Thursday, August 7, 2008

Peeling Back the Mask of a Happy Day (with a side of happy pores)

Today I had a good "mommy day".

Note the quotes were not around "good mommy". We'll have to add up the kids' therapist bills when they are fully grown, or see how they feel about me moving in when I'm old(er) and decrepit(er), to tally up that one. So for now, the votes are out. And hopefully for sale.

I'm not sure if I've ever had a "good mommy" day. A day is a long time. But I have had some really cool "good mommy" moments. One that comes to mind is when my kids were small and we were stuck in a waiting room for ages, and I was trying to keep them entertained and myself sane, so armed with only my arm and a pen, I let them play connect the dots with my freckles. Which, by the way, worked, on both counts, methinks, unless the whole letting your kids play connect the dots with your freckles thing is up for debate. Maybe I should just stop while I'm behind on this "good mommy" thing.

I've had a gazillion good "mommy days", Luke 2:19, treasuring up these things and pondering them in my heart kind of days. The kind of days, where, even if they are not exactly getting up and calling me blessed, it feels like that's what they mean.

"Mommy days" are really every day, but when one's kids start test-jumping from the nest and/or get jobs and social lives, they either consist of being "good taxi-mum" or "waiting up till they come home safe mum" many of the treasures are soundbites and quite a few of the ponderings are of bullet points and recaps.

Today, Dave and I got to spend most of the afternoon watching Mike play in a tennis tournament, which, by the way, his team WON! They won both the league season, and the division play-offs! How fun was that, getting to be "tennis mum", watching your kid do something you both love, and he wins the trophy to boot! I got a picture of him biting his trophy like RAFA! Well, I got a few pictures. Ok, 56 pictures, but he is extremely photogenic, and I did try and make every shot a power shot, with my new Canon Power Shot Digital Elf. "Yes, I see you, tennis champion!"

And as if that mommy moment wasn't enough, the whole fam gathered together for dinner to celebrate Mike and his victory, which is a huge shock/blessing in a home with our three arrows going off in all directions this summer. How lovely that our back deck was the collective bullseye tonight, and all the arrows hit the mark!

After dinner, Amanda decided I was going to be her facial patient, I mean, customer, for the evening, because she likes peeling the mask off, which reminds her of peeling sunburned skin, which she really likes, and also, I think, because she secretly finds pleasure in ripping blackhead strips off people's noses. She said she was just excited for my pores, and, I'm not going to lie, this scared me a bit. The thing is, she was jumping up and down when she said this. Like a cheer. But I think my eyes welling up post-rip, scored me a bonus manicure and pedicure as well. Not to mention, she is trying to practice all the techniques she is learning at beauty school, where she is trying to get her license so she can help work her way through college. So basically the wind down of my evening was a lovely spa treatment from my little girl. How good do I have it? Even if she did paint my fingers orange at first, which, in tennis gear, is peachy with me, but my fingers and toes are lean toward the fall colors, particularly of the wine colored variety. Still, I ended up with pink, because she was not going to have the same old, same old. Two shades of pink. And they supposedly match my swim suit, for our Ladies' Night at the pool tomorrow. I don't usually think about these things, but I do wonder where Amanda got all this girlie from since I'm not sure if I even have one gene of it, and I do just sit there in awe, which makes me pretty vulnerable to things like having my nose ripped off. And honestly, my pores were rather smarting a bit.

Did I mention the glass of Pinot Grigio (appropriately, from Barefoot Vineyards, should be the official pedicure wine) that I sipped on throughout? My hub brought it up for me sometime between the ripping off of my nose and the manicuring of my right hand.

Did I also mention, that Matt came in and serenaded me for awhile with a new song he was learning on his electric?

And it's not like it was even Mother's Day. Just a day in the life. My life. Unmasked,

(And my pores, reportedly happy).

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