Capital P

I feel we represent a different kind of southern living

Well, after reading some of the comments on yesterday’s post, I was thoroughly freaked out about the possibility that the acorns Caroline brought home for me might be the host vehicle for some type of worm as opposed to little tiny oak trees that never reached their full potential. So I explained the situation to her and said it might be in our best interest to use them somewhere outside. Like maybe the trash.

She completely agreed with my decision but I’ll have you know that she didn’t offer me any sort of refund. That’s two dollars that I’ll never see again.

I’m just thankful that I didn’t buy into her sales pitch on the way to school yesterday morning when she tried to convince me the acorns might be worth the same amount as a new game for her Nintendo DS. Listen, if I wanted to pay $25 for fifteen acorns I’d shop at Pottery Barn.

(Speaking of Pottery Barn, have y’all seen the Catalog Living blog? Hilarious.)

As I bagged up the little worm-infested acorns, I felt that it was just one more example of why my house will never be like the homes featured in Southern Living. In all the years that I’ve perused the latest issues of various home decorating magazines, I have never once seen a dining room table that featured rotten, worm-infested acorns as a centerpiece.

Understandably so.

Here are a few other things you’ll never see in Southern Living:

The charming tableau that P has arranged using our toaster as a focal point.

Sure he could use a box of Kleenex to help him through fall allergy season, but that’s such an obvious choice. And if the half-used roll of toilet paper on top of the toaster doesn’t send the message, I think the spare roll off to the side says WE ARE EXTRA-CLASSY.

Along those same lines, I think these bright orange soccer cones really add a little something extra to our office area.

Before Caroline was born, I bought these darling little canister-things at Restoration Hardware. So you can be certain that I paid too much for them. But I felt like they added just the right decorative touch to the bathroom.

So you can imagine my delight that Caroline has decided to use them as various receptacles for her mouthwash, toothpaste, toothbrush, hand soap and whatever else she decides to stick in there on any given day. I’m sure that’s exactly what the folks at Restoration Hardware had in mind.

And then there is Caroline’s bedroom that has become P’s temporary lodging while he fights a cold and snores loud enough to wake the dead.

I blame myself for this really. I brought that yellow floral comforter into our marriage. It belonged to me in college. Never could I have imagined that, twenty years later, my husband would use it every single night. And that it would become a replacement for the beautiful hot pink bedding I picked out for my little girl’s bedroom.

But you know what’s worse than that comforter crumpled up on her bed? Trying to sleep while he breaks the sound barrier.

Finally, there is this.

You can’t really tell from my stellar photography, but that’s an album full of slides P pulled out about three weeks ago with the goal of going through all of them and getting them turned into a DVD. And then headless Butterfly Barbie joined in on the action about a week ago.

I’m not sure why.

But I can guarantee you that those acorns will hatch, the worms will complete an entire life cycle and those slides will still be right there.

As will the toilet paper on the toaster.

It’s how we roll.

(Yes. I just went there.)
It’s not really a dry heat

I will remember Saturday as one of the hottest days of my life. Although I’m sure I’ve probably survived hotter days. But those days didn’t happen forty-eight hours ago so I don’t need to complain about them at this juncture.

Saturday morning started off just fine. Except for the fact that Caroline doesn’t really get the concept that Saturday mornings are for sleeping in. I can’t figure out why I have to drag her out of bed Monday through Friday but yet she wakes me up at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday morning by leaning in as close to my face as she can get and uses a stage whisper to ask, “Will you turn on some cartoons for me?” After I peel myself off the ceiling, I lovingly say, “Go find your daddy”.

But P had to head out early Saturday morning to help a bunch of men cook about 8000 pounds of meat, give or take 7900 pounds, for our church’s fall festival and he wasn’t available to turn on cartoons and scramble some eggs. So I rolled out of bed, cooked some breakfast, and hoped for a cat nap during Phineas and Ferb before we had to leave for our soccer game.

The game was at 1:00. We got dressed and left for the fields by 12:30. This was a personal best departure time for me, especially considering that P wasn’t there to rush me out the door. It was my day to bring snack so I lugged the cooler across the parking lot and felt like I was about to die because it was approximately 132 degrees with about 204% humidity.

We met P at the field and the Cheetah Girls took to the field for what had to be the hottest, most torturous game of their little soccer careers. Bless their hearts, they all looked like they’d jumped in a pool by the time it was over. And meanwhile all the parents sat on the sidelines and complained about how we’d never been so hot in our lives. As we sat there. Drinking our water. Under our umbrellas. Cheering on our precious babies as they ran up and down the field.

After the game, Caroline and I drove out to the Fall Festival with P to see if I could possibly get any hotter without spontaneously combusting. As it turns out, I didn’t explode. But I wanted to. I would have happily exploded if it meant that I could have gotten out of the heat.

I spent Saturday night trying to hydrate myself and wishing I could pack myself in a bathtub of ice like they did to Almanzo in that episode of Little House on the Prairie when he was so sick and Laura showed up to take care of him and let him know she still loved him even though he’d said that no woman of his was going to have a job. It’s one of my top five favorite Little House episodes ever.

On Sunday Caroline ended up spending most of the day with Mimi and Bops. I was all excited about the alleged cold front that still hasn’t shown up as I type this (if it doesn’t make it here I will say horrible things about the weatherman for leading me on) and decided it would be a great time to really clean off our back porch and get it ready for all the dinners I envision us eating out there once the weather drops down to a crisp 85 this week.

P had planned to sit on the couch and do nothing all day, but I lured him into my cleaning scheme because he doesn’t trust me to mix the bleach in the little pressure washer thing. I mean, you kill the grass dead one or six times and everyone’s a critic.

Somehow cleaning the porch turned into bathing the dogs, taking the screens off all the windows and washing them from top to bottom and cleaning off all the outdoor furniture. I say that like we have vast amounts of outdoor furniture. We have a table. And four chairs. And a glider thing. Still, it was a lot of work.

I also discovered that we don’t have any grass AT ALL on the far side of our house. It’s just dirt. Dirt that turned into mud while I washed the windows over there. So I asked P, “How long have we not had grass on that side of the house?”

“About seven years.”

Clearly I need to get out more.

Later in the afternoon, Mimi and Bops dropped Caroline off. She handed me a Ziploc bag full of acorns and said, “Mama, I picked all these up for you so you can put them in the glass things on the dining room table”.

(The glass urns on my table are filled with pinecones, acorns and little pumpkins right now. Very festive.)

“Thanks, Baby. That’s so sweet!”

What a sweet girl. Always thinking about her mama and taking the time to pick up all those acorns just to make me happy.

“You’re welcome, but I’m going to need to get a few dollars for them.”

Okay, so maybe she’s not as sweet as much as she’s a capitalist.
The injury list includes my pride

I just fell over the dog.

I don’t know why I feel compelled to let you know that, but it just happened and it’s the most significant thing that’s going on in my life. Mainly because I landed on my wrist and now I’m typing funny.

I’d just tucked Caroline into bed when I heard P knocking on the back door. He had gone outside to test the new headlights he installed on his Polaris and I’d accidentally locked him out.

Sidenote: He told me about ten minutes earlier that the only thing he didn’t understand was why ATV manufacturers don’t install better factory headlights on their vehicles. That makes two of us. It’s an issue that’s caused me to lose sleep for years.

Anyway, I’d locked him out because he has trained me to immediately lock the doors as soon as I close them and I hurried to let him back in the house. Then just as I was stepping over Scout, who never feels that his presence in the center of a doorway is an inconvenience, he decided to stand up and I fell flat on the floor into a position reminiscent of the way all the breakdancers end their solos in Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo.

I looked up in time to see P watching the whole thing through the glass back door with a look of pity and awe on his face. Welcome to thirteen years of marriage.

The irony is that Gulley and I took the kids rollerskating on Friday because someone got new white skates with pink wheels and pink pom-poms for her birthday and needed to try them out.

No, it wasn’t me.

I WISH.

It was the other birthday girl.

Gulley and I were stuck with the exact same beige skates with orange wheels that have been available for rental since 1976. And the entire experience brought Gulley back to a dark place in her childhood when she got sneaker skates for Christmas instead of white ones with pom-poms.

My long forgotten point is that if you’d told me I was going to fall and injure myself at some point in the week, I would have placed my bet on a rollerskating injury. But, oh no, that would have been way to glamorous. Instead, I tripped over the dog.

However, Caroline got a little too excited at the roller rink when she heard Party in the USA come on and, in her rush to get out on the floor, had an unfortunate encounter with a foosball table that caused her to fall right on her behind.

And she insisted she needed a bag of ice to make it feel better.

See? An injury that requires you to sit on a ziploc filled with ice has some flair.

Tripping over your dog just makes people, who may or may not be your husband, laugh at you through the back door.

He’s lucky I let him in.
Let freedom and aloe vera ring

If I measured our Fourth of July fun based on the level of pain I’m experiencing from the sparkler-induced blister on the bottom of my foot, then it’s safe to say that we had a grand old time. But, hypothetically speaking, if you ever decide it might be fun to light two Morning Glory sparklers at the same time and hold them together to create maximum fireworks excitement, you might want to rethink that decision. Apparently this generates an excess amount of gunpowder or whatever and can cause sparks to shoot in eleven different directions, one of which might be the inside of your flip-flop.

Our weekend started off on a sad note. P took our dog Bruiser to the vet on Friday morning because let’s just say Bruiser had been experiencing some digestive unpleasantries that made me want to hose down the backyard with Clorox. Caroline and I were at a birthday party when P called to let me know our vet couldn’t figure out the problem and it didn’t look good. I spent the rest of the party worried about Bruiser and debating whether or not I should prepare Caroline. When we left to go home I explained Bruiser was very, very sick and may not come home from the doctor and then I prepared myself for the tears. She looked into my eyes and said, “Mama, if he doesn’t make it can we get a kitten?”

Clearly she was all torn up about it.

Anyway, by Saturday morning the vet called to let us know Bruiser was doing much better after a night of I.V. fluids and could probably go home on Monday. But then he called yesterday and said they wanted to keep him one more night for further observation. So the good news is Bruiser is going to make it. The bad news is, after we pay his vet bill, he will probably be the only member of our family to go on a summer vacation. Meanwhile, as I write this, our vet is probably booking a trip to some swanky resort in Colorado to get away from the Texas heat.

But back to our non-dog related portion of the weekend.

Our neighborhood has a Fourth of July parade every year except this year it was on the Third of July. P brought the Polaris home from the ranch and he and Caroline spent Saturday morning getting it all decorated to take part in the festivities.

And then they met up with a bunch of Caroline’s friends and they all piled in the back to wave to the crowd.

I walked down the parade route with some friends so we could wave and cheer as they passed by.

The parade ended about ten minutes after it started and we all met at the park for cookies and lemonade and to be led in a few patriotic songs by a man wearing red socks that came up to the middle of his calf. It doesn’t really get more American than that.

Later in the day we went over to Mimi and Bops’ house because they were having a little pool party to celebrate the 4th on the 3rd. (I don’t know why I wrote “little pool party”. It makes it sound like we were all hanging out around one of those plastic pools you get for $6.00 outside of Walmart.) Caroline decided she wanted to spend the night with them and so I went home and fell asleep for the next hour and a half. God bless America.

On Sunday afternoon we headed up to the pool to enjoy the Fourth of July festivities. Rumor had it there was going to be some line-dancing later that evening, so our plan was to get there and get out before all the fake dancing ensued. Fortunately, we arrived just in time for the belly flop contest which is Caroline’s favorite event.

She walked slowly down the board.

She executed the perfect flop.

Can we please pause for a moment and discuss the odds of me getting that mid-air shot with my sad little point and shoot camera and horrendous photography skills? A million to one shot, Doc, a million to one shot.

And she won fourth place.

Personally, I think she was robbed. Especially now that I’ve seen the photographic evidence that her execution was flawless. But she received a medal and that was her ultimate goal. She is all about the medals.

After the medal ceremony our champion belly-flopper relaxed with a cookies and cream ice cream sandwich.

Later that night we came home and cooked hot dogs on the grill because we believe in our fundamental right to pursue liberty and happiness in the form of processed meat covered in sweet relish. While waiting on it to get dark outside we turned on the July 4th celebration at the Capitol to watch the fireworks. We explained why we celebrate the Fourth of July to Caroline and stressed how fortunate we are to have the freedom we have and how men and women fought and died for us.

A few minutes later she asked, “So is today the day that England celebrates the Day of Shame?”

The Day of Shame.

I can think of several days in my own life that should be referred to as The Day of Shame (like the day I permed my bangs in 1987) but as far as I know it’s not an officially recognized holiday in England or anywhere else.

Once it got dark we went outside with our enormous supply of sparklers.

And a few other pyrotechnics that might have been against the law.

And before that night was over, P had a big blister on his hand and I had one on the bottom of my foot. So I guess it ended up being our Night of Shame.

And aloe vera.
Mullets and overalls

Well I cannot thank y’all enough for all the oven advice. I haven’t actually done anything about my oven yet, but I feel like I will approach the matter with confidence when I decide the time is right. Your guess is as good as mine as to when that time will be because I have a tendency to feel like something is very urgent and then forget all about it. It’s a gift really.

However, yesterday morning I decided the time was right to clean out Caroline’s closet. It was a dreary, rainy day, P was home from work and asked Caroline if she wanted to go to Bass Pro Shops with him. Naturally she didn’t turn down that offer because she knows there’s a good chance they’ll come home with some new fishing lures and an industrial size bag of Circus Peanuts.

So they left on their mission to wander aimlessly around Rednecks ‘R Us and I got started on the closet. Five hours, three trashbags, and a huge pile of things to donate later, I was finished. And I only stopped and cried as I held all the baby clothes about four or six times. Of course there was one unfortunate ugly cry incident when I discovered the mobile that used to hang above her crib, but I got past it.

And in the end it looked like this.

I didn’t take any before pics so you just have to trust me when I say it looks so much better. Plus, we finally have a good place to store our case of bourbon.

I’m kidding. We’d never store bourbon in our child’s closet. She might drink it all.

Actually, that box is from my Nanny’s house and it’s full of my dolls from other countries.

I also cleaned up the book shelves and am willing to bet it will look this neat and organized for upwards of five minutes.

As I went through boxes I found a few pictures that brought me too much joy and horror to not share with you.

This is P and his mullet. I think the plaid tie and navy blazer add a nice touch. It’s like prep school meets Nascar.

Of course, in all fairness, here’s a picture of me with my dad from my senior year in high school.

I don’t really know what concerns me more, the size of those sleeves or the thickness of my eyebrows. Or maybe it’s the bangs en masse on my forehead. Clearly, those who lived in late 80’s glass houses should not throw stones at their spouse who sported a mullet.

And finally, look at these two skinny kids in love sans mullet and eyebrows that look like caterpillars.

That picture was taken fourteen years ago on the Fourth of July. I don’t know why I’m wearing overalls but they seem to be a common theme in pictures taken of me during this mid-1990’s time period. That’s unfortunate. Especially considering that I weighed about 98 pounds.

Anyway, the closet is now clean and I have a deep sense of accomplishment coupled with shame over my eyebrows. And the overalls.

Y’all have a good Friday.
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.