For instance. Last night after Rhi and I got back from our first stop on the burger tour (Five Guys – excellent burgers and even better fries – 4 stars) and a trip to buy alllll the crafts at Michaels, and I had finished putting away the girls laundry so they would have,  you know, things to wear and stuff like that, we were sitting down to watch Jeopardy before sending the girls off to bed. Gracie and Bee were sent to brush their teeth…and that’s when we heard the arguing start up. Gracie popped out of the hallway to start ranting about her sister.

“Mom! I was going to use the potty and I had my underwear pulled down and everything and then Bee sat on the potty and stole it from me!”

Auntie Rhi had turned to stare at Gracie the same time I did, but quickly turned around to try to hide the gales of laughter. Pretty sure Gracie heard her though. And over all of that ruckus, I could hear Bee yelling from the bathroom that she was innocent – there was no potty stealing involved.

“Gracie,” I sighed. “There’s another bathroom! Go use that one!” That’s when I noticed her wobble-running through the living room behind the couch where we were sitting. With her underwear still around her knees, her giant t-shirt barely covering the essentials. Auntie Rhi was laughing so hard she was close to tears. “Gracie!!” I bellowed after her, “Pull your panties up! You don’t just stand there with them down!!” Geez louise. Some days I wonder whether these kiddos have learned anything.

Apparently, Gracie had delivered her entire indignant rant about her sister’s potty stealing with her drawers down, which, from my place on the couch, I couldn’t see. Rhi could. That’s why she was lost to the giggles. I just thought she wasn’t used to the commonplace occurrence of things like arguing over who had prior claim to the toilet.

Finally, bladders were emptied and kids were assembled, where they were still arguing over who had their underwear down first and who had clearly indicated they were using the potty first. Dueling heinies. Sadly, not a first.

And, knowing my children, probably not the last.

Having the girls start their kitchen adventures this past weekend was perhaps a little ambitious with all we had planned, but we had to start sometime. So! Friday night I asked the girls what they wanted to prepare. Out of nowhere, Gracie decided on beef enchiladas. I have never cooked an enchilada in my life. After a rather unfortunate experience with Mexican food and food poisoning when I first arrived in Tejas, my tummy still rejects most Mexican dishes. I can eat enough to get by if I have to, but that’s about it. Which is how Gracie and I came to be digging through recipe books looking for a recipe.

Bee was slightly concerned with her sister’s ambitions. “But, Mama, I don’t like enchiladas,” Bee whispered to me. “That’s okay,” I told her. “I don’t like them, either. But remember what we decided? On nights when one of you is cooking, if you don’t like what we make, you can always have a bowl of cereal.” I figured relaxing the rules was a good idea if I was trying to teach them responsibility without having the entire plan collapse in a pool of failure and angst.

Ingredients for Gracie’s Beef Enchiladas

1 lb. lean hamburger meat
6″ tortillas (flour or corn or whatever your tastebuds are craving)
1/2 cup cottage cheese
1 1/2 cups shredded cheese
1/2 cup chopped onions (optional)
1/2 cup diced tomatoes
1/2 tsp chili or cayenne powder
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 tsp salt
1 cup of salsa
Sour cream

First, brown the meat in a frying pan, medium heat. I forgot how tricky it can be learning how to get hamburger meat to flip over when you’re trying to brown it, but Gracie was a champ. I only had to pick up the meat three or four times and toss it from the stovetop back into the pan, and she only burnt herself once – not from splatter, but from grabbing the side of the frying pan. Whoops.

While the meat is browning (or, if you’re new at this and can’t multi-task, after the meat is finished browning), start gathering your ingredient and make a big mess chopping the tomatoes. Gracie asked if we could leave out the onion because she doesn’t like them, so we skipped that step. (This is kinda important for later.)

In a small mixing bowl, combine 1/2 cup cottage cheese, 1/2 cup shredded cheese, 1/2 cup diced tomatoes, and the seasonings. Since we didn’t have fresh garlic, Gracie decided to add a teaspoon of garlic powder instead.

Spray the bottom of a shallow, 13×9 baking dish with cooking spray. Try not to get it all over the floor, because cleaning that slippery stuff off is crazyhard. (Ahem.) Lay a tortilla in your hand, fill with about 1/3 cup of the cottage cheese filling.

Then, add a bit of the browned hamburger meat.

Roll both sides of the tortilla closed, and place folded-side down in the pan. Repeat until you run out of the mixture, and then, if you’re Gracie, ask if you can fill the last two spaces in the dish with shredded-cheese-and-meat-only enchiladas.

When the pan is filled, top with the salsa and shredded cheese, to taste. Bake for 15 minutes (or until cheese is melty) at 375°.

Ta da! Not bad at all for a first meal, I thought! As I poured Bee her cereal, Gracie asked if I could please give her the two enchiladas that were cheese-and-meat-only. “Because I don’t like tomatoes in my enchiladas.” I stared at her, jaw open, before I busted out laughing. “Gracie! Why didn’t you leave those out like we did with the onions?” I asked, still laughing at my crazy, goofy girl. “I didn’t know they wouldn’t be diced teeeeeny tiny,” was all she could say.

But the fun wasn’t over for us. Gracie decided they were okay, but she would like them better if we didn’t use salsa. I made the note for next time and told her what a good job she did. My other crazy girl, Bee-baby, had decided to at least try a bite of Gracie’s dinner. And then proceeded to eat all of Gracie’s enchiladas and one with the full mixture besides that. Gracie ate Bee’s bowl of cereal. Because of course they did.

Oh well. Gracie had fun running the kitchen for a little while and I was just happy that the night was a success.

It started out with, “Oh, Auntie Rhi is getting in at 9:30 p.m.! The kiddos can stay up a little late and come with me to get her! For lo, they can sleep in the next day.”

Everyone was supah excited and ready to leave to go get her…and then I realized when I was checking her gate that her flight had been delayed by an hour, and now wasn’t due in until 11 p.m. Well. Maybe they would make up some time in the air and the airline’s Web site just wasn’t keeping the arrival times all updated and stuff. So we left the house an hour later than planned. We brought books and LeapPads and planned to settle in, just in cases.

Of course, by the time we got to the airport, the Web site all of a sudden changed their message, saying they no longer had any information on my sister’s flight and to contact customer service. Which, um, is kind of code for something really bad happened to the flight. And the arrival boards in the terminal didn’t even list that flight from Boston. I started panicking just a little, but then the flight randomly reappeared on the Web site. Still not on the arrival boards, though.

But no matter! The flight hadn’t crashed, it was just taking its sweet time arriving. 10 p.m. came and went. 11 p.m. I finally heard from Rhi at 11:30 p.m. and found another super secret baggage claim with ALL THE PEOPLE. Serious – NINE flights’ worth of luggage on one carousel. I have no idea how we managed it, but Rhi and I somehow both tippy-toed to see over the crowd of people at the same time. Which was unfortunate because I was tired enough to start yelling “MARCO” to see if I could get a “POLO” back.

It was another hour before we got Rhi’s luggage, and then a mile’s traipse back towards the car. (Not even kidding. We had parked at E1. Her baggage claim was E32.) We found a fast food drive through that was still open on the way home, and that is why we didn’t get home from the 9:30 flight until well after 1 a.m. It was closer to 2 a.m. before I climbed into bed.

The only thing that kept me from calling in late to work was the fact that Corrie & John’s kiddos are summer-camping at our house this week. There’s no way I’d get any sleep with all the cavorting and fun-having going on in the other room. Then again, I just might have managed – the exhaustion is pretty thick.

Still, I’d rather be muddling through a day of work than trying to play ringmaster to a houseful of madly brilliant penguins. I mean, kiddos. So…upside? Heh. Welcome to vacation, Rhi, where things are somehow always slightly less restful than you envisioned!

So here you go, Kim – let me know which ones I should smuggle into Rhi’s return luggage.

1) Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys. I don’t know why it took me so long to read this imagined prequel to Jane Eyre; it was stunningly and gorgeously written, with a wordscape so lush you’ll want to sink right into it. Want to know why the crazy lady in the attic goes round the bend? Read this.

2) Constellation of Vital Phenomena, by Anthony Marra. Easily one of my favorite books of the year. A story set in eastern Russia about love and loss and the ties (and stories) that bind us all. I borrowed the ebook from the library the Tuesday it came out, and had finished it by Thursday.  It was that good.

3) Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell. It was a tough, crazy read filled with far more sci-fi-centered short stories than I would have preferred. But Kim loves sci-fi and she loves fantastically brilliant writing and she has a bit of a crush on David Mitchell. So…

4) The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, by Reif Larsen. Because Kim is going to love. so. hard. the brilliant little marginalia and the quirkiness of one T.S. Spivet. He’s kind of like if Sheldon from Big Bang Theory and Jake from Stephen King’s Dark Tower series had a kid.

5) Boy21, by Matthew Quick. A book about belonging, community, race relations, basketball and what it means to be a high school boy growing up and learning stuff the hard way. (Is there an easy way?) Because Kim is always looking out for books to recommend to tween/teenaged boys and because this was long-listed for the Tournament of Books for several brilliant reasons. Oh, and because it’s not just for teenaged boys.

6) Twelve Tribes of Hattie, by Ayana Mathis. This wasn’t as good as The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, but almost. And I know how much Kim loved Girl.

7) and 8) The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and This is How You Lose Her, by Junot Diaz. Because Junot is one of my three favorite living authors, and Kim really needs to read why. Betcha she’ll fall for Oscar just as hard.

9) The Round House, by Louise Erdrich. This won all the awards for soooo many reasons. I avoided it for so long because the blurb just didn’t call to me and the cover art bugged (hey – sometimes shallow is deeper than me). But I read the coming-of-age story of the boy who tries to solve his mother’s attempted murder on lands where his tribal lands meet the “real” world and slapped myself for not reading it sooner.

10) A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving. I slogged through this book for what seemed like forever – and I still loved it. It’s one of those classics that you know as you’re reading it that you’ll think about it for the rest of your reading life. It’s a powerful book, and I think Kim is going to have a slightly different reaction and I’m very curious to talk it out.

11) Tell the Wolves I’m Home, by Carol Rifka Brunt. A book about a teenaged girl who loses her uncle, the only person who understood her, to a terrible new disease called AIDS. I loved reading about Junie and her uncle’s relationship; the narrator’s voice was just perfect. In fact, I think I read this book in a single sitting.

12) Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher. Kim and I have a thing for well-executed YA novels, and this is one of the best I’ve come across in years. It’s the story of a girl who’s committed suicide, but left behind 13 audio tapes she’s narrated explaining why she did what she did. It’s a sucker punch to your gut all the way through without being overdone for a single second.

13) Open City, by Teju Cole. A Nigerian med student (doctor?) wanders the streets of New York City, thinking about both his past and where his current life jumped tracks. It’s the kind of philosophical thinking-too-much and not-much-happening-otherwise kind of story that Kim loves and I mostly do not. Since I liked it in spite of itself, I betcha Kim adores it.

14) The Tiger’s Wife, by Tea Obreht. Combine Eastern-Europe life post USSR break-up with some death-myths and a woman piecing together the life of her grandfather and you have one of my favorite kind of stories. Gorgeously written, too.

15) The True Story of Hansel and Gretel, by Louise Murphy. I know Kim isn’t big into history, but I want to hear her take on this completely believable way of explaining how the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale was taken from fictionally-true accounts. Very original and yet believably written.

16) The Song Is You, by Arthur Phillips. If you took Harriet the Spy and made her a grown-up obsessed with music, this is kind of what you’d get.

17) The Gathering, by Anne Enright. Very, very lyrical story of a huge Irish family called back to their childhood home for the death of a sibling. Enright makes dysfunction sound so pretty and spun her tale in a way that didn’t weigh the reader down.

18) The Flight of Gemma Hardy, by Margot Livesay. I wasn’t expecting to love this story as much as I did. It’s a retelling and modernization of Jane Eyre, one of Kim’s favorite books.

19) Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. I finally got around to reading this and I’m glad I did. I don’t know what Kim will make of all the religious overtones, but I think she’ll like the story overall. Another one in the Philosophy Is Beautiful category.

20) Joyland, by Stephen King. Because who starts summer any other way than by reading a Stephen King?! Not these sisters.

(I KNOW, RIGHT?! I have been waiting my her whole life for this!!)

(I never thought we’d get here. With Gracie, she turned two, potty-trained, and then six months later, was completely night-trained. It was so much less of an issue for her than the actual potty training. Unfairly setting up expectations and stuff. Because along came Bee, whose potty training took a bit more out of me [but, hey, then again I was going through a divorce, so maybe my memory and view of ALL THE THINGS was a little skewed], but who eventually got there with the daytime potty training. Nothing out of what I’d consider normal parameters when all was said and done.)

(Night-time training…well that was a different story. Bee flew past the six-month mark without even showing signs that we could skip pull-ups at night. She turned three. Four. Five came and went and I at least let the kid start wearing big girl underwear to bed. She was having frequent accidents, but I thought if she could feel them, she might exert more control. She didn’t. I was washing sheets four, five, six times a week, but determined to wait it out. The poor kid couldn’t go on sleepovers for fear that she’s pee in someone else’s bed or carpet. Whenever we had sleepovers are our house, I’d always drag her mattress into the living room to save my own belongings (and her the embarrassment). I was paranoid when we went on vacation, even though I packed a plastic sheet. I cannot count the times that I was nearly broken by the fact that my 4/5/6/6 1/2 year old could defeat every trick in the book, from waking her up once or twice [or three times] a night, to withholding fluids after dinner to…well, every other trick you can think of. She was going to be peeing the bed when she went to college – but at least she’d have to change her own sheets, then.)

(As six turned to six-and-a-half, Bee started going a few weeks in between accidents, but then she’d have them all week. You know – for optimal breakage of mom’s spirit. Then she’d go several weeks without. Which is how it came to be that I noticed we hadn’t had any accidents in at least two months. I decided it was time for an experiment: I made sure Bee had gone to the bathroom before she crawled into bed, but then I didn’t wake her up an hour later when I went to bed. It was a ritual I didn’t ever skip, because if I did, I was guaranteed there would be an accident later. Except this time there was none. Not one all week.)

(It might seem like a minor accomplishment to anyone else, hardly something worthy of broadcasting to the world, but I can only guess if that’s your position that you are not a parent who has struggled with a child who can’t keep it in til they make it to the bathroom. Clearing this hurdle is better than when the kids learned to buckle themselves into the car; better than when they learned to bathe themselves; better even than when they learned to eat without needing an immediate bath. Maybe not better than learning to read…but almost. Almost. Nobody tell Bee, but this would be an excellent time for her to ask for a pony. Just sayin’.)

Sunday morning I went for a loooong walk around the neighborhood, through the trails where I usually run. It was cool(ish)(for June) and it had stormed and it did me so much good just being out there. That night my knee was a little buzzy, but it seemed to tolerate the exercise okay. Honestly, my hips were more angry than my knee was. And so last night, even though I had only been on one little walk, I decided to lace up my new sneakers and go for another walk…and a short run. I only ran for a mile, paying very close attention to how my knee was feeling. If it started to hurt, I would dial back. Or stop. I didn’t want to set myself back further – I needed to run.

My knee wasn’t exactly singing the Hallelujah chorus, but my heart was. As I turned a bend in the path and saw what I call the Buzzard Tree, my heart nearly leapt right out of my chest with joy. Have you ever had a moment where you feel so happy, so free, so cured that you realize all of a sudden that you had been depressed without even realizing it? Seeing that tree, running past that tree, did more for me than all of the PT and pain relievers and pampering from the past two weeks combined. Maybe my knee would make me pay for it later, but I needed that moment more than I had even suspected. Until I felt better, I didn’t realize how blue and depressed I had been that morning; how stressed and anxious and wallowing in ungood stuff. Pushing myself to run might have been a bit ahead of schedule, physically, but I really needed it. I’m glad I did it.

My knee might be a little more swollen this morning, and I might be limping – a little. But the rest of me feels light as a feather. Not a bad way to start a Wednesday.

Like on Sunday night. The girls slammed into the house, throwing open the door after what seemed like a very long weekend at their dad’s house. They were chattering away about their last day of school on Friday, and what the awards’ ceremony was like, and how Grandma bought them new dresses the day before to wear to church – and that’s when I noticed that Bee was carrying what looked to a red plastic bread bag.

“Whatcha got, Bee?” I asked, taking it from her as she thrust it in my direction.

“It’s leftover Communion bread,” she threw over her shoulder as she ran around the room doing…something. I don’t know what, exactly, because I was staring at the bread in my hand, wondering if this was really happening. Because, you know, little weird.

“Communion bread?”

“Yes!”

“From church?”

“Yes!”

The confusion, it was not ending. “Bee, why do you have, um, “leftover” Communion bread?”

“Grandma said I could have it. We can eat the leftovers, Mom!”

We can…what?? “Bee, we cannot eat leftover Communion bread! You don’t eat leftover Communion bread!”

“Why?” Bee stopped twirling and was rummaging around in the kitchen, trying to figure out what I was cooking for dinner, and not really paying attention to me.

“Because this is special bread! It’s blessed by a priest and…” Bee looked up at me like she had no idea what I was talking about. Probably because they go to a Methodist church with their grandma and I had been raised Catholic, and she has no idea what a priest is. I tried to start again, but man, I was flustered. “Because it’s the body of Jesus, Bee! We don’t eat leftover Jesus as a snack!”

(File under: things you never thought you’d yell in your house.)

Bee shrugged her shoulders and went back to setting the table. Me, I am apparently too churchy to throw the leftover Communion bread away, but not churchy enough to know exactly what to do with it. So I brought the bread down to the back of the yard and crumbled the bread up for the birds and ants to eat. Hey, Jesus has to be about feeding the hungry and recycling and stuff. I thought it was a good compromise.

And that is how we had possibly the strangest start to a summer ever. Now I’m kind of afraid to see how the rest of it goes.

I had one girl who was even more excited than mom this morning:

“Do I look like Beyonce?” Bee asked as she twirled out of her bedroom, batting her eyelashes and jutting her hip out. “Yes, exactly like Beyonce,” I deadpanned. “You’re a dead ringer.” Because obviously.

The other girlchild of mine was less than enthused. In fact, you might have said she was grumpy and rather put out about this whole “no more school” thing. I had to practically drag her outside to let me take her end of school picture.

This was after I threatened to not let her go to school if she didn’t at least pretend to smile. Even though we’re going to see her friends AND her teacher all summer, you’d think I’d drowned her puppy or something, with all the glum. Geez, child. Stop geeking out for one minute and pretend the end of the school year isn’t the worst thing in the whole entire world.

I even made waffles this morning; that is how much happy I had esploding out of me. My glee just could not be contained!

So, Bee and Gracie-girl – let’s have us a fantastic, fabulous, forever-remember-this kind of summer at Casa de Katie! Let’s exhaust ourselves with fun so we’re ready to pack away the sunblock and water wings and hit the books again this fall, okay?

Ready…

set….

…SUMMER!

The end of school this year is going to be the death of me.

It doesn’t help that I’m sleep deprived. I didn’t sleep well Sunday night because, well, we had our summer series patio dinner with John and Corrie’s family and there were very tasty blueberry-pomegranate adult beverages and I must be getting old because I don’t sleep very well after I’ve been drinking. So there was that. Monday night, I don’t know what was going on, because I fell asleep and slept hard for about twenty minutes, and then I was inexplicably awake until 1 a.m. Tuesday I caught up, but last night….oof. My body is crying because I keep jerking it around. Sleep! No sleep! No sleep! No sleep! SLEEP! It’s like duck-duck-goose, but with sleep, so it’s awful! Not that I’m complaining about the double-overtime from the Bruin’s game – we won, so I can’t complain. Oh, no. I’ll complain about the storms that starting rolling through at 3 a.m. and the children who kept waking me up to sleep in my bed, no back in their own beds because the storm was gone, JUST KIDDING, back to your bed, mama, because it’s thundering again! Jesus wept. And then mama wept. Because I didn’t fall back to sleep until after 5:30 a.m. And my alarm goes off at 6 a.m. I am not best friends with math, but I am pretty sure that equals not a lot of sleeping.

Just one more wake-up. One more wake-up and then school will be over and I’ll have the weekend to sleep in, and then we’ll be on a better, later summer schedule. Hopefully, with sleep. Certainly with fewer last-minute cupcake errands. (Silly school party announcements being sent home the night before.) One more day of school. One week of daycare. And then Auntie Rhi will be here! For two weeks! And then the girls go to their dad’s for a month. And then we have vacation! And then Auntie Kim will be here! And then…

Well. We won’t think about that. Because then is the start of school again, and right now I’m too busy being Who-the-hell-cares-let’s-just-get-through-one-more-day-of-school-whatever-it-takes Mom instead of Peppy!Do!All!The!Things! Mom that I am at the beginning of the school year. Because right now, I’m pretty sure that mom is dead and is never coming back.

So. Right. One more wake-up until school is over. But I still might not make it.

But try telling that to me after I spent a very happy lunch at a nearby car park, with the windows down, feet up on the dash, temps only in the low 90s (a summer miracle here in hell Tejas), and a cool breeze blowing across me. I had a new Stephen King book cracked open and a pretty good story spilling out of it.

Go ahead and tell me that’s not a perfect opening to an awesome summer ahead! Because it sure felt like a rather awesome summer afternoon, even if only for just an hour.