Sometimes I'm Sharice

This is what I dreamed about when I dreamed about cool stuff:

"Riding along in my golf cart I pass a giant truck full of pink cases. They're the secret agent type..pink metallic metal, lots of locks, even Top Secret written on the outside. They're all different sizes.
Hmmm...I'm thinking I'd love to have what ever is in them, so I take a look around. Nobody's in sight. I casually putt on by in my golf-cart (no pun intended), reach my arm out, swipe the biggest one on the top. Putting the pedal to the metal I skid away.
What's this? Oh no! The truck is right on my tail and there are angry foreign men hanging out of the cab toting large automatic weapons! I'm doomed.
Of course, it doesn't take long for them to catch up to me in my cart...I'm apprehended in every sense of the word.
When they take the pink case back and throw it in their truck...it's FBI locks are jarred open to reveal the secret contents!
Aha! It's a Barbie prototype. This doll's amazing! I can't remember what makes her so spectacular...but she was truly fantastic judging by the look on my face.
I'm still doomed. I'm lead to a dark, damp room somewhere far away from dream Barbie. The armed men are speaking Johillawoost (that's their language) and I can only pick up on a few words here and there.
"uncovered secret", "how's my hair", "let's shoot her" and "how do you like your Barbie stealer..Fried or boiled?"
AAAAK!
They lead me down hallways until we come to an opening in the concrete wall. They point inside with their guns and say, "fosh". (Johillawoost for get in there and suffer you Barbie-stealing wench.)
I poke my head in the little opening and look around. Not so bad. It doesn't look like a "pit". Three gray, concrete walls. I look back before stepping inside to see the men eating bananas and laughing with their chewed food exposed.
"Ick," i say. They shove me inside.
I sit. Within seconds I realize why this place was dubbed "the pit" by the Barbie holders. The opening to the tiny room has vanished...soundlessly, I am enclosed by an escapeless room. A pit. There are four walls now, a floor and a ceiling. I'm in a cement box.
I close my eyes and try to sleep. I keep thinking, "If you ever get out of here, Sharice, don't ever steal another pink metallic Top Secret box."
I must've fallen asleep...when I woke up I was in a bed, and not in a box at all. I still wished I had the fantasmic Barbie, though. Just so I could brush it's hair."

Almost Five: A manual

When you're almost five you quite often forget you're not the boss. Sometimes your emotions win the battle against reason and logic and you end up crying over spilled milk. Literally.
When you're almost five you more than likely despise anything related to hair care. Including but not limited to: washing, conditioning, combing, brushing, drying, styling and even touching. Most mornings you're satisfied going to school looking like a mopsy-head. With a dangling barrette.
Almost-five-year-olds are never afraid to wear white shoes after Labor day or black tights in the summer. Whatever they put together is in almost-five-year-old-fashion. Period. And if you don't agree, they cry.
If you're not big on cooking, then you really ought to get yourself an almost-five-year-old. They can live on peanut butter sandwiches with strawberry jelly, but not apricot jam. And if you like the crusts, you're in luck. Corn is a five-year-old's favorite vegetable, but they want it on the cob if you serve it in a bowl and they need you to scrape it into a bowl if you serve it on the cob. They're just that way.
Being almost five means that you're big enough to pour water into your own cup, but not big enough to get your own cup down from the cabinet in the kitchen.
So, if you're almost five...get used to being thirsty.
It also means that you sometimes forget to put on shorts or pants under your hula skirt (or tutu) and you walk around with your Dora underpants showing. No big deal, unless there are boys around. Then...pretty big deal.
Riding in a car is the hardest thing to do when you're almost five because you get bored really fast and you have to keep asking how far the place is that you're going. Almost five-year-olds like to look at books in the car to keep themselves busy, but don't let them do that because they might get car sick and barf. Or cry about almost barfing. Or tell you to go slow so you don't make them barf. Or just make barfing noises and hold their hands over their mouth to scare you.
And if you think they're just "crying barf", they're not.
Cleaning up your bedroom is a snap when you're almost five. All you have to do is make a pile of toys in the corner of the room and then cover it with a blanket. Even if there are a few rogue socks and shoes in the pile, nobody will ever know it. Organizing is for big people, so if you wait long enough someone will come around and clean it up the right way.
Although it's a bit tricky being almost five, it certainly is a lot of fun. Rocking-out to music and burping out loud after meals isn't nearly as embarrassing as it is when you're almost six.
Oh, and when you're almost five you sometimes tell fibs about eating jelly beans. If you don't want an almost five year old to eat your jelly beans, be sure to keep them near the cups.

see more dog pictures

noontime allegro

raindrops slice summer heat
dozing frogs a capella
a fleeting heat-wave hymn

Describe It

On the way home the windows in the car were cracked and the wet pavement poured in like the smell of a hot iron. The little dog was panting fast in the back seat and smearing black pawprints on the leather.
I looked at myself in the rear-view mirror. How ugly. My bangs hung in wet pieces around my eyes and my ponytail frizzed out from the side of my head in surrender. Little white flag of faux-pas. I adjusted the mirror to look at Cadence. She looked like me, but pretty.
Smaller. Her wet hair framed a beaming angel's cheeks and a bubblegum pink pout. "That was fun," she whispered. The dog nervously shivered next to her grinning and drooling.
Ahead there was a man on a three-wheeled bicycle pedaling in slow motion. Thin waterfalls cried from his fedora and crashed onto the pedals. The basket followed him like a stray dog- full of aluminum cans and junk. I passed too carefully for the moment. At the stop sign I slowed the wipers to low. They dragged over the drying glass and made a yucky noise. Cars splashed by and drowned us in blankets of muddy street water.
"Wasn't that fun?" Her eyelashes- survivors clinging to eachother. I thought of the mud on the seats and the dirty dog feet. "Sure," I said wanting to turn this moment into a movie scene where the timing is always right and every movement is bound to perfectly orchestrated music. I had to remind myself to take a picture of us. Three mermaids. Their sweet faces knowing nothing about the responsibility of sorrow. Click. And my face.
They were sweet, the two of them. Like the deluge had re-birthed their faith in true fun. Both she and the dog watched the buildings blur by and I said, "I wish we could do this every day."
And the part of me that can still do cartwheels in the grass really, really meant it.

Kid Pops

While pit-stopping at a Mobil station in Altamonte I say to my daughter, "Man, it's cold in here."
She was sitting on the toilet and I was trying not to think about the thousands of other butts that have touched the same seat. Note to self: extra bubble bath in the tub tonight. and maybe bleach.

She gets a quick shiver, like her body is so happy to have finally peed it does the shortest dance ever. And then we wash. Hands, arms...I stop short of wetting a paper towel and scrubbing her patootie.

We're out the door and in a hurry, since Husband and Friend are waiting in the car. We've actually just left the restaurant, but doll-face didn't have to go there, so here we are. And we're running out clutching our arms around our bodies because it's so god-damned freezing in the place. My nugget is running behind me and says,

"It's so cold in here it's freezing my life."

And I laugh. And we get in the car, which Husband has moved to opposite side of parking lot because he's hysterical and I tell them both about the nugget's frozen life.

And then I think, as they talk, on the way home...how great would that be? If I could just walk my almost-five year old baby into the Mobil station and watch from the summer outside, beyond the automatic sliding doors as she freezes her life? And the logical part of me wonders how long it would take and would I need a tent.

Could I have her this way all the time? Smart and silly and precious and proud.

Just a little more time with the kid that sometimes dips her garlic bread in her milk on spaghetti night and chews away while Husband and I sit staring at her. Wishing we could do the same without gagging.

A lifetime more of "I tooted" in the middle of the coffee shop while people around giggle and smile as my face reddens with mortification and hers reddens with laughter.

A month of Sundays where the thing I really love doing is watching her sit at the little table in the living room while she eats pizza wearing a tee shirt, jelly shoes, and a tutu as if she saw Jessica Alba wearing it on the cover of this month's Cosmo.

I want to keep her young. Keep her the way she makes me feel...

Thankful, secretly, that someone has the guts enough to tell me that I have a mustache in a way that makes me laugh instead of cry.