Year: 2009

Demented and sad, but social

Yesterday morning my sister and I packed up our two girls, twenty-five children’s movies on DVD, and a plethora of snack items to head out on the vast expanse known as I-10 to travel to Beaumont, Texas.

P had a discussion with some friends while they were pre-fishing for a fishing tournament last weekend. Apparently you have to pre-fish before the actual fishing can occur. It’s like a warm-up or something, although I don’t know that the fish realize they are only being pre-fished as they’re being pulled from the water with a hook in their mouth.

Anyway, the conversation turned to crimes being committed as a result of people constantly posting their whereabouts on Twitter, Facebook, bulletin boards in grocery stores, or ads in Thrifty Nickel, then criminals using that information to know when the house will be empty so they can break in a rob someone blind.

When he got home he told me that I need to be careful about broadcasting our every move. Let me put you on notice that if you are a nefarious criminal who just read that I am in Beaumont, and you’re now devising a plot to break into our home and steal our sweet low-definition 19-inch television set, P is actually still at home and will most definitely be armed with what could be a pink .22 but is probably something with a little more power, such as a purple .38 Special and an enormous garden spider.

(For those of you who were concerned, I would never kill that spider. I don’t envision us cuddling up or becoming gal pals anytime soon, but she is more than welcome to hang out in my yard.)

Other than hearing “Are we at Nanny’s house yet?” approximately 874 times within the first thirty minutes of the drive, the trip was fairly uneventful. However, I have to mention that we stopped at Cracker Barrel in Houston for lunch and, while we were paying our check, this man standing in front of me complimented me on my lovely pedicure and then went on to tell me that I had beautiful feet.

It was possibly the most awkward thirty second encounter I’ve ever had at a Cracker Barrel or, well, anywhere. In hindsight, I guess I could have complimented him back on his super-sporty satin jacket but words failed me at the moment.

Once we arrived in Beaumont we visited for a while, then headed to Casa Ole for dinner because they hold my heart in the palm of their microwaved enchiladas and green sauce. The Mexican food snob in me hates myself for loving it like I do, but I am powerless to resist its mass-produced charms.

After we got home, I was catching up on the news of the day (Fox News, MSNBC, People.com) and was sad to see that John Hughes passed away, yet it seems sadly appropriate that he died on the eve of my twenty-year high school reunion since his movies pretty much defined my teen years. I mean, who didn’t want to be Molly Ringwald and drive around in a Kharman Ghia, wear odd little crocheted vests, and yell “What about prom, Blaine? What about prom?”, or even wish that you could get detention on a Saturday morning?

For the record, I actually did my share of detention time for excessive tardiness, because my car had a mind of its own and couldn’t make it to school until it stopped for a Coke at the Texaco Quik Mart, and it was never that much fun. There was virtually no crawling around in air ducts or therapy sessions where we all bonded and had new found respect for each other.

Anyway, later tonight I’ll see people I haven’t seen in twenty years and we’ll laugh about the good times we had when we were all part of the Allotropic Forms Club, except that I wasn’t actually in the Allotropic Forms Club because they were a little snobbish about the rules stating that you had to actually take AND PASS Physics.

But I’ll have you know that other than some basic coordination issues, I excelled at Dance Team and serving as part of the dance decoration committee for Student Council. People still talk about our “Winter Chalet” Valentine’s dance decorations and, by people, I mean me.

Actually I don’t talk about it because that would be demented and sad, but I still have fond recollections.

And what kind of high school memories do those kids have that were in the Allotropic Forms Club or the Trapezoidal Tendencies Club? Other than the memory of learning things that got them into Harvard and helped them become millionaires by the time they were thirty?

It’s not like any of those things required real skills like making hearts out of doilies or doing high kicks on the 50-yard line.

But maybe John Hughes was right. Maybe somewhere in each one of us we were a brain, an athlete, a basketcase, a princess, and a criminal.

Of course these days I tend to hover more around basketcase/princess territory, but on the upside my feet have obviously never looked better. I’ll make sure to wear sandals this weekend in the hopes my former classmates will notice them instead of the fine lines I’ve developed in the last twenty years.

Twenty years.

In the words of Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

I’d love to hear your favorite quote from a John Hughes movie if you want to share with the group.

Y’all have a great Friday.
Little Miss Muffet

The other day we were walking through our back gate when Caroline said, “Oh Mama! Look at that spider!”

I looked in the direction she was pointing but didn’t see anything. And since it was 152 degrees outside I said, “Let’s get inside before we spontaneously combust.”

(I didn’t really say that, but I guarantee I thought it)

After a few minutes of being inside, she said, “Will you please go back outside with me and look at that spider?” I agreed, not because I am an arachnologist but because I love my child and, for some inexplicable reason, seeing any member of the phylum arthropoda makes her supremely happy.

We walked around to the sideyard and she began to point and yell, “THERE HE IS! THERE HE IS!”

“Where? I don’t see him.”

(How do we know it’s a him?)

“RIGHT THERE, MAMA! RIGHT THERE!”

“Where? I still don’t see him.”

And then I saw him.

Clearly, I need to make an appointment to see the optometrist because the spider was approximately the size of my head. Or would, at the very least, fit in the palm of my hand. Whatever. The point is he was VERY LARGE.

I wonder if Caroline could take him out with her new pink .22? It would be like big game hunting in her very own yard.

By the way, for those of you who wondered where you could find your very own pink .22, I have to let you know that it was a custom job done by P. It’s a special daddy that will stencil a purple star and some hot pink camo on a weapon for his hunting buddy.
This is nothing but a rambling recap

Sometime around the beginning of June I asked Caroline how she’d like to celebrate her sixth birthday. I assumed we’d do another pool party because that’s the fate assigned to anyone born in August in Texas, but she insisted that she had no interest in a party at the pool. Truthfully, I couldn’t blame her because how is that any different from what we do practically every day except with cupcakes instead of ice cream sandwiches?

She said she wanted to have a slumber party and I promptly began congratulating myself on the prospect of putting together the EASIEST birthday party ever. All those suckers paying for a big party at Pump It Up complete with communicable diseases and the possibility that you might have to (hypothetically) climb to the top of the bouncy slide while wearing a skirt to retrieve your child and I was going to get away with taking four girls to the movies and letting them sleep in sleeping bags on my living room floor? How hard can that be?

And now as I sit here feeling a level of exhaustion that I didn’t think existed outside of being forced to watch a marathon of ShamWow! commercials, I realize that those suckers who pay to have a party at Pump It Up have the advantage of being able to send everyone home after two hours. It doesn’t matter to them one way or the other if those kids stay up until 2:00 a.m. because their parents picked them up hours ago.

So here I sit. Fairly incoherent from the tiredness and in pain due to the fact that I thought it was a good idea to use a sharp knife to open up a frozen pizza wrapper last night. P is constantly reminding me of the hazards contained in my unorthodox methods of opening packages, but I just nod and then keep sawing away with whatever sharp utensil happens to be closest. Ninety-seven percent of the time it works out beautifully, but last night in a frenzy of helping a bunch of girls decorate white pillowcases with fabric paint and glitter and simultaneously trying to open up a box of frozen nutrition for any of the girls who didn’t want to eat Caroline’s requested birthday dinner of her daddy’s fried fish, I sliced the pointer finger of my right hand which is making it a little bit painful to type right now. I guess there is no workman’s comp for people who write on the internet or I’d check out my options for short-term disability.

The most important thing is that Caroline had a great sixth birthday. I mean, what little girl doesn’t dream of getting her very own pink .22?

(Before anyone leaves me a comment about it, let me assure you that it will remain locked in a safe that even I can’t get into and is for ranch use only.)

She also received some Bendaroos which have to be the most clever marketing scheme ever in the history of mankind because it’s just some string covered in some sort of bendy wax. Why not just pick up a pack of pipe cleaners and call it a day?

Mimi and Bops bought her an American Girl doll. It’s one of the Just Like Me dolls so it doesn’t come with a name and bio like all the other American Girl dolls, which are incidentally made in China. Caroline is wavering between naming her Dorothy or Glory. I think we all know I’m hoping she goes with Glory so I can amuse myself by saying “Oh Glory, I can’t believe you’re made in China and your clothing is more expensive than mine.”

I don’t even know if I’m making any sense at this point. Have I mentioned I’m exhausted and that I may have to get my finger amputated? Oh, and that I tried to use that new spray Neosporin on it to prevent the gangrene from setting in and sprayed myself right in the eye around midnight during the slumber party at which point things were beginning to head south due to an epidemic of tiredness denial?

Finally, after three hours of serving as a manicure/pedicure technician to four of the most indecisive little girls on the planet (Oh! I wanted blue polish like her! Can we take off all this pink and make it rainbow instead? Can you hurry up please?) I finally cracked and told them it was TIME. TO. GO. TO. BED.

Then they stayed up another hour and a half giggling and laughing which in all honesty made me smile more than a little bit because it brought back memories of how fun it used to be to stay up way too late surrounded by your best friends, some microwave popcorn, and a few good Barbie movies.

Of course these days Ma-Maw has to get her beauty rest.

Glory, I am tired.
A barrel or a living room full of monkeys

You know how sometimes you think you’re so tired you can’t even move? Yeah, I’m more tired than that.

This is what my living room looked like last night.

I spent the better part of my evening helping four little girls achieve a look that would make people in New Orleans say, “Well, that seems a little excessive”, until I finally decided to hide in my room and hope they didn’t dismantle the house piece by piece.

Finally around midnight I found myself in a bit of an ethical dilemma wondering if it would be wrong to give a healthy dose of Benadryl to other people’s children.

Oh I’m just joking.

Kind of.
Now we are six

Dear Caroline,

Today is your sixth birthday. Six years. I know it in my head but my heart is having a hard time comprehending that you are six years old.

Up until the day he died, my Pa-Pa never missed an opportunity to tell me about the day I was born. He loved to tell me how he took a sleeping pill because he couldn’t sleep and then got the call from my daddy at midnight letting them know they better head to Houston right then if they wanted to be there when I was born. So he and my Me-Ma picked up my Nanny and the three of them headed to the hospital with my Pa-Pa at the wheel in spite of his medicated state. I always loved hearing him tell me that story even though I never totally understood why he told it so often.

Now I understand.

There are moments in your life that are so significant that they don’t fade with the passing of time. I’ve mostly forgotten the pain of not getting an epidural until way too late in labor and the fact that I managed to inflict a thumb injury on your daddy while he held my hand during a contraction, but I will never forget the way I felt when they placed you in my arms for the first time. You looked at me with eyes that never seemed to blink as if you were giving me the once over to see if I was up for the challenge of motherhood.

Some days I feel like the verdict is still out. There are days I get it right and days I get it wrong, but the one constant is that you bring me more joy and laughter than I knew existed six years ago.

A few weeks ago we were coming home from an exciting morning of grocery shopping at HEB and all of a sudden I hear your little voice ask, “Why am I here?”

“What do you mean? Why are you in the car?”

“No. I mean why am I here? Why did God put me here?”

Wow. I don’t think I asked that question until my mid-twenties. Or yesterday.

I explained that God has a purpose and a plan for all of us. He loves us and wants to use us to help those around us. You listened to me very intently and then said, “I think maybe God wants me to be a clown”. If that’s your calling then I will do what I can to help you be the best clown you can be, but you need to know that your daddy had a bad circus experience as a child and may not be able to hang out with all your clown friends. Something about all those people fitting in one tiny car freaks him out.

This summer we’ve spent a lot of time at the pool and you never fail to act completely devastated when it’s time to leave. It’s especially bad if you see one of your friends walking in as we’re leaving. In fact there have been moments that I’ve wanted to fake an injury or throw a beach towel over your head to distract you from the realization that someone you haven’t seen in “at least two days” just walked in to swim.

The drama reached new heights last week as we left to go home after your pleas for “just five more minutes” fell on deaf ears. You looked at me with big tears in your eyes and announced, “I am as sad as a pickle that has just been eaten.”

It’s my new favorite phrase. I kind of think we ought to make some t-shirts and see if it catches on.

But that’s what I love about you. You’re not afraid to voice your opinion. You will never be one to sit back and see what everyone else does. You’re ready to take on life the same way you jump off the diving board, one great big flying leap.

When you were still just a baby, I would rock you and sing to you. These days you’d probably tell me that my voice doesn’t sound very good, but back then you weren’t able to complain unless it was in the form of a toxic diaper. I usually treated you to a wide array of song choices during those middle of the night hours, but one that I always ended up singing was “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” even though singing Aerosmith songs to your newborn is such a cliche’. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation that led me to resort to Steven Tyler, but it summed up how I felt as we sat and rocked with your little baby fingers curled around mine.

“I could stay awake just to hear you breathing
Watch you smile while you are sleeping
While you’re far away dreaming
I could spend my life in this sweet surrender
I could stay lost in this moment forever
Every moment spent with you is a moment I treasure”

Last night I tucked you in and began to read the books you’d picked out for us to read. My voice cracked and I felt tears come to my eyes. You just seemed so big to me as you sat snuggled up next to me and pointed out the words you can read by yourself. Time just seems to be going by too fast.

And I don’t want to miss a thing.

Daddy and I love you more than you’ll ever know. Happy Birthday, sweet girl.

Love,
Mama
Andele! Andele! Arriba! Arriba!

I arrived at the Charlotte airport around 5:00 p.m. yesterday evening in spite of the fact that they’d had some sort of bomb scare earlier in the day which is so weird because the last time I flew I was delayed at Dallas Love Field due to a bomb scare. If it happens again I may develop a complex and be forced to never leave my house again.

Once I arrived at the hotel I met up with Sophie and Annie and we headed out in search of mediocre Mexican food because that is what we do when we’re together. It’s a sickness really. It’s like my head tells me no, but my heart just can’t believe that there are parts of the world missing out on delicious chips and guacamole. I have no doubt that if I ever find myself in some exotic locale like say Spearfish, South Dakota that I will immediately ask the concierge at the Motel 6 where I can find the best Mexican food, head to El Grande Burrito on his recommendation and then walk away totally surprised that it was a less than satisfactory culinary experience.

Annie had her Garmin GPS system at the ready so she immediately pulled up the names of several Mexican restaurants located in the vicinity. Unfortunately, Garmin doesn’t realize that we’re in the midst of some tough economic times and that many of these restaurants are no longer in business.

After driving through some questionable parts of town, we still hadn’t located any of the Mexican eateries that Garmin had promised when all of a sudden I spied the words “Mexican Restaurant” on the side of a building as we drove past at 60 miles per hour. We decided we’d make a u-turn and check it out because obviously it must be okay since it’s managed to stay in business while the other forty-six restaurants we’d tried couldn’t survive the competition of the Taco Bell.

We pulled into the parking lot and got a closer look at the signage.

I don’t know that the Hispanic version of Chuck E. Cheese instilled a lot of confidence in the whole dining experience. There’s something about a rat in chaps, wearing a sombrero, that makes me know without a doubt that I’m not in Texas anymore, Dorothy.

But we decided to live on the edge and went in to experience Andele! for ourselves. As we got out of the car, I immediately felt better when I saw a car parked next to us that had several Hispanic bumper stickers. If the people in that car were eating at Andele! then it must be okay.

And it was. It was okay. In fact, it may have been the best mediocre Mexican food I’ve had in all my vast experience dining at restaurants that call queso “cheese dip”.

So we finished our dinner, bid Adios! to Andele! and then headed back to our hotel. Or at least we attempted to head back to our hotel but Garmin decided that we needed to take a scenic route through all of Charlotte and we drove for about twenty-five minutes on a straight path to what appeared to be nowhere until we finally stumbled back into some semblance of civilization that seemed to be near the hotel.

We saw a Walgreens and decided it would be a genius idea to stop and load up on some candy to get us through our planned viewing of “Real Housewives of Atlanta”. As we pulled into the parking lot I was stunned to see the exact same car that had been at Andele! with all the bumper stickers. In fact, I took a picture of it because that is what I do.

You will notice that the bumper stickers translate to various things such as “I’ve decided to follow Jesus” and “My confidence is in Jesus Christ”. None of them translate to “Follow me to enjoy delicious Mexican food”. But still, what are the odds we’d see that same car after driving all around Charlotte for a sweet forever?

Of course what are the odds that there would be a bomb scare at two different airports the last two times I’ve gotten on an airplane?

And while we’re kind of on the subject of language translation, I have a message to the person who found my blog the other day by googling “A Mexican man called me ‘feo’ what does it mean?” I hate to be the bearer of bad news, my friend, but it wasn’t a compliment.

Adios, amigos.