Well HELL-o.

I just unpacked my suitcase for the first time in a month. Did you think I was either dead or still wandering the streets of New York?

I am neither, although I sort of wish I was still wandering around NYC– alas I am home and exhausted from BlogHer ’12. Most of my readers do not blog and don’t really care so much about what happened there– unless I humiliated myself, in which case I KNOW you people and you are like, “YES!! Tell us about that!”

Well I’m going to do just that. I have SO much to catch up on writing-wise.

I left for NYC on Thursday August 2nd which just happened to be Aubrey’s 8th birthday. She was not happy with me but I assured her that we would celebrate later this month. But consumed by Mommy Guilty of epic proportions, I went to the store and got all the makings of a movie night: popcorn, the girls’ favorite candies and two brand spanking new DVDs and then proceeded to make the most elaborate scavenger hunt of my life. (By “of my life,” I mean, “EVER.” )

New York was a blur of meeting with brands, stalking the best pillow I’ve ever laid my head on EVER (note- WAY MORE THAN ONE) and meeting up with other bloggers and writers. Sunday, after the conference me, Sister Wife and my friend Pauline Campos turned shopping into an Olympic event and took the Gold for best overall performance. I think I got around 18-20 hours of sleep in about 5 days.

Sister Wife and I landed in Memphis and switched right back into Mommy Mode. We ran by Target and by some miracle of God I got all the school supplies I needed for Aubrey and Emma to start school. I got them ALL, at one time. It was amazing.

The next day I spent unpacking, hanging with my kids, buying groceries and writing their names on all of their supplies. I was pretty amazed at how much Mommy Butt I was kicking.

I got the bigs off to school the first day and went to yoga, (I know. I exercised! Hell hath frozen over.)

I came home to start the most massive cleaning of my house in recent history. Sadie was with Sister Wife and her daughter and around 10:30 I thought, “Good lard I’m tired. I’m just going to lay down for a minute.” I woke up at 2:00pm dazed and confused.

Catching up on the blog and now that my kids are in school I have time to blog obsessively. Hooray!

I put on my left turn signal as I pulled up to the light outside the gate of my children’s school. In the midst of after school screams and carpool meltdowns, the act of flipping that blinker triggered a memory almost twenty years old.

I was clenching the steering wheel of my Dad’s 98 Oldsmobile so hard my knuckles were white.

“Turn on your blinker,” he said as I merged into the left turn lane.

My heart was beating in time with the blinker and I had to remember to breathe. I slammed on the breaks a little too hard, slinging my father forward in his seat. He braced himself on the dashboard and I released the steering wheel, letting blood rush back into my fingers as I let out a sigh, “I hate this.”

“Hate what? Driving?” He asked.

“No, I like driving— I hate turning left across four lanes of traffic. It’s so scary. I’m always afraid I’m going to hit somebody.”

It wasn’t my first time behind the wheel. My parents would take me to an abandoned airport and sit in the passenger sit with no cell phone to play on, no internet to surf and let me drive until I got bored. On Sundays I always ran to get in my dad’s car after church because I knew two things: 1) We would take the long way home, and 2) He would let me sit in his lap and drive.

He’d pull over on the side of the road, back his seat up as far as it would go and I’d climb onto his lap. I’d drive his tank of a car while he worked the gas and the breaks. My legs weren’t long enough to reach the pedals until I was almost 13 years old. He wasn’t in a hurry to get home, we’d cruise down side streets and our long potholed driveway at a comfortable five miles per hour.

But I finally had my learner’s permit and it was time to hit the open road.

“Light’s green,” my dad prompted me.

I hit the gas a little too hard and we screeched through the intersection, I flinched as other cars turned on my right hand side, certain that they would hit us. My shoulders relaxed and my grip on the steering wheel loosened as I straightened the wheel with relief. I was so glad that was over. We approached the next light.

“Put on your blinker,” he instructed.

“Huh? Why? Where are we going?”

“Put on your left blinker and get in the turn lane.”

I was incredulous but did as I was told. After another left-hand turn I glanced at my father. He pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up on the bridge of his nose, “Do it again.”

“DAD!!!!”

“Left blinker.” He said.

“Why are you doing this to me!? I told you I was scared of this!”

“Exactly. Do it again.”

With tears welling in my eyes I put my left blinker on and made the turn. At the next light I didn’t even wait for his instructions, I put on my left blinker, merged into the lane and turned.

What was wrong with him? He was supposed to protect me and help me, not terrorize me by exploiting my greatest fear. We traveled around my hometown for hours that afternoon, one left-handed turn at a time.

With each turn my anxiety decreased and by the time we got home I was more irritated at my father than I was afraid of driving.

As a parent myself, I can now recognize the gift my daddy gave me that day. He made me face my biggest fear while he was sitting beside me talking me through each turn. He took the opportunity to stand with me while I conquered a fear instead of letting me face it alone.

The sounds of my children in the back seat interrupt the rhythm of the blinker and my daydream. As I turn left across four lanes of traffic, I think of him sitting in the passenger seat determined that I could do anything without being afraid.

Share a memory of your dad! 

This post is even more convoluted than it sounds. And I’m pretty sure it might not make sense to anybody but me and if I’m going to be honest, I’m a little confused myself. But what’s new, right?

Well, a couple of weeks ago The Farm People (my in-laws) came to visit then took Aubrey and Emma to their house for one week. It’s also important to note here that during lunch one day my mother-in-law who I love LOVE, LOVE– asked casually, “Wonder where I could get a good deal on a buffalo head?” And it just made me love Jenny Lawson even more than I already do. If you don’t know who Jenny Lawson is, you should be FILLED WITH SHAME. If you don’t know why a casual comment about a taxidermied animal head made me feel close to her, you should read her book. I do not digress. This entire post is RANDOM and the mother-in-law was foreshadowing events to come…

Anywho, I wrote about the girls trip in my column:

I was a little anxious as my in-laws backed out of my driveway after Memorial Day weekend. Most people would be anxious to see their in-laws coming but not me. I was anxious because tucked in the backseat, they had Aubrey and Emma packed in to go stay on their Alabama farm for an entire week. 

Aubrey, my seven-year-old, would be fine. She had started packing her bag as soon as her Grammie asked if they wanted to go. (Toothbrush, bathing suit, overalls, rain boots.) Emma, my six-year-old, was hesitant. While Aubrey packed her bags, Emma wrapped her spindly arms and legs around me like a spider monkey and whispered in my ear, “But I love you so much Momma.” 

“I’m not going to make you go but I think you’ll be sad if you don’t.” Emma needed a little time away from me. Over the last few months she’s clung to me like glue, a result, no doubt of me resuming a full time job and being out of pocket a little more. I had been praying for ways to build her independence and thought this might be an answer. 

Emma was eventually sold when her Grammie said, “Oh I hate I won’t be able to give you your birthday present this week!”

“Is it just a card?” She asked.

“When have I ever given you a CARD for your birthday?” Grammie said.

“Okay, I’ll go.” 

So I was anxious when they pulled out of the driveway. I wasn’t sure how Emma would fare but knew if she could keep it together she’d have the time of her life. 

Pictures rolled in hourly via Facebook. Emma looked happy as she rode a horse with Aubrey behind her in the saddle. She grinned ear to ear as she rode beside her Pop Pete on his mule drawn wagon. She looked pretty content blowing out the candles on her birthday cake that my sweet sisters-in-law got her for a joint birthday party with her cousins. 

Emma called me almost every day and said, “Momma, I miss you really bad but I don’t want to come home yet.” 

She’d tell me what they’d done that day: made homemade raisin bread and chocolate chip cookies, rode four-wheelers and went swimming at the lake where she went down the biggest water slide she’d ever seen, played with puppies and jumped on the trampoline. As we’d wrap up the conversation I’d say, “Can I talk to Aubrey?”

“Aubrey, want to talk to Momma…” she’d whisper.

“No.” Aubrey would say, not even bothering to come to the phone. 

Clicking onto Facebook the following day, my heart almost came out of my mouth when I saw my seven-year-old holding a timber rattlesnake bigger than she is. It was obviously, (hopefully) dead and people on the internet freaked the freak out.

WARNING: YOU ARE ABOUT TO SEE A PICTURE OF A BIG ASK RATTLESNAKE. 

That’s Emma with her arms folded across her chest and looking exactly like I would if I was being forced to stand next to my sister whilst she handled a dead rattlesnake, but Aubrey wasn’t that happy to see Santa Claus last year. 

Aubrey called me later that day. “Did you see that rattlesnake?”

“I did. I almost had a heart attack.”

“Yeah, I thought you might freak. It WAS dead, you know?” Aubrey said.

“I had hoped.”

 When we picked the girls up this weekend, they had a few more freckles from being in the sun. They were a little bit blonder and a little bit taller. Emma was a year older. They had a few more inside jokes— their bond a little deeper than just a week before. They were a little wilder and a little bolder and their Momma was a little braver.

So the girls were snake handling and in the meantime, our cars got broken into for the second time in two months and some mammoth raccoon started knocking over our trashcans every night. My husband DOES NOT WALK AWAY FROM A RACOON and he went on a late night Walmart run for shotgun shells. This is where blogger #2 comes in. Jen at People I Want To Punch In The Throat– I almost always agree with the people who need to be punched, and she posted about how she doesn’t want a dog and I was like AMEN Sister Friend. (Also she and I are going to be BlogHer Newbies in New York in August and may possibly wear matching fedoras.)

Deep breath.

I wasn’t sure if the ammo was for the asshat that keeps breaking into our cars or for the raccoon, but either way, I felt better. Until he came running into the room yelling at me to come and hold a flashlight for him because he could SEE the coon through the laundry room window.

Y’all know how I feel about animals. Remember the goldfish that got me a letter from a reader telling me I was going to hell? I am a reluctant cat owner but there is no way in HAIL that I am going to chase my husband and/or a raccoon through my yard in the middle of the night. Not. Gonna. Happen.

So the Hubster found a trap and set it last night to catch the coon. He caught our kitten four times before I brushed my teeth. Then came in the room and begged me one more time to come hold his spotlight.

Me: I don’t love you that much. Go away.

Now, my friend Nikki Knepper (enter Blogger #3) of Moms Who Drink and Swear (who ALSO just sold her first book!) was on the internets about this time lamenting the fact that Roadhouse isn’t on Netflix and that due to the fact that she had no gluten free graham crackers she had to make a S’more with only chocolate and marshmallow.

(If you are still reading at this point I am giving you a gold star.)

Writing is hard, and I was so moved with compassion for Nikki that I texted her to get her mailing address so I could send her the best gluten-free cookies EVER.

Me: What’s your mailing addy?

Nikki: Ooooo! Are you going to send me that raccoon?

I laughed so hard I woke up Emma who had come to get in the bed with me.

Nikki: Dress him up cute.

I was still laughing when Zeb came back in the room and I told him what was so freaking funny.

Zeb: Tell her I’ll put him in a tux.

Then all I could think about was a raccoon in a tux, dressed like James Bond and sipping a dirty martini– which made me think about Jenny Lawson and was ALMOST enough to make me get out of the bed to hold his spotlight. I decided to watch Netflix instead. But alas, no Roadhouse.

My shoulders and neck throbbed, my lower back ached. I shifted on the couch uncomfortably.
“What’s the matter?” My husband asked.
“My back killing me. Will you rub it?”
“I guess,” he turned sideways to halfheartedly massage a shoulder.
“Uh-uh. Let me get on the floor so you can reach my entire back.”
I slid off the couch and rolled on to my stomach and took a deep breath. Then I gagged.
“What it is?” He asked.
“Smells like pee. Lemme move over a little bit.”
If smells are windows into our memories this particular smell was a portal directly to the nightmare of potty training three kids for what felt like 10 million years. I crawled over a few inches and collapsed, my face pressed into the rug.
“Ok, now.” I didn’t mean to huff the carpet but my face was smashed against it. “OH MY LANTA!”
“What?” Zeb asked.
“If it’s possible it smells even more like pee right here. What do our kids do on this rug? Just take off their pants and go?”
“For awhile they did.” He said.
“Good lord. Let me move one more time.”
I scooched over and tentatively put my face on the rug.
“Better?” He asked.
“Yogurt,” I mumbled.
“Huh?”
“It smells like yogurt right here…”
“So it is better then?”
“Relatively speaking.”
He massaged for as long as I could hold my breath then I got up off the floor and gasped for clean air.
“I’m going to take a shower.” I said as I swept miscellaneous carpet debris off my legs .
“I thought you already took one.”
“I did. I I’m going to wash my entire body, including my noseholes, in baby wash and think about how sweet our babies were when they were little. Hopefully those memories will help me forget what I just smelled. And I don’t think I’d stand barefoot on that rug anymore if I were you.”

We are white-knuckling it through the last two weeks of school. Every morning it seems more difficult to get everyone out of the bed, dressed, fed and out the door on time. As soon as I crack the door open in the room my 7-year-old and 5-year-old shared, they whine in unison, “I’m so tired! I don’t want to go to school today!”

I really do understand. Their little brains have absorbed all they can hold. They are tired of sitting still, tired of waiting their turn and tired of wearing shoes.

I remember the first few days of summer vacation as a little girl growing up in Alabama. The lazy days of waking up when your body told you it was time, instead of being jerked out of the bed and rushed off to school.

I remember the simple joy of not worrying about my clothes, but throwing on cut-off blue jeans, a t-shirt and flip-flops to walk on the dirt path to my friend’s house next door.  My feet would be covered with dust and mosquito bites by the time I got there and my hair would be a halo of frizz from the humid honeysuckled air.

My little sister, Blair, and I would squirt Palmolive on the trampoline then spray it with the garden hose and slip and slide all over the thing, while my mother watched from the laundry room, having heart palpitations and praying someone would invent a safety net for that thing.

Our joy lasted for about two weeks, just enough time for our eyes to become red from the chlorinated pool water and our first sunburns to begin to fade. Instead of waking up refreshed and excited about a brand new day, it would begin. The summertime blues.

“Momma, I’m bored,” I would whine to my mother.

“Y’all go jump on the trampoline.”

“It’s too hot and we did that yesterday.” My sister said.

Momma put up with that kind of business for approximately 60 seconds. Regardless of what Eddie Cochran sang, my Momma had a cure for “The Summertime Blues.” Her cure for boredom involved a bucket, a washcloth, all the baseboards and staircases in our house. If you started the day whining about how bored you were, you ended it with itchy eyes and a runny nose as your allergies reacted to all the dusting you’d done.

Now the tables have turned. I’m the mother at the laundry room window, thanking God that someone finally did invent a safety net for trampolines and making a list of all the small chores my girls can help me with this summer, should they be overcome with boredom.

I’m trying to spread our visits with out of town friends evenly over the summer, to break up the monotony, and working on organizing some summer play dates with friends to keep us busy.

In an attempt to avoid the depths of summertime despair, I have been signing up my two oldest children for Vacation Bible Schools and week long day camps all over town. They may not know what they are supposed to believe after a summer of theological vegetable soup. But they will be the most talented soccer playing, tutu wearing, singing and dancing, Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian kids in the school yard come September. And I’ve got a gut feeling my baseboards are going to be pretty clean, too.

 

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Ketchup is a Vegetable

by Robin O’Bryant

Giveaway ends June 13, 2012.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

After spending roughly eleventy-hundred hours in pediatrician’s waiting room over the last eight years of my life, I have made several observations that could make the experience more pleasant for everyone involved. Here is a complete list of the problems and my ingenious solutions.

Problem: Toddlers logrolling on the waiting room floor.

Solution: Install carseats with 5-point harnesses instead of chairs. All children not capable of sitting still must be strapped in.

Problem: Other people’s obnoxious children screaming, whining and throwing a fit.

Solution: Instead of a well child and sick child waiting areas at the doctors office I propose a different solution– Well Behaved Kids Waiting Room and Kids That Need an Exorcist Waiting Room. I will be the first to admit that occasionally my own children need to go to the latter room. I’d willingly take the walk of shame to take them there to save everyone else from having to deal with them.

My children have finally graduated from the rolling in the floor stage and thanks, in no small part to Steve Jobs and my iPhone, we are now capable of waiting for hours on end without me losing my mind.

But at this point I’ve discovered something even more annoying than listening to my kids screaming. That’d be listening to somebody else’s kid screaming. The screams of a known toddler are maddening. The screams of unknown toddler are enough to make you beat your head against the waiting room wall until you blissfully lose consciousness making your wait much shorter.

Last week I learned two very effective methods to stop the screaming. The first is simple, but possibly illegal— but desperate times, desperate measures. To stop the screams of an unknown toddler, simply flip the fire alarm, because apparently the antidote to high-pitched screaming and crying is more high pitched squealing. Win, win. Right? The fire alarm went off and suddenly the obnoxious kid who had been screaming for hours was silent.

The second way to stop kids from screaming at the doctor’s office is to threaten to punish them by counting. It’s a little known fact that children are terrified of numbers. Specifically the numbers, “One, two, and three.” Nothing is more terrifying to a toddler than hearing their parent say while never looking up from their cell phone, “Junior if you don’t sit down and stop screaming you are going to be in big trouble! Do you hear me! Stop. One…two…three…”

Cue hysterical laughter from unknown toddler.

Installing a few of these in the waiting room couldn’t hurt anything.