pieces and ponderings

     Yesterday I did something I have never done before…and at the end of the day, my husband told me to never do it again…so I will heed his advice in the future.  

     I’m not sure why I did what I did.  As I have thought about it, I decided that maybe it was a result of breathing the fumes of the bleach cleaner that I had used earlier in the day to clean some outdoor chairs.  THAT has to be the reason why my thought processes were not behaving properly when I purchased the three boxes of meat from the lady parked in my driveway.  Yes, that’s correct… I bought meat off the back of a truck.

     It wasn’t the best of days.  I didn’t feel well and had fallen asleep while reading a book, when two of my sons and one of my youngest son’s friends awakened me, telling me there was someone parked in our driveway.  I groggily went to the backdoor and then out the backdoor to the driveway, where a lady stood by her red, I think it was red, truck that had a freezer in the back of it.

     The lady was nice enough as she told me about this great deal she could give me on this frozen meat.  It seems that she drives a regular route of grocery delivery that includes the road we live on (though I had never seen her or her truck with the freezer in the back before).

     She gave me her sales pitch and I listened while trying to process that there really was a woman trying to sell me meat off the back of a truck  there in our driveway.

     To my defense, I did say, “No,” to her first sales offer.

     Then I do NOT know what happened.  I guess I began thinking about how hard it must be to sell frozen meat off the back of a truck and how she too was just trying to make a living…and the next thing I know, I’m heading in the same backdoor that I had just exited a few moments before, to get funds to buy the frozen meat.

     My two sons and the friend asked me what the person in our driveway wanted as I entered the house.  

     “She’s selling meat,” I told them.  

     I heard the three boys laughing as I got my purse.  “I’m going to buy some meat from her,” I told them as I again exited the house.   Fading laughter noise followed me out the door.

     She gave me my three boxes of meat and I deposited them in my freezer and then went back in to face more questions from my sons and the friend.

     I told them that I was glad that I brightened their day.

     As I closed the lid on my just purchased meat from the lady in the red truck, I wondered what my husband would think.

     As I opened the same lid on the same freezer a couple of hours later to place some grocery items in the freezer with my husband standing beside me, I found out what he thought. 

      I looked up to see his face as he noticed the three strange (strange, as in they weren’t there the last time he looked in the freezer) boxes.  

     “What is that?” he inquired, seemingly already knowing the answer because he is an educated man and probably had seen boxes that frozen  meat sold off the back of people’s trucks look like.

     I told him that I had bought some meat, frozen meat.

     “From someone driving a freezer truck?” he questioned.

     “Sort of,” I answered.

     “You never should do that,” he patiently responded.

     “Ok.  I won’t do it again,” I promised.  “At least I didn’t buy the big package,” I added.

     Yesterday.  It wasn’t the best of days.

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     After months of not writing a blog entry, I feel inspired to put down on virtual paper a story which will make my husband chuckle, give my kids ammunition to make fun of me relentlessly and maybe provide some reader a moment to breathe a sigh of relief that she is not the only one who has ever done a silly thing.

     It happened this morning.  I was actually running ahead of schedule in getting ready for the day, and after a shower asked my husband to please put some lotion on my thirsty-for-some-kind-of-moisturizer back.

     He agreed because that’s just the kind of helpful man he is.

     I had to go into the next room to fetch my new bottle of lotion (well, I thought it was lotion…read on).  It is one of my favorite brands of lotion, which my upscale lotion-buying locale had stopped carrying.  Wal-Mart does that every now and then.

     So I was very excited a few weeks ago, when my family was doing some shopping in another store and I found the brand of lotion that I really like.  I purchased it and have been using ever since…applying it to my feet so that they will be soft and smooth when sandal-wearing time comes…using it on my legs and arms because they have seemed so dry lately and definitely have needed  a good moisturizing lotion applied often. 

     The product has oatmeal and shea butter in it…great stuff.

     So this morning, as my helpful husband was applying the oatmeal & shea butter stuff to my back, he commented that this lotion seemed different than other lotions. 

     I agreed with his summation and we began a discussion of possible reasons why the “lotion” only got thicker and even seemed to have a lathering consistency the more you tried to rub it into your skin.

     He asked me if I had read the directions on the “lotion” bottle.  Of course I had not read any directions…who needs directions when it comes to applying lotion to dry skin.

     I picked up the product bottle as we continued to talk.  That’s when I realized that the oatmeal & shea butter product which promises to soothe dry, itchy skin wasn’t lotion at all, but rather a bottle of moisturizing body wash.

     No wonder the stuff lathered the more you tried to rub it into your skin!  For about a month, I have been applying this body wash to my legs and arms and wondering why my legs seemed to be more dry than usual.  And you know what you do when you have dry skin…you apply more “lotion.”

     My husband had a good laugh.  I got back into the shower and rinsed the “lotion” body wash off my body.

     I’m a goofball…what can I say.

     And writing this reminds me that I need to add body LOTION to my shopping list. 

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As I drank the last sip of coffee from my mug this morning, I had to smile.  It wasn’t the coffee that made me smile, though coffee can certainly do that, it was the picture of a smiling fish in the bottom of my coffee cup.  The fish’s name is Herman…it says so on the mug.  On the outside of the mug is a cartoon of Moses parting the Red Sea and on one side of the dry pathway through the sea is a wall of water with three very large, very hungry-looking fish in it.  On the other side of the dry ground, in another wall of water, is a little fish looking across the chasm at the big, hungry fish.  The little fish is sticking out his tongue.  The caption under the cartoon reads, “Herman catches a lucky break.”

The cartoon makes me laugh.  And as good as the cartoon is; I love that Herman is also painted on the bottom of the inside of the mug.  Sometimes I forget that Herman is there on the bottom of my coffee mug…until the last drop of the mug’s contents is drained into my mouth…and then I see Herman and I smile just like I did this morning.

And what’s even better than Herman smiling at the bottom of my cup is remembering the person who gave me the funny mug.  She smiles a lot too…just like Herman who had escaped from hungry predators.  And so, even though Herman made me smile…and the warm coffee made me feel warm…and I was drinking the warm coffee on my front porch which also made me feel a little warm because it’s August in the South…remembering my smiling friend made me feel even smilyier (I just made that word up and it works for me) and warmer on the inside.  It made me feel connected to my friend.

I like feeling connected to the people I love.  I hate feeling disconnected.  Feeling disconnected makes me feel really yucky and out-of-sorts.  Feeling connected makes me feel like I can leap tall buildings in a single bound and outrun speeding trains.

I was drinking coffee on my front porch this morning so I could watch the butterflies that are gathering in numbers right now on our Lantana (see earlier post).  After reading my blog post about butterflies the other day, my Aunt wrote to tell me that there are some butterflies outside her window that she has been watching lately.  Watching my butterflies now makes me feel connected to my dear Aunt who watches her butterflies.  When we can’t physically be with those that we love…feeling connected is the next best thing I think.

My daughter who has been away at college for almost two weeks sends me texts every once in a while that look like a little owl face.  I send her one back that looks like a platypus face (yes, I can do that).  When I receive one of her owl faces I feel connected to her because the owl face reminds me of her favorite singer, Owl City, and that reminds me of the many HOURS that we have listened to Owl City together…it reminds me of her and I like being reminded of my daughter.

Connections…they are important.  Feeling connected to the ones we love is the next best thing to being there with them.  Connections…they are worth making and keeping.

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I love football…the American kind, with an oval-shaped ball wrapped in leather and players who begin each game in bright uniforms which take on tinges of grass-stain green and mud-brown by the end of the fourth quarter.

I have loved football for as long as I can remember.  I loved it when I was a preschooler and some really cool high-school guys (friends of my family) would allow a little girl like me run around carrying a football in one of their backyard games.

I loved it when my parents took me to watch one of those guys play high-school ball and then when he played in college.

I love watching college ball on TV.  I love watching professional football on TV.  I love watching it in person.  I just love football.

I love best of all to watch my son play football…it’s really cool.  Love it, love it, love it.

My kids do laugh at me sometimes though (well, they laugh at me a lot, but that’s for other stories).  They laugh at me when we’re watching a game and one of the players rises back to his feet after a tough play and he is all disheveled and his shoulder  pads are no longer covered by his jersey and he isn’t even aware of it…but I am very aware of it.

I call out, “Fix your shoulder pad,” to the television screen.  The player usually remains unaware of  his dilemma and often moves on to the huddle and the next play…WITHOUT adjusting the shoulder pad/jersey.

Ok…so maybe I’m a little obsessive/compulsive about this one little thing…but it drives me a bit crazy.  That’s when my kids begin to giggle and snicker.

Because of this pet peeve of mine, my kids began doing something in the last couple of years…just to make fun of me…and drive me a little crazy.  They will each roll up one of the short sleeves on whatever shirts they are wearing…not completely roll up into a cuff…no that is fine…I do that all the time.  No…they just turn up a portion of their shirt sleeves and don’t say a word.  All of them will have turn-up portions of shirt sleeves on their persons and just sit quietly or walk around quietly…until I notice and say loudly, “Fix your shoulder pads!”

If the child is in my reach, I will try to smooth out the partial cuff myself.

They love to torture me in this way.  They think it is funny.

Yesterday, my football-playing son had his team pictures made.  Afterward, I asked him how the picture-taking went.

“It went well,” he said.

And then he mentioned that he had just happened to roll up a part of his jersey for his individual picture.

“NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!” I cried.  “You DIDN’T!”  “You WOULDN’T!”

“But I ordered one of those photo buttons so I can wear it to all of the games,” I told him.

He just grinned.

I never did get the truth of the matter out of him.  I guess I’ll have to wait for the pictures to come in.  And if his shoulder pad needs fixing…well…I will just have to grin and bear it.

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Today I am acutely aware of being closer to 50-years-old than 40…acutely aware…acutely sore…acutely stiff.  My young and limber 11-year-old had his second tennis lesson yesterday afternoon.  It went very well.  And then he looked at me with huge gray/green eyes and said something like, “We can hit a few more, right?”

And I looked at him and his big gray/green eyes and said, “Sure, we can do that.”

And I laughed a little when his tennis instructor told him to go easy on the “old lady.”

And we did hit a few more until I said something like, “This is the last one as I knocked the yellow ball his way.”  And then we walked to the car and I drove home and got out of the car and thought something like, “If I sit down before I get dinner ready, dinner may never happen.”

I shared these thoughts and conversations with my husband at the dinner table and then said something when dinner was all done like, “I think you may need to carry me because I don’t think I can stand up or move right now.”  I was joking…sort of.

Next thing I know, he is standing over me and then swooping me up into his arms and I felt very young again…and then cried out something like, “You shouldn’t be doing this…remember you back…and your neck…and don’t drop me.”

Our daughter also yelled cautioning phrases as she watched with alarm as her parents exited the kitchen.

I went to bed early…by 9 o’clock.  I awoke a couple of hours later with my muscles and joints screaming, “Get something for us!  Get the Motrin, the Advil, the Aleve, the SOMETHING!”

I applied heat and ibuprofen to my stiff and sore body and prayed for sleep.

I awoke the next morning…today…and moved oh so slowly…very slowly…S-L-O-W-L-Y…muttering something about coffee and ibuprofen.

Today, one of my children shared that he has a friend who thinks it’s “cute” that I have a blog.  That is a sweet sentiment, but isn’t “cute” a term used for things done by the very young or in my case the not-so-very-young…for the more advanced in years…they do “cute” things too…right?  I had a hair appointment today to turn my once-brunette hair brunettier again.  All the time…throughout today…my legs…my arms…my neck, back and hair follicles are letting me know that I’m closer to 50-years-old than to 40.

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Sneakers…I love them.  Nikes, Adidas, Puma, New Balance, Reebok, Converse…I’ve worn them all.  My favorite pairs of shoes have always been my tennis shoes, as we called them back in the day.

When I was a child, it seemed that boys’ athletic footwear was much cooler than what was available for girls.  The stuff for girls, in my opinion, looked…well…too girly.  And if you’re playing baseball or football with the boys in the neighborhood, you don’t want to look too girly…at least I didn’t.  I wanted to look cool like they did in their sporty boys’ athletic shoes.

So my mom would let me look for shoes in the boys’ section of the shoe store.  Back then, when I bought a pair of sneakers, my mom and the sales clerk would let me wear the new purchase and put my old shoes in the box.  I would skip or run to our car, certain that my new footwear made me much quicker on my feet.

I remember my first pair of Converse high top sneakers…black with the Converse star in a circle on the side…they were so cool in my eyes.  In shoes like these I could keep up with the guys on the backyard playing field.

I remember a day when I was around nine years old, looking at my mom in her neat shirt dress and pumps, a typical daily outfit for her, and thinking, “I want to be a mom like my mom.  So I guess that someday something magical will happen and I will suddenly enjoy waking up early (because I liked sleeping in), wearing neat shirt dresses with tidy belts, and having pumps or sandals on my now sneakered feet.  Someday, I won’t want to wear my jeans and sneakers any more.”

I grew up and while I do now like waking up early in the morning, and I have owned a few shirt dresses, jeans and sneakers are still very much a part of my life.  Thankfully, athletic footwear for the ladies evolved into styles as cool or cooler looking than the guys’ shoes.

So now, I’m the mom whose favorite shoes are still her sneakers.  They allow me to keep up…well… almost…at least attempt to keep up…with my kids on our front yard playing field.

My newest sneakers.  I love them.

My new sneakers adorning my feet the day after I bought them.  Yes, I’m wearing my sneakers with my pajamas and robe, heading out to photograph the giant lavender flower that mysteriously appeared in our flower bed (see earlier post).

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My love affair with Oreos began when I was very young; I think I was under the age of four.  I loved eating them with milk and strawberries.  I remember one time when my dad brought home a flat of fresh strawberries, which I called “Oh boys” because every time my father brought them home, my mom said, “Oh boy!”  So that’s why I thought the delicious little red berries were known as “oh boys.”  Anyway, I remember that day because I ate those strawberries in a bowl with milk covering them and Oreos crumbled on top…heavenly.  That wonderful dish doesn’t look the most appealing to adults because the milk turns all chocolaty and the Oreos get mushy, but I’m telling you…it’s good!

When “Oh boys,” I mean strawberries weren’t available, Oreos were just fine by themselves, even better with milk.

I also remember well the day I shared Oreos with my first-born.  He was about 15 months old when I put him in his high chair and gave him one of the cream-stuffed chocolate delights with his sippy cup of milk.  I taught him how you can twist the sandwich cookie apart and eat the creamy filling first, though it is perfectly fine to just eat it as it comes, crunching through the dark black cookie crust, which is my favorite part, and then finding the sweet white cream.  It is the perfect balance of cookie and cream.

Oreos are still a part of my family’s life all these years later.  For the last few years, when summer arrives, we buy the big 10-package mega box at Sam’s…perfect for snacking during breaks from swimming.  My kids know that summer is officially here when the huge Oreo box appears in the pantry.  Today I was the one who fetched the Oreo snack as three of my boys were calling out Marco Polo in the pool.  Ahhh…summer!  Ahhh…Oreos!

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It’s been a slow dawning…a creeping realization…one I’ve tried to ignore, work around, persevere through…but just a few days ago the truth stared me in the face and began to lodge in my mind.  I think… I’m pretty sure… ok… I know…I’ve flunked flip-flops in life.

The ugly truth met me when I tried on my latest pair of really nice, dark brown, imitation leather flip-flop sandals that I had purchased just a couple of days earlier.  They were just what I was looking for when I tried them on in the store, with the piece of heavy-duty plastic wrapped around the strap that goes in-between the big toe and the next not-quite-as-big-toe.  They looked nice so I bought them and was very pleased with my purchase.  Then on the facing-the-truth day, after the almost-impossible-to-remove heavy-duty plastic was finally removed from the strap on both sandals, I slid my feet into them and started to walk into another room.  Immediately the nerves of the tender top-of-the-foot-skin sent pain signals to my brain and screamed, “Remove immediately!”

I continued to take a few more steps and then succumbed to the reality that the imitation leather was going to rub deep holes into the top of my feet, while the little between-the-toe straps were going to cut off my toes.  That’s when I knew…I’ve failed at flip-flops.

I never wore flip-flops as a child like my two younger sisters did.  My feet stayed safely tucked inside my sneakers.  I didn’t go barefoot much either (my little sisters did that all of the time also).  Why walk around barefooted outside where innumerable hard or sharp things can easily penetrate the epidermis of the foot?  It made no sense to me.  Yes, Jesus had worn sandals, but there are NO pictures of them being flip-flops and besides, they didn’t have Nike’s back then.  (I did actually wear sandals as a child sometimes, just not the flip-flop kind.)

But a few years ago, I took the plunge and began purchasing flip-flops.  By golly, I would train my tender toes to work in flip-flops!  There has been some success, but last summer when my friend went on and on about her new Olukai brand flip-flops, talking about how comfortable they were, even MORE comfortable than going barefooted, I went and bought a pair…just like hers.  I found the right size in the store, tried them on, paid for them, went to my car and switched out of the shoes I was wearing into the most comfortable flip-flops in the whole entire world before finishing my errands for the day.  A couple of hours later, I walked through my backdoor with two raw and red feet; little holes rubbed into the tops of both of them.

I’ve not given up…yet.  I’ve continued to wear the most comfortable sandals in the whole wide world every once in a while and then stop to let the rubbed places heal.  I suspect that I will also do the same thing with the really nice looking, dark brown, imitation leather flip-flops that I just bought…I’ll just now wear them knowing and accepting the truth of my flip-flop destiny.

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I’m not a homeschool mom.  Really, I’m not.  I never have been.  None of our 5 children have been taught at home by their mom…well, officially, that is.  Hopefully, I have taught them many things.  But I have never had the full weight of their formal education resting solely on my shoulders as their teacher.

Don’t get me wrong…I mean no disrespect to those moms who do teach their kids their school subjects in a home setting.  I have had and still do have many friends that have chosen to homeschool their children AND I have a lot of respect for them.  That’s a HUGE responsibility!!  But, my husband and I have never felt led to undertake that calling.

So you may be wondering why I am writing a piece about NOT being a homeschool mom.  It’s because of the rumors.  I call them rumors, and my best friend calls them rumors and we giggle under our smiles when someone asks me if I am still homeschooling.  Yes, I get asked that.  I’ve been asked that question many times,  for many years, even by people that I’ve known for quite a while.  My answer is always the same:  “No, my kids are at such-and-such school.  We don’t homeschool.”

“Really?!” is usually the response, followed by, “You’ve never homeschooled your kids?”

“Really” is my typical answer, “We’ve never homeschooled.”

“Oh, I thought you did,” states the inquisitor.

Our family has been in the school-age years of life for MANY  years, but we have homeschooled for 0 (zero) years, that would be “no” years, not any years…never…ever.

I even receive school curriculum catalogs in the mail, but still the truth of the matter is, we don’t homeschool.

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