A brief synopsis of the weekend

I’m unwinding from this weekend and while I really should be unpacking and doing laundry, I am not. The worst part of this formula is that I am blogging to avoid engaging in any type of work, not because I have anything worthwhile to blog about. I guess that is my indirect way of warning you, or apologizing in advance for this discombobulated post.

The weekend was busy. We started by attending my 15 year-old brother’s basketball game. The game was at the high school I graduated from. It wasn’t nostalgic, or a homecoming of sorts, it really just made me feel damn old. Oh and it also confirm my suspect of the rapidly-aging pandemic affecting teenage girls. This was evidenced by the junior-high and high-school girls that easily could have passed for 25. Unless, as a collective group, they have flunked every other grade and really are 25, then I’d surmise that my theory is correct. On second thought, maybe I didn’t feel so damn old in their company. I just felt like I didn’t apply enough make-up and too little of my skin was showing.

We were also supposed to be celebrating my brother’s 15th birthday, but his busy social calendar prevented him from being home most of the time we were there. The birthday celebration consisted of cupcakes after breakfast this morning. Craig even dug out an old Crayola crayon candle (pink, of course) from my mom’s junk drawer in his honor. I swear, the candle has been in there for 20 years. You know the kind of junk drawer I am referring to, right? Anyway, we celebrated the big ONE-FIVE in style this morning. Poor dude.

Kate, of course, snuck in some of her Kate-isms throughout the weekend. First was her uncanny obsession with proudly announcing, “When I grow up, I am going to be a COWGIRL!” While I don’t have a problem with cowgirls, I am not entirely sure where this idea came from. We certainly don’t talk about cowgirls and before this weekend I would have easily bet a paycheck that she had never heard of a cowgirl. Now, not only has she is acquainted, but she’s got a plan to become one. Dream big little girl, dream big. I spent a large part of the weekend harassing Craig over our trip to North Carolina last year. The trip in which he got pulled over at 3:00 a.m. for speeding, by a West Virginia police offer who took his job way too seriously and didn’t take kindly to us out of town folk. Kate woke up screaming and wouldn’t go back to sleep and we unwillingly spent too much time in West Virginia. This has not much to do with my story, but I have Craig convinced that it was where Kate was introduced to cowgirls. Needless to say, that makes this debacle ALL.HIS.FAULT. and that is all that matters, not the accuracy of my story, right?

Her other, perhaps more disturbing comment, came while she was playing with her little Cinderella doll. On the surface, that appears innocent enough. However, while she was engaging in very lopsided dialogue with Cinderella, she says, “Oh Cinderella, you need a boyfriend!” I don’t really have words to explain quite how surprised I was to hear those words uttered from Kate during casual play. I think my head spun around 180 degrees, and my heartbeat hit a rapid crescendo while I tried to avoid a panic attack.