Another day

So, here’s how we’re spending our holiday.

Rain. Hate. Go away. Parade cancelled. Tears. Many tears.

Leak. Bad. Sheetrock ruined. Roofing company closed for holiday.

Bucket. Good. And classy.

Child. Up since 3:30 a.m. Exhausted.

Peanut butter rice krispy treats. God bless America.

The loaner, she is still with us. Day 7 and counting.

And in what can only be described as an incredible twist of irony or whatever, P drove the loaner to pick up some barbecue for dinner last night from our favorite barbecue place. They make the best barbecued turkey in the free world and I don’t even like turkey (why not ham for Thanksgiving? The Indians ate turkey because it was the only thing available. You can’t tell me the pilgrims wouldn’t have pulled up to a table with a Honeybaked Ham given the choice), yet this barbecued turkey with all the smoky, barbecued goodness compels me to eat it.

Oh, and the creamed corn? It is sinfully and wonderfully made.

I’m not implying that people are sinning in the making of the corn, I’m just saying it has a high fat content.

Just wanted to clarify.

Anyway, P is driving through the parking lot of the barbecue place when he notices about 4 or 5 men who have set up chairs in a kind of semi-circle configuration towards the back of the parking lot. He observes that they all have on ties and shirts and are hanging out in their lawn chairs and drinking beer. This is about 6:30 at night, so the temperature is still around 135 degrees and they are sitting out in the full sun.

We’re good friends with the owners of the barbecue place, so P calls Stew up and tells him about this group of men camping out in their parking lot. He tells him they don’t look shady or anything, it’s just kind of odd to see a group of grown men, dressed up, drinking beer in lawn chairs in the blazing heat, in a parking lot.

Stew says, “Oh, it’s no big deal. Those are just the salesmen from the Volvo dealership down the street. They sit out there and drink beer after work almost every day, even if it’s 135 degrees.”

P realizes, on closer inspection, that one of the men sitting there is, in fact, JoEL. And, they are all eyeing P as he drives off in the Volvo dealer loaner.

Suckers.

I’m thinking this scene speaks volumes about JoEL. God help him, he probably does think the service department is great because compared to sitting out in 185 degree heat in a concrete parking lot, while wearing a tie, anything is good.

So, I’ve rebounded from my impending nervous breakdown caused by all the non-sleeping and am feeling much better. I won’t even embarrass myself by taking an “after” picture of the bowl of patriotic M&M’s. Let’s just say a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

Caroline and I were at the pool yesterday. The pool, just so y’all know, is the greatest thing that has ever happened to our family and I’m not even exaggerating a little bit, because y’all know I don’t EVER, EVER exaggerate. I don’t know what we would do without the pool, but feel sure it would be something along the lines of spending all summer locked inside watching Noggin because MY WORD the heat.

It’s like sticking your head in hell every time you walk out the back door.

And why would you do that on purpose?

Anyway, we were at the pool. We’d spent well over an hour playing in the big pool, and then headed over to our favorite grassy spot by the baby pool to eat some ice cream, because HELLO, they totally sell a wide assortment of ice cream and ice cream bars at the pool.

The pool has ice cream, celebrity sightings, and it causes Caroline to be so tired that her legs collapse beneath her by the time we leave. What more do you need to know to convince you of its greatness?

We sat on our towel and I opened Caroline’s ice cream sandwich for her which, let me just say, if you’re trying to watch your fat grams and have been purchasing Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches and telling yourself that they taste exactly like the real ones? Then, don’t actually take a bite of a real one. The disappointment and disillusionment will be more than you can bear. Blue Bell vs. Skinny Cow…let’s just say Blue Bell takes Skinny Cow and chops her up into a sad, pathetic, tasteless hamburger.

Could I get more off topic?

The answer is always yes, yes I could.

But I won’t.

And really, it’s all coming back around to skinny cow…in a manner of speaking.

So, we’re relaxing on our towel when I look over and notice a lady nursing her 1 year old while sitting on the edge of the baby pool. And I don’t mean discreetly breastfeeding her child. I mean swimsuit top pulled up and maximum boobage hanging out. I am all for breastfeeding. Hooray for breastfeeding, but seriously there are gangs of 12 year old boys that roam the pool. They do not need to be confronted with the boob, much less the boob of a nursing mama, which could cause boyhood fantasies to crumble and die in a sad little pile.

My sole goal became to distract Caroline from the breastfeeding because I knew it would open up a can of awkwardness and loud questions that I just couldn’t bear to answer. Being in a swimsuit is bad enough without having your 3 year old pointing loudly and asking inappropriate questions.

And while I realize that I am perhaps a little more modest than your average person, as evidenced by the fact that I changed clothes in the bathroom for most of my honeymoon (never even imagining what horrors childbirth would someday unleash on my modesty) until P reminded me that we were married, I still think that given the setting, a discreetly draped towel might have been a good choice. Maybe it’s just because I am such a private person.

Well, unless you count the fact that I broadcast my life on the internet.

If a woman wants to nurse right out in public, then more power to her. But boobs hanging directly out of a swimsuit for all the world to see are just wrong. It shouldn’t happen at the pool unless, hypothetically speaking, it was caused by an unfortunate wardrobe situation while going down the slide.

When P and I bought our house 9 years ago, the home inspection report showed termite damage to the front door. On further inspection, they found that the house didn’t currently have termites, but only evidence that a family of termites had once lived in the wooden threshold of our front door and frequently held parties where they’d invite all of their termite friends and they’d float a keg and get destructive. Since the house had bigger issues, such as wiring so old it required us to turn off every light in the house to run the microwave, the termite damaged door pretty much didn’t even register on our to-do list.

So, about 4 1/2 years ago, right after I discovered I was pregnant, we decided it was a good time to do an extensive remodel and addition on the house. The work that needed to be done was so extensive we decided to pack up all our things, rent another house and live there until the remodel was completed. I guess we could have tried to live in our house during the renovation, but I’m fairly certain we would have killed each other and the new master suite we were adding would have been a complete waste.

Pregnancy hormones and extensive remodel. Excellent combination and not at all stressful.

I won’t even talk about how I was so determined to be in our house before the baby was born that I stood on scaffolding to help P hang crown molding while I was 8 months pregnant. I was a woman on a mission. The idea of bringing home our child to a rent house was enough to send me into tears.

Of course, in all honesty, I think an episode of Sanford and Son brought me to tears during my pregnancy. I may have been a little overemotional, but sometimes the unspoken admiration between Fred and Lamont is just too much to bear.

Since we weren’t living in our house, and none of our things were in the house, it was an opportune time to take the front door, which we suspected was once again housing a termite family complete with 2nd and 3rd cousins, and have it gassed and send the termites to a better place. Well, a better place for us. But, we procrastinated and it never happened. It just seemed like there were more immediate issues that needed to be tended to, such as installing flooring and hanging sheetrock. The termite family was spared.

And honestly, we never see them or think of their existence until the weather gets hot. We’ve been in denial, but now our front door is at the point where we may go to open it and the door knob may pull right out as the wood around it completely disentegrates.

So, tonight we were discussing things we need to spend money on and the subject of the front door came up. The problem is our house was built in 1923 and the front door is the original front door. It is one of my favorite features of our house because it’s rounded at the top like a little elf house door with a little square cutout towards the top that holds a piece of original beveled glass. It is a yummy little door and holds my heart in the palm of its termite infested hand.

It is not a door that can be replaced with the cold, sterile doors they sell at Home Depot. Last I checked, Home Depot did not stock yummy elf doors. This is a custom door that will require a custom replacement.

I told P I was concerned about how expensive it might be to replace the door and I didn’t want another door unless we could get another one with a cutout for the little beveled glass window.

I asked, “What if we can’t find someone to make it?”

He said, “I can make a front door. I’ll just get a piece of plywood, nail it up there and spray paint ‘GO AROUND BACK’ on it.”

It’s a good thing he’s cute.