Blast from the Past

I am feeling a little bit better, for those of you who were wondering, but still not up to normal. So I thought I would cheat a little bit and revisit one of my first blog posts from back in August. I hope y'all have a good weekend!

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Close Encounters in the Parking Lot

My daughter is in first grade at the magnet school. Here in Texas, we have our regular, non-superior schools, and then we have our magnet schools. Magnet schools are for people like me who think our children are superior, and belong in a superior school, but we can't afford private school, so we pretend that the magnet school is just the best school ever. The main problem with the magnet school is that there really isn't any bus service, so I drive my daughter to and from school each day, along with 600 other parents.

Which brings us to the Car Pool Lane. The Car Pool Lane is where all of us parents of superior children sit and wait in traffic at our superior school. Every. Single. Day. Every single day, I drive the mini-van with my two preschool children to the Car Pool Lane at 3:15, and I sit in line and occupy myself for 20 minutes by either 1)reading, 2)people-watching, 3)telling the two preschoolers to stop fighting, 4)general musing, or 5)all of the above.

Today, I was doing a little musing, and a little people-watching, and I noticed a lady walking towards my car from the kindergarten carpool area. She was pretty, blonde, and petite, and she had her cute little girl by the hand. She walked over to the front left of my car and stood behind her behemoth SUV with her hands on her hips, surveying the scene. What she saw was wall to wall cars, lined up 20 deep, and no hope of backing her behemoth SUV out of its parking space prison. And mine was the first in the long line of cars blocking her way.

Obviously, this woman made a rookie mistake. I feel her pain, because I did something similar when my child was in kindergarten. She got there early and figured if she parked in this lot, she could avoid the kindergarten car pool lane, and that would enable her to sneak over there and pick up her child, driving away quickly and laughing wildly at all those suckers waiting in line. What she didn't realize was that she was planting herself right in the middle of the First Grade traffic snarl. Tough break, rookie.

So she eyed me warily, turned with a flip of her hair, hefted her child up, up, up, into the behemoth, then proceeded to climb up herself. Then this pretty little lady, I'll call her Ms. I-Have-One-Child-And-I-Need-To-Drive-An-Escalade-To-Keep-Her-Safe, proceeded to slap that car in reverse and start backing up.

Ms. Escalade, why? Where do you think you're going to go? Do you think that you can fit that gigantic thing into the 3 feet of space that you have to back up? I know you saw me here because you gave me the evil eye. Really, Ms. Escalade, this is beneath you.

For the next ten minutes (I'm not exaggerating, I timed it), she sat there with her behemoth in reverse, impatiently tapping those brakes, inching slowly back, coming closer and closer to the minivan.

Now, I want you to know something here. If I could have moved anywhere to let her out, I would have. I have no ill will towards Ms. Escalade. But I was boxed in on all sides, which she clearly saw, and there was nothing I could do but sit there and smirk at her. But I did it in the nicest way, I swear.

Well, finally the line moved, and the Escalade family fell in behind me. I guess she thought she was home free, but then I stopped my car and hopped out to wave Gracie down and help her into the car. Apparently it was too much to ask of Ms. Escalade that I could pick up my kid before exiting the parking lot. The minute I put it in park, she started honking and gesturing wildly. I wonder if she taught that sweet girl any new words. I couldn't read her lips, because the only thing visible above the steering wheel were those perfectly tweezed eyebrows, but I'm sure she had plenty to say.

I couldn't help but laugh at her second rookie mistake: When you have road rage in normal traffic, you are anonymous. When you have road rage in the Car Pool Lane, you have to see that same car every day until June.

Same time tomorrow, sweetie!

Are you people reading this?

I'm mesmerized by these bloggers, who are currently on a trip to Uganda with Compassion International. Click on 'read' and see what they have to say.

Really. I've got nothing.

I've got no energy whatsoever. After a productive few weeks of running around nonstop, the brakes have been slammed. I've been stuck in this cycle for months now, with my energy level plummeting to the depths for days or weeks at a time, then returning to normal again, and there is no simple solution to it. I've had blood tests drawn that came back normal. I've been trying to eat healthier foods, and while it has helped overall, it's still a struggle.

So for the last two days I have had to force myself to complete simple tasks: breakfast, lunch, dinner, laundry, driving to school and back, all the while fighting the urge to just crawl into bed and sleep. The kiddos have been parked in front of the TV, not feeling too well themselves, and by bedtime it is all that I can do to keep from snapping at them to just GO TO BED already because I AM TIRED.

Tomorrow I have to spend the day at work, completing my annual certification for a self-defense type class. The thought of lifting any of my limbs to defend myself at this point is laughable. The thought of having everyone fed and dressed and out of the house before 8 feels about as possible as climbing Mount Everest.

It's entirely possible that tomorrow will be better. It's possible that, after a good night's sleep, I will wake up feeling normal again. I never know.

What I do know is that I will eventually come back around, if the past is any indication, and I will quickly forget what all of my complaining was about to begin with. In the meantime, my posting here will be a real downer sporadic for now, but hopefully soon things will get better.

On a more positive note: I saw the first daffodils blooming today. Spring is on its way.

Finally: A Post With Actual Words and Not Just Pictures

Alternate title: "Did I really Just Post a Picture of My Laundry Pile on The Internet?"


Why yes, I did post a picture of my laundry on the internet. Some would call it honest and real. Others would say I just haven't had anything interesting to say in quite a while. Others would be correct.

The past week has been a little too busy for blogging, but not in an exciting kind of way. Just a lot of after-school activities, laundry, and cleaning.

This weekend, however, was gorgeous and 75 degrees, and we were finally able to get out of the house and have some fun. Friday night was our neighborhood moms' night out, and we played Bunco. It was fun in a mathematical sort of way, but all of the addition and dice-rolling gives me a headache. I do enjoy hanging out with the neighbors, though, and it was especially nice to get out of the house for a while and eat some chocolate.

On Saturday, while Greg was at work, I took the kids to the school to teach them to ride bikes. Grace has had her training wheels off for a while, and insists that she already knows how to ride the bike, but truthfully her only skill is hanging on for a few seconds while going in a straight line, before panicking and either taking her feet off the pedals or turning the handlebars at a 90 degree angle. So far, neither option has yielded good results.

Tommy has proved to be an eager learner on the bike, mostly because he wants to master it before his older sister. He was determined, crash after crash, to get back up, dust himself off, and conquer that bike. Even when I encouraged him to take a break (mostly due to my own huffing and puffing), he just kept getting back on, always asking the same question, "Am I doing better than Grace?"

The answer to that question would be yes. That girl, for all of her artistic talent, intelligence, and creativity, has had the misfortune of inheriting her mother's athletic ability (which is to say that she has inherited no athletic ability).

Another factor that is not helping her bike riding skills is her ability to create serious DRAMA out of nothing. She can stub her toe and scream like it has been amputated. In fact, I am so conditioned to her dramatics that my automatic reaction when she is hurt is to say, "Shake it off, you'll be fine". (Normally that works, except for the time she broke her collar bone, and it took her Daddy coming home from work before anyone took her seriously, but that's another story).

So after a pretty good stretch of coasting straight on the bike, when she inexplicably jacknifed the handlebars to the right, the bike went down and she kept going. Even as she landed on the concrete, I braced myself for the screams that were sure to come. And they certainly did. I ran to her side and in between the wailing and weeping and gnashing of teeth, I discovered that the child did not have one scrape. Not one. My accusatory, "Grace, you're not even bleeding" fell on deaf ears, as she continued her wailing for all of the neighborhood to hear.

She eventually stopped crying, decided she was done with the bike, and went to play on the playground with her baby sister, who was teetering at the top of the jungle gym during the entire episode, while Tommy and I continued with our lessons.

I spent Sunday afternoon laying around the house, either on the couch or on a quilt in the sun while Greg played basketball with the kids. They cracked me up because they kept yelling, "I'm OPEN!" over and over again. Grace's explanation for this: "You have to say 'I'm Open' if you want the ball." Makes sense to me.

Wordless Wednesday

New Blogs on the Block

I have a New Kids on the Block song stuck in my head. I won't name it and inflict that kind of pain on you, but it rhymes with 'The Bright Fluff'. I think horrible affliction has happened because of a CNN report that I saw which alleged that the NKOTB were launching a reunion tour.

(Dear New Kids on the Block:
Why?
Love, Chrissy)

In other news, two of my friends e-mailed me in the past week to say they had started new blogs. Yay for old friends with new blogs!

One of them is my friend Tracy, who I know from college. We spent a summer working and living together in Key West on a mission trip. And now I would like to present to you a lovely photo of some chick and Tracy and me after spending an entire day doing landscaping work in the July heat:
Pried straight out of my scrapbook with love.

The other friend with a new blog is Becky Ray, and she and I go way WAY back. We went to high school together, roomed together in college, and she was the maid of honor at my wedding.

I truly wish I could present to you now a picture of her back in 9th grade with her NKOTB t-shirt on, but I have no such photograph, and even if I did, I wouldn't post it because Becky and I did a lot of goofy things in college that she photographed, and knowing her, I am certain that her retaliation would be swift and sure.

As for Tracy's retaliation, well, I'm pretty confident that the worst picture she has of me looks exactly like this one, so I've beaten her to the punch.

So go on over and say hello. Tracy cleans up real nice, I promise, and Becky is one of the funniest people I know.

Have you seen this man?

He lives in my house, normally. He parents my children quite a bit. He is the changer of light bulbs and the putter-awayer of Christmas decorations. And he has been missing for several weeks. There have been sightings of him in our home, mostly late at night and early in the morning before leaving for work. I can report that he has shaved his beard (picture Matthew Fox flash forwards here), making him barely recognizable to his own family. If you have seen him, please call me immediately, as I have children he needs to parent, many light bulbs that are burned out, and a Christmas tree that needs to be hefted into the attic. Thank you.

Our church is opening a new Worship Center this Sunday, and as the staff geek technical person, he has been working tirelessly to make sure that all of the sound and lights and cameras and computers are working in harmony for the big day. The new building is gorgeous and huge and it has not been an easy task for him, but I think he has done a great job.

(Honey, I'm proud of you. Now get your butt home.)