR FIESTA“.

I’m totally putting that on my next resume.

Last Thursday, Caroline came home from school and said, “Mama, the problem with my teacher is that she doesn’t understand some girls are just wild. And I’m one of them”.

Yes.

Yes she is.

I’m planning on recapping our entire weekend tomorrow (I know! How will you sleep until then? THE SUSPENSE!) but the Compassion bloggers flew home from Guatemala yesterday and I wanted to share the links to my favorite posts from their trip. They are too good to miss.

Joy by Amanda (If the picture of her with her new Guatemalan family doesn’t make you feel complete happiness, then I don’t know what to tell you.)

The one question you’ve got to look in the mirror and really ask by Ann Voskamp

When God comes by by Shaun Groves (Do not miss the video at the end.)

Reconciling the disparity by Lindsey Nobles

Lame sponsors of the world unite! by Lisa-Jo

Treasures in the dark by Patricia Jones

And, last but not least, do not miss the photos by the amazingly talented Keely Scott. Her pictures bring life and depth to every word the bloggers write while they’re on the trip.

I also just want to say that I don’t link to these posts because of any obligation I have to Compassion. They don’t ask me to link or anything like that. I do it because I was able to see firsthand the difference they make in the lives of kids that would otherwise be forgotten when I went to the Dominican Republic two years ago. There honestly isn’t an organization that I believe in more. They are the hands and feet of Christ and they give you the chance to be the same.

And that’s all I have to say about that.