Forty-six

I decided to spice up the wardrobe, now that the baby weight is gone.  I decided I needed something a little more hip and young, since I'm teetering dangerously close to the edge of suburban mom-ville. After all, I'm the same age as Tara Reid. Give or take ten years.

Went to TJ Maxx, where I figured I'd get the max for the minimum, stuffed Molly into a cart, and had to consciously tell myself to look for young, hip, Tara Reid clothes.

"Sure, it looks ugly on the hanger," I thought. "But I bet it looks young and hip on."

Cut to me in the dressing room, trying to pull the unfortunate pants I had chosen up all the way, and realizing, they’re meant to stop there.  Then, I tried to pull the unfortunate shirt I had chosen down all the way and realized it, too, WAS MEANT TO STOP THERE. 

I'm standing there with my undies blooping out the top of these ridiculous pants and my road map of a midsection exposed by this insane top that had 'nasty' or some stupid thing emblazoned across it, and I looked and felt like a rodeo clown.

"But it looks cute on Julia Roberts," I thought out loud. "And she's actually a few months older than me.........."

The somalian fitting room attendant shot through the curtain,

"Julia's queen of the world.  She can wear a gorilla suit if she wants. You are queen of a red mini van. And doesn't your fake blond hair make you look foolish enough?"

So on the way out of the fitting room, I spotted the same cotton turtleneck sweater I already have in several different earth tones and bought it.

Meg started piano lessons. So far she seems to enjoy it, which is, of course, the main thing. Brought Finny along to her last lesson, at Shmidtt Music, and he went nuts when he saw the wall of real guitars. He kept shrieking at me, "I wanna try that one!" And leaping around doing his rock star face. He tried them all, and decided his favorite was an ebony electric one inlaid with mother of pearl . He had everyone in the store giggling at him (something new,) and one lady said to me, "You should be very proud-- my son is obsessed with vacuum cleaners."

Gotta go—

Yesterday was Finny’s pre-school graduation. Which for starters was wrong, since he's going back next year, but anyway, it was another parental photo-op, “isn't shnookums cute’ thing.  So I was about ten minutes late because I stopped to get his teacher a gift.  All the kiddies were sitting on the stage like little angels in their mortar boards, except this one little boy who was standing off to the side, alternately shadow boxing and breaking into air guitar. As each child was called forward so the teacher could say something endearing about them, this same little boy would escort them off the stage to their parents, then run back up for some more karate chopping and U2 singing.  The topper was when he went behind the risers and started jumping up and down, so all you could see was his big bean popping up every three seconds.  I was stuck in the back of the theater so I couldn't fish him down, and he artfully avoided eye contact with me the entire time. Finbar.......a stage.........a spotlight...........it was too much for him to resist.

Forty-eight

So we all came out to Denver to run the Bolder Boulder 10k race.  My sister Margy, who lives here, threw out the challenge that she would kill us all since she's used to running with no oxygen.  We couldn't let that kind of trash talk go unanswered.

The drive out bit monkey dongs. Molly almost went bananas stuck in her car seat for seventeen hours. There's no cd player in our van, either, so we were reduced to listening to whatever Bumblefart, Nebraska town we were near had to offer.  We did get a kick out all the 'Kum-n-Go's sprinkling the Midwest, but nearly drove off the road when we saw, my hand to God, a place called 'Pump-n-Munch'.

We've had a blast since we've gotten here, though, golf, running, hot tubbing, and massive amounts of alcohol drinking being the activities of choice.  Meg has had a pony tail holder clinging to a giant knot on the back of head for two days.

Margy had a party Friday night, so all her friends could see what idiots we  are. Her next door neighbor told me a story about a party the previous night where some a-hole dumped beer all over her, and I swear not five seconds later, I dumped my wine glass down her shirt.

So this morning was race day, and I slept not one single dingle second last night because I came down with a cold and took some drugs that made me hyper. But I gulped down a bunch of coffee, the race was super fun, and I did better than I thought I would. The boys all said they weren't out for blood, but of course the second the gun went off, they took off like their hair was on fire. Margy and I ran together and then I let her win at the last second. Yes, I did. I just felt it would be rude of me not to let her win since we were staying at her house and all. SO WHY DON'T YOU JUST GET OFF MY BACK ABOUT IT, I JUST HAD A BABY. AND ANYWAY, MARGY'S DUMB.

We'll be home tomorrow night.

Happy Summer.

It's been so long since I wrote, to  I think the easiest way to bring you up to speed is to break our comings and goings into sub categories.  Now, I know what you're thinking, "Who gives a shit?"

But bear with me. I know for a fact that the only thing on tonight is ‘To Gillian on her 37th Birthday’, and you've seen it at least three times. Still gets ya every time, though.

1) The Kids

   a. Meg

Meg will be seven in two weeks, and we're up to our eyeballs in birthday party preparations. Actually, we're not, but we've invited twenty-five of her closest friends over for a party in the back yard, so I should probably get on the stick. So far, the only game I’ve come up with is whoever picks the biggest pile of weeds wins a dollar. Yes, twenty-five is an outlandish amount of guests, but she's never had a real party before, so I figured what the heck, invite everyone you want. I plan to drink lots of Gin and Tonics anyway, so what's the dif?

 b. Finbar

Finbar went from swimming with a flotation device to jumping off the diving board in four days. He then got booted out of the pool for jumping off the diving board onto a pool chair he had dumped into the water. God love the little hooligan. The other day, he was playing with a little neighbor girl and she started to cry, and when I asked what happened, he yelled, "I didn't punch her!"  I told him to apologize, and he said, "I'm sorry I didn't punch you."

 c. Molly

Ah, Molly.......she's one, she's trying to walk, and when she sees her mommy or an Oreo, she smiles so hard it looks like her face is going to break.

2) Me

I'm on a powerful antibiotic, perhaps you've heard of it.....CIPRO? That's right, bring on the Anthrax! You won't take me down this week!  Why Cipro, you ask? Funny story. Turns out if you sit around in a wet bathing suit for long enough, that bladder infection you've been ignoring will go straight to your kidneys. And you will feel like h-e-double hockey sticks and have to go on Cipro, so lesson learned.

Where was I?

3) The house/yard

House is fine, we built a fence and got a court paved and had new sod installed, which grew like mad for two weeks and then died. I guess you were supposed to water it or something. Screw it.

Other than that, we're pretty much in a groove of swimming all day and then coming home to lovingly prepared, piping hot bowls of Cocoa Puffs. The kids have killer tans.

Hope you’re having a fun summer…

Fifty

Happy belated Thanksgiving.  

Had the in-laws over. 

I got the house all ready, food all ready, blah blah blah, guests start trickling in at 2:30, as I have promised them dinner by four o’clock. 

Well, Butterball can just go to hell, that’s what.

The little chart said it would take four and one half hours to cook the stupid turkey, and at five o’clock,  that monster was still barking.  At five forty five, the  hors de ouvres (??? You know, the whores ovaries) are all gone and I've got a kitchen full of people staring at me.  I am sweating profusely.  Molly comes to the rescue, she has put a bucket on her head and is amusing everyone by running into things. God bless her.  I've cranked the heat on the oven.  My mother-in-law walks by, and peering into a large pot of what looks like dishwater asks, "Now what's this?" 

"Never you mind," I snapped, too embarrassed to tell her it was the beginnings of my fake, reconstituted potato flakes mashed potatoes. 

Finally, the thermometer reached one hundred-seventy degrees. It's the very minimum setting for poultry, but I pulled that sucker out and Mike and I started hacking. No, I didn't wait twenty minutes like you're supposed to. It was six friggin' thirty, and people wanted to go home.

I would just like to say that carving a turkey is the single most disgusting experience of my life. And I'm including watching a cat have kittens all over a pile of my clean laundry. 

I swear to Heaven, the thing got bigger as we chopped it up. A big pulsating blob of dark meat and tendons.  Plus, halfway through, Mike started pulling plastic bags of turkey garbage out of its nether regions. I'VE NEVER COOKED A TURKEY! I DIDN'T KNOW IT HAD SECRET BAGS INSIDE OF IT! WHY! WHY? And everyone saw, because they were all watching with their silverware clutched in their greedy hands like in a cartoon.  Thank God everyone was drunk.  And that Molly loved that bucket so.

So everyone ate and raved about how delicious it was and left. 

Mike started vomiting around ten. He got better just in time to leave for Pheonix tonight at 9:30. By, hon! It was nice seeing you! Sorry you almost died from eating my yucky Thanksgiving dinner!   It just always seemed so easy in the past. I'd go over to mom's house and drink cocktails, and by the third or fourth one, a lovely dinner would appear. 

© Katie McCollow, 2004 • katie.mccollow@mac.com