tennis rocks

March 11, 2012 By

I thought it might be fun to talk about my insanely awesome athletic skills.  I’m a Texas girl, and everyone here in the Lone Star State should know how to throw a football, identify an offside penalty, or at least jump a hurdle or two.  So naturally, my parents were ecstatic to have a tall girl like me on their hands.  There were so many possibilities.

But reality came crashing down when I dribbled the ball down the court the wrong way, and broke both my wrists (at the same time) in a very polished backward fall.  And there was that one attempt at softball, where my uniform never got dirty and the opposing team just aimed their bats in my general direction to see the ball land directly next to my ankles.   One summer my parents put me in a soccer league, which required an insane amount of running, of all the crazy things.  They even tried to enroll me in ballet, but I argued with the teacher about why I needed to learn all those silly positions.  I felt – more like deserved – to be leaping across the room in toe shoes after three weeks and fall in the arms of well-muscled men wearing tights.  Duh.

But one day, things changed.  Tennis came along.  This was something I could practice alone and advance at my own speed.  I actually liked it.  Seeing a glimmer of hope that I might lead a normal life and not become a colossal choir nerd, my parents enrolled me in private lessons.  They drug me across town to the country club with the rich kids so I could attend tennis camp and bought me little tennis skirts with blue and yellow stripes. I wasn’t that great, but I stuck with it, and in time I (barely) improved.

In high school, the tennis coach had pity on me and allowed me to play on the varsity team.  After all – I was a funny sort that kept everyone else’s spirits high.  I considered myself the team mascot, since I never won a match but got drug along to all the tournaments.  I kept everyone on the bus laughing and encouraged them to keep on smiling (“It’s just one game!  You’ll do better next time! Tally Ho!”).  Okay, so I didn’t actually use the words tally ho, since that sounds strangely English for a blond Texas girl, but you get the general optimistic mental picture.  I played games occasionally, but no one watched because they always knew I’d lose. But I didn’t care because it was jolly fun to smash the ball across the net and watch my opponent race to catch it.  I’d eventually hit a fly ball or miss altogether, which would cost me the match, but I considered those just minor setbacks.  I just needed to work on my consistency.

The Fall of my freshman year of college, dewy with hope and a youthful optimism, I rolled up my sleeves and hit the court with a bucket of balls and my old tennis racket.  It was a good stress reliever, the weather was warm, and I was suddenly filled with the reality that I could actually play.  It was so clear – like a vision laid out in front of me.  All those years of goofing off and I had a talent hidden underneath that finally blossomed like a beautiful flower.  I was a tennis player.  This was my destiny.   I was born for this.

That wasn’t true, of course.  I totally sucked.  I think it might have been heatstroke.

So fresh with my newfound love of tennis, and the reality that I just might compete at Wimbledon if I darn well set my mind to it, I contacted the athletic department.  I was going to try out for the Texas Tech University Tennis Team.  Yes, I was available to meet with the coach for an information interview.  Yes, I was more than happy to work out with the team.  And yes, why of of course I could play tennis at a very professional level.  State championship?  Well, no.  But I have many, many participation ribbons.  That should count for something.

For a month, I got to eat at the athletic dining hall, and made many friends with people from Sweden and Missouri and other far-off places.  I was fascinated by the whole experience and soaked it up with vigor.  I rolled up my sleeves and ate chicken-fried-steak with the best of them.  I ran laps and said “hell yeah suckahs!” and wore the perfect grimace on my face when faced with a tough opponent.

Then, I had to hit the ball.  Just some simple forehands and backhands and volleys at the net.  Nothing difficult or challenging.  Whoops, I said the first time around, covering my mouth.  How funny!  Did I hit that ball clear over the side wall?   I’m terribly sorry.  That just never happens.  And then began the comedic efforts of one who cannot actually play tennis at the college level, bumbling and running and jumping and missing and having a terrific ‘ol time.  The girl from Sweden just looked at me like I just recently landed on this planet.

The coach was so incredibly sweet, and pulled me aside after a few days to give me the tragic news.  “You didn’t make the team,” she said.  She offered some terrific advice, like perhaps years and years of lessons.  Or an arm transplant.  Perhaps a racket that hits the balls for you.  Or sticking with choir. I thanked her so much, and hugged the Swedish girl.  I smiled my big Texas smile.  “It’s just such an honor,” I said as I held my hand to my heart – not sure why since playing tennis isn’t at all akin to fighting in Iraq.   “Thank you all so much for this opportunity,” I bellowed, my eyes full of tears.  But by this time they had turned their heads, back to playing tennis. Glad to get the crazy girl off the court.

This, my friends, is what happens to a young girl with an inflated since of self-esteem with absolutely no talent behind it.  I went on to do fulfilling and wonderful things in college, like being a Resident Assistant in the dorms (is that pot I smell, mister?), singing baroque music in the concert hall (oh the beauty, oh the harmony), or meeting my friends in the dining hall for chicken strips (how do they make this gravy so yummy?).  I had a very dorky useless boring amazing college life, and I don’t regret for one day my near-brush with athletic fame and fortune.

I think the lesson to be learned here is to never give up. One day, you’ll realize what you’re good at and quit making a fool of yourself.

But what’s the fun in that?

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

Twenty Random Things I said to my Five-Year-Old this Week

March 7, 2012 By
  • No, honey.  Mosquitoes are not amphibians just because their eggs float on top of the water.  That doesn’t count.
  • Butterflies don’t make honey.  That’s a job only for the bees.
  • Where exactly are the heart pains?  Show me.
  • It doesn’t matter if bees and butterflies are best friends and they share nectar.
  • Yes (in response to “did you know that [Hey Soul Sister] is my favorite song?”)
  • I’m on a conference call in five minutes, so this is the last piece of tape I’m going to give you.  The last one.
  • No, you can’t go to [the babysitter’s house] just because you have a fever and can’t go to school and she lets you watch videos on utube.  You’re just stuck staying home with me.
  • Trillion is a word, remarkably.  Ask any government official.
  • You still need to make a get-well card for your great grandmother, despite the fact that “you’re sick too.”  You have a 99 degree temperature, and she’s in the hospital with a broken hip. It’s not the same.
  • Bees.  That’s it.  Those are the only guys that make honey.  Why is that so difficult for you?
  • Yes, you do have sags under your eyes
  • Earthworms are also not amphibians even though they wallow around in mud after it rains.  Still not the same.  But great question; I can see the confusion.
  • You’d rather have chicken-and-stars soup out of a can than this [homemade pasta with fresh spinach and feta cheese and basil pesto]?  So that’s a yes, I take it.  Super.
  • No.  I will not save that leftover two tablespoons of broth for you in the refrigerator for later.  When exactly will you eat that?
  • Please don’t keep giving your brother pacifiers behind my back. It’s annoying. He doesn’t need three of them at once.
  • I just love this necklace of yellow pom-poms and random beads you found in your dresser. I’ll treasure it forever.
  • Why did you leave me a “very special love note” that reads “glow in the dark?”  Oh, you just copied it from that puzzle box over there?  That’s cool.  It works.
  • Did I say it wrong?  The book clearly says “Repunzel.”  Oh, my bad.  “Barbie as Repunzel.”  That’s different.
  • I’m sorry your head feels like a thousand knives are shredding it into pieces. That really must hurt.
  • Right back at ya (in response to her double-hand squeeze plus two taps at the grocery store, which is our special way of saying I love you to each other in public so that it’s not cheesy and embarrassing).

And tomorrow’s only Wednesday. . .

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

Cable is evil. And I love it.

November 8, 2011 By

We are living in a quirky old rental while our house is being remodeled. The original place was a single room built in the 1800s with walls eighteen inches thick.  The owners and their forefathers kept adding onto that one room, with bedrooms and bathrooms popping from one single hallway like a branch sprouting new shoots.  To go from the bedroom to the kitchen for a drink of water requires running shoes, and there are light switches in strange places that, instead of turning on a light, actually fire up a heater or turn on an attic fan.  I still can’t muster up the courage to head down into the basement.  My dad went.  He said it was creepy.  But I can’t imagine a more perfect place.  My children now think of it as “the 1826 house” like we just picked up and moved there.  The landlords live about ten feet away in a house adjoined with a breezeway, and they are lovely people.  I brought the landlady so much pumpkin bread that she finally had to tell me to stop because she has a gluten allergy.

The most perfect thing about our rental is not the fact that it has a dug-out basement or that it’s quite possibly haunted or that almost every room has a different type of flooring.  It’s not the grand piano or the fact that the décor contains a large amount of arrowheads or that one bedroom in the house is actually referred to as “the Africa Room” due to the collection of safari memorabilia. The coolest thing is contained within the confines of a little blue cord.  Cable. I am in awe of this majestic invention of technology that we do not possess in our actual home.

Cable is something strange and foreign to the Hill clan, and we all gather around the television like cave men, pounding upon the box with clubs and beating our chests with glee.  It causes the Hill leaders to lose sleep and feel compelled to watch long Iron Chef marathons.  After all – we have a civic duty to see what the hype is all about regarding drunken women in New Jersey whose names sound like baby blankets.

I have grown so attached to the food network that I’ve become irrationally inspired.  I see the way chefs manage to put together entire meals from wheat flour, peas, and fresh tuna, and I feel that despite my lack of formal training I, too, could whip up a soufflé if my life depended on it in thirty minutes.  Because it’s a temporary living arrangement, we didn’t haul our entire spice rack over to our new pad, so the only two spices that reside in our rental kitchen are cumin and cinnamon.  But as you know, if you watch the food network, this should not be a deterrent. With cinnamon, some black truffles, goat milk, and a Wolf range, dessert is so completely done!

So the other night, when I’m staring into the refrigerator, I see sausage, leftover rice, and remembered we had a can of black beans in the pantry.  That’s it! I can make a killer Mexican Jumbalaya! After all, we have Cumin.  So what if I’m mixing cultures? Chefs do those things all the time, people.  Think Asian fusion.

My husband came home and I mentioned that we would be dining on Mexican Jumbalaya and tamales, along with some Italian beer and Halloween candy for dessert.  Suddenly, I hear myself speaking. I realize cable has rotted my brain.  Who put this menu together, anyway? Later that night, my daughter was speaking into a fake camera that’s located somewhere in the imaginary world she lives in.  She’s telling the people in television land exactly how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, going into painstaking detail for the television audience about how to slather on the jelly without it dripping.  Then she broke for commercials.

When we move back home, we will not have cable. I haven’t read a book in a month, my daughter is now dreaming of being a TV personality, and I’m inundated with thoughts of buying a hybrid car and a Vitamix.  But I will miss cable, that fancy modern invention, broadcast among the arrowheads in our 1826 home.   Rich housewives and fancy chefs will just have to plod on without this household of viewers.  We’re heading back to the dark ages.  To the days of flipping through magazines and checking our email on our iphones.  Reading books and watching NOVA on public television.  Somehow, some way, we’ll muddle through.

Filed Under: Humor, Technology, Television Tagged With: , , , , ,

sparkles

September 26, 2011 By

This weekend, we went out of town for a wedding.  Weddings are bright and happy, filled with love and flowers and sparkles.  Or in my case, poop and overflowing toilets, with oozing wounds and gas.

On the day of the wedding, I had to leave a bridal brunch early since my father-in-law, who just had surgery, needed to head back to the doctor to see if his wound was infected.  There’s no way to make that situation less disgusting.  We were all huddled around in the exam room trying to distract ourselves with models of spines and feet bones so we wouldn’t see the surgical tech digging into his shoulder with a long needle trying to get out all the puss.

And finally, after the wedding vows and songs and exchanging of rings, we reached the reception, whereby my son began a tirade of screaming and thrashing in extreme fatigue.   At that, without even a bite of cake and an untouched plate of food sitting on a table somewhere, I began a thirty-minute drive to take my son and husband’s grandmother home.  My son was passed out cold, but she was in a chatty mood, and went into great detail, bless her heart, about the effect of beans on her digestive system.

The next day, it was back to grandma’s for cornbread and a pot of beans (we’ve covered that! I know the full effects!) and after hours of sitting around in an extremely hot house, it was my son’s nap time.  But the moment I laid him down, I heard a strange rushing-water sound coming from the restroom.  I went to investigate and discovered a bubbling witch’s brew of urine-laden water overflowing from the toilet basin and pouring onto the tile floor.  I screamed as my drugged father-in-law stumbled in like he was woken from the dead.   I told him I needed a plunger.  Like, immediately.  Perhaps some Pine-Sol?  He headed for the garage (what? why is this essential item in the garage?) while I tried sop up the water with towels and bathmats.

The day actually got slightly better when I did my mother-in-law’s laundry.  That should tell you something.

On the seven-hour drive home, the kids did great.  No poopy diapers in the car and no major breakdowns.  But Sunday night, after an exhausting weekend, I looked down after getting my son out of the high chair and saw brown things on the carpet.  It was, in fact, poop.  Literally dangling from his shorts and dropping to the floor below in small little clumps.  I rushed him into the bedroom to change his diaper, whereby he immediately stuck his hands directly into his filthy, half-exposed diaper, squished his fingers around in the contents before I could stop him, and then stared at his crap-covered hands in wonder.  I later had to go around the house like it was an Easter Egg Hunt trying to find poop droplets.  I ended up on my knees scrubbing the kitchen floor until my hands stung from the bleach water.

All in all, a really fabulous weekend.  I love weddings.  Peace and joy and sparkles, after all.

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

Amanda (from Texas)

September 9, 2011 By

Dear Martha Stewart,

Today, my son projectile vomited all over my shirt.  I had to change into a gown at the pediatrician’s office, walking out with a pile of my son’s throw-up still remaining on the little table.  Try getting that out with a stain stick.

Years ago, in your post-prison haze, I took a leave of absence from my job.  I said goodbye to my husband for the summer and jetted off to New York in a vainglorious attempt to work for you.  To impress you.  Befriend you.  After all – it’s ME!  Funny, confident, dancing-in-the-hallways me!  If I could just have a chance to meet you face-to-face, you’d totally agree with my three best friends that I’m fabulous.  We’d toast to our newfound friendship, sewing monograms onto calico pillows while sipping on chai tea.  I’d finally admit that I’m a wretched gardener and we’d have a grand afternoon plotting total world domination.

Okay, so it was reality television.  Not exactly the classiest venue.  But the fifteen folks who joined me in New York were not pond scum, but really successful people, chosen over a million folks to be talking with you about summer bulbs and apricot preserves, vying for a job where we could work with you on a daily basis.  This was my chance.

On day, in the middle of making a wedding cake to be sold at a bridal expo on 5th Avenue, your daughter paid us a visit.  I asked her a question I’d always wondered about.

“What was it like to have a mother like Martha?”

I envisioned parties of grandeur, with sugar cookies piled high with edible flowers and friends dancing around maypoles drinking cucumber water and reciting old nursery rhymes.  Alexis just gave me a flat look and said with hardly a breath that it was hard.  “Once,” she said, “when I was young, I tried to bake her a cake.”  I saw little Alexis running around in my mind in a petticoat, flinging sprinkles around with glee.  “She yelled at me for making the kitchen all sticky.”

Everyone chuckled with nervous laughter, because the reality was too sad to imagine.  We were on television.  5th Avenue, no less!  Let’s not focus on what the woman did years ago.  She’s changed!   So what if her daughter is dressed in black and seems to have a sour attitude, living with the memory that she never could live up to her mother’s standards.  We’re living in New York City.  Street vendors and expensive four-inch heels. Who-hoo!

Now, Martha, let’s be honest.  I didn’t have to meet you personally to realize you’re a big fan of order.  Rationalized numbering.  Labels.  You like steel and grey and windows and white, all clear of clutter and chaos.  You could literally eat on the floor of your office.  Somehow in this imperfect world we live in, you’ve found a way to have perfect rows of cabbage.  I respect that.  The ability to yell at the gardener and demand he remove the one wilted head on the end of the row?  Genius.

But I slowly allowed myself to question the long-standing truth that (1) you would surely think I’m special (2) we would be swapping sweet potato recipes long into the future.   Perhaps you weren’t the person I imagined.  A crack was starting to form in the armor of my Martha-ness.

The thoughts naturally arose – does anything gross happen in your world?  Have you ever accidentally peed in your pants or had to comb lice out of your daughter’s hair or invented a recipe that tasted like goat manure?  Surely once in your life you thought “I’m going to hurl.  I’m totally throwing this out and ordering pizza.”

Weren’t there ever a few moments in life, brief as they might be, that you cupped your hands over your mouth with delight at the beauty of seeing your child try to bake you a cake or make you a valentine or knit you a crooked potholder?  Is there ever a wilted cabbage you just don’t have the heart to pluck?

One morning, we got to have brunch with you in Bedford.  I was so confident you’d finally love me that I casually strolled over to the cappuccino machine in your gigantic kitchen and made small talk about the flower arrangement.

“Want one?” you asked me as the coffee machine hummed and hissed.  I tucked my hair away from my face and nodded.  Just me and a few pals, hanging out at Martha’s.  No biggie.  I was prattling on about how we can’t grow peonies down south, due to the hot weather and all, when I realized by the look in your eyes that you weren’t even listening.

“Are you Amy, from California?” you suddenly asked.

“No,” I stuttered.  “I’m Amanda.  From Texas.”  You briskly walked back in front of the camera to give a lesson on making waffles.  I was hurt and ashamed.  All the while talking of peonies, for goodness sakes.

The moment we left your place, after taking a tour of the greenhouses, hearing about elephant ferns, and watching your brilliant black horses pad around the back 40, we climbed in the car back to our quarters and, suddenly, it was if we didn’t exist.  Just another day in the office.  Just Amy from California.

I suppose the folks we idolize don’t always turn out to be as amazing as we had hoped. There is no pleasing you.  You will always be yelling at the gardener, the sticky child, the producer.  No cabbage or bath towel or applicant will ever be good enough.  I suppose if I get my book published, I won’t be back on your show to promote it, eating those yummy scones and sipping coffee backstage, waiting for hair and makeup.  Which is unfortunate.  Those were really good scones.

I don’t have to be walking along Broadway to feel my lungs fill with fresh air.  I can do that in my own backyard, watching my daughter scoop piles of pebbles into bowls and call it popcorn.  She will come running over to me with messy hands and a popsicle-stained face, showing me a stick that reminds her of a telephone.  My son will someday break a lamp or get motor grease all over my travertine floor and eat so much fried chicken in one setting that he’ll groan with delight, wiping grease on his jeans as he stretches back in his chair.  This is the texture and fabric of life.  It’s not monogrammed.  It’s not in perfect order.  It’s vomit-down-your blouse crazy.

So screw peonies.  I’ll take fields of bluebonnets, swaying in the breeze, my kids on the side of the highway buried in them, squashing the flower heads in their Sunday best.  It’s then, and only then, I realize they have buggers in their noses.

Yours most truly,

Amanda (from Texas)

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

technology rehab

September 2, 2011 By

When I was growing up, we didn’t have cell phones.  We didn’t have email.  What we did have, located in the smack center of our house on the kitchen wall (adorned with 1970’s fern wallpaper), was a regular home telephone.

It was yellowy-beige with a ten-foot-cord that could be stretched precariously around the corner when privacy dictated.  But there really isn’t any privacy in the center of a kitchen.  Every time my dad came in to make popcorn, he’d just wave and say “tell [random boy I was talking to] hello!  Are you coming in the family room to watch Hunt for Red October?”  Then he’d just grunt and pour himself a soda and I’d be left in utter humiliation.  Then, after I thought the coast was clear, I’d spot my mother doing something very important like ironing linens or peeling grapes next to the door so she could listen in.

Kids now-a-days have it so easy.  Televisions in every room. Cell phones on every belt.  Email and chatting and texting and instant messaging– the amount of unbridled privacy is endless.  It scares me to think what my daughter might be saying someday in the free, bare silence of modern technology.  I can’t snoop around the corner and then just say “What? I was just coming in to get a drink!” if I got busted.  I think I’ll force our family go back to the days of old, where the father sits around each night reading the bible and we all stitch our own dresses out of flour sacks.

It’s amazing how dependant we are on technology.  I’m one to talk. My commute home involves about twenty minutes of cell phone chatter with two minutes of checking my lipstick.  So the other day, when I forgot my phone at home, it was torture.  Torture, I tell you! What the heck was I supposed to do on the drive home– listen to the radio?  The thought of it brought back vague memories of youth.  Days when I made mix tapes and hoped to push the stop button before the DJ broke in and ruined the song’s ending.  In my extreme boredom, I started surfing through the channels.

I tried NPR, but they talking politics. I looked ahead at the string of red taillights and realized there was a wreck on the highway. Great. I couldn’t call home to tell the babysitter I would be late, and there was no way I could stop.  I felt trapped and isolated.  All I had to keep me company was top-forty radio, spiked with loud advertisements about luxury cars, a Joss Stone CD with a scratch, and boring economy talk.  My hands began to shake and I felt sweat forming on my brow.  I was unsure if I could make it.

Relax, I tried to tell myself.  Think.  Pray.  Flex your abdominal muscles or make a mental grocery list.  But after about three minutes, I checked all of these items off the list and was instead punching the radio buttons in a futile belief that something interesting would blare through the speakers.  I was looking at half an hour more.  I looked the car next to me and saw the driver laughing away while talking on his blue tooth. I thought I might need a Zanax.

After being on the road for forty-five minutes with no cell phone and finally landing safely at home, I had an epiphany.  I need technology rehab.  I’m an embarrassment.  I can’t go less than an hour without Tivo, iTunes, cell phones, or texting?  What has become of me?

Maybe it would be nice for the family to have only one phone with a ridiculously long cord. And how wonderful to enjoy the radio again, singing along with the window down —

Hold on a sec.  My cell phone is ringing.  I need to tell my best friend who got fired on Project Runway.  She was in a meeting and her cell phone was out of juice (she forgot her car charger – again!) and she just got home to find her Tivo was set to record a movie and she didn’t catch the show and I didn’t answer her text because I was in the middle of sending my husband a picture of our empty milk carton as a subtle hint to go to the store.  You understand.

Maybe someday, we’ll abandon all this junk and just sit around by the fire reading the bible and sewing.  Or maybe, even better, there’s an app for that.

Filed Under: Career, Embarrassing Moments, Humor, Technology Tagged With: , ,

martha stewart clean

August 31, 2011 By

I never thought I’d say this, but thank you, Martha Stewart.

 

Today, after we returned home from the grocery store with items sitting randomly about the kitchen table, my son grabbed a bottle of bathroom cleaner and waddled off.  I was at the stove cooking asparagus and wondered why my son was so quiet. I went to investigate. As it turned out, he unscrewed the lid and poured the entire bottle of bathroom cleaner on the carpet.  And I had no idea if he drank some.  I immediately called my doctor, who referred me to poison control, and the conversation went something like this:

 

“Hello?” I asked in a panic. “Poison control? I think my son might have ingested some bathroom cleaner. “

 

“Oh no,” a woman said.  I could hear the seriousness in her voice.  “What brand of cleaner was it?”  She was typing something into her computer.  Probably something along the lines of Yet another negligent mother who let her kid drink poison.  Call CPS immediately to have her parental rights revoked.

 

“Martha Stewart Clean,” I said.

 

“Uh huh,” the lady said.  There was a pause.  “I think you’ll be fine.”

 

“But don’t you want to know the active ingredients?” I asked.  I really was hoping I didn’t have to get his stomach pumped, or worry about him being unconscious, or burning a hole though his intestines.  He didn’t seem sick.  He was laughing and pointing to my nose and trying to moo like a cow, but still. 

 

“Yeah sure,” she said as she bit into a sandwich, stuck in some cubical in Dallas.  “If you want.”  What’s wrong with these people?  Aren’t they experts in poison? Don’t they have some advice?

 

“Water, Citric Acid, and plant-based detergent.”

 

“Yeaaah,” the lady said, her mouth full of ham.  “I really wouldn’t worry about it.  That’s harmless.”

 

I wasn’t sure whether the judgment in her voice related to the fact that I am a negligent parent, not noticing that my son walked right past me holding a bottle of detergent, or whether I spent five dollars on a bottle of distilled water with a few drops of citric acid.

 

In any event, this stuff won’t kill your kid if they accidentally drink it, and it managed to create suds when I tried to soak it up from the carpet, so I’m never buying anything else.  I’m a loyal Martha Stewart Clean consumer (when it’s on sale). Or, conversely, maybe I should just pay more attention to my child when they walk by.   The next time, it might be a butcher knife.

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

one liners, part two

August 29, 2011 By

Five year olds are officially hilarious.  At least I think so.  Here’s some recent statements said around our house that made me laugh.  I laugh a lot.

(1) “You see that?” she asked as she pointed to my son’s privates.  “I’m going to call that a hankerdoodle.  So if I ever say the word hankerdoodle, you’ll know what I’m talking about.”

(2)  (a few weeks later, during a bath) “Mom, don’t forget to wash the hankerdoodle.”

(3) “Did you meet some new friends at school?” I ask.  She shrugs. “We didn’t have formal introductions.”

(4) “I scratched my arm and it feels like I’m being scraped by a giant cheese shredder. A GIANT CHEESE SHREDDER!”

(5) “I’m going to call grandma and tell her I got crunched” (after her brother bit her in the face)

(6) “I love you infinity times infinity plus one and then times a hundred.  Plus two.”

(7) “Why can’t we ever go to Chunky Cheese-its? I think they have pizza.”

(8)  “You can just call it recess, mom” (rather than the more inferior “playground”)

(9) “One hole in my nose is all plugged up and I just don’t know what to do about it.”

(10)               “Why are all the states united?  What does united mean anyway?”

(11)               (Sobbing). . . “I just think it’s so sad that Angelina Ballerina lost her doll and that she didn’t get it back and I tried to look at another book that was happy to get over it but it just didn’t work.”

(12)               “I don’t want you to put bows in my hair.  I never want to wear bows.  Ribbons are okay.  Just no bows.”

(13)               “When I grow up, I want to be a cheerleader, a mommy, and a nurse,” she says.  (“Can’t you elevate that to doctor?” I ask.  “Maybe a dermatologist even?”) “No.  I want to be a nurse. Nurses get to leave the room first.”

(14)               “I don’t need a nap.  I’m not tired.  And I’m not being mean.”

(15)               “I’m so glad I have you for a mommy.”

(16)               “If I wasn’t born and another kid was born instead and you named her the same name as me, would you love her just the same?”

(17)               “You can always get more money.  Stores will give you change.”

(18)               “If he can’t say the word “passy,” (referring to her brother’s pacifier), it’s okay if he just says “assy.”

(19)               (Crying). . . “I miss my old teachers. I want to write them a card first thing tomorrow when I wake up.”

(20)               (The next morning). . . “Card? What card?”

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

the wedding album

August 27, 2011 By

It never occurred to me when we got married to get our wedding photos printed in black and white.  I’m not sure why not; they make everything look classy and would hide the fact that I thought yellow, handmade bridesmaid dresses were a good idea. And now, with the explosion of scrapbooking, you can get picture corners and three-tiered wedding cake stickers and cool quotes like “love conquers all” and “OMG! Grooms cake!”  I simply had to recreate my wedding in an album.  With sayings and fake diamonds that could be applied with craft glue.

Over the last decade, I’ve occasionally (as in no more than seventeen thousand times) contacted our wedding photographer to see if he could print one or two pictures, seeing that we didn’t have two nickels to spend on photos when we got married.  He was finally so sick of (1) me and (2) looking up negatives from years ago that he sold me the entire box of negatives for two hundred bucks as long as I promised to forget his phone number.

I trucked down to Wolf Camera and dumped my box-o-negatives on their counter, convinced by the one-hour-guarantee that I would have my scrapbook completed by sundown. The store employee glanced at the negatives with disgust and touched them with the tips of his fingers like I had brought in cartons of old expired yogurt.

The employee told me I should make three-by-five prints of every negative so I could see what pictures I like best.  But that would require more money and another trip to the camera store, and I didn’t have any use for pictures that made me look the size of a soldier ant.  So I declined and just tried to look at them in the store to narrow them down, but all I saw was a woman in a black dress apparently holding dead black flowers.  I’m not good at translating opposites.

While I’m trying to determine if people’s eyes are open or closed in pictures taken years ago, my son decides that he hates camera stores and that he needs to eat immediately and that, in case I was unaware, his arms do have the capacity to hit random objects and pull down camera cases as we barrel past them in a stroller.  Despite the fact that prints were seventy cents each, I just told the employee to process the entire box and left with my screaming son.

Two weeks later, I went to pick them up.  My hands were sweating and my mouth salivating at the mere thought of all those black-and-whites.  The kissing.  The cake cutting.  The dancing.  The distant glares out a country-club window.  The re-creation to make our wedding look better than it actually did.

When I got home, I ripped open the package of photos, anxious to pick out which ones would be enlarged to hang on our upstairs wall.   But I didn’t recognize any of faces.  I didn’t have a clue who all those people were staring back at me on paper.  That certainly wasn’t my Four-Seasons cake.  Is that a Catholic priest?  Why are there twelve bridesmaids standing around holding roses?

As it turns out, someone named Rosalinda got married to a short dude and had an inordinately large number of cousins.  They had a fabulous time!  There was a DJ and cake!  There were lots of smiling faces and cheap alcohol!  I shook my head.  It’s not like I could go back to the photo lab and say, uh, sorry.  This isn’t my wedding. I want my three hundred dollars back.

A few mixed in the bunch were of me in my wedding gown, half sun-damaged and faded.  There was one of my grandmother with her face in a contorted position, and yet another of me trying on my wedding dress, a petticoat up around my neck. I thought perhaps I should just embrace the disaster and make an album dedicated to Rosalinda instead.  They were such a joyful bunch. After all, I have all the stickers.

Filed Under: Humor Tagged With: , ,

Devotional for the screw-ups

August 19, 2011 By

Let’s just be honest.  I would NOT be perfectly happy living in a double-wide trailer, trying to decipher smudged expiration dates on ground beef packages in a Wal-mart somewhere in Oklahoma. Not in the land of opportunity.  Not in a country filled with air conditioning and sugar soda and live musicals.  I don’t need much.  I can take or leave Neiman’s.  But I’d work two jobs and struggle and save and find a way to move into an apartment with fake granite countertops and at least wear fancy dresses from Target.  This might mean I’m a horrible example to humanity.  Perhaps I treasure material goods over all else.  Well at 6 am, people, the only thing on my mind is a grande pike roast coffee with two raw sugars.  It’s just human nature, for goodness sakes.

 

Someone asked me recently how I professed to be a follower of Christ’s teachings when I am so ambitious and competitive.  “Those are goals of the world,” this person said, “as opposed to the teachings of Christ, which is to serve others over self.”  I was caught off guard.  I never really thought of the two as mutually exclusive, like to follow Christ you should just chill on the bottom rung of the ladder, eating peanut brittle and snickering, watching those other poor saps climb to the top.  If I had only known, I’d have never graduated college or gone to law school, clawing and scratching my way to wonderful, fulfilling jobs.  I could have gone to work at Wendy’s and saved me all that trouble.

 

I think there is a fine line between living the life God called you to live – using the talents and strengths you were born with to their fullest potential – and crossing the line toward an unyielding race for power and wealth.  As painful as it can be, I think it’s good for folks to question your faith and call you out in public once in a while.  It makes you actually wonder if you are living out the life God wants you to live.  And maybe, you’re not.

 

I like to be reminded of what’s most important in a way that’s real and honest.  A devotional for the screw-ups.  I want a mirror to constantly reflect my own life back in my face to make sure I’m using my talents for God’s glory and not my own.  But for goodness sakes people, don’t reflect life directly into your eyes.  You’ll see a long history of acid-washed jeans and huge bangs and pants that were intentionally baggy at the hips and tight at the ankles.  This might cause permanent blindness and defeat the whole point of the exercise.   Aim it at your cheek or something.  

 

I walked into a Christian bookstore to find such a book. Daily devotions for “real women.” I thought I’d just know it when I saw it, like there would be a woman on the cover with a red wine stain on her shirt and her hair pulled back in a greasy pony tail, attempting to make Chicken-with-40-Cloves-of-Garlic while her kids are in the background drawing on each other with markers. But as I would unfold the stories, day by day, I would unearth a person who was genuinely happy with her life.  Who had found her true calling. I’d be drawn to her and feel we were kindred spirits, reading with interest how she found time to worship when she needed to make peanut butter sandwiches. She would remind me in daily increments that I’ll totally make it, even if I did slip up and say a creative slew of curse words to my boss in a fit of anger about a budget report.  She would gently remind me that such behavior is not becoming to the person God calls me to be, and I’d agree, realizing that such words defame God and are icky and crass like the shoes that I refuse to give up to Goodwill. Do it! she’d say. Put them in a paper sack in your garage and haul them off!

 

Most of all, she would tell me that it will be okay.  That I didn’t have a choice to be ambitious.  After all, we all must answer to the call God gives us the best way we know how.  And just maybe, she’ll tell me about her own momma, sweet thing, who scrapped and saved in their double wide outside Tulsa to buy everyone Taco Bell.  Just to make sure I’m really getting the point.  Jesus spoke in parables too, but he used classy stuff like wine and wheat stalks instead of double cheese burritos.

 

So I looked for this book to tell me I was okay, most of the time. But all I saw staring back at me on the shelves were pictures of teacups, fake steam gently rising to the top, all calm and pink and reflective, sitting in pretty little displays. Women with great teeth and well-combed hair reflected in great detail how busy they are vacuuming and praying at soccer games.  They are probably kind and lovely women, I’m absolutely and/or possibly sure of it, but where were the milk stains and reading glasses?  Where were the unmade beds and dirty dishes?  What about the burritos? They didn’t chastise me for not praying every morning and tell me there is no valid excuse (none!) unless I’m in the hospital undergoing surgery for an abdominal infection.  Then, maybe I get a pass.  They just kept being nice and respectful.  They keep flashing that unrelenting, pasty smile. I need honestly, people. I need that gut-wrenching kick in the pants.

 

So I sighed and kept walking through the store.  Past the school supplies with “I Heart Jesus” scrolled in bubbly letters.  I strolled past the scripture mints and the bible covers and the ceramic plates that proclaimed the goodness of all things biblical.  They had complimentary coffee, but the house blend was empty.  Figures. I pondered for a moment whether my life would be exponentially better if I just owned a tea kettle emblazed with a quote from Psalms.

 

As it turns out, there isn’t a book geared for overworked moms who are intimidated by all those perfect teeth.  Maybe I’ll write it.  I’ll encourage these women to keep going, despite the fact that they drank one glass of wine too many and let their kids watch cartoons the following morning for three solid hours.  Despite the sippy cup that used to contain milk but somehow got stuck in-between the minivan seats and turned into curds and whey.  Despite missed life lessons and botched biblical opportunities and tangled tongues.  We can remind each other that tomorrow’s a new day.  There are more battles to overcome and morals to teach.  Keep praying!  Keep trying!  Refrain from insulting Oklahoma!

 

There goes that ambition again, wild and out of control. Maybe one day I’ll be lucky enough to sit through a tornado on the high plains, scared and shaking, wearing a cheap Wal-mart dress and hugging my knees.  I’ll hear God’s voice as clear as an arrow and realize that this world is but a wind that will pass.  That his love is forever.

 

It’s possible I might hear God where I am, through the limestone rock that encases my house, amidst the hum of the air conditioner, beneath the sound of my surround-sound stereo, over the laughter of my children, and despite the jangling of my Tiffany bracelet.  But I really have to listen. That’s what a devotional should really be about, anyway.  To drown out the nonsense and keep your ear to the ground.

 

Keep listening.  It’s easy in Oklahoma.  Not so much everywhere else.

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

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