My mama told me go to school, get your doctorate

CEP,

Susan was here over the weekend, and by Susan I of course mean my mother. Imagine me saying Susan in that special voice we used to refer to each other’s mothers, when we called them by their first names and added a nasal element to our speech. It sounded like we were making fun of each other for having a close relationship with our moms, but in reality we respected the other’s relationship with her mom because our own with our mom was so important. So I would say, “Paula wouldn’t want you to have that fifth shot,” and you would ask, “Would Susan really approve of that low-cut sweater?” It sounded like nagging but was really just another way to prove how well we knew each other and to honor our mothers because Paula would want you to be happy and if that means a shot then that means a shot, and Susan definitely would want me to wear the low-cut sweater.

So having my mom around was nice because she’s a mom and does motherly things. She still loved me after seeing the debris-strewn-field-after-a-tornado that is my apartment. I told her that the snow on Friday night made the backyard muddy which led to the many dirty paw prints all over the floor and my clothes, but there was really no excuse for the fact that my kitchen table could not be seen under the mounds of paper and that a cup of pasta sauce covered in mold was still in the fridge. She went around the place, thinking of things to fix and things to clean and things to buy. She discovered that we did not have a microwave and remedied that on our first of two trips to Target. She also insisted on defrosting our freezer, which had 4-6 inches of ice inside it on all surfaces, cutting the amount of freezer storage in half. I don’t have a before picture, but here is a photo as we neared the end when a huge sheet of ice fell off the roof of the freezer:



My mom is also pretty creative and crafty, which is where I get my crafty ways (in both senses of the word). We were shopping at Jackalope for general house stuff and saw some great, Pueblo-style ladders. Many of the Pueblos here in New Mexico traditionally used wooden ladders to enter their homes as the only door or entryway was in the ceiling for security purposes. I think this is a great idea, because if you need to protect yourself you just go up on the roof and down into the house and then pull in the ladder and you’re set. So, we were about to leave Jackalope and hit Target for a cheap bookcase (because the four we already own cannot contain our large book collection and massive amount of other junk) when my mom saw these ladders and said, “What if we bought two ladders and had wood cut for shelves in between? We could make a really cool, rustic, Santa Fe style bookcase!” I thought it was a great idea, so we did exactly that. Mom and Todd held the ladders in place as I drilled and screwed on the planks and here is the result:




We are actually going to fill it up with books but this shot was taken with a few decorative objects on the shelves just to give it some color and prove to my dad that we built a bookcase. I think the best part of the whole experience was wandering Home Depot with my mom and she said, “We’ll show Dad. We’re women and we can do anything!” Then we found the lumber aisle and asked for help from Frank in an orange apron, who didn’t mind checking out “the girls” if you know what I mean, and when he asked what he could do for us she replied, “We’re women, we don’t know anything about this stuff.” I guess she figured we’d get better service if we played the role of clueless women confused by the many manly tools around us, and it worked.

P.S. This post was written yesterday, but then we had champagne at 3:00p.m. during a special tea, and the rest of the day was pretty much shot. Note to self: eat more than a handful of pretzels for lunch on the day you celebrate your boss getting onto Time Magazine’s list of the 100 people shaping our world, or two glasses will make you tipsy and you have to find ways to not look drunk until you can go home. Option number two is to drink more on the weekends to improve your tolerance. Yes, maybe number two would be better.