Motherhood

Blah, blah, boots, blah, blah, zucchini, blah, blah, pizza

I already mentioned that I started my day on Friday by horribly disfiguring my thumb in an accident of idiotic proportions. In fact, I tried to dodge the “how’d you do that?” question from P because I didn’t want to see the look on his face that would confirm my brilliance, but eventually, there was no other way to explain how I’d sliced my thumb open in my car without telling some lie about huge shards of glass hidden under the drivers’ seat. I had to ‘fess up.

And the look? It did not disappoint.

Anyway, Caroline and I forged ahead with our morning o’ errands with our first stop being Cavenders Boot City. She has outgrown all of her boots and she has to have boots to wear to the ranch, not just because it’s the obvious fashion statement for a day in the country, but also something about tall grass, stickers and snakes. I was living in fear that the day would come when P would offer to take Caroline to the ranch for the entire day, and I would have to decline this offer of freedom because our child has no boots.

We walked into Cavenders and headed straight to the shoe section. I measured her foot on a handy little mat with various renderings of foot sizes, and figured out she’d need a size 9. I was looking through the array of size 9 boots, preferably in hot pink (only because snakes don’t like hot pink, not because they are the cutest) when a salesman came up to help me. He threw us into a state of confusion by showing Caroline way too many boot options and trying to convince me that she really needed an 8 1/2. I tried to explain that her foot grows at a rate of speed NASA wishes they could achieve, and therefore, I like to buy shoes a little bit bigger so that we can get more than 2 days of wear out of them, but he kept pulling down the size 8 1/2’s.

I expressed my sympathies over his apparent hearing problem and continued to try to find a pair of size 9’s. Finally, I found a pair that Caroline and I both liked and checked the price tag. $59.99. Oh, Cavenders, you’re not fooling me with that price tag, I can round up and I know that’s really $60.00. I’ve seen the state of Caroline’s boots after she’s been to the ranch and there was no way I was going to pay $60.00 for something that would be covered in mud and scratched beyond all recognition and cuteness. Money was no object to Caroline though, and she wanted those boots. I promised her, as God is my witness, that she would have a new pair of boots before the morning was over, and we headed to a new store that sells boots.

We walked into Target and went straight to the shoe section. Lo and behold, hot pink boots at 50%, bringing the grand total to $7.84, which even rounding up, means they were just $8.00. Caroline declared they were the best boots EVER and we happily took them up to the cash register. She is now ready for any spur of the moment trips to the ranch.

The rest of the morning was spent running other errands, most of which involved buying various Little Mermaid paraphernalia for her upcoming birthday party while thinking about how bad my thumb hurt. I could have used a granola bar and some Gatorade.

P has had a sinus infection due to allergies since last week, and on Saturday morning, I woke up and realized I had caught his “allergies”. My throat was sore and scratchy, my nose was all stopped up and I was tired and achy. Plus, my thumb hurt. So, I decided we’d have a pretty non-eventful day.

I spent most of the morning cleaning out the playroom. I took a garbage bag in with me and showed no mercy to the legions of Happy Meal toys that had taken up residence. I scraped dried playdough off various surfaces, put pieces of puzzles back where they belonged, and put clothes back on Barbie. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, that Barbie is a tramp.

Finally, the playroom was clean.

Elephant drawing on the chalkboard was done by Bops. You can have your own copy for $59.95. Today only.

Later on in the day, I realized that sad truth of motherhood, which is even though you may not feel good, your child has massive amounts of energy to burn. And since we don’t have a child-sized hamster wheel for her to run on, I decided to take her to the pool, even though I told her I was just going to sit on the side. And that’s what I did, I sat on the side. Did I mention it was next to two other mamas who are both 5’11 and weigh 98 pounds?

Oh, I’m exaggerating. They really weigh 105.

There is nothing that builds your self esteem like sitting between two supermodels while experiencing raging PMS, having braces on your teeth complete with snazzy rubber bands hinging your jaw together, and a head cold that causes you to sniff and rub your nose repeatedly. I have never felt more attractive or lovely. I was a Glamour Don’t caught between two Glamour Do’s.

So, after we got home, I decided it was a good time to make zucchini bread using what can only be labeled Gigantor Zucchini, which one of P’s customers gave him. This thing had been sitting on my countertop staring at me menacingly for days. It was intimidating. But realizing it was about to go bad (and who wants anything that size to go bad on them), I decided it was time to bite the bullet, or cut the zucchini as the case may be.

It made enough for two loaves of zucchini bread.

And still, there was enough left over to save for grilled zucchini for Sunday night’s dinner. It was the zucchini that would never end.

For Saturday night’s dinner, I spent hours getting dinner ready and this is what we had.

I know y’all are all very envious of this magnitude of culinary brilliance, but rest assured, you too can heat an oven to 400 degrees and have a pizza like this, with 100% REAL CHEESE, in 16-18 minutes.

I even managed to do it with my thumb covered in a Care Bear band-aid.

Let’s see if Paula Deen can do that.

BM stands for Beth Moore, Big Mama and something else

Yesterday morning, I took advantage of Caroline being enthralled with one of the Muppet movies while I sat at the kitchen island to work on my Bible study. Gulley, some other girls and I are doing “Jesus, The One and Only” this summer and I am loving it. And I have to say, I thought I knew a lot about Jesus, but this has made me look at some things in a different light, which really needs to be a post of its own at some point.

But for today, I’m just doling out the really profound material.

So, I’m sitting with my workbook and my Bible, pen in hand. The picture of studious. The portrait of a Godly woman.

Caroline can sense me having a moment to myself a mile away, so she came over to see what was going on.

“What are you doing, Mama?”

“I’m doing my Bible study”

“Oh, I’m going to do my Bible study, too!”

She climbed up on the barstool next to mine, grabbed a pen and started scribbling on a notepad. I watched her for a few moments and thought this is what it’s all about, I’m showing her my love for Jesus. I’m creating an example of living a life dedicated to God, and how precious that she wants to model that behavior. And secretly, I even wished the other person who lives in this house (that would be you, P) would notice this moment of mother/daughter/God closeness and take a picture of the sweetness.

I went back to reading my study when Caroline said, “Mama?”

“Yes, my precious angel baby darlin’?”

“I just drew this picture. It’s a picture of what my poop looks like.”

And with that, I bowed my head and thanked Him for the dose of humility.

I didn’t know the meaning of embarrassment until I was a mama

This morning, while it was still just the heat equivalent of being baked in an oven as opposed to being dropped in a Fry Daddy filled with boiling oil, Caroline and I went to the park.

She went down the slides and played on the various playscapes and then said, “Come on, Mama! Let’s go swing!”

I put her on one swing and I sat down on the swing next to her, even though I noticed it had a little dried bird poop on it. No big deal. I’m a gamer like that.

After a few minutes, she said, “Let’s switch swings, Mama!” So, we got off our respective swings and when she walked over to mine, she looked down and yelled, “OH MAMA! DID YOU POOP IN YOUR SWING?”

As if I’m her incontinent mother who makes a habit of pooping on playground equipment.

Everyone’s a critic

We spent Friday afternoon at the pool having a grand old time. And I hate to brag, but I went down the new super slide at the pool. I feel fairly certain I am the first mother to go down the slide and, possibly, the only mother who will risk losing her swimsuit to make her child smile.

Well, except for Gulley. Now that I’ve gone down the slide, it’s like I’ve thrown down the gauntlet. You go, Gulley.

But hold on tight to your bottoms.

Anyway, after a day of swimming we were headed home and I told P how excited I was about all of y’alls fantastic classic country suggestions. I was more excited than I probably should admit to spend an entire Friday night downloading songs off iTunes.

I said, “People came up with some songs I would have totally forgotten”

Caroline: “What Mama? What songs?”

Me: “Oh sweetie, just some old songs that Mama wants to put on her iPod.”

Caroline: “Like what songs?”

Me: (singing and thrilled to have a captive audience) “You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille. Four hungry children and crops in the field. I’ve had some bad times, lived through….”

Caroline: (interrupting and maybe suffering from bleeding ears) “Oh. Okay, that’s enough.”

Calling for ralph

I spent most of Friday morning filling out health insurance applications, and then in an incredible twist of irony, spent Friday afternoon coming down with a stomach bug. Caroline and I were playing outside Friday afternoon when I began to get the feeling that maybe an alien was trying to escape through my stomach, so I told her I needed to go inside and lay down.

She was all for that. “Okay, Mama. I’ll go get my doctor bag and I’ll take care of you.” And I was all for that plan. So, I went and layed down on my bed while she ran to her playroom to get her medical supplies. After about 5 minutes, which is the time it takes her to dump out every single bin in her playroom while finding what she’s looking for thus ensuring maximum mess potential, she came crawling up into my bed holding her cash register. I said, “I thought you were going to bring your doctor stuff and take care of me” and she replied, “I am, but you need to pay first.”

And with that statement, my morning came full circle.

Since I was only feeling a little queasy at this point, we went ahead with our evening plans to go eat Mexican food with Bops. Once we were in the restaurant, I knew I must be on the verge of death because I was not even tempted to eat one chip. This has never happened before in the history of my existence. I constantly crave Mexican food. I could eat it for every meal of the day and, back in my wilder college days, it was the only real cure for a hangover. I have never in my life faced a stomach trauma that couldn’t be cured with chips and salsa…until Friday.

I began to feel increasingly bad and finally, went to bed around 10:00 hoping to put myself out of my misery. I fell into a deep sleep until I woke up at 1:15 and ran to the bathroom knowing that the moment I had been dreading was upon me. False alarm. So, I spit in the toilet a few times for good measure and headed back to bed.

2:00 a.m. found me running back to the bathroom and this time there was nothing false about it. As I threw up everything I have eaten since 1985, I knew that I had never been this sick before. And it’s safe bet that I won’t be eating crispy, beef tacos for a long time since that’s what I’d had on Thursday night. We violently parted ways around 3:00 in the morning on Saturday.

It was not a pretty breakup.

I finally cleaned myself up and crawled back into bed. P never said a word, so I knew he was either in the deepest sleep known to man or playing possum in fear that I might ask him to come hold my hair for me.

I fell back asleep and woke up to Caroline crawling into bed with us at 6:20 a.m. She snuggled up next to me and said, “Oh Mama, you smell like the throw ups. Did you throw up?” I said, “Yes baby, Mama’s real sick”, and she said, “I wish you would have waked me up so I could see your throw ups.”

I live with sensitive, sympathetic people.

The good news was that P had already planned to take Caroline to the ranch for the day on Saturday, so I was able to spend the day resting and throwing up all by myself, which would have been glorious, except for the throwing up part. I did have a temporary break in my illness that allowed me to go get my haircut because I made a vow to my hair that I would take care of it in sickness and in health and I’m not about to break it. Or maybe that was the vow I made to P. Anyway, although I was a little concerned about possibly getting sick all over the floor of the salon, I was more concerned about the shape my hair was in and decided it was worth the risk.

After my haircut I was feeling better, so I drove to Sonic to treat my poor stomach to a Diet Coke poured over their miraculous, health restoring crushed ice. It was like little drops of heaven until about an hour later when it came back up with the fury of hell.

Obviously, I had overestimated my intestinal fortitude.

So, with Diet Coke literally out the window or, you know, in the toilet, I showered, put on my pajamas, crawled into bed and watched episodes of Oprah, including one with Sarah Jessica Parker’s new fashion line that included some high waisted gray jeans which almost made me throw up again, and then fell asleep for about 3 1/2 hours.

Seriously. Gray jeans. That can’t be good for anybody.

I woke up when Caroline and P walked through the door and managed to get her bathed and into bed with some help from P, and then fell right back asleep. When I finally woke up Sunday morning, I felt at least some semblance of decent again. And by Sunday evening, when I started thinking about eating something fried, I knew the worst had passed.

Thankfully, this experience didn’t require a trip to the doctor or the hospital, because I still haven’t finished filling out those insurance applications, which is an entirely different story that is causing me pain in an entirely different area.

How I’ve spent my weekend

All I have to say right now is stomach illnesses are of the devil.

If I can keep anything down and if I survive, I’ll be back someday.

I have always prided myself on my strong stomach, but this has brought me, literally, to my knees. I have no doubt it would have killed a lesser woman.