Another day

  • And then I’m going swimming

    I didn’t even discuss what we did this past weekend. Probably because, now that it’s summer, the weekend doesn’t look much different than all the other days in the week. We went swimming and then we went swimming and then we went swimming again.

    Thank you.

    Good night.

    Actually P was out of town fishing all weekend. His original plan was to leave on Friday evening, fish all day Saturday and then come home late on Saturday night. Well, at least that was the original plan unless they were having a lot of fun. Which in guy terms means catching a boatload of fish.

    (As opposed to having a lot of fun in girl terms since that roughly translates to laughing and drinking wine while discussing The Bachelorette and the advantages of using a magnifying mirror to pluck your eyebrows)

    (Or maybe that’s just me)

    But P and his friends ended up getting marooned on a desert island (Not a dessert island like I originally typed. Which is unfortunate because that would be delightful) like Gilligan and the Skipper, too. Except there wasn’t really an island involved at all, but rather three guys stuck on a boat that ran out of gas two hours from the nearest dock. Fortunately one of them was able to get enough of a cell phone signal to call someone to tow them back to shore because otherwise the whole thing could have ended up like some kind of Man vs. Wild episode where they had to learn to live off the land. Or they could have just flagged down a passing boat to help them out. Either way.

    So P didn’t make it home until Sunday because they didn’t make it back to shore until late Saturday night and he was too exhausted from the whole ordeal to drive home. And then he decided that since he was still there on Sunday morning that he might as well fish. Meanwhile, Caroline and I were back at home. Swimming. And did I mention we went swimming?

    And it was while we were swimming on Sunday afternoon that I got stung by a bee on the inside of my calf. It burned like hellfire but I didn’t want to be dramatic so I pulled the stinger out and put some ice from my drink on it to stop the horrific burning sensation.

    (So much for not being dramatic)

    It finally quit burning after a little while, but later Sunday night I noticed it was red and swollen. I showed it to P and asked if he thought that was normal since he gets stung by stuff all the time and has never had anything look like that. He explained that it’s because he takes Zyrtec every day for his allergies and always has medication in his body to stop the hista.

    “The what?”

    “The hista. You know? I take antiHISTAmines.”

    He is hilarious.

    And histamine free.

    I wish I was going to tie up this whole bee story into something resembling a point, but it’s not going to happen. However, I will tell you that it has now been thirty-two hours since I was stung and it still hurts. Bees and their ilk are dead to me.

    In other news, P had one of the Mendez brothers come over yesterday (while Caroline and I were swimming) to float and tape the cracks in the kitchen. So now that the kitchen walls are covered in caulk and bondo, it looks like I’m going to have to really paint it turquoise. Unless I want my kitchen to continue to look like an El Camino in East Texas.

    So I’m off to Home Depot and Lowe’s and various other paint establishments later today to look at paint chips and purchase samples and to generally obsess over what shade will make me feel like I’m in the middle of a peaceful oasis as opposed to eating bad Mexican food at an establishment named “Vallartas” with a menu featuring a mustachioed man wearing a sombrero on the front.

    Then I’ll go pick up Caroline from Vacation Bible School.

    And then we’ll go swimming.

  • Friday without any fashion

    Caroline and I caught a 7:25 a.m. flight home from Birmingham yesterday. Which means that we had to be up at 6:00 a.m. and that’s an hour that I consider to be obscene.

    On the plus side, we were back home by 11:45 a.m.

    On the negative side, Caroline decided she wanted to eat Chinese food in the Houston Hobby airport at 9:00 a.m. while we were waiting for our next flight.

    Listen, I love her but that is just sixteen kinds of wrong.

    And then we spent the afternoon at the pool because apparently one of us still had energy to burn. I wasn’t that person.

    So now I am exhausted and plan to sleep for the next thirty-seven hours to recover from our relaxing vacation.

    But I’ll leave you with a few quick things.

    1. I am absolutely obsessed with all the buzz about all the athletic conference shakeups and whether Texas A&M will end up in the Big 10 or the Pac 16 or (please, God) the SEC. I’m sure that Bill Byrne has been waiting for my opinion on the matter so I’m just going to go ahead and say I’m hoping for the SEC. The thought of all that good college football makes me ten shades of happy.

    And I realize this means nothing to so, so many of you, but it’s my way of saying that I am spending all my free time on ESPN.com and the Texas Aggie message boards.

    2. Several of you asked about Caroline’s polka dot swimsuit. It’s from Target and I wish it came in my size.

    3. There is a line in The Patriot where Mel Gibson’s character, Benjamin Martin, says, “I have long feared that my sins would return to visit me, and the cost is more than I can bear.”

    That pretty much sums up how I feel about the amount of cream cheese I’ve eaten in the past week and resuming my Shred workouts with Jillian Michaels.

    4. Here are a few more pictures from the beach.

    5. Y’all have a great Friday.

  • Electricity is good

    Last night we were eating dinner with some friends when a huge storm blew in. Their electricity went out and we decided we better get in our car and head home before the hail kicked in. I’d hate to get a dent in my brand new radiator.

    As we drove the three blocks home there were huge limbs down everywhere, the rain was pouring and everything was dark. Caroline said, “THIS IS THE SCARIEST NIGHT EVER.”

    But it was about to get worse because we arrived home to discover our power was out. Which means our air-conditioning was out. I’ve spent a lot of time this year trying to grow as a person and make myself do things that are a little out of my comfort zone, but sleeping without air-conditioning on June 2 in South Texas is really beyond what I am equipped to handle.

    (It’s always seemed like it wouldn’t be so bad to be without power in the middle of winter. It always looked so cozy on Little House on The Prairie except for that time they were all stuck in the schoolhouse during that blizzard. Of course I live in a city where the winter temperatures rarely get below thirty degrees so I’m probably not an authority on the subject.)

    I put Caroline in my bed and laid down with her until she fell asleep. Then I got up and went into the living room to sit in the dark with P and watch the lightning. Fortunately P had equipped us for an occasion such as this so we had plenty of flashlights, candles and glo-sticks. Sadly, none of those things provide cold air.

    Around 10:15 our lights flickered on and I was all HOORAY FOR BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, but my excitement was short-lived because they went right back out. And by 11:00 p.m. I began to accept that I was going to have to attempt to sleep without air-conditioning. Like a real pioneer.

    I told P I was heading to bed and he said, “Don’t go in there if all you’re going to do is toss and turn and complain about how hot you are and that you can’t sleep.”

    “Umm. Have we met? Of course that’s what I’m going to do.”

    I threw back the bedding and tried to get as comfortable as possible considering that I was about to attempt to sleep next to a forty-two pound heater that was snoring in a not so delicate manner. P walked by my bedside table and placed a headlamp and a flashlight on it and said, “I’m putting these here for you in case something happens tonight.”

    I wasn’t sure what might happen that would require a headlamp. Was there going to be trouble in the coal mines? Maybe an impromptu skit that would require me to play the part of DooLittle Lynn from Coalminer’s Daughter?

    I fell asleep in the midst of thinking about my favorite scenes from Coalminer’s Daughter and feeling unbelievable sympathy for everyone who lived before air-conditioning was invented. Finally around 4:30 a.m. the fan clicked on and I knew everything was back up and running.

    Needless to say, three hours of good sleep have left me feeling refreshed and rested and totally ready for all the end-of-the-school-year activities that are taking place later today.

    Which is why I’m off to take a nap.

    Under a blanket.

    With the thermostat pushed down all the way to YOU DON’T EVEN WANT TO KNOW.

  • Car and driver

    Last Thursday night Caroline spent the night with Mimi and Bops while P and I pretended to be sophisticated and attended an art auction with some friends. If we had any doubts about our complete inability to appreciate all forms of contemporary art, they were put to rest that evening while we walked around like the Clampetts and occasionally marveled, “FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR A PILE OF OLD TIRES?”

    But we were feeling cosmopolitan enough to eat dinner in a restaurant at 10:30 and stay out until after midnight. Two things that haven’t happened on purpose since sometime in early 2002.

    However, I wasn’t worried about living so fast and loose because Mimi and Bops were taking Caroline to school the next morning and I knew I could sleep late. Until I was washing my face at 1:04 a.m. and remembered that I had an early appointment to drop my car off at the dealership to get fixed. I really wanted to just bag on doing the whole automotive repair thing, but according to P it’s a bad sign when you have to refill the coolant every other day which I’d been doing for the better part of six months because procrastination is my place of comfort.

    And since when is P an auto mechanic?

    So I dropped off the car and drove to the library to meet Caroline’s class for a field trip. The librarian talked to the kids about the summer reading program and explained that if they read ten books over the summer they can come to the library and choose a free book. Caroline was sitting in my lap and whispered in my ear, “Do NOT sign me up for that. I don’t want to read ten books this summer.”

    Oh. I’m afraid summer isn’t going to meet her expectations.

    Naturally, I signed her up because if we’re going to fight over how many minutes she has to read every day, we might as well get a free book out of the deal.

    While I was in the middle of helping her pick out a few library books, I heard my phone do it’s little beep thing it does when I get a text. It was from P and it read:

    “Pray that the warranty is still good on the car.”

    I texted back, “What’s wrong with it?”

    “LOTS.”

    Perfect. One of my very top goals for the summer was to spend a lot of money that could be used for Coppertone and fluffy beach towels and cute floral dinnerware on AUTO REPAIRS.

    So in the course of ten minutes I discovered my child has no desire to read ten books this summer and there’s a high probability that we’ll be eating Ramen noodles all summer to offset the cost of a new radiator. It all kind of made me feel yuck, much like the way I felt when I saw Craig M. with that sweater tied around his shoulders on The Bachelorette.

    P texted me twenty minutes later to let me know that everything was covered and HOORAY we’ll be able to eat nachos at the pool grill this summer. (He didn’t actually say anything about the nachos at the pool grill but I’m sure he meant to because they are delicious)

    And so we spent the rest of the Memorial Day weekend swimming and eating and spending time with friends and family and driving around in a sweet loaner car from the dealership that I will be sad to part with when I pick up my car and my new radiator later today. (It doesn’t even have a real key. Just a key-like thing and then you push a button to start it. Technology is a wonder. Next thing you know we’ll all have portable phones that we can carry with us wherever we go. And maybe they’ll even have a computer in them!)

    Anyway, after all our Memorial Day fun, Caroline was exhausted when I woke her up for school yesterday morning. She said, “Mama, I am still so TIRED even though I slept like a stone last night.” Stone, rock, whatever.

    I dropped her off at school, but I had to go back later in the morning because she’d forgotten to bring her gift for her fifth grade buddy. I parked the loaner car in front of the school and walked over to the playground where her class was killing time. Because that’s what these last three days are all about. Killing time. Yesterday was bubble gum day, today is pajama day, tomorrow is crazy backwards day. I have a theory that they’re really not learning anything at this point.

    After I dropped off the gift I walked back out to the car, opened the door and got in. I noticed it smelled a little different but didn’t think much of it until I realized I couldn’t figure out where to put the key. And then I realized that it had tan upholstery. And a stack of things in the passenger seat that didn’t belong to me.

    I was sitting in the wrong car.

    And I could not have jumped out faster if it had been on fire.

    It’s time for summer. My brain is tired. And unlike my radiator, it’s not under any kind of extended warranty.

  • The laziness has set in

    Listen. I’m going to be a bad blogger today.

    I’ll be back tomorrow.

    I promise.

    But right now I’m going to sit here and lament the fact that Caroline still has three days of school left because it sure feels like summer to me.

    And not just because I ate more than my share of homemade peach ice cream over the weekend.

  • Day of the field

    Yesterday was Field Day at Caroline’s school. I wasn’t exactly sure what Field Day entailed but felt fairly certain it was teacher code for SCHOOL SHOULD GET OUT BEFORE MEMORIAL DAY AND WE ARE KILLING TIME BECAUSE OH MY GOSH WHEN WILL THIS YEAR END.

    My suspicions were confirmed.

    Field Day is an all-day affair where the different grades take turns doing a series of wacky events (Yes. I just said wacky in a non-ironic way.) in a muddy field. Needless to say, I was thrilled that first grade gets the short end of the Field Day stick and our events were scheduled from 1:30 – 2:30. Otherwise known as the time of day when both the temperature and the humidity levels hover above 100.

    There were sack races.

    And fake pony races.

    There were ice pops.

    And muddy feet.

    But most of all there was joy.

    And water.

    Lots and lots of water.

    Then we came home and made snowcones the same way they make them in hell.

    But the teaspoon of shaved ice we procured after an hour of turning the handle on the Snoopy Sno-Cone maker helped us combat the heat.

    Or at least I thought it did until I suffered heat-induced hallucinations and thought I saw Hall and Oates perform on American Idol last night. And that’s not even the worst of it. I could have sworn that Janet Jackson sang Nasty Boys and P told me he’d never heard that song before.

    Obviously I was crazy from the heat. There’s no way any of those things could have actually happened, right?

    Because, if so, DANG.