Getting Girly

It's getting harder and harder for me to blog on the weekends. Weekends when I have the kids, there's always something going on with them or someone needs my attention or I'm doing laundry (ALWAYS) or cooking or cleaning something. Once in a while there is sleeping. Weekends when I don't have the kids, there's always something going on without them or I'm doing laundry (ALWAYS) or cooking or cleaning something. Man, it's hard to work full time and keep a family running.

Not that I would ever trade it.

As hard as it gets sometimes, there are moments that make it all worth it, plus put some in the bank for the times when you are looking up the number for gypsies in the phone book while packing some kid or another's stuff.

Want a confession? (Heh. Like I haven't made enough of those around here!) I'm about the least girly girl I know. A couple of my female "real world" friends who read this blog are laughing out loud and saying "No Shit!" I know lots of things. And I know some girly stuff, too. But, it's not my forte'. Not by any stretch.

My fingernails are kind of longish right now and I was thinking, last week, that maybe I'd polish them over the weekend (yeah, that's how NEVER I do that) and do [Kid 3]'s at the same time. Toenails, too. When I mentioned it to her, she decided that we should do each others' nails. Uh huh. [Kid 3]. Who is six years old. Hard to back out of that one.

Now, [Kid 3] is the queen of fashion shows and hair styling and all things girly. I shan't argue that. But [Kid 3] (who tried to cut her own hair at school last week, btw) is NOT a licensed cosmetologist and has never worked in a nail salon one day in her life. Not one.

As I said, I'm not particularly girly, so my expertise at doing my own nails is quite limited, anyway. Her enthusiasm was so contagious that I simply couldn't decline her very sweet offer.

So, Saturday morning, she started. "Are we gonna do nails now, Mommy?" "Not now, Sweetie. Probably late in the day. We've got a lot of running around to do today and I need to get that done before we'll have time to do nails."

I had to get a few more items of school clothes and some medical items and the grocery shopping and I can't remember where else we went, but we didn't get back to the house until 3PM.

(Oh, hey! One of the errands involved me getting my VERY OWN, really cool, sphygmomanometer!!)

As soon as we got back home, though, "Is it time for makeovers, Mommy?" "Sweetie, believe it or not, I've got to start cooking dinner. It's a dinner that takes a lot of time today and I think the best time for us to do nails is gonna be after that. I don't want to mess them up cooking after you've done them for me. Why don't you help me cook tonight?"

She's actually an excellent sous chef. Following in the footsteps of [Kid 2]. She rubbed the dry spice rub on the ribs for me, as I got the eggs and potatoes boiling for my potato salad, and together we started on the chocolate chip cheesecake I was making for dessert.

I was in the kitchen for about 3 hours non-stop on Saturday. She didn't hold out quite as long. As [Kid 2] doesn't like potato salad, and had been asking me about potatoes au gratin for a couple weeks, I threw together a small batch of that for her. I thought it would work with the bbq ribs and corn on the cob I was already planning. You've no doubt heard the legend of my potato salad...LOL!

After dinner was finished, the kitchen, as you might imagine, was a disaster area. I would say that FEMA was knocking on my back door, but we all know they won't be there for another week or so. Anyway, I wasn't even up from the table and she started another round of "Is it time, YET???" "Let me clear the table and start some dishes and then we can do it. Why don't you get things together in the living room and I'll be there in a few minutes?"

By this point, the manicure/pedicure plan had turned into a full-blown makeover. [Kid 1] and [Kid 2] thought it sounded like fun, too and wanted to join in. Before I knew it, I had a girly glam party on my hands. The kids asked me if I thought I could talk Highlander into letting us make him up. (There is something that girls find quite mischievously joyous about putting make-up on a man. Why is that?) In any event, I had to shut that down before it ever grew (hairy man) legs.

With one of Highlander's comfy afghans on the floor, my girls and I sat in a circle and [Kid 2] decided that we could work on each other's hair in one direction and then we'd switch and work on each other's make up in the other direction. Of course she thought that sounded like a marvelous idea. [Kid 2] wasn't going to have a six year old working on her in either direction.

There is something about sitting on the floor with my kids, just laughing and cutting up and getting as silly as we can get, that lifts my heart like nothing else. Highlander took a ringside seat, pretending to busy himself on the nearby computer. I know he was jealous, though. Even if he was acting like he was ignoring us.

I ended up having my nails done by [Kid 3]. Thick globs of bright pink (and, yes, pink IS my favorite color...but...but...) glitter nailpolish and then she did a matching theme, coating my eyelids with a white glitter paste. It's an interesting look for a woman my age (or a man my age, I suppose). The other two girls were laughing so hard at me, that the glitter became a mandatory addition on everyone, as we competed for the worst make-over.

With my hair poofed out and my eyes stuck open from the glitter paste on the lids, I'm sure I was doing a pretty good impression of what Marty Feldman would look like as a drag queen. I'm here to testify, though, that every one of us looked pretty damned bad.

Yesterday, as [Kid 3] rode her bike out in front of our house, I spent a good half hour out on the front porch with some cotton balls and a bottle of nail polish remover. It was HELL getting that stuff off! Never trade it, though. Never. I have such fun with them. And I love knowing that they have such fun with me, too. You better believe that THAT keeps those readings on that new sphygmomanometer looking better than anything else!