Month: June 2009

GoodNite! It’s a contest.

There is a very fun contest going sponsored by the nice people at GoodNites. Click on over to my giveaway page to read all about it!
I have nothing to say, yet here I am

I wish I had something terribly brilliant and creative to write about, perhaps something that doesn’t pertain to any health issues or other equally boring topics. Unfortunately, we spent the entire day at the pool yesterday and I believe that the 100 degree heat combined with my cold turkey approach to my Diet Coke addiction has completely melted any original thought I had in my brain.

Just imagine what will happen later today when it’s supposed to hit 103 degrees.

103 degrees in June with no ice cold Diet Coke.

That’s just eight kinds of wrong.

So due to the fact that I can’t put together any kind of paragraph about anything, I’m resorting to a list of things that may or may not (leaning heavily toward “may not”) be interesting to anyone.

1. I have recently discovered the show “Mad Men” and finished watching Season 1 last night. My plan was to make it my summer show, but unfortunately Season 2 doesn’t come out on DVD until July. How am I supposed to wait three weeks to see what happens next?

Anyone have any good recommendations for a summer T.V. show? Because if it’s going to be 103 degrees all summer long, I’m going to need something to do that merely requires lying on the couch in the air-conditioning.

2. Over the years I have tried many a candle in search of the perfect scent. My taste tends to vary depending on the season, but I recently rediscovered Trapp Candles in Guava/Mango. It’s like a little piece of summer in a cute glass jar.

3. When Caroline got out of Sunday School last Sunday, I noticed they’d learned about Jesus feeding the five thousand. That night at dinner I asked her what they learned about because I wanted to hear her version. She told us some little boy brought some bread and fish to see Jesus, then two angry men tried to take it from him, and ultimately Jesus told them it wasn’t enough and went to a bakery to get more.

They must be using a different translation of the Bible in her Sunday School class.

4. Sophie is in Pittsburgh this weekend at Living Proof Live. She’s working behind the scenes with the event team and will be posting updates on LifeWay AllAccess throughout the weekend.

I’m a little sad I’m not there because what if Beth has a question about the Bible and needs me to answer it for her? For instance, does she know about the bakery that baked all that bread for 5,000 people without the benefit of a modern day industrial oven?

5. I wish I had something else, but I’m out.

Y’all have a great weekend.
Yet another tale of woe

Yesterday morning I had a doctor’s appointment because I’ve had a sore throat on and off for about the last month. It’s the only real symptom I’ve had, but if you google “chronic sore throat” enough times it’s easy to become convinced that death is imminent and now would be a good time to stop doing the 30-Day Shred because what’s the point? Everyone knows there will be no swimsuits in heaven.

It didn’t help matters that I’m in the throes of a particularly foul case of PMS which has a tendency to heighten my already heightened sense of paranoia.

The ENT looked, appropriately enough, at my ears, nose and throat and declared that I have acid reflux. This is particularly disturbing because P has been telling me for years that I have acid reflux and I’ve repeatedly told him that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s totally normal to cough for thirty minutes when I lay down to go to sleep at night, I’ve been doing it for years.

It just dawned on me that I’ve written about skin cancer, multiple doctor visits, and acid reflux all in one week. When did this turn into a letter from your Ma-Maw? Next thing you know I’ll be giving reports on how bad the food was at the last funeral I attended.

On a positive note, my rheumatism has hardly bothered me at all and my dentures finally quit rubbing the inside of my gums.

Anyway, I happened to sell medication for acid reflux back in my drug rep days so I knew exactly what he was about to tell me. Avoid spicy foods, red wine, tomato sauces, and coffee. Also, chocolate.

Sure, that’s going to happen.

When I’m dead.

And then just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, he asked, “Do you drink a lot of Diet Coke?”

“Well, usually just one a day.”

(That sometimes turns into two or six depending on the proximity of a Sonic)

“You should definitely cut that out. It’s about the worst thing for you.”

“Okay, I guess so.”

But what I wanted to say was “Why don’t you just cut off my arm instead? It would be less painful.”

How am I supposed to quit you, Diet Coke?

More importantly, how am I going to survive the summer without you?
The spirit of Old Mexico with a little big city panache

Monday night I went to bed determined to wake up the next day and begin the search for the perfect urban sombrero for P. And when you live in San Antonio and find yourself in need of a big dang hat, where else would you go but to El Mercado?

That’s “The Market” for those of you who don’t possess my vast knowledge of the Spanish language. I can also tell you how to ask “how much for the donkey?” in case you ever find yourself in need of that particular phrase. Those eight years of Spanish really paid off.

I hadn’t been to El Mercado in years because it’s a touristy thing to do and I generally try to avoid all touristy activities because I have an aversion to being in crowds of people wearing socks with sandals, but I thought Caroline might think it was fun. I mean, how many places can you go these days that sell bullwhips and combs that look like switchblades all under one roof?

Not nearly enough is the correct answer.

We walked through the market as Caroline’s eyes got bigger and bigger. She had never seen so much useless, yet beautiful, stuff under one roof, which is saying a lot because we go to Target at least once a week. She’d pick up various things and ask “Is this Mexican?” And I’d say, “No baby, that was made in China because it wouldn’t be fair if Mexico cornered the market on making junk. It’s part of the Free Trade Agreement.”

She did manage to score an embroidered Mexican tunic and a darling headband, both of which she insisted on wearing immediately. I couldn’t bring myself to look closely at the labels because I didn’t want to know if they were made in China. The pain and disillusionment would be too great. It was disheartening enough when I recently discovered that the group Menudo was actually from Puerto Rico and not Mexico. Next thing you know I’ll learn that cheese enchiladas were originally made in Taiwan.

Finally, we got down to business and begin looking for the perfect hat. Oh, and we did find it.

Ladies and Gentlemen (as if I have more than two male readers), I present to you the Urban Sombrero.

It can provide you and your six closest friends with plenty of shade.

In the end I decided it was probably a little bit more of a statement than P is looking to make, unless it were to become his trademark and we renamed our business Big Dang Hat Landscaping, which doesn’t seem like a likely scenario. We sacrificed our desire to purchase the biggest hat in the place for a more understated, tasteful version.

And then we went to Mi Tierra, ate fresh flour tortillas and drank Shirley Temples.

Or as they’d say in Mexico, El Shirley Temples.
It’s better than diggin’ a ditch

We had a weekend full of festivities around here. There was a birthday party at the pool on Friday night, a t-ball party at the pool on Saturday, and basically nothing on Sunday because I didn’t want to look at the pool for at least twenty-four hours. After all, summer is a marathon, not a sprint and we can’t burn ourselves out this early in the game. As it stands, all the food served at the pool grill has already started to taste the same which is bad considering the culinary offerings range from chicken fingers to bean and cheese chalupas.

The good news is that all the drinks are served with Sonic-type ice. It’s worth the price of membership to be able to sit poolside and drink all manner of cold beverages out of a styrofoam cup filled with that ice.

In between all the weekend fun, Caroline kept asking if we could wash my car. In fact, it was the first thing she requested on Saturday morning but I managed to refocus her attention on the impending t-ball party with a lecture about the importance of saving our energy. But then she brought it up again on Sunday morning and then again on the way home from church.

Apparently she has fond remembrances of the last time we washed my car at home even though it’s been over a year ago. I’d like to think it’s because I know how to bring out the fun in any situation, although this is a real conversation we had Saturday night after she heard me refer to “the fun police”.

“Mama? What are the fun police?”

“Well, it’s just a name for people who don’t like to see other people having too much fun.”

“Oh, so that’s like you. You’re the fun police.”

I’m not going to lie. It was like a knife through my heart. I guess being labeled the fun police is the price you pay for making a person leave the pool before they were able to eat their third ice cream sandwich.

And for the record, I AM fun. At least that’s what I tell myself.

We got home from church, ate some lunch, and then I told her to go put on some old clothes so we could go wash the car. Nothing like waiting until the temperature was comparable to sitting directly on the equator. I put on a big, floppy hat to protect my face from the sun because I don’t need any more sun spots, not to mention the fact that I have a big PMS breakout on my left cheek that would need its own chair at a restaurant. Caroline decided to put on her big hat too, and as we walked out the door, P reminded us to make sure we set up the orange cones around the perimeter of the car to warn oncoming traffic.

Because at least three cars will drive by in an hour.

And all of them will slow down to see who the nerds are wearing the big straw hats surrounded by orange cones.

I let Caroline set out the cones because she needs to earn her keep.

We filled a bucket with soapy water and began to scrub. Caroline was very enthusiastic and exclaimed, “THIS IS GOING TO BE SO MUCH FUN!”

Approximately three minutes later she declared it was too hot, she was all soapy, and was going to go back inside, leaving me to die of heat stroke all by myself.

However, I couldn’t just hose the car off and call it done. I had to finish it because y’all should know by now that this is the sort of task that causes all my compulsive, perfectionist tendencies to ramp up at warp speed. I went into the garage to look through our arsenal of car wash supplies and was disappointed to see our stash isn’t what it used to be.

Sure, that may look like a lot to the untrained eye, but it is nowhere near the amount P usually needs to feel secure enough to sleep at night knowing he could wake up the next day and wash sixty-five cars at a moments notice. P is a fan of buying in bulk.

As Exhibit A, I present this bag of Japanese bread crumbs that he purchased several months ago.

Granted, he uses these when he fries fish and he does make the best fried fish in the world. However, last I checked we weren’t planning on hosting a fish fry for every living thing in a thirty mile radius.

But we could if we needed to and that’s the most important thing.

I asked him later what happened to his car wash arsenal. It’s not like we’ve been using it to wash our cars since that only happens every twelve or thirteen months. I thought maybe he’s been so consumed with work and Operation Attic Cool-down that he’d just moved on to more important things like researching every single brand of radiant barrier paint or making his daily trip up into the attic to see what the temperature is and then record it in a little journal he’s been keeping to chart the progress of our new, improved attic fan.

I am not making that up. It’s a real thing. The first time I saw it I thought maybe he was taking his temp every morning to see when he’s ovulating and then I remembered that men don’t ovulate and we’re not trying to have a baby. Plus, 110 degrees would be a little on the high side for even the sickest person.

It turns out that he was vaguely aware that our car wash supplies have been dwindling, but didn’t know to what extent. The culprit is Shorty, one of our landscape company employees.

Shorty rides the city bus to work everyday, but he brings his bike on the bus with him so he can ride it from the bus stop down the street to our house. Obviously, it gets dirty in that process so Shorty faithfully coats his bike in Armor-All each day before he leaves and rides it another 1/10th of a mile back to the bus stop. He likes to keep his ride looking fresh.

The ladies are suckers for some shiny bicycle tires.

All I know is the next time Caroline starts begging me to go wash the car, I’m going to send her out and tell her she can wash Shorty’s bike.

Orange cones are optional.
Time to sit back and unwind

This is how we started the last day of Kindergarten.

And this is how we ended it.

Not pictured: the popcorn shrimp and ice cream sandwiches that the girls inhaled.

Also not pictured: the mom who was on the brink of exhaustion after four and a half hours at the pool and about to pass out on the couch before she finally crawled into bed to prepare to do it all over again for the next 70 or so days.

Hooray for summer.