- I had a parent-teacher conference this week. I always cringe, because I fear they will say something negative about my beautiful daughter, who makes up imaginary worlds inside of her head. Which I fully support and encourage. Instead, we discussed the fact that my usually straight-A kid made a B+ in literature. Which is curious since the last thing she read was the history of armaments in the Medieval era and knows more vocabulary words than I do. I asked my daughter if it bothered her, to not have an A. “Doesn’t bother me at all,” she said. Which pleased me so much we went out for pizza.
- My boyfriend’s daughter is on a gluten-free, sugar free, egg free, and dairy-free diet, which is otherwise known as No Reason to Live. Her doctor thought it might help her eczema, and we felt so sorry for her that we also decided to also adopt such restrictions in solidarity so she wouldn’t feel so alone. But this means I’ve been eating nothing but tortilla chips and guacamole, which sounds good but try doing that for two weeks straight without any queso.
- I am so tired of hearing about Trump, but what I’m more tired of is people posting articles on facebook about how much of a misguided racist troll he is, because that’s also growing old and is just dull. Unless he has a pet squirrel who can say “No more taxes” let’s not re-hash the obvious.
- For the Easter season I was on the hunt all over town for plates that looked like cabbages so I could take down my brown Woodland spode and lovingly display these new, lighthearted plates from Portugal from the vantage point of the Easter luncheon table. Because let’s be honest Jesus rising from death and lettuce have so much in common. When I finally found them, my daughter pretended to be excited for me and grabbed my hand and said “I’m so glad you found the lettuce plates, mom” and I had this vague foreshadowing of me being crazy in a nursing home. I don’t even care because the plates are nice. You see where this is heading.
- This week I texted a friend to see if we could bring back the phrase “gag me with a spoon” and she said she actually did gag herself with a spoon in a Dairy Queen in 1987 and I naturally assumed she was bulimic but she said nah, it was just the peanut butter parfait and I said how disgusting peanut butter parfaits were compared to butterfinger blizzards and she was all “agree to disagree, wench.” This is how the modern era communicates. Children, educate yourselves.
- On the morning commute to school I pretend I’m different people with different accents to make the kids laugh. We have a standing appointment with Maurine from New Jersey who yells at the drivahs and we have a very proper Elizabeth who chastises Maurine for her lack of civility and we just dive in and out of alternate personalities without much ado. Which is normal for us but I realize isn’t normal for all. I assume these are like crazy family secrets that shall remain within the realm of our crumb-laden Lexus. But my son goes around now saying he speaks English and New Jersey like Maurine and people think he’s nuts. I just make that crazy sign with my finger to my head and roll my eyes. Because I really want him to join me someday in the psych ward. I’ll be lonely and maybe this will help speed things along.
- I went on Amazon today to order a cabbage platter – much larger, more detail – but I yelled at myself to stop. Because honestly. That’s just absurd. A cabbage platter, for heaven’s sakes.
- This year my kids were with their father for Spring Break, so I used the time to clean out the garage. I rushed the children to the garage immediately to see when they got home. Then for an hour I heard nothing but silence. After, they proclaimed they “made a junk shop” and all the piles I had to goodwill were intertwined with the trash they drug back into the garage and they forced me by almost gunpoint (sad children’s eyes) to shop at said junk shop and negotiate prices and they made me little receipts with stamps. I was so amazed at how quickly they could ruin what was once clean. But it reminded me how much I missed them, and how quickly their lives go by, so I just kept buying half-used spools of thread and old pillows and said things like “my my, these are Neiman Marcus prices” and they’d say “yeah well we may be called a junk shop but this isn’t really junk.” And I smiled because messes can be cleaned but childhood will not soon be forgotten.
- My credit card company called to see if I made three charges over the weekend to a car wash and tailor. They obviously know me well to suspect I might not have washed my car three times in one weekend since the last time it was washed was (a) never or (b) in an alternate universe. They indicated that my card was hacked and they needed to cancel it and renew it. “But it’s still here in my wallet!” I said. Didn’t matter – it happened online. “But everything is linked to this card!” I said. Their response was basically “this is a first-world problem / you idiot, people are starving in Syria and this is what you worry about / you’ll somehow have to figure out how to re-link your card to Netflix.” I suddenly had an urge to just go back to buying and selling with pieces of silver. Also I thought briefly about washing my car. I have lots of crazy thoughts.
- I just want to say for the record that my Easter table had a greenish lettuce hue. Which is exactly what I was going for. It was cast from the light bouncing off the cabbage plates. WHO’S LAUGHING NOW.
We are kindred spirits in the obsessive searching for random home decor items, that at the time seem so necessary and important. My heart beats faster when I stumble upon what I’m looking for. Then, once I find it, I decide I need all the matching pieces, (like the cabbage platter). I, too, think it may be the beginning of dementia. I’m sure my family thinks so.
DQ peanut buster parfaits are so my jam!!! We don’t even have a DQ anymore here in Knoxville, but if we go anywhere and I spot one I HAVE to stop in and get one. 🙂
Dammit, now I want a Peanut Buster Parfait.
I’m sure there was more to take away from that post, but I’m laughing too hard. Cabbage plates, of course.
(Only because my tiny china hutch is empty, with the intent on sorting through my husband’s grandmother’s china to put on display and ship the rest to his cousin in New Hampshire, but then Housewives of Dallas came on…and so there it sits.)