Another day

Easy like Sunday morning

Well, I’m sitting here in the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina listening to David Crowder on a Sunday morning.

I mean, he’s not here. I am listening to him on my iPod.

But how cool would it be if David Crowder hit the airport circuit on Sunday mornings?

At least on the Sunday mornings that I happen to be traveling, which is pretty much never.

I’ve been up since 6:30 a.m. Can you tell?

So, that’s it. Big Mama OUT.

I’ll be back tomorrow with thoughts from the weekend.

Deep and compelling thoughts.

Or at least a report about how new wedge heels are good in theory, but can leave blisters when you wear them for twelve hours at a time.
Not just in my mind, I’m going to Carolina

Remember how last Friday I said that I’d post about fashion this week?

Yeah, I’m not going to.

I completely underestimated how tired I would be after a three-hour flight and all the stress of making sure that my suitcase came in at under fifty pounds.

It was 46.5 pounds.

I’m so glad I took out my hairdryer and that extra pair of jeans.

Anyway, my flight was pretty uneventful except for the fact that I ended up sitting next to a nice young man in the Air Force who was on his way to visit his fiancée.

I knew I was in trouble when he sat down with no apparent reading material.

Sure enough, he wanted to talk.

And since I am a patriot, I could not ignore him. After all, he is serving our country.

So I heard all about his upcoming wedding, bachelor trip to Vegas, and weekend plans over the course of the next two hours.

As opposed to enjoying the silence and reading a book.

Anyway, the travel has worn me out and I’ve also lost an hour due to the time change.

And I still have PMS.

However, here is one fashion-related thought.

When I arrived in Charlotte, I walked outside and immediately noticed that it actually felt nice. The reason for this is because the high was only 89 degrees.

I may need a sweater to ward off the chill.

Y’all have a great Friday. I’ll check in over the weekend.
The problem with the heat is that it is hot

Yesterday morning I dropped Caroline off at Vacation Bible School. This is the first year she’s been old enough for VBS and I wasn’t sure if she’d like it or not, but we walked in the church and there were bubbles everywhere and music blaring over the speakers. She looked at me and said, “OH, I AM GOING TO LIKE IT HERE!”

She is such a wallflower.

Anyway, after that I had to take my car in to get the windows tinted. P had made an appointment for me at Four Wheel Auto Parts. You know what you don’t see a lot of at places named Four Wheel Auto Parts?

Volvos.

And also women.

Unless you count the pictures of women in bikinis posing by monster trucks in various literature throughout the store.

I know anytime I put my bathing suit on I get the urge to visit a Monster Truck rally.

They asked me how I wanted to get my windows tinted and all I knew to say was “the normal way”. I mean are there other options? Maybe my name cut out in calligraphy across the back window?

I didn’t really care about tinting my windows, but P felt strongly about it. In fact, we couldn’t go anywhere in my car without a discussion of the INTENSE HEAT blasting through the clear windows. According to him, it raised the temperature in the car to equator-like levels.

But, when I picked my car up an hour later, I could tell a noticeable difference.

So when I got out later in the afternoon to go to HEB, I was optimistic that perhaps my car wouldn’t be too hot.

I have never been more wrong.

The digital thermometer read 120 degrees when I started my car.

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY DEGREES.

It is the middle of June.

Which means by August I will have to stay indoors twenty-four hours a day in a bathtub filled with ice or someone will die.

Not from the heat, but rather from my rage caused by the heat.

I arrived at HEB in the form of a wilted, sweaty flower. It took every ounce of strength I could muster to drag myself into the store.

Immediately, I made my way to the frozen food section and stood there for a good ten minutes until one of the employees asked me to please get my head out of the frozen vegetables.

I walked down the aisles and picked up the things we needed, including milk and Dreyers’ Loaded Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream. The heat was stressing me out and I needed some relief.

By the time I drove the ten blocks home, the milk had already turned to blue cheese and the ice cream looked like chocolate milk with chunks of peanut butter cups floating around.

I can’t tell you how hard it was to suck those peanut butter cup pieces through a straw.

And as if all that wasn’t enough to bear, after we got home from the store Caroline rediscovered her Baby Born doll that I may or may not have hidden sometime right after Christmas.

She brought it to me to see if I could make it cry real tears like the one in the commercial. Because, yeah, I perform miracles.

I squeezed various appendages trying to make something happen and it finally did.

Baby Born peed all over me.

Some kind of stale, leftover since Christmas pee.

At least it cooled me off.

Needless to say, this is how Baby Born spent the rest of the afternoon.

I’m hoping she’ll escape through the drain.
The suns of my youth

P keeps asking me if I notice a difference driving my car with four new tires. And I’m really trying to feel the difference but, as far as I can tell, it’s not something tangible that instantly improves a situation, like say a great pair of wedge heels.

Even as Caroline walked out to the car this morning, she said, “Those tires don’t look any different”.

Yep.

A whole lot of not different.

But here’s something that’s different. Apparently I turned into an eighty-year-old woman over the winter months.

Over the last six or so years, I have become pretty diligent about keeping sunscreen on my face. Just call it a desperate attempt to make up for an ill spent youth that consisted of days spent getting the perfect tan on my face with no sunscreen.

The 70’s were a kinder, gentler time when people didn’t know words like OZONE or LONG-TERM SUN DAMAGE.

Oh sure, I was on the swim team for much of my childhood and I always wore the requisite zinc oxide smeared across my nose, but that was more for the look. THE COOL SWIMMER LOOK.

I didn’t care if my nose got sunburned and I certainly wasn’t concerned with any reapplication after swimming, I just wanted to look like all the cool older swimmers as we sat and ate our packets of dry Jello gelatin in between races.

Why did we eat Jello gelatin? I can’t remember but I think it involved some theory about providing energy. Or maybe just a sugar high that could fuel a nine-year-old to victory in the 100 meter freestyle. Whatever. ALL THE COOL KIDS DID IT.

Anyway, at some point in my late twenties, it became apparent that my skin had suffered some sun damage. The main thing that concerned me was the fact that it wouldn’t really tan in the sun anymore. It would just turn red and splotchy. HOT LOOK BY THE POOL.

Are you suffering from heat stroke? No, I just fried my skin throughout childhood. This is my consequence.

Then, after Caroline was born almost five years ago, my hormones exploded in the form of melasma, also known as evil mask of pregnancy. The first summer after she was born, in spite of my liberal use of sunscreen, I developed dark, patchy spots in the perfect form of a mustache.

Horror doesn’t begin to describe it.

When I close my eyes, I can still hear my screaming.

Thankfully I managed to micro-dermabrasion and bleach away that bad boy. Otherwise I would currently be wearing a veil over my face for all public outings lest I scare the little children or cause them to think they’re at the circus.

So, these days I wear some heavy-duty sunscreen in addition to various big, floppy hats to provide maximum sun protection. Even though between the hat and the big sunglasses I look like someone’s Aunt Maude having a day at the pool.

I fully expect that Caroline will end up in therapy over the hats her mama wore to the pool throughout her childhood.

While we were in Florida last week I became giddy with all the freedom, threw caution to the wind and played in the ocean for at least an hour without a hat on. My face didn’t burn because I had on my SPF 170, but it did get some sun for the first time in five years.

There are vampires that have seen more daylight than my face.

Anyway, that little moment of indiscretion in the waves came back to haunt me in the form of not one, but TWO age spots. I’d like to say they are freckles, but I’ve never seen a freckle a 1/4 inch in diameter. For that matter, I’ve never seen a freckle that looks like a map of the former Czech Republic.

Needless to say, the micro-dermabrasion has been working overtime since I returned home to the harsh reality of my bathroom mirror with overhead lighting. Also, there has been many a prayer for skincare redemption being lifted to the heavens.

I think at least one of the age spots has faded to the point of looking like it could at least be a distant cousin to a freckle, but I will never make such a grave error again.

So, if you need to find me at the pool just look for Maw-Maw sitting in the shade with a hat that could be mistaken for a satellite dish.
Two explosions in one day has to be a record

Yesterday morning I dropped Caroline off at this little half-day summer camp that she’s doing this week. Of course, half-day is really a misnomer considering that it starts at 9:00 and ends at 11:30.

Which is really more like a half-morning.

However, those two and a half hours are like precious gold to me right now, except I don’t really like gold. Unlike Caroline who announced yesterday that gold was her favorite color and whenever she saw it she was going to “HOWL AT THE MOON!!!”.

I have no idea what that means but she was very passionate about it.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that small little morsel of free time is invaluable especially because I have about a million different things I’m working on, none of which are more easily accomplished by the constant narration and interrogation of a four-year-old.

So, I dropped Caroline off and headed to the HEB. I certainly did not want to go to HEB during my small window of free time, but we were literally about out of everything (meaning Q-Tips and York Peppermint Patties) and the grocery store couldn’t wait unless I wanted to go in the afternoon when I knew it would be hot enough to make me long for a vacation on the sun.

I raced through HEB with the speed of a woman on a mission, pausing only long enough to mourn two great losses.

1. HEB has quit carrying Tyson’s Roasted Chicken Breasts and is offering no replacement item. Does this mean I’m going to actually have to prepare recipes using raw chicken? Because if it does, then I’m about to swear off poultry forever.

2. When I went to talk to my favorite manager, Dwayne, about the Tyson Chicken Breast Fiasco of ’08 because I knew he’d make the situation right, I found out he is no longer at our neighborhood HEB.

I don’t know how I’m going to break the news to Caroline that her prime source of Buddy Bucks and helium balloons is no longer there. It will be a dark day.

As I’m pushing my cart down the cosmetic aisle (after surveying my nail polish inventory in the midst of the cabinet makeover I realized I was sorely lacking) I heard a loud POP.

And when I say loud, I mean LOUD. I thought it was gunfire.

Gunfire from a disgruntled HEB shopper who just discovered that she was going to have to cook with raw poultry since some moron in the home office decided to quit carrying Tyson Roasted Chicken Breasts.

I didn’t hit the linoleum floor, but I glanced around to see if anything was awry. Not seeing anything, I moved on in to the checkout line and started unloading my groceries. All of a sudden I saw the source of the POP. A can of biscuits had exploded in my cart.

EXPLODED.

As it turns out, the great biscuit explosion was a little thing known in the literary world as FORESHADOWING.

Later on, after I’d picked Caroline up, we were driving along when I heard a loud POP. Of course my first thought was that I’d left a can of biscuits in my car, but then I realized that my car was shaking and veering off the road.

Probably not because of biscuits.

I pulled over on a side street and realized my front tire had experienced a complete blow out.

So I did what any self-sufficient, independent woman of the 2000’s would do.

I reached into my purse for my cell phone and called P to come rescue his damsels in distress.

Fortunately, we were close to where he’s working right now and he made it in record time even though my directions were along the lines of “You know where that building is that used to be next to the Starbucks and then they turned it into the Sushi Restaurant? Yeah. We’re not really by that. But if you go there and then head maybe a mile or five past that, then we’re either on the right or left side of the road but I can’t tell because I can’t remember my right from my left at the moment.”

I have a navigational gift.

He put the spare tire on my car while we discussed the fact that the Swedish people were nice enough to include one glove in the spare tire changer kit thing. One glove.

Like in case Michael Jackson had a flat.

With spare tire in place, Caroline and I went to Discount Tire to purchase a new front tire. And GOOD NEWS! It turns out all the other tires were on their last legs, or treads as the case may be, and we had to purchase FOUR NEW TIRES.

There is no way I’d rather spend that amount of money than on automotive repair.

It was a joy.

Yes, I know. Safety, schmafety. Precious cargo, blah, blah, blah.

But that money could have gone towards a lot of new shoes.

Or perhaps to mail order some Tyson Roasted Chicken Breasts.
This is for my mother-in-law who inspired my cabinet makeover

In my quest to show the internet that I am task-oriented and focused on results, I am proud to present my new and improved bathroom cabinet.

And, seriously, whatever on the task-oriented stuff. I am a charter member of the why do today what you can do tomorrow club.

But I did finish the bathroom cabinet.

I even have some pink stripes in my hair to prove it.

I’m a little concerned it’s not pink enough.

Anyway, I wanted to share it with y’all because I know that many times I quit reading a blog because it just doesn’t offer enough bathroom cabinet stories. I think to myself, AWESOME BLOG! but needs more bathroom cabinet.

Y’all may notice that there isn’t much in the bathroom cabinet and that is largely due to the fact that prior to this renovation it was far too scary of a place to actually use for anything other than an air cast that P wore on his arm back in 1998 (never know when you might need it again!) and the plastic sitz bath thing that came home with me from the hospital after I had Caroline.

Here’s hoping I never need that again.

Now I have a place to store ALL FIVE of our beach towels, Caroline’s various cough and cold medications, and a basket full of miscellaneous dried-out bottles of OPI nail polish.

Anyone looking for an eight-year-old bottle of “I’m Not Really A Waitress”?

The truth is this is Caroline’s bathroom and she doesn’t use it much right now. She prefers to take a bath in our bathroom which means our antique clawfoot tub is filled to the brim with all manner of plastic fish, a water trumpet, and, at last count, six rubber duckies.

It’s like something you’d see in Better Homes and Gardens.

Anyway, for right now this bathroom is still pretty much mine. I’ve actually redone it three different times since we moved in because it’s a small space that doesn’t overwhelm me. But I adore the black and white toile that’s in there right now and the pink accents are new.

What you can only see a little bit of is a fluffy, pink bathmat that I immediately regretted purchasing because it looks kind of old-fashioned and dated. I bought it anyway because it isn’t that easy to find a pink bathmat, and once it made it into the house Caroline saw it and pledged her undying love and devotion to its Pepto-Bismal shagginess.

She even asked to sleep in the bathroom because the mat was “THE BEST THING” she has ever seen.

We don’t get out much.

At some point, if I find a suitable replacement, that bathmat may have an unfortunate accident and go missing.

Anyway, I figure I better enjoy looking at the bathroom while I can because in about eight years Caroline will hole up in there for days while she examines every pore on her face and experiments with the different ways she can style her bangs, all while yelling at me through the door that I don’t know what I’m talking about and she doesn’t need to pluck her eyebrows.

After all, it’s her legacy.