Year: 2007

Yesterday, while I was reading different blogs, I discovered that Jeana over at Days to Come, had written about a dream she had about Dr. Phil, which was so weird because that same night I had a very real dream in which Boomama emailed me to let me know how to properly DVR the Montel show. It seems that I had been missing the first twenty minutes of Montel and she had the answer as to why.

I’m not sure anyone has the answer as to why Jeana and I are having dreams about third rate talk show hosts.

Let me state for the record, that in real life, I don’t actually watch the Montel show. I also feel fairly safe in saying that Boomama doesn’t either. That’s just a guess on my part, so if I’m wrong, she can let me know.

It amazes me how things like that creep into my subconcious. Okay, it makes sense that Boomama popped up in a dream because we do email back and forth on occasion, but Montel?

In all fairness, Montel and I do go way back because he spoke at an assembly at my high school during my junior year. They brought him in to ease tensions due to a “race riot” in my school cafeteria.

I attended high school in Beaumont, Texas, and due to the fact that Beaumont is a little behind the times by about thirty or forty years, the high schools had only been desegregated for about four years and this was in the late ’80’s. In truth, all of the students were fine with it and there weren’t any problems. However, the media (and I use that term loosely) in Beaumont was always looking for a good story about race relations.

At my high school, there were two different lines in the cafeteria; the hot lunch line and the a la carte line. The a la carte line was always the more popular choice because they served the best burritos ever. Seriously, they were these crunchy burritos with chili sauce and I’d eat one with a side of fries every day because I was sixteen and at a point in life where I was still acquainted with my metabolism.

The only problem with the burritos, other than an unbelievably high fat content that is probably affecting all of my classmates’ cholesterol levels to this day, is that they tended to run out of them. This meant that there was always a race to get to the a la carte line.

Well, one day, Antoine (who happened to be black) and Keith (who happened to be white) got into a fight over who was in line first. Due to the fact that they were high school boys overflowing with testosterone, the fight escalated and turned into pretty much a full blown cafeteria food fight. If memory serves, I think our vice-principal might have gotten pushed over a table. It was not a pretty scene, yet it was not a race riot, it was a burrito riot.

Word spread like wildfire and next thing we knew, all the media had shown up at the school to interview students about the “race riot” in the cafeteria. Of course, since we were teenagers and looking for any kind of fame, we lined up to talk about the incident. I’ll never forget our head cheerleader, Maggie, talking to Gail at Channel 4 news and saying, “I was like, so scared. Food was like, flying everywhere”.

Really, the only thing anyone was scared of was not getting a burrito for lunch.

One thing led to another and eventually the school administration decided to bring in Montel to ease the tensions caused by the burrito riot. Of course, the student body was totally fine, but the school officials were feeling the heat to do something, when really the best thing they could have done was up the order for burritos.

So, Montel came to the school and gave a speech that I can’t tell y’all anything about, except that he kept saying “MOUNTAIN, get out of my way” and none of us really knew what that had to do with anything, but from then on the lunchroom was filled with peace, harmony and plenty of burritos with chili sauce.

It’s no wonder he got his own talk show.

I have documented, without shame, my OCD tendencies when it comes to all things sleep related. Honestly, if the moon and the stars aren’t aligned just right, it can throw my entire REM cycle off. So y’all will realize exactly how tired I am when I tell you this.

Yesterday morning, we went to play with Jackson. The sun was shining for the first time in weeks and so the kids played outside. Naturally, they wanted to play in the sandbox and due to the previous cold, wet days, the sand was of a consistency guaranteed to find its way into crevices that it would never again find its way out of without a complete hose down.

In spite of the sun, it was too cold outside to hose the kids down like a scene out of a women in prison movie, so I had to settle for dusting Caroline off as well as you can dust wet, cold sand, before putting her socks and shoes back on and heading home.

When we got home, it was time for rest time and she wanted to rest in my bed. Due to the fact that I was so desperate for a moment or two of silence, I said sure. She climbed in my bed, we turned on a movie, and I went back in the kitchen to do important things like file my nails and read People magazine in sweet, sweet peace and quiet.

About an hour later, she comes out of the room and tells me she got a little sand in my bed. That sentence will go down as one of the understatements of the year. There was enough sand in my bed to claim my mattress “beachfront property”.

No big deal, I’ll just change the sheets later.

Well, it is now later and I just finished brushing the sand out of the bed with my hand. We all know that all the brushing in the world isn’t going to stop me from feeling like I’m camping tonight, but I am so tired that I can’t bring myself to change the sheets.

What happened to that sweet girl with the OCD? I guess I’m proof that sleep deprivation combined with a head cold can trump even the strongest OCD tendencies.

Over the last year and a half, it has become increasingly apparent that Caroline’s social calendar is far more packed with events than ours. Of course that’s not saying much considering that when we looked at our calendars for 2007 to mark down big social events, it equated to us writing down my cousin’s wedding on June 2…that’s it…for the whole year. Oh, I’m sure we’ll have other big events that will come up such as the Cattle Baron’s Ball or you know… a cookout at the neighbor’s house, but for now we’re not exactly all booked up.

Anyway, I realized that Caroline averages 3-4 birthday parties a month, which means that we average giving away 3-4 toys a month at these various parties. I have no problem with the gift giving, my issue is that I am a procrastinator.

In the perfect world that exists only inside my head, preparations for these parties would go like this. We would receive an invitation from some sweet child in Caroline’s class and I would display it on our magnetic chalkboard to remind me of the upcoming festivities. The day before the party, I would look through my stored stash of gender appropriate, moderately priced toys, pick one from the pile and gift wrap it in a room that looks just like Martha Stewart’s, complete with rolls of beautiful paper and streams of festive ribbon and more scotch tape than anyone could ever need. We would head to the party, fresh as a daisy, with the perfect gift in hand.

And then I wake up.

The reality is that the morning of the party, I notice an invitation displayed on our chalkboard and say “Oh man (truth be told I usually don’t say “man”, but I’m trying to keep it family friendly), that party is TODAY?”. Best case scenario, we head to Learning Express to find a toy that I’ll pay way too much for, but I do it anyway because it’s the closest toy store and they have free gift wrap. It’s just a bonus that I get to listen to Caroline whine and bargain to try to get a toy for herself while I threaten that if she doesn’t shape up, we’re not going to the party at all.

The whole experience really puts me in the party mood. Bring on the pinata and the Dora cupcakes.

There are times that I remember the party earlier in the week and while I’m making one of my thrice weekly visits to Target, I pick out a good toy. I always feel a little smug at my preparedness…it creates a real sense of accomplishment. I am ahead of the game. And yes, I need to get a life.

When this happens, I get home and deposit the gift on a shelf in our laundry room, still wrapped in the Target bag. The day of the party, usually around the time we’re about to walk out the door, I remember it needs to be wrapped and look in my real life gift wrapping station, which consists of a plastic container shoved under my bed filled with various wrap, ribbons, and an empty roll of scotch tape. Martha Stewart would cry if she saw it.

And I don’t mean a good kind of cry.

I’ll finally decide that maybe red and green polka dot wrap doesn’t necessarily look too Christmas-y or that the stork on a gift bag from my baby shower could pass as a whimsical birthday bird.

Anyway, I say all this to ask this question. Do any of y’all have a favorite gift that you like to give at a child’s birthday party? It can be anything, whether it’s for a boy or a girl, as long as it’s in a price range that won’t cause me to take a second mortgage on our home.

The dream of the gift wrapping room is never going to happen, but at least I could have my perfect stash of gifts that wouldn’t just exist in my head.

Martha would be so semi-proud.