It’s Memorial Day weekend and, of course, cookouts and cookout food is priority number one. So…this morning, my Mom went grocery shopping. She loves Eastern Market!! She came home with all sorts of stuff. And then…
Mom: Hey baby, did you know that Tom Brady and Gizelle are vegetarians?
Dad: WHO?
Mom: You know the football player and his wife, the model.
Dad: Ummm, No..I didn’t know that.
Mom: I read that they are vegetarian 80% of the time. I think we should try that too. We eat a lot of vegetables and I’ve read that it is so much healthier. I went to the market and got some gooood stuff. Mel, this cantaloupe is gonna be good!!
Dad: You want us to be Brady and Jasmine??
Mom: GIZELLE. We can try it out…why not? I’ve got some good recipes. I think this will be really good. And, it will give us some new things to try.
ME:(hands on my head)
Dad:(head hanging, chuckling) OK Baby
LATER THIS AFTERNOON / EARLY EVENING
Mom is in the kitchen. She usually cooks dinner on Sundays. She is doing her THANG!!! Daddy comes in the kitchen right after me.
Dad: Something smells good Baby. What’s for dinner?
So…my Mom is a napper. She doesn’t really “go to sleep.” I regularly receive emails from her at 4:00 am saying “Good Morning Sunshine!” See, she is a like a cat. She takes multiple naps a day. What’s funny is when she has meetings or appointments…she really has to focus and stay on schedule. LOL It is not unusual for her to be up at any particular time. Now, my Dad on the other hand is the complete opposite. I started calling him Dracula when I was in High School. He stays up ALL NIGHT and sleeps during the day. When I was in junior high school, he would surprise me with different movies that would come on late at night. When he would come home from work, he’d tell me that he taped some movies for me. I would ask which ones and he would tell me “Cooley High” or “Carmen Jones.” Now, those movies only came on around 2:00 AM. (for my DC folks, on channel 20).
So…back to my Mom. I admit, I am an online shopper, so the UPS and FedEx guys know us. BUT RECENTLY, things have picked up!! My Mom has been receiving all sorts of packages. She had several productions over the last few months, so I figured that it was stuff for her theater company. Nooooooooo……she has been shopping on late night TV!!!! I think I really paid attention when my Mom gifted me with some yoga socks. Not just one pair of yoga socks…but 12 (yes TWELVE) pairs of yoga socks. Don’t worry, she has twelve pairs as well.
Wait, then there are the pasta strainers. Yes “are” and plural. She ordered some special pasta strainers, where you put this thinga-ma-jig over the pot to strain the pasta. I guess that would be OK if we didn’t already have 3 complete sets of cookware, ranging from All Clad to Le Creuset. The 3 complete sets isn’t bad, they are from 3 households (main house, my former home in Atlanta and their Hilton Head house). So, she gets a pass on the cookware. I bring that up because, WHY then do we need the red, plastic pasta strainers? Oh yeah, we received 4 (yes FOUR) sets of 2; totaling 8 pasta strainers. She can’t even give these things away…and she has tried!!!
I could go on and on. So…I finally asked my Mom why she is ordering all of this stuff. She told me because they look cute on commercials. CUTE!!!! She figured that she is doing early Christmas/Birthday shopping or that they are good deals. Between my Mom and her As Seen on TV good deals and my Dad and his Costco good deal obsession I am gonna turn into practicing yoga, chopping, straining, slicing and dicing, wraptastic Sous Chef!!!
Reading my previous posts and creating this blog has bought up so many memories. The Fords didn’t begin their antics on July 5, 2013. They have always been special and did things their way. So…I am going back. Waaay back and share some Built Ford Tough flashbacks.
and here we go…
When I was in kindergarten, I attended Burgundy Farms Country Day school. It was an artsy fartsy type of school with a bit of crunchy granola added to the mix. We had a farm and created lots of projects…kindergarten style.
There was an all class project coming up and my teacher sent us home with notes about the class project and that each of the kids needed to bring material and supplies to be used for the project. The note explained what the material would be used for and that all collected materials and supplies would be used for the project, therefore not being returned. The note was sent out far in advance.
We had our routine at home, including either my Mom or Dad, usually my Dad, checking my book bag for notes. My Dad told my Mom about the class project and that I needed to bring the stuff to school by the assigned date. Cool.
Well, another week went by. Another note was sent home. My Dad reminded my Mom.
So…the morning came when I had to go to school with my stuff and I didn’t have a thing! My school bus was gonna arrive in about 20 minutes and I asked my Mom about the stuff for my project. Exasperated, my Mom goes to the hallway, pulls down the steps to our attic and stomps upstairs. Y’all know…that old school attic ladder, with the string hanging from the ceiling to pull down the stairs.
She is up in the attic shuffling and making noise and comes back down the ladder steps with a big white box filled with material. She tells me to finish breakfast. When my school bus arrived, she gave me a kiss on the cheek and handed me this HUMONGOUS box to give to my teacher. The box appeared like it was the same size as me.
I arrive to school and am in class. My teacher’s name was Paige (there is a whole other story about Paige). As I am writing this, I realize that we called her Paige, not Ms. (so and so). Like I said, it was a crunchy granola school setting. Anyway, Paige is collecting everything from us. The other kids have felt, fabric from fabric stores, old sheets and some blankets. She gets to me and I hand her the big box.
When she starts organizing the material and supplies, she opens my box (now, mind you, I just got the box that morning and hadn’t a clue what was in it). She opens the box and pulls out layers and layers and more layers of tulle, finally realizing that it was a VEIL.
My Mom gave me her WEDDING VEIL for my class project!!!
Paige calls me up to the front of the class and tells me that she is going to call my Mother. I am confused. She takes me to the main office and tells whoever the Burgundy Farm Country Day school Big Wig is, that I stole my Mom’s veil and bought it to school for our project. They call my Mom (smh smh why? why? why?). They begin with apologizing to my Mom for interrupting her day and having to let her know that I bought her wedding veil to school and that they were sure that my Mom would not have wanted that.
Now mind you, I am in kindergarten, so this conversation is told to me by my Mom. My Mom told me that she told that Burgundy Farm Country Day School Big Wig that she didn’t appreciate them implying that I was a liar and that she was mad that they pulled me out of class and making me feel bad. She also told them that they need to apologize to me, otherwise she will come up to the school for a meeting. When they asked why she would give such an important thing, my Mom responded “I only wore it once….what am I gonna do with a veil? I don’t need it anymore!” At this point my mom was just frustrated. They harassed her for 3 weeks for some material and when they get some, probably the best material of the lot, they wanna call her and question her? Humph.
Well…
I am escorted back to class and we proceed with going through all of the stuff. The veil was a hit!!!! There was tulle EVERYWHERE! Just imagine a bunch of 5 year old kids throwing tulle in the air, girls pretending to be brides, boys using it to pull one another around the class. Yeah…I was a hit that day.
