Minding the Wait

So I got into the checkout line at the store today, only to quickly realize what I thought was going to be a “quick to the register” was instead going to be one of those lines.  Don’t laugh.  You know the kind I’m talking about.  It was a family of 5 and nothing was on the conveyor belt.  There were several things sacked up in their cart, but there were also several more things not sacked in their cart.  The checkout girl was going through these items one at time, cross-referencing and checking something in her hand as she went.

I’ll be honest; my first feeling was irritation and impatience.  But quick on the heels of that was curiosity.  Then, as I realized it had something to do with governmental assistance and making sure they had items that were acceptable and not exceeding a set price, I felt a jumble of things all at once.  Relief it wasn’t me.  Deeper curiosity about what it felt like to have to live that way.  A heavy embarrassment about all of the junk in my cart.  A desire to give a candy bar to the little girls staring at the checkout goods and shooting me shy grins.

As their checkout continued, I tried to justify my own purchases, but cokes, chips and pre-packaged snacks were really hard to overlook as they got clearance on their apple juice, cereal and eight large bunches of bananas.  (Eight bunches of bananas?  Who in the world can eat that many bananas before they get black and mushy?)

And I decided I should stop judging.  They weren’t judging my chips so I certainly shouldn’t judge their bananas.  Maybe they really liked bananas.  And maybe they didn’t, but that’s what they could afford to get.  I wondered about how their two little girls would feel going home to eat their bananas if they knew my little girl was going to go home and eat powdered sugar donuts I had impulsively picked up for her.

And then, just like that, they were all done and headed off.  Except the dad came back, flashed me a happy, genuine smile and apologized for taking so long.  His girls called for him and they all left together.  And I realized that none of the items in either of our carts mattered.  They were a family out shopping together.  He was happier after his long checkout ordeal than I was with a full pocketbook, shopping cart and pantry.  There were important lessons to learn here.

And for that, I could honestly say that I didn’t mind the wait.

The Talk

Last summer Wes and I had “the talk” with Tyler.  Yes, you parents and non-parents alike know exactly what talk I am referring to.  We used cows on the farm instead of birds and bees, but hey, whatever is relatable, right?

So a couple of weeks ago I had the same talk with Emily.  By myself.  (Minus the cows).  It seems crazy to me since she’s only 9 and in the 4^th grade.  But times are different than they used to be, and she needs to be informed before things sneak up on her (or she hears it from somebody else.)  It’s still crazy, though.  I was in high school before I really understood some of the things she and I talked about.

I was a little apprehensive about it.  After all, I had to cover much more complex territory than the part I was responsible for with Tyler, and I didn’t know how she would feel about it.  But she took it really well, wasn’t upset or embarrassed, and on some level seemed relieved to have an explanation for some things she vaguely knew she didn’t know about.  She even asked some great questions which made me happy, since it meant she was really thinking through the whole thing. 

It made me feel closer to her somehow, because for now she and I share this girly secret.  We’re waiting together for her to grow up and become who she was made to be.  And the best part is she didn’t even look funny at her daddy later than night, but just snuggled with him like she always does every time she gets the chance.  Regardless of the information shared, she is still our little girl for a while longer.

We have always tried to be pretty open and very practical with our children.  I feel the more you hide and try to cover up, the more “taboo” it becomes.  If you make a big deal about it, they will too.  If you are mortified and get upset and hedge, they will never ask you anything else about it.  Ever.  Everything needs to be in its proper time, of course, but when it’s time, it’s time.

And for my beautiful, sweet and sensitive oldest girl, I think it was time.

Defrosting the Freezer

Our first major purchase as a married couple was a stand-up freezer, and it ranks in my top 10 favorite purchases of our married life.  Weird, huh?

Ok, so I am not a hoarder, per se.  But I grew up pre-planning meals up to 2-4 weeks in advance and buying in bulk (1 month’s worth at a time except for bread, eggs and milk) to save money.  And although my life as an on-the-go family of 6 is forced to be a little more flexible these days, at heart I am still most comfortable with this method of meal-management and my freezer reflects this.

So for those of you who can relate because you have one of your own, or at least have a grandmother who has a stand-up freezer, you probably know that from time to time it requires defrosting, to get rid of the mounds of ice buildup that will accumulate on the coils.  And for anyone who has ever lived for any length with a well-stocked stand-up freezer, you also know that every now and then, disaster strikes when for some reason your freezer defrosts without your knowledge or consent.  (Usually meaning either the power goes out for a couple of days, the breaker flips in your garage, or someone forgets to make sure the freezer door is completely shut.)

So yeah.  School just started, crazy fall is here, I’ve been on a kick lately to get things “in order” and of course at this very moment I have meals planned out for 2 weeks and my freezer is completely stocked.

Was.  Was completely stocked.  As in now is mostly empty.

(I would have before pictures, but I was sobbing too hard and on my knees trying not to hyperventilate.  I wish I was exaggerating.) 

One large black garbage bag (double-bagged) filled with pork loin, pork chops, steak, shrimp, fish, chicken, hamburger, plus about a dozen Lean Cuisines and several large bags of processed chicken products now on its way to the dumpster.  You do the math.  The only thing that saved my sanity was the fact that I had just been to the Tyson company store and bought a large box of boneless chicken breast…but I hadn’t opened it yet and distributed it into freezer baggies so it was still frozen.  If I had, that would have all been gone too and I think I might not have recovered.

I guess all of this is to remind me that no matter how much I plan and dictate, my life is not in my hands.  I am not in control.  And regardless of my feelings at this very moment, I know that is a good thing.

On the bright side, my freezer is defrosted now.

The Problem with Football

Sorry, I was a band geek in high school and college.  And although I went to my share of football games, it was all about the timeouts and halftime, so we could blow our horns like crazies instead of sit bored out of our minds.  The only time I watched any part of a game was during the brief period when I had a crush on one of the linebackers.  Or whatever the big guys are called.  See what I mean?

But now I have a crush on another big guy.  This one is my 11-year old son.  And for now, he plays football.  So it’s become a good-mom necessity to go to more games, and over time I’ve realized that for me, there is an inherent problem with football.

I don’t get it.

For one, I don’t understand the craze of being nuts over a team or player you have no personal affiliations with.  (I’m a Cardinals fan…oh wait, that’s baseball…but it still applies.  Have you ever lived in St. Louis?  Gone to school there?  Is one of your friends on the team?  So why do you paint yourselves colors and act like a lunatic on television?  Oh wait…that’s football again.)  Whatever.

I do, however, get the concept when it is your school, your hometown, your state, your son (or your crush).  But I still have a problem with football.  The real deal is I just can’t understand the sport.  I really have tried.  I get the dynamics of a football field…I’ve marched on them countless times.  I understand the concept of offense and defense, the center who snaps, the quarterback who hopefully catches the snap and runs like mad, the “big guys” who bash into each other, the ball, the end zones, and the scoring.  But I simply can’t find the players once they line up, or the ball when it’s in play.  (Obviously I’m not a fan of the running game).  People are yelling and stomping and standing up and I’m wondering what is going on…even though I’m trying to make sense of the mash-up of male bodies.  It makes me feel like I came to the stadium on the short bus, and I hate that feeling.  I’m constantly looking at the score board…or for the ref’s hands to go straight up.  Then I can whoop because I know somebody just scored.  (The team with the little light-up outline of the ball, of course).  Unless there is a flag on the play, and then I feel humiliated again because I’m just starting to cheer when everyone else is sitting back down muttering ugly things under their breath.  (Or out loud within earshot of my other children).

So I’m stuck.  My husband loves the sport, my son plays in it, and most people I know are fans…from moderate to rabid.  It’s not their fault that I’m football-incompetent.  Or that I let that fact get to me so much I dread going to the football stadium in case someone figures out my dirty secret.  Maybe it’s just a personal handicap for me, something I will learn to live with and everyone around me will just smile and nod sympathetically.

Hi, my name is Beth, and I have a football problem…

I guess there are worse things.

Summer to Fall

I swear school just got out for summer break.  I realize with my eyes that two full months have come and gone on the calendar, but it’s hard to reconcile the facts with feelings.  And it feels like it should still be summer.  Obviously the weather agrees with me!

But still, there is no denying the fact that it is that time of year again.  Time for backpacks and lunchboxes, routine bedtimes and alarm clocks.  Part of me is glad.  And part of me is going to rest in a moment of rebellion as I recall some of the memorable events of the summer.

When school ended, I needed a break.  Badly.  So we escaped to Grandma's house in Nashville.  The kids spent a week shuffling back and forth between the two sets of grandparents, and I pretty much hunkered down and tried to focus on breathing in and out regularly.  It was nice not to have to worry about washing clothes or planning meals.  We went swimming, visited the park, and ate way too many desserts.  Like I cared.

I still didn’t care a couple of weeks later when the kids were back at Nashville, but this time without me, and Wes and I were headed to Dallas for a long weekend spent with old friends.  We watched grown-up movies and went out to eat at new and interesting places, took in a play and went swimming.  Sometime in there I let go of my type-A mindset long enough to decide it was not too late to blog about things that were six-months past and proceeded to play catch-up.  This gave me the motivation to get caught up on my family scrapbook, which I immediately began to work on.  And perhaps read a few books, just for fun.  And quit gnawing on my fingernails.  All of this made me so happy I decided I should probably care a little more about too many desserts and proceeded to come up with a more healthy eating plan for our family.

Apparently, that weekend was the springboard I needed.

We went home, the kids came home (I was even happy to see them), Fourth of July and Kids Camp came and went interspersed with some family swimming and the first-time-ever trip to the Fayetteville Public library, and when it was finally time for a true FAMILY VACATION, I was ready instead of in dread. 

We spent the week at Branson, enjoying season passes to Silver Dollar city, riding all of the rides (well, not me, although I conceded and rode a few…somebody had to take the pictures, right?), shopping at Branson Landing twice (a completely random fluke on my part but I’ll be woman enough to admit the second time was for school shoes and frozen yogurt), and boating on the Spirit of America catamaran swimming tour (yes, I was the only one besides the captain who remained IN the boat the entire time…don't judge...nobody missed me in the water anyway...) but still, it was a really good week.

So now, even though I usually dread the onset of Fall like the plague (such a busy, stressful time of year to me), I think I’m ready to tackle it.  Good summer, good memories, more relaxed countenance, and 10 pounds down for me so far…whoohoo! 

I’m even looking forward to the football games.  Sort of.

Mother/Daughter Shopping Day

I am not a shopper.  I like new clothes or decorative home upgrades from time to time, but I don’t generally have the desire to go pick them out.  (Not to mention my innate sense of style equals that of a rock.)  In my fantasy world, right behind having a chauffeur, I would have someone that would shop for me.  You know, learn my tastes, look through my house and wardrobe, and go get whatever I need that matches and is in style.  But in the meantime, while I hold my breath in vain for that, you could say I’m more of an on-line shopper—when I bother to shop at all.

But alas, shopping is in the genes of my husband’s family, and I have at least one daughter who has apparently been handed the torch.   And because the guilt of my I-have-never-taken-my-oldest-daughter-out-shopping conscience was pricking hard, I set pretty much the only open date we had left before school started.

Which is how it came to pass that Emily and I were out having a mother/daughter shopping day this last Saturday.  Tax-free Saturday.  Oh yeah.

I almost never go to the mall on a Saturday.  Going to the mall on a Saturday is like a curse word.  A really bad one that never gets even thought of, much less uttered.  So the first thing I noticed this particular day was a bunch of cars.  When I do go to the mall, it’s usually on a quiet weekday night.  So I also noticed the abnormally huge bunches of people.  And I have never never ever shopped on a Black Friday or any day like that, so the final thing I noticed was the super long lines.

So.  Much.  Fun.

But you know what?  I took a deep breath, told myself (out loud repeatedly) it was all ok because we weren’t in a hurry, and I actually had a good time with my daughter, out shopping just the two of us, for the first time ever.  (I know.  I KNOW!)  We bought shoes, jewelry, funky-smelling body washes and hand soaps, ate at the food court and again at the cookie place.  We held our ears and bravely kept shopping when the fire alarm went off because the Chick-fil-a kitchen was on fire.  We raced another family to an open bench and won.  (We scoochied down to the end of it so they could share).  We were limping by the end, trying to pawn the bags off on each other.  It was a really good time. 

We came home, showed off all our stuff, put it all away, and then I promptly sat down with Emily and placed three online orders for things we couldn’t find because there was no way I was going back out again the next day to look again somewhere else.

Mother/daughter shopping at its finest, baby.

Small steps.

Middle School: The Next Frontier

Random confession—I just don’t get into the elementary school thing.  Of course now I’ve just publicly alienated myself from the many homeroom moms, field trip chaperones, party planners and project lovers…not to mention earned the raised eyebrows and perhaps covert snickering of those who are savvy enough to do the math and realize I have 8 more years of said “elementary school thing”…and gathered the contempt of those that have already been where I have not yet and are thinking I better watch what I wish for.

Not that I wish for my children to hurry and grow up.  I’m just not dreading the next phase, is all.

So Tyler is going into the sixth grade, which is considered middle school at Shiloh.  He will have a locker, change classrooms, and be able to order off of the ala carte menu at lunch.  He gets to have a teensy say in what classes he takes (he chose band over choir/art…I didn’t persuade him, I swear).  He will have to keep up with his own assignments.  And he doesn’t go to car line at the end of the day; I have to find him instead.

Many, many changes.  But he is ready, and so am I.

We moved Tyler into his locker the other day.  He was so excited, 

he could hardly stand it.  Of course, reality crashed when neither of us could get his locker open.  Embarrassing.   Once it was open, courtesy of one of the sweetest teachers the school has on staff (and gracious enough to not make me feel like a middle-school reject for not getting it open myself), Tyler decided he wasn’t manhandling it enough.  So he’ll probably pull it off by the hinges on the first day.  (Wish I could be there to see that…not that I would be anyway because I'm not a hover-mom...but no, I’ll be dropping off Hannah for her first day of PK3, on the elementary side.)

Anyway, after we got everything neatly placed into the locker, we walked through Tyler’s daily schedule.  Fun stuff.  Across campus to the band hall, back up to Christian Studies, across campus again to the Learning Center and back upstairs again for Social Studies and Math.  We even opened the locker “in between” classes, and took a visit to the office to see Aunt Lizzie, making us “tardy” to keyboarding.  All in the 150 degree heat.  We glossed over the afternoon classes of Science, English, and Enrichment (fancy for study hall) since they are all in rooms adjacent to his locker…and opted to play hooky instead, skipping out to Sonic for some milkshakes.

Good times.  He looked at me, all sweaty and happy, and said… “I think this is gonna be a GREAT year”.

So do I.

Oh, To Have Dental Innocence Again…

So I took the kids to the dentist yesterday for their every-six-months checkup.  This was Hannah’s first time to sit in the big chair.  As we were getting out of the car, she was crying “I can’t wait!  I can’t wait!”

Silly girl.

I’ve never been a fan of dental work, having been through the somewhat typical woes of cavities, braces and wisdom teeth removal.  But then in 2002 during a brief but brutal fender-bender collision in which I had neglected to put my seatbelt back on after hopping out of the truck for a quick errand, my front teeth connected with the dashboard of the truck.  I knew it wasn’t good when I spit teeth pieces into my hand.  The dashboard still bears the gouge-mark scars.

Fortunately, in spite of my hysterical fears over that horrible weekend, I didn’t have to go through the rest of my life looking like a toothless hillbilly, and my smile was good as new after over a year’s worth of temporary teeth, root canals, braces (ugh, again) and veneers.  However, I came away not only with a brand new set of straight, white front teeth but also a healthy loathing for dental offices on general principal.  Fighting a panic attack while in the chair for a teeth cleaning a year later, I told my unbelieving (and childless) hygienist that I would rather be lying on a table having another baby than sitting in her chair enduring the scraping and horrid electric whirring.  Well, I meant it at the time.

Since then, I haven’t even had so much as a cavity (I’m a regular flosser now…got to take care of those expensive false teeth you know), and the panic of going every six months has faded.  Plus I have to put on a good show for the kids when they go so they don’t develop my phobias by association.  So when Hannah expressed her sheer excitement and joy at this new adventure, I heartily agreed with her.  We were out and about having nothing but fun.

I’m just glad it was her turn.