If you give a mom a coffee

August 21, 2012 By

If you give a mom a coffee, she’ll want a donut to go with it.

So she’ll stop by this great bakery on the way to the kid’s school drop off, get the éclair instead, and eat it in four bites.  Stuffing her face with saturated fat and sugar will remind her that she’s fifteen pounds overweight. So she heads to the gym.

At the gym, she starts to run on the treadmill.  Running on the treadmill and staring at a wall covered in closed-captioned televisions annoys the fire out of her because she can’t hear a dang thing and has to keep up with all those words popping up after someone talks.  It’s distracting.

All that useless television that no one watches because people’s heads are buried in their iphones makes her think that her mind is just a collection of closed caption nonsense with words popping up after the thoughts have passed.  And when a mom starts to focus on distracting energy, she obviously thinks of her two-year-old son, who loves animals and trains and has an odd way of making her sit in a chair holding him for a solid hour just to hear him breathe and inhale the loveliness of his messy, sweaty toddler hair.

Sweat reminds her of the gym, where she is currently still residing, and she glances down and sees that she’s burned off only 92 calories.  Close enough.  She gets into her car that smells slightly of either vinegar or rotten milk and notices her kid’s spare clothes sitting on the front seat that were supposed to be sent to school for water day.  It’s a little red shirt from the Austin Zoo.  Which reminds her of the Austin Zoo.   It’s plainly written on the shirt, for heaven’s sake.  That’s just called reading.  But she’s famished and dehydrated and exhausted from trying to read all that closed captioning.  Cut her some slack.

So the next day mom hauls everyone to the small rescue zoo to see the prairie dogs and peacocks and ride the train.  As she’s passing by the grey wolves she thinks what a really strange zoo that has a hundred goats and a large potbelly pig with not one single zebra.  Of course zebras remind her of nothing, so she stares down at her bulging waistline and pats her children on the head.  She thinks she might hit the gym, but her son needs a nap so off they go for lunch and a big pile of laundry and she’s consumed with guilt over the fact that she paid a hundred bucks to the YMCA this month for a stupid 92 calories.

When she gets home, she notices that her husband hasn’t unloaded the dishwasher as promised.  She’s faced with a pile of dog vomit and her son has decided he’s rather not sleep but instead run around in concentric circles around the rug declaring to all who will listen that he’s batman.  She scratches her head at why all the magazines are not in their proper place but then realizes that the magazine rack has been converted to a trailer to be drug behind the rocking horse by one of her best winter scarves.  Her daughter is whining that she only likes mac-and-cheese and that she doesn’t like peanut butter and I could have sworn I told you that already, but the mom magically can’t hear any noise coming out of her daughter’s mouth and suddenly remembers there are dark chocolate oatmeal cookies in the pantry.  So she decides to let the house run amuck while she sits in the corner reading about Frank McCourt’s rotten life in Ireland.  And you know what happens when a momma starts eating cookies and reading a book.

She’ll most likely want a cup of coffee, a handful of Advil, and a babysitter to go along with it.

Filed Under: Humor, Motherhood Tagged With: , , , , ,

Failure is not an option

August 8, 2012 By

I knew a girl that trained for the Olympics.  She got permission to cut out early from school to spend eight hours in the gym.  Her parents were insanely rigid and no one really invited her to play dates or to have ice cream sundaes.  She couldn’t come anyway because she was training.  She was always training.  Her father died young. I always thought he bottled all the angst and misery and fear of watching his twelve-year old girl fail or turn or miss a handoff and one day he just couldn’t take it anymore.  He put a gun to his temples and blew it all away. Just tiny bits of stress scattered into the ether.

In a tiny way, amidst the cheers and clapping and proud faces, I see the pain in the eyes of all those collective Olympians, their young hearts beating rapidly under their overbuilt bodies with sparkles on their eyelids.  After all – the brass ring of winning looms so high.  Some of these tiny girls – leaping and hopping and tumbling on a national stage before their sixteen birthday – don’t even have arms long enough to reach out and grab it. They haven’t built up the maturity to handle the fleeting moment when the edges of their fingers touch it, but it slips past their grasp.  It reminds me of Gollum in Lord of the Rings, wanting something so bad it becomes a longing that’s seared into you.  After a while it’s nothing but an empty, haunting noise in one’s twisted throat.

The announcer introduced a young Romanian.  Her eyes had that steely gaze of one who knows exactly what she wants.  She had won silver four years earlier, but not grabbing that ring had left a hole in her heart.  I wanted to clasp that poor girl into my arms.  I wanted to hand her journals of pink butterflies and banana splits and afternoons lounging around under oak trees reading mystery novels.  I wanted to give her back a childhood and tell her it’s just a silly piece of metal, coated with only shreds of worth.  But her stare was so unyielding.   It was a hopeless cause.

She mounted the balance beam so assuredly.  She had done this so many times, and in so many ways.  Through injuries and bad days and being yelled at.  When she was hungry and longed for a day off and when her legs were pinching and burning and red like fire.

And then she fell.

It was just a simple turn – the announcer said.  But there she went, cascading down in slow motion to the padded mat below, chalk puffing up around her tiny feet as she hit. She rose slowly, as if her life’s work had been for naught.  As if all she ever wanted had come crumbling down around her feet.  The grief was printed on her face.  Her arms rose to the beam again to climb back on, but it was a dead baby now.

Her eyes haunted my dreams that night.  I thought of how one might not ever recover such an epic failure.  These are champions.  They overcame great hurdles in their rise to glory.  And yet there is that looming dread of going home empty handed.  The oiled finger that couldn’t grasp the ring.  The missed opportunity that would never again present itself.

As I was telling my husband about it that night, he stopped reading and thought about it for a moment.  He said he felt failure was an overused word.  We might miss opportunities, or do things we regret, or take paths that might later need redirection.  “But failure is final,” he said.  “And it’s not over until the end of the game.”

I thought about our lives.  The raising of our children.  The tenuous bonds of marriage and friendship and being the one others count on.  Our eyes grow so focused on being good at it, and choosing the right paths, and winning.  Sometimes there is that moment you almost let it overtake you.  Like the father who put the gun to his head and gave in.

But God expects more than this.  We are all built to be champions.  And someday, there will be that second we step onto that balance beam and our feet fall flat underneath us.  It is that moment we must find the inner strength to rise again.  Through the grief.  Through the defeat.  Through the brokenness. We must stand proud and tall on that beam, and with all the energy left in our tired bodies we must clap those hands together, look high to the sky as our backs arch in beauty, and land squarely on two feet.  We will regroup.  We will not let this define us.  We will dismount after the fall.

If you look closely enough, you’ll see a shiny little ring dangling from your fingers.  Funny thing is, by then it doesn’t seem to matter.

—

http://www.flickr.com/photos/96434059@N00/with/1017675131/#photo_1017675131

Filed Under: Inspirational, Motherhood, Religion, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

my colorful life

July 25, 2012 By

Today, I thought I’d paint a picture of what my life is like.   

The big news of the week was that our six-year-old girl lost her front tooth.  I videoed her trying to say “silly sally went to town, walking backwards, upside down” so I could hear the funny whistling lisp she developed.  It was all so crazy pink with the swollen gums and her tongue sticking out.

That night, my daughter recounted the story of not beating all the other girls in art class because they put their peacock feathers on the canvas already and she was slower to cut them out.  I told her art was not a competition.  She’s so red that girl, flaming with desire to be the best, and fastest, and quickest at everything.   Sometimes you just need to slow down and take your time.  Or try new things even when they don’t come out perfectly the first time around.  She’s not daring for fear she might not come out on top.  We are working on experimentation.

I had a crazy burst of energy the other day, in part due to the explosion of vegetables from our garden.  I peeled and cut up four large butternut squash, their bright, orange flesh so clean and cheerful.  I sautéed asparagus and made a salad with cucumbers and tomatoes with an aged balsamic dressing.  I stole a friend’s recipe for pasta with capers and cream sauce and the plate was bursting with color.  My kids picked out all the bowtie pasta and left all the rest, but I threatened them with something that I now can’t remember and they ended up eating all the spinach.  Funny how all that spinach wilts down to nothing when you cook it.  A tiny little mass of vitamins that can be gulped down in two bites.

Then a few nights later, I was frustrated that a new bottle of organic tearless wash was bobbling around in the bath, filling with water and making it run out when I tried to use it.  That was the millionth time I’d warned my daughter about letting soap ruin in the tub.  I was so upset I yelled for both children to immediately exit the bathroom and transport themselves immediately into pajamas.  I muttered something about how much money was wasted and having to always repeat myself. All that yellow Burt’s Bees soap diluted and ruined. It was all his fault, my daughter said.  She likes to stand around and watch him do things and then blame him for it later.  You’re older and wiser.  I expect you to set an example.  It’s a broken record, that conversation.

Almost every night this week, my son has decided that the only possible way he can sleep, now that he’s graduated from the crib to a normal bed, is to be velcroed to his mother at all times.  The moment I inch away, he is awoken from a deep slumber and begins to cry out my name.  He is buried in a blue patchwork quilt and is wedged between a pillow I got at pottery barn that says “Discover” but all that blue matches his longing mood. It’s been a long week of hauling a two-year-old back to bed, telling him that he is loved but mommy has her own sleeping place, requesting that he instead cuddle with his bear or stuffed horse, and if all else fails to go sleep in his sister’s room.  I try and break up the blackness of night with a nightlight and warm kisses, but all that crying makes me sad. I want to curl up next to him and feel his soft breathing until the end of time.

My husband is out of town for a funeral, which means he left work undone at the office and must catch up upon his return.  I have a girl’s dinner and got a babysitter, which means that I’ll have to fork over so much green for one night just to not hear “mama hold me” or “can I watch just one more show” or “I don’t like spinach” or “I didn’t do it.”  It’s worth it.  It’s always worth it to catch my breath and laugh over swollen glasses of wine and good company.

I am reading Angela’s Ashes, which is so sad and it fills me with an ache that children have to grow up around all that brown drabness, with diapers that are never changed and dirt that is never washed away.  I worry about the negative overtones of Disney movies and the stereotypes of Barbie dolls and stress about not having enough Vitamin D in my kids’ diet and then I read that Frank McCourt stole bananas just to stop his twin brothers’ hunger pains.  I am filled with a sense of loss for his childhood.

I had a crazy work situation happen Monday afternoon.  The entire day was relatively quiet and I could have dealt with that particular crisis better at any other time of day, but of course it happens at 4:30 pm, which is the witching hour at my house when all hell breaks loose and my children act like wild animals.  I was trying to convince an attorney to withdraw a subpoena when my daughter comes running in screaming about her brother drinking something he shouldn’t.  I see him sucking from a juice box that was somewhere in my daughter’s room.  Where did that come from?  How long has it been there?  Is it molded?  Oh for goodness sakes. I rush over in between saying “uh huh” and “why exactly do you need our particular witness for this case” to run over and grab the juice from my son.  At the moment I grabbed it, he threw it on the ground and it just so happened my foot came down on top of it, and in that perfect storm, purple juice went spraying all over the wood floor.  I wanted to scream, but I ran to the front porch and politely asked counsel to repeat that last part.  The one about the Family Code.

All in all, my life is very colorful.  It starts out such a blank white canvas when my two feet get out of bed and I pad over toward the coffee machine, like the computer screen that is blank until my fingers find a way to fill the page.   I love the richness and hues and the depth of all these stories.  The fire and melancholy and stillness all run together like watercolors.  My life is full of light from any angle.  You could let it dry and hang it on a mantle, scratching your head and saying,

My, my. What a beautiful piece. 

Filed Under: Inspirational, Motherhood, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

Why well-check appointments make me feel like a bad mother

July 16, 2012 By

I dread well-check appointments.  It’s not that anything is wrong with my kids, but those darn visits make me feel like an inadequate mother.  But this year, I was prepared.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has a list of questions that my doctor uses to judge the overall health and well-being of a child.  They are good questions.  Based on solid evidence of what’s harmful to kids.  I’m all over it. No, I don’t keep a loaded gun around.  No, I don’t feed my kids fast-food burgers three times a week.  No, my kids don’t watch hours of television.  I’m really quite an all-star.  Did you see that one answer I jotted down about the excellent reading skills and vocabulary? I hand the form over to the bubbly little nurse.  Here ya go!  Here’s to high percentiles and healthy habits!

I’m not sure why I worry.  It’s not like they take your motherhood pin away if your kid eats nothing but noodles with butter. But still. 

This year, I prepped my daughter in advance.  In the car ride over, I subtly reminded her that she does eat carrots, corn, and roasted broccoli.   And if anyone asks, just say yes to bike helmets.  Just random conversation on a Monday morning.  Nothing to worry about.  She just looked at me like I had marker on my face.

Our pediatrician, who is warm and lovely and not at all judgmental, walked into the room and happily started up a conversation about life.  My daughter started off by explaining that Kindergarten was hard.  She talked too much and didn’t feel like following the rules all the time.  Typical stuff.  Her tone was so matter-of-fact.  Then she smiled and wiggled her front tooth.  I wanted to crawl under the table at the honesty.  Kids are like that.  We should take more lessons from them.

After lifting up my daughter’s arms and legs and peering inside her nose, the doctor started squeezing in the tricky questions.

“Does an adult watch you at all times by the pool?” the doctor asks.

“Well there was this one party where mom was just hanging out inside with a friend and I pretended to be a mermaid.”

That is totally not true!  I watch her like a crazy vulture!  As a matter of fact, I was apologizing to another mom because I couldn’t keep my eyes away from my six-year-old, who was only in the shallow end, with one other girl, twirling her hair around and sitting on an underwater bench laughing while I sat ten feet away inside the glass-covered patio.  I mumbled something to the doctor about that being a bit of an exaggeration, and that I’m always looking, and by that point she had just moved on.

“Do you drink lots of water and milk?” the doctor asks.

“Not much,” she says.  “Hardly ever, really.  I do drink chocolate milk.” I felt like kicking her under the table, but there wasn’t an under because she was sitting on top of it.   The doctor then gave my six-year-old a very nice lecture about how it’s really hot, and how important it is in the Texas heat to be well hydrated, and to drink cold water whenever she can.  This is crazy.  Can’t I just answer these questions, for crying out loud?

Finally, the doctor asked about my daughter’s diet.  It’s decent, with the exception of our one splurge – a Wendy’s baked potato.  When this little jewel is revealed, my doctor suggests I put steamed broccoli on top.  So helpful.  In between my two-year-old having a meltdown and trying to assuage my pounding headache, I’ll steam some.  Just so it will be pushed aside because it’s not roasted until it’s dark and crispy with sea salt and parmesan.  Because that’s the way I make it where it tastes good.  I’ve ruined her for life.

I’m left with the lingering feeling that I’m a horrible mother, that my child needs to take more vitamins and eat more green things, and she must triple her fluid intake or she’s going to shrivel up like a raisin.

Afterward, we head to lunch.  My daughter wanted a lemonade (no), a smoothie (again, no), and a ham sandwich with absolutely nothing on it but ham and cheese.   She refused to eat the sandwich because she wasn’t hungry and only drank water when I allowed her to put three lemons in it.

Later, when she’s starving to death (her words), I point to a shriveled up sandwich.  She frowned and said it was stepped on in the car by her brother.  I finally gave in and let her eat a baked potato for supper, covered with spoonfuls of tomato basil soup.  She sighs, sips on soup, nibbles at the potato, and tells me that she wants to go back to the way it used to be, when she can have a potato with sour cream and a side of apple juice.   I told her to drink more water.

My daughter is a very smart girl.  Eventually, she’ll figure out that the better she answers the questions at the doctor’s office, the better I will feel as a parent, and when we get home, I’m likely to make everyone chocolate-banana smoothies.

My daughter wears her bike helmet. She loves carrots, roasted broccoli, and corn.  She runs to grab a paper towel when someone makes a mess and cuddles up next to her baby brother to help him sleep.  Despite the water, or the lack thereof, we’re all good.  We are getting what we need.  In spite of my insane need to look like the perfect mother at the doctor’s office, I realize that I’m not that horrible after all.

Here’s a chocolate milk, kiddo.  Drink up. 

Filed Under: Embarrassing Moments, Humor, Motherhood Tagged With: , , ,

Odd and Curious Thoughts of the Week

July 13, 2012 By

This week, in the mind of Amanda Hill . .

(1) I’m always left scratching my head when advertising slogans are in quotes.  They jump out at me on billboards or on the backs of the trucks.  “Real country cookin,” one reads.  “We’ll be there when you need us,” says another.  Who is saying these things?  Is it similar to air quotes, where you say one thing but mean another? If that’s the case, don’t plan your day waiting on those losers.  They’ll come to fix your leaking toilet between 8 am and whenever they can pry themselves away from Denny’s all-you-can-eat pancakes.  That are “made fresh.”  Eeeugh.

(2) I am struck by the lack of random acts of kindness I perform on a daily basis.  I should pay for people’s groceries behind me in the check-out line.  I could stand to wait more, compliment more freely, and act more selflessly.  I think I’ll start by not screaming at my two-year-old for dumping an entire container of blueberries on the kitchen floor. I’ll just pick them up, some half-smashed into the bottom of my shoe and others staining our travertine tile, and simply say “there you go, buddy.  This act is for you. Don’t gripe the next time the door slams into your face, K?  How many of these do you think I can do in a day?”

(3) Why LOL?  Why not SFF (so freaking funny) or TAGO (that’s a good one) or just DTWA (dang that was awesome)?  These are at least more accurate.  Rarely does a friend’s facebook update on health care reform cause you to cackle uncontrollably until your eyes begin to water.  Unless you are friends with David Sedaris, in which case you have my full permission to use LOL.  Or SFIWMPA (so funny I wet my pants again).  But then you’d forget all those letters.

(4) I roasted some butternut squash in little cubes and then put them in ziplock bags for my kids to munch on during a two-hour car trip.  I really don’t know what happened to me.  For a moment, my mind went blank and I forgot what it was like being a mother at all.  My kids just looked at the bags like I was handing them chunks of poison-laden concrete.  “Uh, do we not have Cheese Nips?” my daughter asked.  Of course we do.  I’m not sure where that even came from.  I looked down at that alien squash and shook my head in disgust.  You are dead to me.  Pass the oreos.

(5)  My daughter likes Martinelli Apple Juice in a glass bottle.  When we drive through the coffee place by our house, she insists on me asking for award-winning apple juice, like they might make an error and hand her the off-brand swill.

(6) Speaking of my daughter, we were on our way to the pool when she was having a conversation with herself.  “Who ya talking to?” I asked.  “My feet families,” she said.  She wiggled her toes as if all the people were waiving at me.  Each toe had a name, and each foot was a family that occasionally got together with the other foot for trips and such.  I hope they like each other since they live so close. I wonder if other children act this way.

(7) I was in a rush the other day, and plucked my shoe-less two-year-old out of the car and plunked him into the grocery cart because I was too lazy to find a matching croc. But one item led to several, as grocery store trips go, and suddenly I had an urge to pee.  I’m trying to hold a wrangling and twisting two-year-old in my lap while using the restroom, but it was impossible.  I tell him to stand over to the side where people’s shoes probably didn’t touch as often, not moving from that one place, because at least that minimized the germs his feet would be exposed to.   This is the actual logic that went through my head.  I have no idea how I made it through law school.

(8) I sucked on my son’s pacifier to clean it the other day because I thought “I’d wash off the bad germs from the floorboard by putting it in my dirty mouth that hasn’t been cleaned properly since the Listerine wash at 9 pm the night before.”   That’s me reasoning to myself, in case the quotes threw you.  And we all know from (7) above how excellent I am with reasoning.  TAGO.

(9) I did one of those online tests to see how many books I’ve read of the 100 best books of the world, and I was hovering somewhere around the pitifully-low national average.  I have a feeling I’m going on an Amazon bender. Mark Twain and Nabokov. Steinbeck and Woolf.  I’m cracking open book covers not because I really want to, but because I’ll beat that other stay-at-home mom who has read more classics than I have.  I’ll show the world how smart I am.  I’ll make squash nuggets for long summer car trips and carry shoe-less toddlers into germ-infested bathrooms.

Oh, wait. . .

Filed Under: Embarrassing Moments, Humor, Motherhood Tagged With: , , , ,

Here’s to no-good, boring birthdays

July 2, 2012 By

 

Some Mondays aren’t the best.  This particular one was teeth-grindingly bad.  It just so happened that this Monday was also my birthday, which added to my abounding self-pity.  Birthdays really shouldn’t matter so much to grown-ups.   Just because you wake up on your official DOB doesn’t mean you carry a special florescent glow that mandates people give you free coffee and stickers.  I will say, however, that at least in the working world someone buys you a Starbucks, or there’s a cake in the break room.  When you’re a stay-at-home type, who happened to buy yourself a new camera for her own present, it’s just any other day and your main goal is for the kids to eat their carrots.

I felt bad about whining about my no-good, boring birthday to a girlfriend, until she reminded me that she knew.  She knew my life was blessed and full and rich and wonderful, and that it’s okay to have bad days.  I told her this day was ridiculously awful, aside from my family being healthy and us having a comfortable living with clothing and food and love and homemade bread and leftovers and an amazing life. Shoes on our feet and a belly full of organic turkey breast?  Blessings schmessings.

So here was my day. No one was diagnosed with a brain tumor or broke an arm, but still.

  • My husband left for work early.  My son fell out of his crib and I awoke to the sound of his sobbing face, covered in snot, screaming next to my pillow.
  • I tried to wake my daughter, who “needed some time” and didn’t want to be disturbed. Okay, royal highness.
  • I had three hours of child care for the 2-year-old, so I rushed to get a pedicure with my daughter at an upscale boutique.  She didn’t understand why she couldn’t stand around for a million hours looking at nail polish colors and couldn’t have a certain oversized ring that looks like a rose.
  • We headed to the bank. “Oh my gosh, it’s your birthday!” the teller gushed. “Here’s a lollipop!”  I guess the glare in the drive-in-window disguised my birthday glow as that of an anxious three-year old, because it’s been a long time since a lollipop was that thrilling.  But I’ll take it.  Things are looking up.
  • I picked up my son.  He ate said lollipop and his entire mouth turned blue.  What is this stuff – trick candy?
  • We headed to a friend’s house so my daughter could apologize to my friend’s child for saying hurtful words during a play date over the weekend.  We finally get that fun chore out of the way.  Sorry is said/hugs to be had.  Victory!
  • We head home, whereby my mother has called to sing me Happy Birthday.  Only she and my Dad are in Kansas and the phone keeps cutting out.
  • I try for a solid hour to get my son to take a nap.  He giggles and cries and wrangles and twists and I almost use brut force to tie him to the bed. Finally, I gave up and looked forward to a fun afternoon with an exhausted toddler.  What a great birthday present!  Better than dirty diapers!
  • I went to buy a real mattress for my son, who clearly needs something besides the crib since he’s looking like a future linebacker.  It costs more than I planned.  There goes all my spending money.
  • The mattress was being delivered that afternoon, and during the seven minute interval by which I was vacuuming his room in prep for the mattress, my son discovered a truck-load of permanent markers somewhere in his sister’s room (who put those in there?) and colored his entire hand, arm, and part of the carpet green.
  • I was so mad when I saw the green carpet I threw the markers across the room and might have yelled.  I’m fairly certain I yelled.  Oh yeah.  I yelled.
  • I gave myself a time-out on the front porch to calm down.  I sucked down a sparkling water.  Should have made it beer, the more I think about it.
  • I headed back in and decided I need to embrace the craziness.  If you can’t beat em, join em.  Want a popcicle?  Sure!  Want fruit smoothies for dinner?  Why not?  We all sang a rousing version of “Do, Re, Me” while I folded socks and towels.
  • Things are really looking up when I sneak spinach and flax seed in the smoothies when the kids aren’t looking.  Does spinach equal out the marker throwing?  Does the singing void out all the yelling?
  • My daughter spilled the entire smoothie on her white t-shirt.  Panic ensues that the stain will never come out, since this is a tried-and-true favorite tee. My son follows suit with the spillage.  Blueberry pomegranate sludge covers my front porch. Both kids are hosed off.  The porch is hosed off.  I wish I could hose off my bad mood.
  • I decide baths are in order, whereby my expensive organic bath gel somehow ends up in the tub and is half-full of water.  Why do I leave these things at arms-reach?
  • I put my son to bed.  He’s wiped.
  • I read a thousand chapters of Nancy Drew to my daughter, who keeps begging for more.  She finally pleads for a back scratch in the whiniest voice I’ve ever heard.  I tell her it’s my freaking birthday and I’m done with all her incessant demands. She throws a crazy fit by standing up, saying “hmph” really loudly, stomping, and crossing her arms.
  • My daughter loses television privileges as a natural consequence of her bad choice.  I told her one more outburst and the Polly Pocket dolls were headed to Goodwill.
  • I fold more laundry.  I eat a peanut butter sandwich.  I’m no longer singing show tunes, and I haven’t had one single piece of cake.
  • My husband calls and says he’s getting home really late due to a pending work deadline. Super double awesome.
  • I call my mother-in-law and remind her it was my birthday, since she had clearly forgotten.
  • Time for bed!  Here’s to Tuesday!

I recently gave a speech whereby I told a group of ladies that when horrible things happen, take a step back and find the funny.  There is always, for certain, without a doubt, funny things that bubble up from tragedies.  I was thinking of real tragedies, like death or cancer or car accidents.  But bad birthdays count.  The more I think about it, they so count.

So here’s to funny.  To the yelling and spilling.  The singing and cleaning up.  Regretful and glorious moments of motherhood are all wrapped up in a shiny birthday package, with a ribbon that reads “There’s always tomorrow!  Thank God for tomorrow!”

Tonight, I prayed out loud with my daughter.  I asked God to grant me more patience and to still my anger.  For my daughter to be more selfless, and to develop a heart of gratitude.  Mostly I just thanked God for our beautiful life.  For so many rich blessings. They don’t come in packages, tied up with string.  We don’t deserve them.  And yet we are surrounded by so many. As I write this, my two kids are sleeping and my laundry is done. My fingers fly over the keys like an old friend.  I have so many people in my life that I love and cherish.  I have the privilege of being a servant.

Next year on my birthday, I’m making pineapple smoothies.  At least they don’t stain.  That’s my new goal for birthday success. Let’s shoot for small victories. . .

Filed Under: Embarrassing Moments, Humor, Motherhood, My life Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Odd and Curious Thoughts of the Week

June 21, 2012 By

I’m about to head to the coast for a family vacay, so I thought I’d leave you with these thought-provoking things.  Welcome to a week in my life. . .

(1) Stop it already with the swim coaches referring to the freestyle stroke as some sort of exaggerated ice-cream-scooping maneuver.  This is the third swim coach who’s yelled at my daughter to “Scoop!  Lift those arms and scoop that ice cream!”  Who comes up with these hair-brained examples that all swim coaches feel compelled to use? When’s the last time you raised your arms above your head in a swan-like fashion and dug your bare fingernails into a vat of ice cream? Any normal person would use a metal device with much less work involved, put the chocolate directly into a cone, and sit back licking it before it melts.  A normal person would not fervently kick while scooping over and over again, only coming up to breathe.  That person has a horrible bulimic binging problem and needs therapy.

(2) My son this morning decided he didn’t want to wear clothes.  A battle ensued with a slightly grey-haired 37-year-old and a 2-year-old.  I won, but only by a hair.  He beat me on the shoes.  I had to give a little.

(3) My daughter had another swim lesson today.  “Scoop, sweetie!”

(4) My daughter watched a movie this week called “Polly World,” whereby small Polly Pocket dolls come to life.  In this movie, which I assume is meant generally for children since the characters are pink and sparkles come busting out of their behinds, Polly’s mom died and her father was about to get remarried to an evil woman who wanted to ship Polly to boarding school.  Polly lands on stage at the talent show with perfect hair, along with her all-girl band, wearing a strapless dress.  I’m so pissed off at the writers of this movie, whereby I have to explain things like “moms dying” and “not all children get to grow up being in a rock band” and “you can’t wear a string bikini.  You’re five.”

(5) My daughter has announced that for her birthday, she would like every single Polly Pocket set ever created on this planet.  Alert: you’re getting a set of molding clay, an unabridged version of Heidi, and a set of oil pastels.  Deal wit it.

(6) I have a sudden urge for ice cream.  I just want to wallow in it.

(7) Stupidly, I answered a work phone call this week while I had both children with me.  Apparently my son wanted a certain book that my daughter took away from him and he was shrieking for it back and my daughter was holding it hostage. “Excuse me one second,” I said into the receiver.  “Give that back to him right now!” I yelled at my daughter.  “I need to take this call!”  Whatever works to create five minutes of quiet. My daughter gave me the most dejected and panicked look.  “But it’s the New Testament!” she said.  “He’ll ruin it!”  I grabbed it and handed it to my son.  It’s fine.  Jesus will understand.

(8) Of the food items that I’ve packed to go to the beach house, paprika made the list.  Who knew paprika would ever make a list of anything but useless spice one puts atop deviled eggs?  Who knew?

(9) “You really don’t have many wrinkles,” my daughter tells me.  “You have a few.  But you don’t look that old.”

(10)               It’s the weirdest thing.  The Polly Pocket movie has gone missing. I think Polly might be off scooping ice cream in an endless sparking river of cotton-candy with sprinkles.  She’s kicking like a movie star to make it to the other side, where her deceased mother has come back to life in order to hand Polly her first training bra and a designer glitter-bag chock full of inappropriate topics for children.  Yeah Polly!  Scoop that ice cream!  You can do it!

Filed Under: Humor, Motherhood Tagged With: , , , , ,

big apple of ambition

June 18, 2012 By

Recently, I friended an old high school acquaintance on facebook who turns out to be a creative director in an amazing ad agency in New York City.  Like Don Draper status with Emmy-winning commercials and fancy ties.  I looked down at myself, sloppy and tired, brushing the cookie crumbs off my pants.

Is this really where I wanted to end up?  Is this the woman I thought I’d be?

My mind was consumed with thoughts of the past as I unloaded the dishwasher.  Memories of television and fake eyelashes and In Touch magazine photo shoots.  People doing my make-up and eating at fancy places I could never afford. I thought of poor Martha Stewart, who didn’t like us much, but had such fabulous collections of things and a bubbly, youthful laugh.  I thought of the endless cabs and the fleeting second of fame and what it was like to feel special in this world.

I yearned to live there, then.  The Big. Ol. City. where the lights were always burning and air thickened in the summer – a mixture of urine and exhaust and pure, uncut talent. “What’s a working girl to do?” I’d say to myself as I rounded 24th Ave, my future yet untold.  Maybe I’d meet my husband for drinks, or coffee, or try that new vegan place uptown. My hair would be blond and my legs lean.  It’s not like everyone can run off to the Hamptons when the temperature rises.  I’d gut it out.  Because I’m a southern girl, and I can handle it.  I’d find my place in that rat race, settling down in a nice hole somewhere, munching on crumbs.

I remember being on an interview, sitting down with a bunch of marketing executives on 6th Avenue, my first child belly-flipping around in my abdomen and making me nauseous.  She was just the size of a bean then.  I think she was trying to tell me something.

My son suddenly awoke from his nap crying, ruining my perfectly good daydream about Dean & Deluca chocolates.  His pacifier had fallen to the floor and tears were streaming from his red, tired face.  The moment I picked him up, his arms curled around my neck like I might leave him forever and this was our one last embrace.  His head of thick, blond hair buried into my chest, and he let out the most peaceful coo.  I stopped what I was doing, carried him to my bedroom, and let him lay on my chest for a solid hour and a half.  He turned his head and sighed and flipped a few times.  I think he was as happy as he ever was in his whole two years of life.  As I lay there, rubbing his back, I let my mind rest on what might have been.  Or what I might have missed.

I chose this life.  You can hear the katydids screeching their evening refrain in the oaks and wonder if the tomatoes are getting enough water.  I eat farm eggs and bake bread on Mondays and hang clothes on the line.  Instead of going to court or summarizing deposition transcripts, I ask my husband about his day.  I make sure the toilet bowls are clean.  I find time to write. It’s the life I wanted, and one I fiercely fought to have.  But it’s not cosmopolitan.  No one cares if you wear designer jeans or have red underbellies to your high-heeled shoes.  No one in Austin even wears high-heeled shoes.  Why would you, when flip flops are much more comfortable, and you’re just headed out for Migas anyway?

My son woke up and we played the tickle game.  I did laundry.  I made macaroni and cheese with a breadcrumb topping.  My son wore one of my old hats and tried to dig ice from a Whataburger cup, which made me laugh.  My daughter and I stayed up late eating warm banana pudding.  My husband was out of town, so I let my daughter cuddle up in our down comforter with me, turning over sometimes in the middle of the night just to touch her arm.  Just to make sure she was still there.

Somehow I don’t think I’d get these memories living in the land of great hopes and expectations.  I’m not sure my soul would be rested enough.  I’m not sure my children would find their way.   It’s not home.  It’s not warm and inviting with room to breathe.

This is the place I want to live.   This is the life I choose.   Thank you, God, for leading me here.  For letting me float inside this quiet peace, amidst the wildflowers and artists and fields of expired ambition, gently blowing away with the wind.  Past the inland sea oats, whispering by the Indian blankets.  Far off into the hot, Texas sky.

Filed Under: Career, Motherhood, My life, Texas Tagged With: , , , ,

Eggs are excellent

June 14, 2012 By

For dinner, I made a lovely quiche.  I took my time rolling out the fresh piecrust dough.  I was teaching my daughter how to drape it over the pan, press it down, and trim it with a sharp knife.  Crimp and press, crimp and press. All the way around. She nodded in agreement.   We were on a cooking show, you see, and she was explaining to the imaginary audience that I was making the most excellent dish.

I smiled as I whisked the bright, yellow, happy eggs.  They came from our neighbor’s chickens down the street – one green, a few brown.  All different shapes and sizes. I added roasted broccoli and milk and two different cheeses and slid it into the crust.  An hour later, dinner would be served.  Even raw it was beautiful.  And later as I walked through the kitchen, I could smell the crisp forming on the sides, all golden and flaky and becoming the proud landlord of a cheesy, puffy center.  My palate was screaming for a wedge of sharp cheddar and a glass of smooth Pinot Noir.

Soon, we would all sit around the kitchen table, laughing and eating tossed salad and remarking on how broccoli never tasted so good.  “Why don’t we have this more often?” I imagined my daughter saying as she asked for seconds.  In this pretend world things like “made from scratch” and “mamma’s doing all this for you, kiddos” matter.  In my pretend world, children eat with grateful hearts, don’t whine or scrunch their noses up when they are lucky to have such food at their disposal.  In a pretend world, quiche is most excellent.  Like in my daughter’s cooking show.

Sadly, I don’t live in a pretend world.

The phrases that actually eclipsed my children’s mouths, once the plates of food were set before them, included, but were not limited to:

Why do we always have to have quiche? 

Ugh.

It’s too hot.

Me no eggs, mama.

I’m not hungry.

Can I have applesauce?

Yeah, yeah.  Applesauce!

I can’t pick out all this green stuff.  

Did I mention I don’t like broccoli?

Can I watch my show now?

And the like. 

Finally, I told my kids they could just starve to death for all I care.  My son then threw his plate on the floor with gleeful gusto like I had just said something wonderful and the dog proceeded to inhale all the contents thereof. Did my canine appreciate the homemade crust, or the two kinds of cheeses?  Did he notice the broccoli was roasted rather than steamed?  Was he benefiting from the organic, free-range nature of it all? He eats his own poo, so I kinda doubt it.

Later that night my daughter said she was hungry.  I told her there was always quiche.   She just looked at me funny and instead asked for water.

My kids don’t realize how good their life is.  How rich and beautiful and plentiful are their days.  Someday we will go to Guatemala, or Malawi, Africa, or Haiti, and they’ll appreciate their lot in life a tiny bit more.  They will hopefully become more thankful.  More grateful.  They will roll their eyes less and be excited about foods that do not contain the words “mac” or “jelly” or “nugget.”

“You really wouldn’t let us starve to death, would you mom?” my daughter asked before bed.   The fact that she asked made me chuckle.   “No, sweetie,” I said as I pulled her blond hair away from her face and scratched her back.

Little do they know they are getting eggs for breakfast.

That’ll show em.

Filed Under: Humor, Motherhood Tagged With: , , , ,

keepsake boxes

June 12, 2012 By

I’m a keepsake packrat.  Like the outfit my sweet baby wore home from the hospital or that brown plaid shirt my husband wore on our very first date.  It still has a little tiny hole in it from where his pledge pin went.  How cute is that?

These things mean nothing to anyone else, but to me, they are priceless.  I never take them out and run the tattered fabric though my fingers, or line the walls with monogrammed onsies in shadow-box frames (thank goodness, because we put people who prefer to do these things in group homes). Instead, I vacuum seal them, keep them in our attic, and freak out if my husband tries to move them to a storage unit or sets them anywhere near the corner of the garage reserved for Salvation Army Pick-up.

Ridiculous, our attachment to such things.  Are we thinking that somehow, we can transfer the memories to our offspring so they will also save them, and then we’ll have five generations of sleepers and Christmas dresses to store until the end of time?  “Oh, look honey.  It’s a tiny little t-shirt that says Back Seat Driver that some ancient-relative-I’ve-never-met wore! And this glass bottle with a cracked yellow nipple? Priceless!”

I have two huge keepsake boxes for my children, because I’m sure they will want to use the same napkins from my very first baby shower (I was given three extra packages!).  I’m absolutely positive my granddaughter will want to see the coloring books given to guests on her mother’s fifth birthday.  I even saved cupcake toppers, in case my great grandson wants to stick fifty-year-old toothpicks with rotten paper elephants in mounds of chocolate icing.  Because they so totally will.  Don’t spoil my dream.

To make matters worse, I included little cards indicating the significance of each one.  Like “you wore this dress on your 5th Birthday!” and “this was your favorite night-night book!”  I document such things because I want you, dear offspring, to at least feel shooting pains of guilt as you load this crap into your minivans and head to the Goodwill drop-off the minute I pack my bag for the nursing home.  Or, worse, it will force you to cram you children into old smelly clothes that have been sitting in a box for half a decade to please your delusional mother.  Then you can store them for another forty years until they are eaten by rats.  See how awesome I am? You can totally thank me later.

I thought of all this as my mother was lamenting how kids these days don’t sing the same songs that we did when we were kids.  No one in this century runs around whistling Father Abraham. And if they did, I feel kinda sorry for them. Because there are new fabulous songs with movements and catchy tunes that are more exciting than the old. We can’t transplant everything we loved into our children so that they will see them the way we did.  They have different eyes.  They live in a different world.   They don’t really want used and worn-out baby shoes, or every Christmas dress.  They want to experience it for themselves.  They want to start brand new keepsakes.  They want to bloom.

I went to the attic and stared at the boxes I’ve been saving.  Shoes and bonnets and recital pictures.  Albums and records and hundreds of pictures. I wonder why I feel it’s so important to live in the past.   Why I can’t free myself of the dusty memories.

If Jesus tapped me on the shoulder and said simply Follow me, I might just put my hands in a time-out for a sec to see if we could have a tiny little discussion about all these keepsakes.  I’m so totally there, this whole following God into the wilderness business, but can I negotiate a rider?  Like a teensy weensie addendum regarding the wedding album?  After all, it took me weeks to chronicle all that happiness and paste the little stickers in the scrapbook, and I’d hate to throw all that out.  Right?

As it turns out, it might just be stuff after all.  If those boxes burned to the ground, the stories are already saved in my heart.  They are woven throughout bedtime stories and summer nights and lightening bugs and popsicles.  My children will smell fresh bread and cut grass and strong coffee and be transported back home, where the pillows are soft and the sheets are dried on the line.  They will have so many memories and jewels in their crown that come from their childhood, and the stories that I write, and the love between their mother and father than transcends space and time.

Help me, Lord, to build up keepsake boxes in their hearts.  Today, when I lost my patience and yelled for everyone to just be quiet and said we were never, ever going to get smoothies as long as they lived if they were just going to sling them around the backseat, I didn’t mean it. These are the years of keepsakes, every one. Help me relish it and drop those moments into storage, to be pulled out, and laughed about, and treasured. 

The boxes can burn.  Because I’m filled with all those lovely memories that can’t be stripped away. These keepsakes don’t rot or get musty with mildew or bear someone else’s monogram.  Now that’s worth saving.  And passing on.

Filed Under: Love, Motherhood, Religion Tagged With: , , ,

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