Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

Save Me From Myself

Singing Telegram

by

wanda pretzels
Wanda was sick. She’d been hacking up a lung for days and I’d kept her home from school and other activities. One morning she woke up coughing nigh unto death and barfed all over her bed. It was a lovely way to wake up.

Laylee shakes my arm.

“Mom.”

“Mom.”

“Hey Mom. Wanda barfed.”

It isn’t stomach flu, just a coughing fit and what she chuffs up is a glob of Tylenol and other globs of other things that, frankly I’m glad are no longer in her lungs.

She is fine the rest of the day. I give her a bottle of watered-down Gatorade, call it “sick soda” and plunk her in front of the TV. She barely coughs at all and her fever becomes non-existent.

The thing is, I have Christmas packages to mail and I’m running out of time. So, that afternoon, I tell her to grab her sick soda, pack up the car and head to the post office.

First thing she does – show every person in the line her sick soda, explain why it is called sick soda and that she only gets to drink it when she’s REALLY REALLY ill. Everyone steps back a half step as she makes her rounds gleefully.

“Come here, Wanda. No one needs to hear about that.”

“But I’m really, really super sick,” she says as I casually clamp my hand over her mouth, drawing her into a tight hug-like hold.

She stays quiet just long enough for us to get to the front of the line, the center of attention, before she begins singing a freestyle composition.

“I am so sick, so so so sick. When I woke up this morning, I barfed and barfed and barfed and barfed and—“

I am a deer in headlights, a criminal in one of those giant floodlights, a mom with a four-year-old with a super adorable, super big mouth.

Everyone is staring and not in a commiserating sort of way. Their looks are more along the lines of, What kind of mother brings her daughter full of Ebola virus to the post office on one of the busiest days of the year?

This kind.

I give a nervous laugh. “Wanda, they don’t need to know all the details.”

The looks get even more disgruntled. “So now you’re going to stop her from sharing her truth?” they seem to say and I don’t blame them. This all looks very bad for me.

I’ve got 4 packages up on the counter. Wanda’s song continues.

“And I barfed and I barfed so bad that I barfed up my Tylenol and I barfed up all my green stuff…”

“She’s really not that sick,” I say to the room. “It’s not the stomach flu. She just coughed so hard she threw up a little.”

The words sound astoundingly unhelpful as they fall from my mouth. Um. Shut up.

I decide that the best course of action is to get the packages mailed and get out of there as soon as possible with as little eye contact as possible.

“And after I barfed and barfed and barfed, I was so sick and so SICK! So my mom said, ‘Let’s go to the post office!’”

That’s exactly how it was. Whenever one of my kids is sick, I think, She is so sick! I know! I should take her to the post office! And I hope she performs a song about it.

The song lasted until the last package was stamped and tossed in the bin and I sheepishly grabbed Wanda’s hand and hurried her out of the building.

I was already laughing as I got to the car. I was the only one, but I hope that as they got home and did not come down with The Plague of Green Goo and Barfed Tylenol Doom, they wondered for just a second if maybe I wasn’t the worst mother ever. Maybe Wanda just had mad lyrical skills.

I Know! You Can Borrow My Car

by

My parents taught me to be kind, loving, honest, selfless and… auto maintenance. That’s why this particular story is so embarrassing to me.

For the Thanksgiving/Christmas season, my mom and dad are in town, about 45 minutes away from here. My dad is working as the main attraction and my mom is here to be with her lover and working in a supporting role on set.

For my mom, it’s hourly part time holiday work. For my dad, it’s a job share with another man who looks a lot like him. I think of them as high-end models. My dad works mornings and the other man works evenings. My mom flew out here with the intention of working the same hours as my dad.

But another one of my dad’s jolly doppelgangers, working an hour and a half north of here, got sick. So my dad’s job share partner took over all the hours at my dad’s mall and my dad is currently spending his days up near the Canadian border bringing joy to children and their confused parents. “Why is Christmas so early this year?”

That leaves my mom living in a hotel with no vehicle during the day and a day job to which she no longer has a ride.

Perfect solution. She could borrow one of our cars. Dan takes the bus to work every day and it just sits there. Soccer season is over. It was all perfect. So, on Sunday night, after much persuasion, I convinced her to take Dan’s car, my first car, a car that has over 100,000 miles on it but has served us well.

As she was about to leave, Dan said, “You should check the oil. It might be low.”

Apparently “low” means there is approximately zero oil in the engine and the smear that remains at the bottom is black as tar or midnight or super old oil. So, I got in my van and followed her to the gas station to put some oil in the car, oil she insisted on paying for.

On the way there, I noticed that the left brake light was burnt out. Awesome.

“Mom. It also looks like the left brake light is burnt out, although I don’t know how a person is supposed to know that kind of thing unless she is driving behind herself or gets pulled over.” I start talking really fast at this point. “I hope you don’t get pulled over, but I think it’s still safe to drive and do you think that you could go replace the bulb tomorrow and maybe get the oil changed? I’ll pay you back and I’m really sorry.”

She was super gracious about it. “You’re lending me your car. It’s the least I can do. Blah blah. Nice mom stuff. Blah blah.” And all I could think was, My dad is gonna know of this and he will not outwardly judge me, but a little part inside of him will sigh and he will think, “Nothing’s changed since high school when she would run my car into cement posts and forget to put gas in the tank because apparently cars can run on school spirit and teenage infatuation.”

Then we went to put the oil in, two quarts to get it reasonably full, and I noticed that the power steering fluid was low.

“So, ahem, tomorrow after work when you get the oil changed and the brake light fixed, can you also please make sure they check the power steering fluid? I think it will be fine for the rest of your drive tonight in the dark on unfamiliar highways. Hope you don’t get a ticket for this! KayThanksBye.”

AAAHHHHH! A kind gesture is so much more kind if it doesn’t come with a massive to-do list that says, “Remember when you taught me how to be responsible and care for my belongings? Oops. I accidentally… the whole car.”

Mistakes Were Made

by

Sometimes passive voice is needed. Sometimes mistakes are made. Jars of applesauce might even be smashed on the garage floor.

We had a gaggle of delightful family members in town this past weekend for Magoo’s baptism. Yay! He decided to do it. Fun was had by all. Baptisms were performed. Memories were created.

baptism

With any big family event, there’s a certain level of stress. Never mind that our parents worked like fairy slaves, fixing fences, hauling junk out of our back yard, cooking food, and replacing shower heads, all while giving frequent gifts to the children and babysitting them so I could get my hair done and go grocery shopping.

The stress builds slowly, almost imperceptibly, until your husband asks you if you’re feeling anxious and you stretch a crazy sort of smile and say, “No. Not anxious. Just alert. I don’t want anything to go wrong.” Then you shove your fingers in your mouth and bite down hard with exaggeratedly wide eyes.

When the baptism was over, the neighborhood lunch was finished, everyone special was made to feel special, we were settling into a nice groove of lying around on the living room floor playing games on our individual electronic devices.

And then I went into the garage to get some pasta. I pulled down the plastic bin, and stuck to the bottom of it was a sticky mouse trap and stuck to the bottom of the mouse trap were two bottles of home-canned applesauce, and stuck to the bottom of the bottles of applesauce was my sanity, because as one crashed to the ground and the other dangled precariously, I lost it. It. Was. Lost.

“Dan. Dan! Hey DAN!” I called. “I need you. I really need you right now.”

He was cleaning the kitchen or rescuing an old lady from drowning or something, but he stopped and came out to the garage, where I stood frozen in place.

“Applesauce is smashed on the ground,” I said, staring at it blankly.

His look said, “So?”

Someone called from inside, “Is everything okay out there?”

“Yeah. Kathryn just smashed some applesauce on the ground.”

“I did not smash it. It was smashed. The mousetrap did it. I did not smash this apple sauce.”

“Ok.”

Awkward silence as we both looked at the broken glass and liquid fruit splatters.

Dan – “Do you need something?”

Me – “I didn’t smash the applesauce. It became smashed. Mistakes were made. I do not claim responsibility.”

Dan – “Ok.”

Me – “And can I have some paper towels?”

Dan – “There’s a roll right behind you.”

Someone else from inside – “Do you need anything out there?”

Dan – “It’s okay. Kathryn just smashed some… Applesauce was smashed. It was no one’s fault.”

Me – You know that’s right.

I didn’t need him to fix it. I just needed him to stand and stare at the sauce with me, to recognize my non-responsibility, to stand and look at me in a way that said, “I know you put a ton of planning into this weekend and acknowledge that the smashing of the applesauce by reason of a maliciously placed sticky mouse trap in no way reflects your abilities as a host, a wife, or a human being. Mistakes were made. You are a keeper. Now, why don’t you take two minutes to wipe it up, while I go back inside and finish saving that old lady from drowning or whatever I was doing?

Drops of a Podcast

by

Today I had the chance to speak with Dr. Paul Jenkins on his Live on Purpose Radio podcast. We chatted about Drops of Awesome and a little of the background behind it. He’s so delightful to speak to and I love the uplifting nature of his show.

It was my first podcast so I kept thinking I should be nervous, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t nervous before. I wasn’t nervous during. He’s just really easy to talk to. AFTER the podcast I got nervous. I had this sort of, “Oh Em Heck. What did I say?” sort of moment.

With writing, you can always go back and edit.

Speaking on someone else’s radio show? Not so much. I think I said bra about five too many times, but other than that it’s probably okay.

Here’s the link:

Live On Purpose Radio with Dr. Paul – Drops of Awesome-Sauce Style

Love Songs For Jerks

by

Yesterday, I tried to get romantic. It’s Valentine’s week and I was feeling lovish so I got out my Nashville soundtrack CD, cued it up to what is currently my favorite love song and left it in Dan’s car so he’d hear it when he headed to work in the morning.

I worried that he’d get in the car, think, This is not Jazz. Why is this not jazz? and turn it off, so I told him to listen to the song I’d cued up because it contained a special message.

When I said I love this love song, what I meanter say (channeling Hagrid here) was that every time I listen to it, I cry and I want to tell Dan to quit his stupid day job, come home and hold me. HOLD ME!

So I waited to hear back from him. Did he love the song, even though it had lyrics and a discernible melody? Did he feel the same as I, perhaps even wiping away a phantom tear of romantic ecstasy?

His responding text said, “Um… I hope you pressed the button one too many times. It was about how you can see through my lying cheating ways… :-)”

Now, I like to mess with Dan. It brings me pleasure. He plays along. I call it flirting. RE: he is my boyfriend.

There was the time I put pigs’ feet in a prominent place in our kitchen cupboard and waited to see how long it would take him to notice them.

Then there was the time I went out to his car every night for weeks and tuned his radio to the Mexican Mariachi band station at a deafening volume so that he’d enjoy turning on his car for his commute in the morning.

But this time I was sincere, and very romantical… But I did press the button one too many times. What I wanted him to hear was this:

What he got was this:

Not quite as Valentinesy. I’ll make it up to him soon. I’m making him the best, weirdest belated Valentine’s day present ever. I will keep you posted.

Tuppence Per Each Bag

by

I’ve been trying to eat well lately. In theory I’ve been trying to eat well all my life, minus college. In practice I’ve been getting progressively better for the past 5-10 years. I’ve very recently turned to a hard-core, stop-eating-anything-that-doesn’t-taste-like-a-literal-nutrient way of eating.

I’m struggling with perplexing health problems and if you have perplexing health problems, eventually you turn to examining your diet and when you examine your diet, you find that if it tastes good, there are at least ten people who live on the internet who will tell you that what you’re eating is causing your specific problem.

I don’t listen to those ten people because they obviously hate brownies.

However, last week my naturopath told me that I should consider severely limiting my grains. Also, my “random thoughts that come into my head right after I finish praying” told me I should severely limit my sugar intake.

Blech.

So I’m trying to eat like a good girl, I am. Lean meats and vegetables, baby!

But there are days when Doritos must be imbibed. So, I was having one of those days but I was trying to have it Drops-of-Awesomely, focusing on the fact that I only bought the supersized personal-sized 50% more bag, instead of the supersized FAMILY-sized 50% more bag. I planned to enjoy every morsel.

Then Wanda walked in. She had many questions, questions about what I was eating, about why she was not also eating it, about, please please, could she please eat it.

So I shared.

Begrudgingly.

If I was going to unlimit my grains, I wanted to unlimit them all the way down.

But she had cuteness on her side and I really shouldn’t have been eating that much grain, much less that much grain coated in nuclear cheese dust. I should be feeding it to my sweet, growing child person.

She started plowing through the chips faster than I would have thought possible. She’d grab one, say, “Thanks,” and leave the room. Two seconds later she’d be back for more. With increasing dog-protecting-his-bone-ish-ness, I handed them to her. Grrrr….

We made short work of the bag and I continued my quest to eat things that are green and crunchy and capable of making me feel smug and self-satisfied when I notice them hanging around like a lump in my stomach and later coming out in Dr. Oz approved luscious deposits.

But, as I went outside later to pick up my kids from the bus, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a mother lode of Doritos all over the porch and front walk.

“Look!” Wanda grinned, “I’m feeding ALL the birdies!”

It was obvious from the sheer number of slimy glowing orange chips that the birdies had absolutely zero interest, or they assumed that something the color of a construction cone was inedible, from previous painful personal experience.

So I smiled and congratulated her on her good deed-ery, sighing at all the lost cheesy goodness. And when she wasn’t looking, I threw them over the fence into the decaying bamboo forest section of my crazy-sauce back yard. I don’t know what goes on back there but we have found animal bones. And broken clay pots circa AD 1985.

Now all that’s left to do is put on all my Newsies-colored dresses and skirts in multiple layers, tease my hair like a crazy rock star homeless person and start singing on my front porch steps. “Feed the microscopic organisms in the decaying bamboo forest section of my crazy-sauce back yard. Tuppence per each bag.”

You know you’d pay money to see that. Way more fun than giving your coin to those mean old guys at the bank, right?

Sunburnt

by

After six years working with the teenage girls at church, I’ve moved on to a new job. It’s… a “little” different. The class of three-year-olds in the Mormon church are called Sunbeams and I’ve written about the experience of teaching them over at the Time Out For Women blog.

“Sunbeams are warm and lovely, vibrant and life-giving. But if you get too close, they will incinerate you.”
[read more at TOFW.com]

Reluctant Red

by

“In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.” ~Mr. Darcy

I love Taylor Swift against my will. Love. For a while I pretended I was buying her music for my kids, but when I’m blasting her CDs on shuffle as I drive alone in my car, singing along with every word of even her most obscure songs, I know I need to stop denying what we have together.

When her new album Red dropped this week, I was proud of myself for waiting until the day after release to pick it up because I wasn’t going to be near a Target on release day and didn’t want to go out of my way. I thought that showed great restraint. Why didn’t I just pre-order on Amazon? Good question.

Because the Target version of the CD has several bonus tracks and what’s better than a CD full of emotional songs about teenage break-ups? A LONGER CD full of emotional songs about teenage break-ups. Indeed it is.

I love Taylor Swift because her songs are about raw emotion and angst and drama, whether real or imagined. Essentially, I love her for the same reasons I love writing young adult fiction. The highs are so high. (You flew me to places I’ve never been) The lows are so low. (Now I’m lying on the cold, hard ground.) I could always use a little more passion in my life.

And her songs are danceable. And they’re fun. And when I listen to them, I feel like she stole material from my junior high journal in all its melodramatic glory. It’s the kind of music that makes you stop at your girlfriend’s house on the way home from Target with a swagger wagon full of kids so you can blast your favorite new song and dance together in the front seat, while your exhausted toddler sleeps like a log in the back seat.

Listening to Red last night brought me back to the days of 6th grade Paula Abdul obsession. Forever Your Girl!!1!!!111! How many artists have CDs I’m content to listen to all the way through? Over and over?

I just wish her perfume didn’t smell so freaking good, because I draw the line at trying to smell like a 22-year-old pop/country starlet. Yes, I smelled the perfume. Don’t judge me.

Dental Fairies

by

Magoo still believes in the tooth fairy and defends her honor in the face of mockery at school. The only downside to this centers around the tooth fairy’s complete and utter moron-acy. She is totally intellectually insufficient.

When his tooth fell out this weekend, I thought, I should care about this. There’s some reason I should care about this. This isn’t my first rodeo. I know the drill. But somehow I missed the clue bus. (I did not, obviously, miss the metaphor train.)

Then the next morning, he comes downstairs distraught. “The tooth fairy didn’t come last night!”

As my friend Stephanie said this morning, “A tradition where a kid hides a tiny tooth under their pillow and the tooth fairy is supposed to magically remember it is ridiculous. The tradition should be that the child places the tooth ON his parent’s pillow. I’m sure the fairy would find it there.” I agree. But that’s not the world we live in. We have to take our magical creatures the way they come and the tooth fairy in this dimension likes things done a certain way.

So when Magoo comes to me oozing drama over the fairy’s failures, I have to defend her.

“Well, maybe your tooth is flawed and she didn’t want it.”

He looks shocked.

I continue. “That book we read said she uses the teeth to build her palace and maybe your tooth wasn’t palace-worthy.”

“No-o,” he counters, “It’s a good tooth.”

I shrug. “Well, you can try and put it out again tonight and if she doesn’t come, I’ll pay you 50 cents for it. I’m not building a tooth palace, but I like you. And besides, I could put your tooth under my pillow the next night and try to make a profit.”

“I’ll put it out one more time.”

The next morning he comes downstairs distraught. “Mom! The tooth fairy still didn’t—“

At this point, I have to physically restrain myself to keep from slamming my head into the table. She didn’t come again?! What the hockey sticks?!

I reiterate my offer to compensate him for his dental refuse. But he won’t play. He can’t stand the thought of me hitting the tooth fairy jackpot with one of his extracted body parts.

“You know what it probably is?” he muses, “It was under my Pillow Pet and she probably didn’t realize it was a pillow. She probably thought it was a stuffed ANIMAL.”

So last night he gets a normal pillow from the guest room, and places the tooth underneath. I write TOOTH FAIRY in gigantic letters on my To-Do list. I tell Dan that if he sees her, he should under no circumstances let her go to bed until she’s done the deed.

Then, when the children are slumbering in their beds, and the tooth fairy’s ready to sleep, she creeps up to his room with a fist full of sparkle-dusted coins, removes the tooth from under his pillow… and steps in a massive carpet puddle of urine.

Someone, who shall remain nameless, periodically sleep walks and sleep hoses down his room. This is shocking to find in sock-feet and the fairy ends up waking him up. So there she is with a tooth in one hand, coins in the other with a wet, confused boy awake and staring at her.

I call Dan into the room to help with cleanup and hand him the tooth, telling him that if Magoo notices it’s missing from under his pillow, Dan should “help him find it where it’s slipped down onto the floor.”

Sure enough, as we’re stripping the sheets off the bed, Magoo yells, “Oh NO! My tooth!” and we have to “help” him “find” it.

So we get everything cleaned up and put the tooth back in play and Dan and I leave. The fairy then has to wait 30 minutes for him to go back to sleep before trying again.

And the fairy is tired. And the fairy is sick of it. And the fairy just wants to build her house out of wood with granite countertops like a normal person. And she wants dry socks.

Losing IT

by

Sometimes I’m a great mom, times like yesterday morning and afternoon when I walked all over town taking Wanda to the park and the library for story time. Then every once in a while I snap and it’s not pretty. It’s not even homely. It’s bad.

We’ve been stressing out, maybe too much, about where Laylee would take ballet this year. She’s nine and she loves to dance and there are altogether too many things to consider when raising a kid. How do we encourage her passion for dance without pigeon-holing her and cutting her off from all other activities? How will she know if dance is the only activity she loves if it’s the first activity she’s ever kissed? How much is too much?

So, we decided to slow down from her dance school’s 4-hour per week class recommendation and move her to a school in the next town over that offers a slower road to pointe. It was a tough decision and I’m not sure if it’s right, but my head was exploding so I just cried Uncle and paid the registration fee.

But we’re both nervous to try a new place. Will she like it? Will they like us? Will she be challenged enough but still able to have a life outside of dance?

So yesterday, the first day at the new studio, she didn’t get off the bus at her stop. We had to search the bus and drag her out and she came off the bus late and sobbing. SOBBING. Apparently the book she was reading was way sadder than a book should ever be.

“And it just ends like that,” she sobbed, “That’s it. There’s no sequel. It can’t get happy because it’s just over. The end. This is a bad, bad book mom. It started out sad and then got as good as a book can possibly get and then got as bad as a book can possibly get.”

The characters were so real to her and she couldn’t handle the emotion and the betrayal. She was nearly inconsolable and, as an insanely easy crier, I was extremely proud. Her reaction showed compassion and sensitivity and, oh crap, we were gonna be late for our first day of ballet.

So, I drove her home, got her dressed, arranged her hair into a perfect ballet bun, (Doesn’t it feel like that should be spelled B-U-N-N-E?) and told her to grab her shoes. She’d worn her ballet shoes off and on all summer as she stretched and practiced.

“Grab them,” I said.

Blank stare, followed by grimace.

“Are they lost?”

Shrug.

“Look for them.”

Ten minutes later, she informed me that they were really, for real, very truly lost and… oh well.

And. Then. I. Snapped.

She lost her shoes and I lost it. It was nowhere to be found.

We had 2 minutes until we needed to be in the car driving if we wanted to be on time and I started tearing around her room, searching. And she just stared at me. As soon as I was on the case, she gave up. And I lost it a little more.

With her standing there watching, I dumped out her drawers, and her laundry basket and all the one thousand little purses full of nothing that were stashed all over her room. It turned into a full-on tantrum. The shoes! The SHOES! Where were the ever-loving SHOOOOOES! I yanked all the bedding and books and stuffed animals and reading lights and grocery items and 4th grade necessities from her bed while she bawled her eyes out.

I couldn’t stop and I couldn’t calm down.

And I was horrified with myself for acting like a bratty toddler.

But it was like I was outside myself looking in and thinking, STOP, but I couldn’t.

We left shoeless and we still can’t find them. I knew she was devestated on the drive, but still I lectured her. She went to her first class crying.

I can count on one hand the number of times in my life that I was doing something and I could tell it made someone feel small and I did it anyway. I hate those times. I want to yank them from the record and start fresh.

But my apology can’t erase this one, the time I forgot who I was because… shoes. Laylee will remember this. She may talk about it at family reunions or tell her kids. I hope that when she does, she will add in the part about how I apologized and maybe how she learned that being a grown-up doesn’t mean being perfect. It means putting the room back together better than it was before while talking about our lives and giving periodic hugs. Being a grown-up means knowing when you’re wrong, feeling utterly crappy about it, fixing it as best you can and doing better.