Eggs on the Brain

OUTTAKES

• "I am the adult here. I am the adult here.  I don't want to be the adult here. I nominate the cat." -- one of my status posts to FB on a less than smooth day.

•  Josh on a recent visit to my mom's:"Do you have a surprise for me upstairs?"
• Me *embarrassed*: "Aw, baby, please don't..."
• Mom *laughing*: "And who's fault is that?"
• Josh *deadpan*: "Yours."

•  I am going to be a football player when I grow up, and I'm gonna play this *holds arms wide* much! -- Josh

•  Josh: "Huuwanna's family all died."
• Me:  "Of what?"
• Josh *matter of factly*: "Diarrhea. They had a LOT of poop. But Huuwanna has no poop.  He never poops."

•  Josh:"I am going to be a daddy and work in a gas station because it (the pump) counts as fast as me.  My little boy will be called "Huuwanna" or "YuBaba" (*this last is the name of a character from Spirited Away)

On the Friday of Easter Weekend, a stressed mother with four kids had her timing belt go Kabluey! in front of our house...Help didn't arrive for at least three hours...but believe it or not,  this was not a bad experience at all. The house was a wreck before they got here, but most of it was just clean laundry that needed a path beaten through it, and Josh's toy stash...so I wasn't _horribly_ embarrassed.   The kids were very nicely behaved ranging from about 5 to 8, and thankfully, we have a "few" toys around our place, and a good-sized yard, so they dashed around playing basketball or hide and seek or bubbles or whatever with Josh following behind in fascinated thrall, and I did my part to help keep tabs on the ducks and try to destress the frazzled mom.  Sadly, they live in Columbus and were just down for a visit, and we will likely never see them again.  People breakdown out here all of the time...and most of the time, they couldn't break down in a better place -- in spite of the wicked traffic coming around the curves (as I have often said, this is the Land of Fix-It...where they know cars and carpentry and wiring and more). Of all the folks who have had car troubles by our house, they were by far the most pleasant. A while back, there was a horribly drunk, belligerent couple that had a flat, and were cussing and screaming so loud at each other that all of my inlaws, after assessing the situation, returned to their homes, locked the doors,  and kept a hard eye on them while they (the in-laws) did a mental count of all shotgun shells on hand.  As freaked as I was about that duo, I remember I was actually more afraid that someone across the river was going to light a match -- nothing could convince me that there wasn't going to be an alcohol-induced explosion, even at that distance.  The beer fumes just poured out of the couple like liquid nitrogen.  Five days after they were gone, our trees were still having difficulty standing up straight and some of the wildlife had to admit they had a problem and are now in Squirrels Anonymous.

One of the more unexpected things in my life happened the same Friday as the unexpected play date. We had yet another new arrival at our house, and no, it’s still not what you think. Jon came home early (literally pulled in twenty minutes after the family pulled out), and we threw ourselves into the car for a lovely road trip. Now, ostensibly, we were going up to buzz a car dealer and then we were going on a quest for our first Burrito Buggy Burrito of the season. We never made it to the Burrito Buggy. We’d been eyeing a particular car for about two weeks, and going back and forth on whether or not we could even pull off another car for at least two years. (It took Jon seven months to research televisions…by golly, he likes to have all the facts in hand before he makes a decision.) Somehow, the stars aligned on this one. Since it wasn’t moving out quickly enough, they dropped the price a couple of hundred. It scored a 91 on the carfax report and was babied within an inch of its life by the previous owner, and only had 57 thousand miles on it. It’s a cream white (not a glaring WHITE-white)2005 cr-v with a light interior, and we think that was the only real reason it stayed on the lot. Josh managed to be fairly well-behaved throughout the car buying process, which included an hour drive and several hours "in talks", but by the end, he couldn’t express his impatience strongly enough, even with the bribe of a gold balloon. That aside, Josh loves my car so much that he wouldn’t set foot in the little civic from that point on. That wouldn’t have been a bad thing, except that I then had to drive on miles of unfamiliar, curvy roads with white knuckles, while a very smug preschooler grinned all the way home. I made the mistake of letting my mom give it a trial run, and very nearly had to full-body tackle her to pry the keys from her hands – and really, there’s just no way to spin that properly. It would seem, I’m not the only convert. It took me five days before the shock wore off and I started to get excited and silly and absurd about the whole thing. This is the first car that was ever purchased with the intent of being specifically mine. This is my first car. Jon's just going to go out for the next four years and put a bow on it, just in case I forgot that our anniversary is well and truly covered. Of course, it has the added benefit of being able to get Jon to and from work safely in the winter…a rather crucial bonus considering there is so much black ice and river between here and there.  Sweet, wonderful Jon.  Remind me that I owe that good man a burrito.

I shall call it, "The Luggage" after Terry Pratchett's creation. It is a surprisingly spiffy car, despite the moniker. One of the loveliest bits of this whole thing is that for the first time in a long while, my driving phobia is easing up. I just feel safe and relaxed in that car. I’m up high, I don’t feel like I’m going to be crushed by everyone, Josh is far enough in the back seat that he can’t kick the front (as much) and sound in the car is subdued. I can still hear him, but if he starts a tantrum, I can just turn up the radio a little and tune him out until he chills out. The car has more gimmicks and secret compartments than may be truly necessary, but it’s a deeply enjoyable drive…and I wouldn’t mind having this car the rest of my life.

For me, the car was the ultimate…for Josh, though, he had his sights set on only one thing…the Bowling-Alley Easter Egg Hunt (for Operation Feed). He had to wade through several other Easter Egg hunts to get to it, though (Genesis, Two at his School, one at home, and of course, that one). I think I was especially pleased with the first one at his school. We were running late, and they started early…so of course, it could have been a catastrophe of unheard of proportions when we finally pulled in to find that the eggs had already been hunted. God bless the ladies there – they were determined that no one got left out. Since two other little girls were in the same fix, the teachers dashed out and hid some more eggs just for them to find, then all three of them went in to cookies and candy. Then the teachers dashed out again to hide a further batch of eggs for the very small sproglings. It was too adorable (and yet another reason that I am so glad we made the choice we did in sending him there).  He now has enough candy to last him until Halloween...and believe it or not, it really will.

And so we keep moving on. The lilacs have come in bloom. We’ve had a few thundershowers, but on one of the prettier days, I took Josh to the park the other day, and let him pedal around on his little bike. I came to the conclusion that he handles it well enough that we could probably take the training wheels off. Four and a 1/3rd years in…and the training wheels finally come off.

Yeah, that seems fair.