Dear Friends and Fellow Mommies,
Glad you could join me as I join Andrea at Momfessionals for Show and Tell Tuesday. Before you start worrying about what it is exactly I am going to show, I want to assure you that I don’t have a lot of pictures for this blog post. So you will have to use your imaginations.
You can thank me later.
Today Andrea has encouraged all of us to reminisce about the real side of motherhood. To remember back to a few of our less-impressive mothering moments and then to share them here with you guys.
So, as Jackie Gleason used to say, “And away we go!”
Got Milk?
Lauren worked as an athletic trainer in high school. She helped with the football team, in particular, getting them water, helping to ice down and wrap sore muscles. She had to stay after school every afternoon in the fall while the team practiced. One particular day, I had taped an episode of “Come Read with Me”, the televised reading program I did for the school district. For the show I had read some books about cows and had my audience make a cow craft. And of course, I dressed as a cow and I wore a little cardboard sign around my neck that read “Got milk?” (Can you tell where this is going?) Instead of changing back into my street clothes after we taped, I just drove over to pick up Lauren in my costume. When I arrived, I got out of the car just in time to see the football team going back to the locker room after practice. The players (Lauren’s boyfriend included) got a kick out of my costume and my pretending to squirt milk at them from my udders…Lauren, ummm, not so much.
Dirty Knees
When Brennyn was very young and Lauren even younger, maybe 20 and 18…no, just kidding, maybe 5 and 3, or 6 and 4, I started encouraging them to wash themselves during bath time. They always took baths together, so I would give them a couple or three hours to play in the tub, then when the water was good and cold, I would tell them it was time to wash up. (Ok, I exaggerate. A little.) One night, I went into the bathroom to inspect the girls for dirt they missed behind their ears and between their toes, when to my horror, I noticed that both of Brennyn’s knees were absolutely dirt brown, almost a brownish-black. I scolded her and took the wash cloth and started scrubbing her knees myself. I scrubbed and scrubbed, then rinsed off the soap and her knees were just as dark, only kind of red and irritated looking now, too. There might or might not have been blood. Brennyn looked at me with tears in her eyes and said that her knees were just that color. Ooops. Guess I had never looked at her that carefully.
Dish-Washer
Chances are pretty good that few of you guys are ever going to come over for dinner. And after this next momfession, those of you who might actually be able to come over, probably won’t. When the girls and I lived in our little house, before I knew PC, we had the craziest dog named Cici. She looked like a 3/4-size English sheepdog but was actually part poodle and part human. I had a galley kitchen that was about the size of most people’s pantries, when the dishwasher door was down, I couldn’t open the oven, when the refrigerator door was open, no one could get in or out of the kitchen. After dinner, I would open the dishwasher door so everyone could put their plates and silverware in after rinsing them off in the sink. But we never rinsed them very well…the girls were young and short and couldn’t reach the sink. So we just let Cici stand on the dishwasher door and lick off all of the leftover food. What? Come on, we live in a desert. Water is precious.
The Drink of Astronauts
When the girls were little, I told them that when I was little I told myself that the pulp in orange juice was really the fur from dead orange cats. (You probably told yourself the same thing, right?) And as a result, I refused to drink orange juice with kitty fur in it. Because, as they say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and my girls refused to drink orange juice with kitty fur in it, too. Shot myself in the foot with that one. Everywhere we went, I carried Tang orange drink mix in my purse; the girls would order water to drink and I would put Tang in it for them. As they got older, and I got broker/poorer, I would tell them that if we were going out to eat, I couldn’t afford to buy food and drinks. They usually preferred eating to drinking, so they would always just order water to drink. To this day, when we go out to eat together, they will glance at me first before ordering anything more than water to drink. Most of the time nowadays, I give them the thumb’s up on a soda.
Bottom’s Up
As I may have mentioned before, when the girls and I lived in little house, we had an in-ground swimming pool. Having the pool put in was some of the best money I’ve ever spent because the girls and their friends made our home the place to hang-out. It was also a lot of work. Cleaning the tiles and plaster, skimming the water for bugs, adding the chemicals, back-washing the filter. One particular spring day, the girls and I had worked hard getting the pool ready so we could swim. All of my neighbors were up on their rooftops, getting their air conditioners up and running. When I got ready to get into the pool, I pulled off my shorts only to realize I had forgotten to put on my bathing suit underneath. I screamed, then dropped to the ground while struggling to pull up my shorts. My panic alerted not only my daughters but all of my neighbors to my state of undress. Bottom’s up.
I could easily go on, and on, and on confessing my lapses in judgement and mothering sins but this is a Tuesday post and it is almost Wednesday. With all of my mistakes, my beautiful daughters managed to grow up in spite of me.
And I couldn’t love them more.
Hugs and kisses,
Sharon
I can so see you screaming with your shorts down! Ha! You are still so funny after all these years! My kids would say they didn’t want orange juice with hair in it! No pulp at our house either. 🙂
Sarah C
oh my gosh I love this, kitty fur, hilarious!
Elements Of Ellis
Haha! That is too funny about washing her knees too much! lol. When I was about 7, my mom tried scrubbing dirt off my arm but it wouldn’t come off…turns out it was my birthmark. lol.
http://elementsofellis.com/
Lana
I really enjoyed reading this Leslie – I was laughing the whole time! You have such a talent for telling a story. Hope you’re having a great week!