Month: June 2011

About ten years ago, we did some landscaping.  I told Big Daddy that we should hire a landscape architect to draw the plans for us and we could do the work.  Landscape architect?  Little woman, he says, do you lay in bed at night and think of ways to spend money.  Sometimes it’s the only thing that takes my mind off my nighttime hotties.

When I have an idea to do something that involves BD’s cooperation, I float it out there like a balloon.  If he has an absolute fit, I don’t do it.  If he has a mild fit with muttering about how he needs another bike, I do it.   How many bikes do you need, I mutter back.  Lordy, don’t ever let him decide to count my jeans.  Ankle, skinny, cropped, wide, stretch, not stretch, dressy, not dressy……..

When the landscaper came, I had a table full of pictures from magazines.  I took her around my house.  See, I said, it’s cottagey and not perfect and my landscaping has to be like that.  So you want a controlled chaos look, she says.  Yes, yes, just like my hair.  She drew us a plan and it took six years to finish.  The first time we went to the nursery to buy bushes we had $300.00.  In Nurseryville, that’s really funny.  We moved dirt until we couldn’t lift our arms to even drink the beer we desperately wanted.  If you want to know why landscaping is so expensive, try doing it yourself because it will beat you until all you can say in an itty-bitty voice is, “Mama, mama……..help me.”.

Was it worth it?  Every time I walk out the door, I can’t believe I get to live in this house.

You might not know this, but Branson doesn’t have a real book store.  I wanted to buy a book while we were there and couldn’t find one on the shopping center directory so I asked somebody working in one of the stores.  She told me they have a Books A Million at one of the outlet malls and a Christian bookstore, but not a regular book store. 

I went into the 5 & 10 that’s been in business for fifty years.  I’ve never seen such a selection of hairnets in one place.  Light brown, medium brown, dark brown, blonde, red, black, auburn.  You name the color and there’s a hairnet for it.  I did not even know that you could buy hairnets anymore.

But no books. 

I saw my little ballerina doing this and bummed a book off somebody to make the time pass and someday I’ll probably regret not buying myself a couple dozen of those hairnets.

There’s this fancy shmancy thing you can do to post on your blog when you’re gone.  You set it up for the day and time you want it to post and it automatically does it.  Oh, technology.  Is so techie for me.  It works like a charm unless you save it as a draft instead of publish and then your little plan goes poof.

This learning curve is way too curvy for my wee little brain.

Mallie Bee and I are going to Branson for a few days with her dance team for a national competition.  Branson?  Seriously?   A few years ago when she got big into the dance thing, Big Daddy and I went to her first competition.  Oh sweet Jesus in a leotard.  It was like watching Toddlers and Tiaras and Tramps.   

Big Daddy looked like he was either having an out-of-body experience or going to explode as we watched some of the most godawful dancing you can imagine.  The highlight was when a couple of dads wheeled out a cage.  With a kid inside.  The music starts and she comes roaring out of the cage and her mom is behind us yelling, “WORK IT GIRL!!!!”

At the awards ceremony, Caged Animal Girl won a Sophisticated Gold.  Nicely done pole dance routine.  The sponsors of this dance cluster explained that some of the trophies were damaged in transit and replacement ones would be mailed.  Big Mama with the tats says, “That’s so ghetto.”   And I believe she would know what does and does not qualify as ghetto.

Big Daddy hasn’t sat through an entire competition since so he won’t be accompanying me.  Too bad for him that he’ll miss out on all the fun and what’s sure to be an exciting evening when I go see Andy Williams and Yakov Smirnoff.

I have a white slip-covered sofa.   People always tell me that they’d never have a white sofa, but once a month I throw that baby in the wash and problem solved.  It’s taken a hit from a glass of red wine and blueberry pie and came out just as purty as ever.  I love when it comes out of the wash and is back on.  Clean, white, perfect.  I like it so much that I prefer nobody sit on it.  Seriously.  Could ya not sit on the big white thing in the living room that’s meant to be sat in?  Over the years, I’ve recognized this as obsessive-compulsive behavior.  My dad one time scrubbed the hose because it was dirty, so amongst my people this is called weekend chores.

One day, I said to Big Daddy that this sofa smoothing was making me question my sanity.   Do you think it’s time for me to take the bus to Crazy Town?  Nah, he says, I’m a little kooky with the water thing.  True that, as the youngins say.  Our back yard looks like we’re operating a commercial bucket farm with all the containers to catch water and that’s with a rain barrel.  I have no idea why he collects water.  Or drops his undies by the front door.  Or puts fish in the Cialis tub.

I’m a little concerned for the Big Daddy and he may score high on the Nut Chart, but the cat just walked across the sofa and I’ve got to smooth the paw prints he just put in the thing or I will have some sort of anxiety attack that will require a pill.  Some days nursing my own mental illness leaves me no time to nurse anyone else.

When it’s like this, I don’t have any of my spells.

Big Daddy goes biking every Saturday and Sunday morning in the wee hours with his buddies.  They ride fast.  Big Daddy likes fast.  Makes him feel like he’s not a geezer.  Like he’s got some gas in the tank and some man in the manhood.  When  he comes home, he thumps his chest and says “Did 42 miles today.”  Wow, I say back.  I doubled that at Target.

I rarely hear him leave as I’m still dreaming away about distributing my Lotto win.  When I get up, though, the coffee is made and ready for some sippin’ along with some newspaper reading.  When I went to let the cat in this morning, this was by the front door.

Those would be Big Daddy’s underpants.  Either he was in a hurry to get into his bike gear and out the door or Jesus has called him home.

Last year, Big Daddy and I drove to western Kansas so he could meet up with a group of bikers from our church that were doing a cross-country bike ride to raise money and awareness for poverty.  We drove out on a Wednesday, BD would ride with them for three days and I’d drive home the following day.

We ate dinner with our friends, came back to the motel and swatted flies before trying to go to sleep.  Farm country + heat = flies.  The bikers left at 7:00 a.m. the next day and I left shortly after that.  About 45 minutes into my ride home, the car decelerated and I had to pull over.  I was in the middle of fricking nowhere with no cell phone.  I contemplated my options (none) and started the car up.  I drove about five more miles when the same thing happened but I was close to a truck stop and coasted into the parking lot.   I used their phone to call Roadside Assistance and after an hour wait, got into a tow truck to ride to Marysville.  I asked my new friend working at the truck stop to tell my biking husband what happened to me and that I was headed to town, should he stop by.  While on the way to town, the left rear brake on the tow truck started smoking.

We got to Marysville and once they found out I had a hybrid, they wouldn’t even look at the car.  I called Roadside Assistance again and was told to have the car towed to Manhattan which was 60 miles away.  The tow truck driver had to take my car off that truck since it was having problems and put it on another.  While he was doing that, I look up and see BD riding around looking for me so I wave him down.  He gives me his cell phone, meets the tow truck driver who also loves to bike, and they exchange info on tires, gloves, jerseys and mph.  Keep chatting it up you guys and don’t you worry a bit about my looming nervous breakdown.  My new BF and I get to the next dealership at noon.  I’m scheduled to be at work by 3:00 so I call Mallie Bee to tell her what’s been going on and for her to call the store and tell them that I’d be there as soon as I could.

I sat down in the service department waiting room that was full of customers and a woman in a housecoat is sitting there swatting flies.  I swear to God I’m not making any of this up.  One by one, customers start leaving when their cars are repaired and I’m left alone until some old guy comes in with a Hardee’s bag.  I give him the look.  I don’t care if you eat fast food, just make it at a fast food restaurant instead of subjecting the rest of us to the smell.  He took the look to mean I wanted to chat.

Turns out he was of the tea party persuasion and mistook my boredom for interest in his opinion about everything.  Forty-five minutes into his yapping, I picked up Car and Driver magazine and put it in front of my face and he still keeps going on about socialism.  Betcha can’t even spell it, Mr. Lipton.  Finally, I got up, picked up the fly swatter and started beating the shit out of flies.  I’m smashing ’em like I’m playing Whack-A-Mole at the carnival and I am aware that I am losing it and I don’t care.

The service writer interrupts my swatting to inform me that I need a new water pump and they don’t have it in stock.  What a surprise.  Since the car was under warranty, they would take me to Hertz to pick up a rental car.  I gathered my stuff and Mr. Tea Partier says, “It was a pleasure talking to you.  I believe I was merely a listener in this two-way.  Now you have a nice day.”  A nice day?  I was way past a nice day and harbored no fears of the fires of hell cuz I’d been in them since I got out of the fly bed.

Ten hours after I left that motel and two hours past my start time, I got to work and the owner didn’t speak or look at me for two hours.   My friend came by and said what in the hell happened, I’ve been worried about you all day.  I love my friends.  Then You Know Who pretended to be straightening a rack of clothes close by so she could hear the whole story, because until then, she only cared that I was late.

By that point it was 8:00 p.m. and all I wanted to do was go home, take a hot bath and go to bed.  Well, that’s not completely accurate.  This day of all days could have been much worse had a truck stop employee and tow truck driver not went out of their way to help me out.  They were strangers, my employer was not.  As tired as I was I still had a little of the bat-shit crazy left in me, and if there was a fly swatter in that upscale little boutique of hers, I’d have whacked her moley, little head.

A few days ago, we attended Mallie Bee’s dance recital.  I believe I’ve been to about fifteen of these, first with Teacher Girl and now the Beester.  We love watching the kids, from itty bitty ones to the older girls.  Over the years, it has become apparent that Mal is pretty good at this dance thing, but I am highly prejudiced so that is a biased opinion. The last three years she has danced on the competitive team and though she has always been shy, put her in some jazz, tap or ballet shoes and she explodes on the stage.

This has been an expensive endeavor for us to undertake.  I’d like to say I’ve been a supportive mother through it all, but that would be bullshit.   We’ve never had one of our kids get to this level and the financial commitment has been a continuous drain on our bank account.  Some months, both my paychecks went to dance expenses and I’d make sure she knew it, because you’re not a mother unless you’ve learned how to pass out guilt like treat bags at a birthday party.  Last year, I decided to let that go.  If she was serious about this (and she was) then I needed to suck it up and be happy I had a kid who’d rather hang out at a dance studio than anywhere else.

At this year’s recital, Mal was awarded the studio scholarship.  For the next year, she will be able to take all the classes she wants at no charge.  The award is given in memory of Rebecca Wright, a dance instructor who died at the age of 22 from cystic fibrosis.  She left her mark with many and Mal was lucky to have her as a teacher.  That girl of ours cried and cried when she got it.  To be recognized by your instructors for your passion and commitment is incredible.  To be recognized in the name of someone you adored is overwhelming, and I’ve no doubt that Becca’s spirit will be perched on Mal’s shoulder during this next year.

I wish I could rewind some of my guilt trips and be the kind of mother she deserved all along when it came to this passion of hers.  I got to the party later than I should have, but have learned that whether it’s art, writing or dance, creativity has to be nurtured and the cost of getting there gets paid back in a thousand different ways.

We moved to Kansas City from the Washington D. C. area with a five year old and a two year old.  We rented for awhile before we bought this house so our little Teacher Girl went to kindergarten in one school and then 1st grade in another.  I did not know a soul when we moved here.  Combine that with being a stay-at-home mom and it’s a recipe for loneliness.

One day I got to the school a little bit early and let Boy Child work off some energy on the playground equipment.  I noticed a group of women chatting nearby and recognized them as 1st grade moms.  Oh, if only I had a group of people to talk to.  After a few minutes, one of them walked over to me.  Maybe today I’m going to make a friend.  Instead she said to me, “You need to get him off of that.  It’s for kindergartners only.”  She walked away and I took a wailing two year old off the playground, and if I weren’t being watched so intently I would have wailed with him.

Over the years, I had these kinds of encounters with these kinds of moms all the time.  THEY TALK REAL LOUD SO EVERYONE KNOWS THEY’RE IMPORTANT AND THEY’LL SAY THAT THEY HAVE GOT TO GET THEIR HIGHLIGHTS DONE, THEY’RE GOING TO THE CLUB FOR DINNER, BUFFY MADE THE TENNIS TEAM, JR. IS TAKING PRIVATE VIOLIN LESSONS THREE TIMES A WEEK, OF COURSE WE’RE GOING TO CANCUN FOR SPRING BREAK, DID YOU SEE MY NEW TENNIS BRACELET THE HUSBAND BOUGHT ME TO GO WITH THE NEW SUBURBAN, I KNOW HE’S THE BEST, AND I’M TALKING TO THE PRINCIPAL ABOUT THAT MRS. SO-AND-SO IN 4TH GRADE WHO MAKES BABY SHUT HIS PIEHOLE SO SHE CAN TEACH.  It’s impossible to ignore them even though they’re experts at ignoring you.

It took me longer than I ever expected to make any friends that were of like mind, but I did and I also extended myself to anyone new that came to that school cuz God knows they needed somebody on their team.  The friends I made back then are still my friends because instead of working on maintaining fake, we work on maintaining fun.

Sometimes I see those mean moms in the grocery store and would rather read an ingredient list on a bag of ice than make eye contact with them.  However, if the day ever comes that our carts have a stand-off  in frozen foods, I’m going to look Mrs. Self-Absorbed in the eye, smile and say what I should have said 18 years ago……….

I’m not moving and you can bite me.

Nancy and I had a really good sale.  We saw old friends and neighbors, we sold a bunch of our stuff and we made some new customers.  It was an incredible amount of work but when you get to be creative and make some money at it, it’s good work.  Behold the photos of the day………

Why, oh why did I sell that scale?  Boo hooey 🙁

Nancy made the Mr. & Mrs. pillows.  Aren’t they cute?

Chalkboard sold, cart sold, stool sold, folding chairs sold.

The Adirondack chair was the first thing sold.  The barrel the second.

Nearly all of these pillows sold.

That’s Nancy folding material.  Her son made the flag artwork that Big Daddy and I bought.