Year: 2007

  • 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.”

  • Friday night blues

    Well, between the Aggies losing to Rice in the 10th inning tonight and Paris heading back to jail, I’m just despondent.

    It’s not right.

    I think I’ll go eat some ice cream and see if I can muster my will to live.

  • She was 41 and her daddy still called her baby

    Last night after dinner, when we discovered there was truly nothing on T.V., we scrolled through our channel guide and discovered our music channels. I had no idea we even had music channels. We switched our service to Dish Network after I decided that Time Warner is part of the axis of evil, and I haven’t spent much time perusing all our programming options.

    Plus, we know where Noggin is and, in at least one of our opinions, that’s all that matters. Oh Go Diego Go, how I love starting my mornings to the sound of Rosie Perez’s voice.

    Anyway, P searched for a classic country option. We’ve been listening to quite a lot of classic country lately because it’s always on at Mimi and Bop’s house. Lo and behold, we have our very own classic country channel on our television through the technological marvel that is the satellite dish. So, we sat on the couch and listened to some high quality music while we discussed our the events of our day.

    Seriously, there is nothing on T.V. this week, but don’t think I’m not counting down the days until the all new season of Top Chef premieres next week.

    Hearing some of the songs brought back so many childhood memories that I could almost smell the interior of our ’77 Buick LeSabre with its baby blue velour seats. I was country when country wasn’t cool, wearing my cowboy boots from Weiners. Of course wearing cowboy boots bought from Weiners probably qualified me as more of an urban cowboy.

    I shrieked with delight when The Statler Brothers came on. “Flowers on the Wall”, anyone remember it? “Elizabeth”? “Do You Know You are My Sunshine?”?

    These are classics people. Classics.

    In a one hour period, we listened to John Conlee, Patsy Cline, Buck Owens, Jessie Colter, Waylon Jennings and George Jones. I think I frightened P with all my nostalgia and talk of GENUINE LEATHER cowboys boots from Weiners. But as God is my witness, I am so going to download some classic country from iTunes this weekend and don’t be fooled into thinking for a minute that “Delta Dawn” isn’t going to be on the list.

    So, what classic country would be on y’alls list? Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. Be proud and own your love of The Oakridge Boys. You know you spent some time singing “Elvira”. Don’t deny it.

    And any comments that mention Rascal Flatts or Kenny Chesney as legitimate musical suggestions will be promptly deleted. They’re not classic and they’re not country. George Jones would give up drinking before he’d be seen wearing pukka shells around his neck.

  • It’s the end of the door as we know it

    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.

  • Minty fresh

    Every now and then, as a mama, you have those days where you are deluded enough to think you’ve got this whole thing figured out. Yesterday was not one of those days.

    I’m not sure what exactly started the day off on the wrong foot, but I have a feeling it was waking up with a 3 year old contorted around my body in such a way as to create a huge crick in my neck. I’m not sure how she ended up in bed with us, but I have a vague recollection of stumbling across the house around 2 a.m. knowing I had lost my will to fight this battle.

    We woke up around 7:15 to the sounds of all the construction workers arriving at the house next door. There was much yelling and hammering. It really is a delightful way to start the day. I highly recommend living next door to a construction site, because not only do we get to wake up to all the incessant hammering of the hammers, but around midday each day the head contractor, who I like to call “The Silver Fox”, takes off his shirt and spends the rest of the day supervising while shirtless. The whole scene is like a Diet Coke commercial gone wrong.

    Very, very wrong.

    So, we’d been up all of 4 minutes before Caroline started in with the whining. And really, who can blame her? She has a rough life with all the constant love and adoration. Not to mention the hot meals, the clean clothes, and using my cheek as a pillow for the better part of the night. But apparently, my resistance to allowing her to eat York peppermint patties for breakfast is causing her much distress. I hope God answers her prayers, because really, does it get any meaner than that?

    We spent the morning engaged in various little battles and then it was time for swim lessons. I hosed her down with SPF 50, put on her swimsuit and then went to get myself sunscreened and dressed. As I was standing in the bathroom, she walked in wearing clothes. A long sleeve shirt and jogging pants, which are perfect attire for these 90 degree days. She informed me that she WAS NOT GOING TO SWIM LESSONS because either her stomach hurt or the other kids were too wild. She couldn’t really make up her mind.

    Either way, her story had no credibility. An upset stomach is her go-to illness in all instances and there is no human way the other kids are wilder than she is. She is the queen of wild.

    When I told her that she absolutely was going to swim lessons, there was much screaming, yelling and gnashing of teeth.

    And she wasn’t happy about it either.

    I wrestled her into her swimsuit, grabbed the swim bag and we headed to the pool. And before any of y’all suggest that maybe she doesn’t enjoy swimming lessons, let me clarify that she is a champion swimmer. She has spent the entire winter doing the backstroke in the bathtub. She has never had a fear of the water and in fact, the summer before she turned one, I spent much time trying to keep her from drowning herself because all she wanted to do was IMMERSE herself in the H2O goodness and would constantly push against me so that she could completely submerge herself.

    The issue was not swim lessons. The issue is that she is 3 1/2 and I actually said out loud the other day, “She seems to be fighting me less on things as she gets closer to turning 4.” If that’s not the equivalent of daring fate to throw me a curveball, then I don’t know what is.

    Once we got to the pool, she walked happily to her swim lessons as if the crying had never happened, because after all, it’s not the swim teacher’s fault that Caroline has been cursed with a mother who won’t let her eat York peppermint patties for breakfast.

    Maybe if she swims in the Olympics someday, her picture won’t be on a box of Wheaties, but rather a bag of peppermint patties. Breakfast of Champions.

  • And I’ll pray that she would just go to sleep

    By the end of the day yesterday, I was tired and my teeth hurt to the point that I was ready to have them all pulled out and just get false ones instead. My orthodontist keeps saying we need to fill some spaces, but don’t they have some kind of Bondo they can use instead of making my life a living hell?

    I guess not.

    Plus, he took some x-rays of my mouth because I’m pretty sure he’s trying to get my hopes up that it’s about time to set my teeth free so that he can then dash those hopes to the ground and make me feel foolish for ever thinking a day will come that I won’t have wires sticking into my gums.

    Anyway, it was time for Caroline to go to bed and bedtime can be enough of a beating even when I’m feeling good, and last night my patience was at an all time low. And of course, she had to peruse her entire inventory of books before deciding on her bedtime stories.

    Then, she needed water.

    Then, she needed to go to the bathroom.

    Then, she needed to give Daddy one more hug.

    Then, my head spun around in circles until it exploded into pieces that flew all over the room.

    Finally, stories were read, kisses were given and she started asking for stuff again. In a loud voice I said, “NO. NO. NO. NO MORE STUFF. Now let’s say your prayers and get in bed.”

    And she looked me in the eye and said, “Okay, Mama. I’m going to pray that you wouldn’t be so mean.”