Another day

  • I thought the large unicorn pinata was just a myth

    Thank you all for all of your comments yesterday. It’s always nice to know that you’re not the only one who is living with someone who is trying to overthrow the current regime and establish her own wee dictatorship.

    On the bright side, we have had a solid 48 hours of peace. Oh, she tried to get to me yesterday morning, but I was strong and resisted the bait.

    We had a morning full of errands to run and she announced she was going to get herself dressed. I went into my closet to do the same and when I returned to the living room she was wearing a yellow floral skirt, a black and white paisley shirt, turquoise knee socks, and sparkly tennis shoes.

    Oh, and a fleece snow hat.

    I told her to grab a snack for the car so we could get going. She looked right at me and said, “Do you see what I’m wearing?”

    “Yes, you look great. Although you might get hot in the snow hat.”

    It’s like I’m a whole new person. A person who is choosing to only see love and peace instead of mismatched patterns and tacky knee socks.

    We spent our morning running errands to get ready for her birthday party next week. Our first stop was supposed to be our favorite bakery, but when we arrived there, it was gone. Seriously. GONE.

    I called them and discovered they are in the process of moving and will be shut down for the next three weeks. I wanted to yell, “BUT WHAT ABOUT MY BARBIE ISLAND PRINCESS CAKE?!”

    Then I remembered that I am full of peace and love.

    So we drove to HEB to check out the bakery. I mean it’s not like a bunch of five year olds really care about the cake. All they’re going to do is lick off the icing and drop the cake on the ground for the ants.

    Unfortunately, HEB does not make a Barbie Island Princess cake. HOWEVER, they do make a Barbie Fairytopia cake covered in hot pink icing that is guaranteed to stain anything within a five mile radius and cause sugar levels to skyrocket.

    The last errand on our list was Party City. We needed to get Barbie plates on which to eat our Barbie cake. Also, we needed to get candy to fill up the pinata.

    Speaking of pinatas, I delegated the task of pinata purchase to Gulley’s husband, J. His work often takes him to the South Side of San Antonio where you can get a MUY GRANDE PINATA for very little dinero. Caroline told him she would either like a cheetah pinata or a unicorn.

    Because everyone knows that Barbie frequently cavorts with both cheetahs and unicorns.

    As opposed to Bratz dolls who spend all their time perfecting the art of looking like a hot, trashy mess and putting on another coat of mascara before they go pierce their bellybutton. For the third time.

    Anyway, I had a message on my cell phone from J. yesterday afternoon. “Mel, I’m down here on the South Side looking at a white unicorn pinata with a pink, yellow and purple mane. I think it’s a good choice so I’m going to go ahead and get it IF IT FITS IN MY CAR.”

    J. drives an SUV.

    Gulley called after J. got home and informed me that I am the proud owner of one of the largest pinatas she has ever seen. In fact, her youngest son, Will, was currently sitting on it.

    I’m afraid we may have to take out a second mortgage to fill it with candy.

    Or maybe I’ll just pray that the kids will pass out from the sheer exhaustion that can only come from beating the heack out of a gargantuan piece of papier mache’ and will fail to realize they only got one Starburst and a pack of Nerds for their efforts.

  • I don’t mean to be a pill

    To give y’all some idea of the level of excitement around here this week, I’ll tell you what the highlight of my day was yesterday. Caroline and I went to Target and I found party favors for her birthday party in the dollar aisle. I won’t reveal what they are because I don’t want to ruin the surprise for any of her friends that happen to read the blog.

    Even though her friends are five and they don’t really read.

    And, as far as I know, none of her friends’ parents read the blog either. Well, except for Gulley and she already knows about the party favors because my joy was so great that I called her immediately to tell her of my incredible find.

    I really need to find some sort of hobby.

    However, my party favor elation was short-lived because I returned home later in the afternoon and made a horrific discovery.

    The night before I had a hard time sleeping because it felt like the bottom of my bed was filled with crumbs. It’s not like this is an unlikely scenario considering that I have a four-year-old who, much like Barbara Mandrell, enjoys nothing more than eating crackers in my bed anytime.

    So when I returned home yesterday, fresh from my party favor coup, I remembered that I wanted to strip the bed and wash the sheets. But when I went to throw all the pillows off the bed, I discovered that it wasn’t crumbs causing levels of discomfort I haven’t felt since watching Jeremy show up again on “The Bachelorette” Monday night, rather it was the fact that my bottom sheet is beginning to pill.

    I cannot tell y’all how this troubles me. It completely stole all my $1.00 party favor joy.

    It has been well-documented by me, and anyone who has ever had the misfortune of sharing a sleeping space with me, that I am a high-maintenance bedtime person. I always have been.

    In fact, I can clearly remember dragging my sleeping bag into my parents’ room in the middle of the night when I was a child and taking the time to spread out a sheet under the sleeping bag because I didn’t want my hands to touch the shag carpet if I decided to tuck them under my pillow. Which is why they sold me to a band of gypsies when I was seven.

    I need soft sheets. I need a fitted bottom sheet, not a ghetto flat sheet posing as a fitted sheet. I need the room to be the proper temperature. I need a gaggle of pillows surrounding me on all sides.

    I am basically the poster child for why couples shouldn’t live together before they get married. Had P been made aware of all my bedtime quirks, I feel certain that he would have found a nice sane girl to share his life and his bed.

    And I would be all alone with the exception of my eighty-two pillows.

    All this to say that the reason I am so upset about my pilled sheets is because they are practically brand new. I had such high hopes for them. They had it all; high thread count, Egyptian cotton (no one knows cotton like the Egyptians, look how long those strips of cotton preserve those mummies), and a sateen finish.

    Please note I said “sateen”, not satin. I am not confessing to the internet that I sleep on satin sheets. Although my Nanny swears by sleeping on a satin pillowcase because it keeps your weekly “set” from the beauty shop fresh.

    When P and I got married we received two really nice sets of sheets. Over the next three years they developed a softness that was rivaled only by a baby’s rear end. I adored them.

    Unfortunately, they were queen-size sheets because at the time we had a queen-size bed. When we decided to upgrade due to sleeping space issues, I had to lay my precious sheets on the sacrificial king-size bed altar.

    Since that time I have bought various brands and styles of bed linens. I have purchased expensive sheets and I have purchased inexpensive sheets, but no matter what I do they always end up pilling.

    Help me, O WISE INTERNET. What am I doing wrong? Am I washing them wrong? Am I drying them wrong? Am I buying the wrong brand? Are the Egyptians not as smart as I give them credit for?

    Am I destined to spend sleepless nights singing Barbara Mandrell songs in my head?

  • Mickey would just die

    Yesterday was the first day in about three weeks that Caroline and I didn’t have anywhere to be or anything we had to do. We spent much of the morning in our pajamas and finally headed out to run a few errands around 10:30 a.m.

    This is the sad reality of motherhood. When you wake up at the crack of early, it seems like you’ve already lived half a day by 10:30 a.m.

    I told Caroline we were going to run some errands and she ran in her room to get dressed. Heaven help me, the wardrobe issues are going to be the death of me.

    It’s like living with J.Lo back when she was all “Jenny from the block and don’t be fooled by the rocks that she got”, and not Mrs. Marc Anthony.

    Frankly, I miss the old J. Lo.

    Caroline came out of her room wearing jeans that were about three inches too short, pink cowboy boots, a sleeveless floral print top, and a necklace that she fashioned out of two bracelets that came from Vacation Bible School that say “When in doubt, PRAY!” and “PRAY without ceasing”.

    Which is exactly what I do every morning when she gets dressed.

    And just for that extra bit of flair, she was carrying her Hello Kitty purse, had her huge sunglasses up on her head and was carrying a coffee thermos. I bet five dollars she and Mary Kate Olsen had on the same outfit yesterday.

    But since I am beat down by the wardrobe and, inherently, there isn’t anything wrong with it, other than the fact that she looks like a hobo, I just went with it and we headed out to run some errands.

    Our first stop was the mail store and then we walked down to the drugstore to pick up a few other things. This was a critical error on my part because there is a pet store in between the drugstore and the mail store.

    Caroline begged to go in the pet store and I thought “What the heck, it’s summer. Let the girl have some fun!”, because what says summer fun like hearing a parrot squawk until your ears bleed?

    Of course all she wanted to see were the rodents. And I have never been more grateful that she can’t read yet because there was a big sign on the cage of the Siberian Hamsters that said “FREE TO GOOD HOME. ASK YOUR PARENTS.”

    Oh, that’s just what I need. A free Russian rodent that would, no doubt, demand high-dollar vodka, caviar and repeated viewings of Anna Karenina.

    She was particularly interested in seeing what she called “the feeder mice”.

    I asked, “What are the feeder mice?”

    “They are the mice that you feed to snakes. Can we buy some to take to the ranch to feed the snakes?”

    “What did you say, baby?” Mama couldn’t hear you over the gagging and her brain spontaneously combusting.

    “I want to buy some feeder mice to feed the snakes.”

    I suspect that someone has recently visited the pet store with her daddy, because the only mice she knows about from me are the kind that make dresses for Cinderella or hang out with ducks who don’t wear pants.

    And I’m keeping it that way.

  • Winner, winner, winner and another giveaway! Yes, it’s true.

    I used the handy random number generator to choose the winner of the Lindsey Kane CD.

    And the winner is:

    Random Integer Generator

    Here are your random numbers:

    13
    Timestamp: 2008-06-27 19:43:26 UTC

    Congratulations to Fab the Mayor, lucky #13, at Musings from My Little Corner of the World.

    Email me with your address and I’ll get your Lindsey Kane CD in the mail on Monday.

    Or maybe Tuesday.

    But for those of y’all who didn’t win, I have GOOD NEWS!

    Third Day is coming out with their new CD Revelation on July 29. You can go listen to all the awesomeness right here.

    But here’s the GOOD NEWS. I have ten Revelation CD’s to giveaway!

    TEN.

    TEN WINNERS!

    So, leave a comment and I’ll use my friend, the random number generator, to pick ten winners on Monday!

  • Georgia on my mind

    Remember how on Fridays I used to talk about fashion or something?

    I’m not sure what happened.

    And I realize I keep creating false hopes for all three of you who care about Fashion Friday because every Friday I promise that I’ll resume Fashion Friday the following week.

    Honestly, I still intend to do Fashion Fridays because I enjoy them, but it will be sporadic over the summer. Because really, what do you need to know about summer fashion?

    Wear shorts. Wear t-shirts. Wear skirts. Wear a swimsuit.

    It’s all good.

    As long as you have access to some A/C.

    I’m leaving for Atlanta at 6:30 a.m. to attend Deeper Still. For those of you doing the math, that means I’m going to have to set my alarm for 4:30.

    Oh the horror.

    I haven’t set an alarm for 4:30 since Caroline was a newborn and her pediatrician said I needed to make sure she ate every three hours around the clock. That’s what I get for having a baby that only weighed 5 1/2 pounds.

    The good news is that I managed to pack one carry on bag. However, since I’m only going to be gone thirty-six hours, it would have just been embarrassing to have to check a suitcase. Still, I haven’t traveled with just a carry on since my days of riding the Greyhound bus to Houston to visit my daddy with my rainbow duffel bag thrown over my shoulder.

    So yesterday I spent the day meticulously obsessing over the inventory of my carry on. What if I spill something? What if I hate the shoes I pack? What if it doesn’t feel like a day for jeans and all I have are jeans?

    You know, real problems.

    Anyway, in spite of all my suitcase concerns, I spent most of the afternoon at the pool with Caroline. Everything was great until we stopped for a break at around 4:00 and I pulled out my cell phone to check in with P, only to discover that my cell phone wasn’t working.

    Panic. Sheer panic.

    How did my early 90’s self survive without a cell phone? Or as I called it back then, a CELLULAR phone.

    I cannot even imagine all the time I wasted in my late teens sitting at home waiting for some loser to call. Time that could have been spent bettering myself or shopping.

    Clearly, I couldn’t leave town (to a whole other state, no less) without a working cell phone.

    The phone was working, it just said that I needed to insert the SIM card. I’m no technological wizard but I do know that the SIM card is the key to your cell phone universe.

    So I took out the battery and took out the SIM card to research the problem. I used a highly scientific process to try to fix whatever was wrong with the SIM card, which means that I kind of rubbed it on my beach towel and then blew on it really hard.

    After I put it back in the phone, it still wasn’t working. I can’t imagine why.

    Caroline and I stayed at the pool a little while longer and then we left so that I’d have time to go to the AT&T store to say HALP! MAH PHONE IS BROKEN.

    Since I couldn’t call P, I decided to stop by the house to let him know what was going on and share my STRESS. STRESS OVER MY NON-WORKING CELL PHONE. Nevermind that I spent the first twenty-four years of my life without one, I cannot function without it.

    He opened it up while I stood next to him explaining that I’d already done that. “I’VE DONE THAT. I EVEN BLEW ON IT AND WIPED IT WITH MY BEACH TOWEL. CLEARLY, IT’S BEYOND HELP.”

    That’s when he noticed that some idiot had put the SIM card back in facing the wrong direction. And it was kind of stuck. Which required tweezers.

    And maybe some pliers.

    But it finally came out.

    P put it back in and turned on my phone. It worked.

    He looked at me and said, “That’s a little thing I like to call doing it the RIGHT WAY.”

    Whatever.

    He’ll be lucky if I call him this weekend.

    I’ll be posting updates on Deeper Still over at the LifeWay All Access blog this weekend.

  • So I’m still talking about the weekend

    I was going to post about everything I talked about at She Speaks but, when I copied and pasted my Word document full of notes over here, it was incredibly boring.

    Not that this is going to be any better but, you know, at least I’m going for effort.

    My portion of the seminar was on blogging boundaries, etiquette and privacy. Which can basically be summed up by saying USE GOOD MANNERS AND GOOD SENSE.

    There is no need to leave someone a comment letting them know that you are now dumber for reading their blog.

    But just in case you want to read the whole boring page of notes, minus my less than witty ad-libs, I’ve posted it on a separate page which you can find here.

    All two of you are very welcome.

    On another note from the weekend, there was just this darlin’ girl leading worship. I immediately loved her voice and then I found out she’s an Aggie. It made me so proud.

    Anyway, her name is Lindsey Kane. You can hear her here.

    Go check her out. Get her to come sing at your church. Buy her CD. Download her on iTunes. You will not regret it. She has an awesome heart for worship.

    So I basically stalked her so that I could tell her how great I thought she was and that we were both Aggies.

    And it totally paid off because she gave me an autographed CD to give away to one of y’all.

    All you have to do is leave a comment and I’ll use a random number generator to pick a winner on Friday.

    In other news, Caroline and P survived the weekend. In fact, when I called home on Saturday to check in, P asked her if she wanted to talk to me and she said yes.

    “Mama?”

    “Hi Baby. How are you?”

    “Good. Mama, I need to tell you something.”

    “Okay, what?” (Preparing myself for an emotional speech about how much she misses me and can’t wait to see me.)

    “I’m hanging up now. Daddy and I have to go.”

    Seriously.

    Is it just me or does that bring a tear to your eye?