Our current voice mail message is a very generic computer generated voice that simply states, “Please leave a message.”

I keep thinking I’ll change it to something more specific and personal, but if I were going to be completely honest it would probably say, “Please leave a message. I’m home right now but I’m currently being sucked into a vortex of estrogen and dog hair. When the mood swings subside and I can actually find more than 2 minutes to talk on the phone at home without being interrupted by a human child or a canine child, say in about 15 years or so, I’ll call you back. Thanks. In the mean time, please feel free to send hard liquor, dog treats, and a lint brush. Oh, and the girls like fruit snacks. The last time I checked, I couldn’t convince them that doggy peanut butter treats were gourmet Barbie bonbons.”

Just outside the Sommet Center, Miss C and the hubby strike a pose, while Miss A  disses the mamarazzi.

Miss C, Miss A, mommy and daddy were overjoyed when their good friend Mr. Lonnie offered them free tickets to last Saturday’s Predators preseason NHL game downtown in the big city. (Overjoyed is a fancy word for happy.)

Mommy told Miss C it would be chilly in the arena, so Miss C made sure she wore her most fabulously chichi pink scarf. (Chichi is a fancy word for, what else, fancy.)

Miss C and Miss A loved their first NHL experience. They munched on cotton candy and they became quite adept at “fang fingers” and shouting “Let’s Go Predators!” By the end of the game, Miss A was in her sock feet , though, and not paying a lick of attention to the game. She did a great job of flirting with the couple sitting one row up and nearly sticking a foot in Daddy’s super-sized draft beer. (Adept is a fancy word for doing something really well.)

Miss C and Miss A also were enamored with the fist fights on the ice. (Fist fights is a fancy word for white trash, but it’s all good when in the context of pro hockey.)

So do your girls love Jane O’Connor’s Fancy Nancy books?

The hubby informed me that Miss A added a new word to her 3-year-old vocabulary last week when he picked her up from daycare: “squam.”

When he asked her what a squam was she explained, without hesitation, that it was “a boy and a girl mixed up together…that’s a squam!”

I’d love to see the flash card for that one.

Last night she rubbed her stomach after bathtime and told me she had “two babies in there!”

“Do you have boy or girl babies in your tummy?” I asked.

“I have a boy and a girl!,” she exclaimed proudly. “They are mixed up in there together…and they like to eat cereal bars!”

One of the great things about living in Nashville is having the convenience of the suburbs (Target and TJ Maxx, can I get an Amen?), but living just within a few miles of the country.

Miss C had her annual fall pumpkin patch field trip this year and the weather did not disappoint. Neither did the cows. There were 12 calves at the farm, but I didn’t get one photo!

Quote of the day, from one of the first graders, “Ewwww, I can see that cow’s privates!”

Also, the kids could not stop talking about the cow smell in the pasture. Call me crazy, but I love the smell of a farm. I grew up in the country and all the smells in the fields and the barns take me back. OK, OK so maybe I don’t love the scent of manure.

I want to give a little plug for McNeil’s produce stand on Highway 100 here in Nashville. It’s a perfect place to stop and pick up fall mums on the way back from Gentry’s Farm in Franklin. Thieves burned McNeil’s, which has been in business for 30 years, down to the ground this summer and they are up and running for fall with pumpkins and mums and produce.

Miss C made a goal at her second soccer game of the season, bringing her grand total of two goals so far this early in the season to a number surpassing her entire spring season. It’s so exciting to see her make goals because last year she was starting to get discouraged. She’d drive the ball down the field, but could never quite make it in the goal. Of course hubby and I both gave her the “it doesn’t matter if you score a goal” talk, but she was still getting really frustrated toward the end of last season until she finally made a goal. This year, although she is one of the shorter girls on the team (a trait I always had the honor of holding during all my school years), she’s also one of the fastest.

Three of Miss C’s teammates are from the original team that began playing in the fall of 2006. One of the girl’s moms marveled with me at our first practice at how much older the girls seem now. Then this weekend, because I am prone to bouts of “what happened to my baby” episodes, I was looking at pictures from that fall and found their first team group photo. The girls look so much more grown up. It’s hard for me to believe that in just two short years and five seasons of soccer that Miss C has gone from looking like this little pony tailed 4-year-old:

To this pony-tailed 6-year-old:

I was having a day and I’d only been home since 3 o’clock.

The witching hour came early. The girls were fighting and by 5 o’clock I found myself waiting for the hubby’s usual call to check in and discuss dinner, the usual. Everything seemed to be amplified a few notches as I had PMS, which at my house stands for Psycho Mom Syndrome.

The hubby got home from work a little early and I told him I needed to run to the grocery store for a few things. Translation, “I need to get out of this house so I can escape. And buy beer.” It’s pretty sad when you’re “only” with your kids from 3 o’clock on during the school week and your kids drive you crazy. Seriously, I don’t know how you full time SAHMs do it. Then again, PMS makes my short mama fuse even shorter.

As I was heading toward the checkout line I heard a scream. Not just any scream either ya’ll, but the scream of a child having an impressive meltdown. And then it happened again and again like clockwork every few seconds and then the screaming got closer and closer until I saw a mom pushing her son in a cart and realized he was just screaming for the hell of it like he was being tazered every 30 seconds or being forced to eat canned beets. The mom had that beleaguered zombie mom look of resigned surrender that a weary mother has when she’s grocery shopping at 5 p.m. on a Wednesday and would rather be on a Caribbean island with her own personal cabana boy, margarita fountain, endless supply of People magazines, and miracle drug that would guarantee she’d tan and never burn or wrinkle or develop cellulite or spider veins.

I gave the cashier “the look” and she gave me “the look” and I started emptying my cart as fast I could all the while thinking, “I came to the store to escape my kids, not be subjected to other kids…let me out of here, I need a beer!”

Little girl laughter

Warming the crisp nighttime air

Like streaks of sunshine

-Dedicated to my Aunt Betty (my mother’s only sister), who died yesterday at age 69.

Mommy, my friend S doesn’t have any money. She needs her friends to give her some.

What?

She needs money! She says she doesn’t have any money. We need to give her some.

I think she needs to talk to her mommy and daddy about that. She doesn’t need to be asking her friends for money.

Well, she says she has plenty of food and toys, but she just doesn’t have any money.

Well, we’re not giving her any money, OK? (By now I’m thinking WTF?) Maybe she can talk to her mommy and daddy about doing some chores and earning an allowance.

I think this request trumps the little curly headed boy sending his phone number home with her last year in her Disney Princess backpack and then asking Miss C to ask me to call his mom so they could play together.

Who knew 5 and 6-year-olds could be so forward?