Capital P

A girl and a her bike

On Caroline’s second birthday, two momentous things happened. The first was that Mimi and Bops moved from Houston to San Antonio. You can’t appreciate this if you don’t know them, but the fact they left their beloved Houston with its many fine restaurants and other cultural offerings is akin to a miracle. Caroline will never understand how much she totally caused her grandparents to become people they didn’t even recognize. And I’ll try not to think about the fact I lived in San Antonio for ten years prior to having Caroline and they never once mentioned relocating.

The second momentous thing was that Mimi and Bops gave her a little bicycle and a helmet for her birthday. I wish I had a picture of her trying out her new bike in her little zebra-print dress, but that would require me to get off the couch, locate the right photo album and scan the picture in. Then I’d see all the other pictures of her at two years old and get caught up in a wave of nostalgia and the passage of time and P would find me in the morning, passed out with a photo album clutched to my chest with dried tears on my cheeks.

When she first got that little bike she could barely reach the pedals, but eventually grew into it and was completely happy to pedal around with training wheels. The thing is, we don’t really live on a bike-friendly street. There aren’t cul-de-sacs or endless sidewalks like we had when I was little. Not to mention that the world doesn’t seem as safe as it used to back in the days when I would hop on my bike and ride the eight blocks to the pool wearing just my swimsuit with a towel wrapped around my neck.

(Was there really a time when I was so confident that I felt free to ride a bike wearing only a swimsuit? Because that sounds like a scenario that I might have nightmares about tonight.)

When she started first grade last year we realized it was probably time for her to learn to ride a two-wheeled bike. We pulled the little bike out, took off the training wheels and discovered that KIDS GROW over the course of four years and the bike had become a wee bit small.

Mimi and Bops bought her a new bike that Christmas and I began last year with a renewed determination to teach her to ride it. It lasted for about two minutes, which is how long it took me to realize that she viewed riding a two-wheeled bike as an activity comparable in danger to feeding live sharks while wearing a suit made of tuna.

The bike issue didn’t come up again until about a month ago. I knew that most of her friends had left their training wheels behind and began to encourage her it was time to do the same, especially if she wanted to participate in the Bike Rodeo this year. I picked her up from school one day and told her I was going to teach her to ride her bike.

The whole thing went very differently in my head. In short, the “lesson” lasted approximately four minutes before I decided I was not mentally or emotionally equipped to teach my daughter how to ride a bike. Largely because she said, “I DON’T WANT YOU TO TEACH ME HOW TO RIDE A BIKE” and I may have had to put my head between my knees and count backwards from ten.

When P came home from work that day I handed him a Xanax and told him the good news. He was now solely in charge of Caroline’s bike riding lessons.

And that’s when it got serious.

He took the pedals off her bike and began to teach her how to keep her balance. But she had a total mental block. She was so afraid she might fall that she couldn’t make herself balance. I told P that I had NO IDEA where she gets her ability to get so worked up over something that hasn’t even happened yet. NO IDEA.

She said she wanted to be in the Bike Rodeo but would just ride her scooter instead. We explained they don’t allow scooters because it’s not a Scooter Rodeo. She said she’d wait until she was eight to learn to ride her bike. She said it was too cold outside to practice. Or too hot outside to practice. The Bike Rodeo form came home in her folder and I threw it away. I did. I’m a betting girl by nature and my money was on the bike to win this round.

(I’m not really a betting girl by nature. I don’t even know what that means.)

Sunday afternoon P came in and announced it was time to practice on the bike. And she said she didn’t want to. But he said she had to learn sometime and today was as good a day as any.

And so the bike-riding lesson began.

I don’t think I can do this.

Are you letting go? Don’t let go. Are you letting go?

I’m scared.

Wait. Am I doing it?

I’m doing it! My streamers are whipping in the breeze just like God intended.

She is so proud of herself. And we are so proud of her. It was a big day.

And I might have cried a little.

P was proud of himself too. He took a celebratory lap.

Just like The Bandit. He did what they said couldn’t be done. The purple Schwinn Dee-Lite did not beat him.

(If I ever write a book I want that picture to be on the cover.)

When I tucked Caroline into bed last night she was reliving the glory and said, “Mama? I know how to ride my bike now, don’t I?”

“You sure do! I’m so proud of you!”

“All I have to do now is learn not to be afraid of the dark and I’ll be finished with all my little kid stuff.”

And then I might have cried a little again.

And reminded myself to pick up a new form for the Bike Rodeo.
My pancake was a broken heart

Yesterday morning as I got Caroline ready for school, I told her, “Tonight we’re going to have a special family Valentine’s dinner and there might even be a present!” She said, “Okay, but I thought I usually get my Valentine’s presents in the morning.”

Yes. Yes, you do. But only when Mama actually remembers that it’s Valentine’s Day.

I should have remembered. I spent a good portion of our weekend helping her make homemade cards for all her classmates while practicing the art of glitter management. Which is just a fancy way of saying I tried to limit the spread of glitter to one small patch of the dining room. Although based on the fact I just walked to the kitchen for a glass of water and came back with a bedazzled foot, I may have failed at my task.

But I procrastinated on a Valentine’s gift all last week and, thus, had to make a run to Target before attending Caroline’s class party later in the afternoon. I secured a gift and made a quick swing through the Whataburger drive-thru line because I was in need of lunch before all the cupcakes. The girl at the window informed me it’s FREE JALAPENO WEEK at Whataburger and asked if I’d like my jalapeno on the side or on my burger. It seemed like too much to think about and so I made the decision to forgo my free jalapeno. And, may I just say that FREE JALAPENO WEEK seems like kind of a lame marketing strategy.

Once I arrived at the class party, I helped set up the tables and the party craft. All of Caroline’s classmates began to file back in the room after recess and I was immediately greeted by my child and a little girl I’ll call Mabel. Mabel wrote Caroline a Valentine’s letter that read, “Dear Caroline, You are a nice friend that is wite” which is ironic because Caroline just asked last week if we could please adopt a kid with dark skin so she’d have someone in the family that looks like her. Apparently the fact she tans well has caused some racial confusion.

Anyway, Mabel also told me, “I really like the way you talk. It sounds like a cowgirl.” In other words, MA’AM, YOU SOUND LIKE A COUNTRY BUMPKIN. It made me so happy.

I decided it might be fun to cook breakfast for dinner and make heart-shaped pancakes because I am nothing if not a culinary optimist. You’d think the Gingerbread Man Pancake Fiasco of Christmas 2009 would have made me own my inability to properly cook pancakes in a specific shape. But you would be wrong.

(On a total tangent-y sidenote, the mention of heart-shaped pancakes reminds me of the time in college when one of my roommates decided to make a Valentine’s Day gift basket for her boyfriend. She put in things like a mix CD, a new t-shirt, and a pack of his favorite gum or whatever. And, last but not least, she lovingly made a giant Rice Krispie treat in the shape of a heart and wrapped it in foil. She came home later and told us that he named each item as he took it out of the basket. “A pack of gum, a t-shirt, a CD…” and when he pulled out the foil-wrapped Rice Krispie treat, he said, “A big pork chop”. I think about it every Valentine’s Day and laugh because, seriously, a pork chop.)

The first error of dinner occurred when I looked in the refrigerator and discovered I only had three eggs left in the carton. That’s the kind of thing that tends to put a damper on a dinner consisting of eggs, sausage and pancakes. So I headed to HEB to procure more eggs. Like I told Gulley on the phone on my way there, nothing says I HAVE HOT VALENTINE’S DAY PLANS like a trip to HEB at 6:00 p.m. to buy a dozen eggs and some cake flour while wearing a pair of faded yoga pants and an Old Navy t-shirt that reads “St. Patrick’s Day 2003”.

But eventually I managed to make at least two out of six pancakes look remotely like hearts. And P cut me some slack and said he’d be content with just average round pancakes.

And, let’s be honest, that’s what real romance looks like.

We had a great time, drank milk out of the crystal stemware I only use once every three years, and laughed a lot. Or maybe just P and Caroline laughed at me. Especially when I asked her if someone played the guitar during worship at Sunday School or if they played the music on a tape player.

A tape player.

Yes, they magically transport all the children back to 1985 each Sunday and play Petra songs on the tape player.

If that church existed, I would totally go.
While mama’s away

So I was in Birmingham this weekend. I believe I’ve mentioned it once or eighteen times.

What I didn’t mention was that I actually worked as part of the LifeWay event team for the Deeper Still conference. Seriously. They gave me a walkie-talkie with an earpiece and everything. Sadly, I had to give it back when everything was over and that makes me sad because I discovered this weekend that people take you seriously when you walk around with a walkie-talkie and an earpiece. Well, except for the people who know me in real life who just died laughing every time they saw me.

I will write about the weekend tomorrow, but right now I have to go to bed because part of my event team duties involved selling $2.00 t-shirts at the merch table and I think all 14,000 women in attendance bought one.

(You don’t know how happy it makes me to use the term “merch”. It makes me wish I had merch to sell so I could walk around and talk about my merch table. Apparently that word and a walkie-talkie is all is takes.)

But, in the meantime, I have to share that Caroline passed a major milestone this weekend. I also want to warn you that if you are not a fan of the hunting you should probably leave at this point and come back for the rest of the weekend re-cap tomorrow.

On Friday afternoon, P texted me this photo.

Aww. Mama’s little baby has on camo face paint.

I texted him back and said, “I LOVE IT. I LOVE Y’ALL!”

And then Saturday morning I was walking around the concourse looking very official with my walkie-talkie and earpiece.

(In reality I was going to meet my friends, Heather and Kelly, who had brought me a Peppermint Mocha but were told they couldn’t bring it in the arena. I was DESPERATE for that Peppermint Mocha and not above telling someone it was for Beth Moore just to get it in the doors.)

(Also, they let me walk right in with it and I didn’t have to resort to deception. I owe it all to the walkie-talkie.)

Anyway, I’m walking around the concourse when I receive a text from P that says, “Caroline shot her first deer this morning.” And it was accompanied by this photo.

Y’all.

The weirdest part is I felt tears of pride well up in my eyes.

And I spent the rest of the day saying words I never would have imagined saying seven and a half years ago, “LOOK Y’ALL! MY BABY GIRL SHOT HER FIRST DEER THIS MORNING!”

The best part was people acted like they were genuinely interested.

Or maybe it was just the walkie-talkie that made them feel like they had to listen.
Yes, I’m still talking about my Christmas tree

So yesterday morning was Monday. And I’ve become a big fan of stating the obvious.

I knew that eventually the Thanksgiving break would end and it would be time to join the real world again, but that really didn’t make it any better when the alarm went off. It also doesn’t help that our alarm is P’s cell phone and he has it set to some kind of mamba ring tone. He says it’s because he’ll hear it, but I suspect it might be because he knows it drives me insane enough to make me jump out of bed. Or at least to roll over and growl, “TURN IT OFF. TURN IT OFF. FOR ALL THAT IS GOOD IN THIS WORLD, TURN IT OFF.”

We all managed to get out of bed and start our morning routine. I dropped Caroline off at school with a coyote skull gently packed in her little sequined leopard print messenger bag. Yes. A coyote skull. She found it at the ranch last week and couldn’t wait to bring it in for Show and Tell. Bless her teacher’s heart.

Once I got home I knew I could no longer avoid the run I’d been trying not to think about all last week when I decided that exercise should not interfere with my enjoyment of the Thanksgiving holiday. I put on my running shoes, cranked up my sweet tunes, and spent the next thirty-five minutes feeling like I was wading through quicksand. My loose hypothesis is that a steady diet of cream of mushroom soup and butter in various casserole forms has a tendency to make a person feel a little sluggish.

After I plodded my way around the neighborhood, I came back home to hydrate myself and pass out for about forty-five minutes before running my long list of errands. First up? A trip to Michaels to get more Christmas tree lights. Second? I ran in Charming Charlie’s to buy the zebra-print koozie with hot pink feathered trim that Caroline fell in love with when she saw it on Saturday. I don’t know why she really needs a koozie, but I can understand the siren song of the zebra print trimmed in pink.

Anyway, I finally completed a whole list of errands and I won’t bore you by going into all the details. When I finally got home I decided to go ahead and put the lights on the rest of the tree so that Caroline and I could get to decorating as soon as she got home from school.

I continued my vertical light strategy around the back of the tree until it was adequately wrapped, then I put one more strand around the entire tree just to ensure maximum light coverage. And then!

AND THEN!

I plugged in the lights and marveled at their beauty. And also at the fact that I managed to buy some sort of twinkling lights by accident and half my tree has a significant twinkling effect.

AND THEN!

All the lights went out at the same time. Darkness. Total darkness.

Fortunately P happened to be home and I summoned him to the living room with a delicate, “OH NO! ALL MY LIGHTS JUST WENT OUT! WHAT HAPPENED? OH THE HUMANITY!”

He looked at me and asked, “How many strands do you have plugged all together and plugged into this one outlet?”

“Ummm. Eight?”

(Or twelve.)

“That’s too many. It overheated and blew a fuse.”

Technically, I knew when I was connecting strand after strand of lights that this venture was ill-advised thanks to the directions on the box the lights came in. However, I choose to think of those directions as more of a guideline than the gospel truth.

P fixed my fuse and told me I’d need to go buy an extension cord and a power strip. So I picked up Caroline from school and we headed to Walgreens to buy the necessary supplies. And then I had to come home and try to reconfigure my lighting scheme. The good news is this gave me the opportunity to evenly distribute the twinkly lights so my tree doesn’t look like it’s bipolar.

Now it just looks like it belongs in a nightclub in Las Vegas. Which is so much better.

After the lighting was all straightened out, I turned our T.V. to one of the satellite radio channels that plays continuous holiday music and Caroline and I began to hang the rest of the ornaments as we sang along to Jingle Bell Rock. It was all very festive in spite of the fact that it was a crisp 82 degrees outside.

All of a sudden a song came on that I’d never heard before. I knew immediately it was Dwight Yoakum. And as I listened to the lyrics I realized he was singing that Mama said Santa can’t stay and Santa looked a lot like Daddy as he drove away.

Wow.

Way to bring us all down at Christmastime, Dwight.

I told P about it and said it was the second most depressing Christmas song I’ve ever heard. The first being that song about the little boy who’s trying to buy new shoes for his mom in case she dies and meets Jesus on Christmas Eve.

P looked at me and said, “I don’t even know what you’re talking about, but I have serious concerns about your listening habits. Why would you listen to any of that?”

It’s a valid point.

However, he doesn’t know that I’m the same girl who spent much of Christmas 1987 listening to Dolly Parton sing Hard Candy Christmas over and over again on my York stereo with cassette player while I cried over a breakup with a boy whose name I can barely even remember now. I felt like Dolly and I were united in our feeling of barely getting through tomorrow, but committed to not let sorrow bring us down.

Which is more than I can say for Dwight Yoakum.
Jumping the Christmas shark

I thought I’d go into excruciating detail about how we spent the rest of our Thanksgiving weekend, but I can hardly remember. I think it was Saturday before I regained consciousness from my whipped cream hangover and all I really know is that we watched a tremendous amount of college football. Between all the close games and the amount of butter contained in most holiday casseroles, I can only imagine that it proved to be a banner weekend for cardiologists all across the United States.

About noon on Friday, P decided that he was going to head down to the ranch to spend the night. I asked him if he had any interest in getting the Christmas decorations down from the attic for me before he left. And so he did. Even though it’s his personal belief that the last weekend of November is too early to decorate for Christmas. In fact, he told me that I jump the shark on Christmas decorating every year. I think what he was trying to say is that I jump the gun on decorating. Jumping the shark would imply that I might pay the neighborhood children to perform a living nativity in our front yard every night from now until Christmas.

Which now that I think about it, PURE AWESOME.

So maybe I’m inclined to jump the gun AND the shark.

After P left, Caroline and I began to go through all the decorations. Everything appeared to be accounted for except for my MERRY AND BRIGHT sign. And I’m trying not to take that as a sign of things to come. I plan to enjoy the Christmas season with my MERRY AND BRIGHT firmly intact.

I managed to get most of the inside decorated and even made a quick run to Michaels in the midst of Black Friday madness to look for turquoise ribbon. It totally paid off because I found the perfect ribbon for 70% off. I also bought a wreath hanger that’s too small for our front door and some pink glitter ribbon that called to me from the aisles.

(I don’t know why I think you care about any of this. The ribbon! It’s fascinating!)

(Their frames were also 60% off and I nearly bought two black ones and then I didn’t because it’s Christmas and I felt guilty buying things for myself and now I regret that I didn’t just buy them. Why do I overthink everything?)

Caroline and I took a brief break from all the football and Christmas decorating to go see Tangled in 3-D Saturday afternoon. We both absolutely loved it. And then we ate Mexican food with Mimi and Bops because leftover turkey was dead to me and I hadn’t had Mexican in over six days. Well, unless you count that A.J. and I met at Cafe Salsita for breakfast earlier that morning. But that’s breakfast and it’s different from dinner. And now I’m just stating the obvious.

Night is different from day. The moon is different from the sun. Brad Pitt before Angelina Jolie is different than Brad Pitt after Angelina Jolie.

Sunday morning we went to church and then I attempted to take a Christmas card picture of Caroline. The verdict is still out on that whole process, but I’ll keep you posted. Then the time came to go get our Christmas tree.

Mimi and Bops always do the tree thing with us. We all meet at the lot, load both trees up in P’s truck and then take their tree back to their house before we head home and attempt to get our tree to stand up straight. This process is met with varying success each year. It’s the whole getting the tree to stand up straight that has been the cause of marital stress in years past. Apparently one of us has a hard time knowing what a straight tree looks like.

I’ll go ahead and admit that I am that person.

Me: “OH! That’s it! Just like that! PERFECT!!”

P: “Ok. It’s all tightened down.”

Me: “Well, now I think it may need to go a little bit more to the left. Or maybe it’s the right.”

And this scenario tends to cause a bit of frustration.

But this year we got smart and realized the advantages of child labor.

Oh sure. She tried to complain that she was too tired to help after we made her carry the tree in on her back, but what’s the point of having kids if not to get the benefits of free labor?

Just wait until we make her hang the outdoor lights later this week while we threaten that Santa won’t come if the house isn’t properly illuminated.

Speaking of proper illumination, after we secured the tree in an upright position, I began to wrap the whole thing in lights before we hung any ornaments. Last year I read somewhere, probably Sadomasochist Monthly, that it’s better to string the lights vertically on the tree instead of wrapping them around the tree. True to form, I have no recollection of why this is supposed to be better but yet I did it anyway because some person in some article I can’t remember said it was the best way to do it.

And I have to disagree with that unknown person in the unknown article because now I appear to be short by at least two strands of lights. Caroline and P tried to convince me that it doesn’t matter because it’s just the back part of the tree and no one will notice.

But how am I going to jump the shark this Christmas if I don’t have a tree with a maximum display of wattage?
Forty

Today is a big day at our house. It’s P’s 40th birthday. I am married to a forty-year-old man. Which means I must be getting old.

But I can’t think of a better way to grow old than with someone who makes me laugh every single day. It’s part of why I love you, P. Along with these forty other reasons:

1. The way you never really panic about anything. In fifteen years, I’ve never seen you panic.

2. The way you talk me off the ledge when I work myself up into near hysteria.

3. Your ability to recall movie lines from a movie you saw one time back in 1983.

4. Specifically, The Warriors. Which I’d never even heard of until you referenced it about four years ago.

5. The way you get so excited about hunting season EVERY SINGLE YEAR.

6. That you have all your camo clothing arranged by pattern in the guest bedroom closet.

7. The fact that you don’t mind keeping your camo clothing in the guest bedroom closet because it usually smells like dirt and would make our shared closet smell like dirt and you realize I don’t want to smell like dirt.

8. Your ability to just sum up a situation in two words. For example, “COMPLETE NONSENSE”.

9. The way you never hesitate to be completely honest about anything.

10. That you know me well enough to ask me how honest I want you to be when I ask a question like, “Do you like this dress?” or “Do these jeans look okay on me?”

11. You never question my sanity. Even when I paint the kitchen twice in six months. Oh, you’ll mock me for it. But you don’t question my mental capacity.

12. The way you occasionally get sucked into something I’m watching on T.V. and start to ask about the characters or plot before you remember that you have absolutely no interest in Rachel Zoe or how she styled Demi Moore for a photo shoot.

13. Your constant safety lectures. How else would I know I should NEVER, EVER stand on the very top of a ladder that’s not securely on the ground?

14. Or that it should be my natural impulse to immediately lock my car doors THE VERY MINUTE I get in my car?

15. The way you can get on the phone with your friends and discuss all manner of weaponry and ammo with the same passion and intensity that I talk to my friends about The Bachelor or Real Housewives.

16. You know how to fix just about anything. And if you don’t know how to fix it, you will find out. Or make something up.

17. That you actually believe I’ll allow you to hang a third deer mount in our living room.

18. The way you clean out the backhouse at least once a month and always find new ways to organize everything.

19. That you tell me we’re out of everything and then give me a grocery list that contains two items. Usually York Peppermint Patties and Nilla Wafers.

20. How you sometimes add things to the grocery list just to make me laugh. For example, “toilet paper not made of sandpaper”.

21. The way you love the Doodle.

22. And how you never get tired of answering all her questions even when I am way past done.

23. Seeing the two of you dressed up in your camo, loading up your guns and heading to the ranch for an adventure. Oh, she does love her daddy.

24. The sweet mullet you had in high school.

25. That you weighed all of 155 pounds when we first met. And that when you got sick after we’d been married for three months you went to the doctor where they weighed you and you discovered you weighed 185 pounds. You told them their scale must be broken.

26. That you rode the city bus to a Tea Party gathering about a year ago. And packed heat.

27. The way you believe in me even when I don’t believe in myself.

28. How you know when I’m being too hard on myself and when I’m not being hard enough.

29. That you make me want to live up to the person you see in me.

30. You never question me when I tell you something only cost $15.00.

31. Although you do laugh at me.

32. That you carry a weapon at all times when you’re down at the ranch. Even when you’re playing pool.

33. The way I never feel safer than when I’m with you. You are a man that can handle some things.

34. You aren’t too proud to say when you’re wrong.

35. Or to let me know when I am.

36. That you’re man enough to help Caroline dress her Barbie dolls or let her give you a makeover or to always compliment her on a new outfit and tell her how pretty she looks.

37. The heart you have for God. And how I know that you’re always in prayer over anything that involves our little band of three.

38. The way you provide for us even though it means working long, hot days in the South Texas sun.

39. The fact that you told me last night at dinner that you’ve lost six pounds since Friday. Actually, I don’t know if I love you for that as much as I envy you for it. And am slightly bitter about it.

40. Your hair that’s almost entirely gray. Because I’ve always had a thing for a silver fox.

You are everything I ever wanted and so many other things I never knew I needed.

Caroline and I love you so much.

Happy Birthday! from Big Mama on Vimeo.