Just a funny

My eldest son sat next to me, munching on a pear he'd picked from my parents' tree. This was dessert after a lunch of sliced ham, a cookie, and milk.

"What would your Perfect Day be like, Eldest?" I asked.

"Cookies for every meal!"

"Hahaha. But you wouldn't really want just cookies for every meal, you'd be hungry all day."

"You're right. I'd want there to be trees where the branches are ribs... pig ribs. And the sidewalk is made out of bacon, and the street is made of steak."

"So, your Perfect Day is all about the food?"

"Yep!"

Yeah, what can I say? That's my kid.

The Pregnant Pause

We interrupt this Giveaway to bring you news of an embarrassing sort. Warning: This post is rated PG-13. (Yes, Iris, that means you should probably skip it, less your innocence be scarred. Thanks for understanding.)

So, remember how I was complaining awhile back about all the people around me getting pregnant with their fourth babies? The conspiracy continues.

My favorite bloggers are mothering newborns, and now I'm surrounded by pregnant people in real life. This would be understandable if I were still teaching birth classes. I am not. I stopped teaching birth classes because they made me want to be pregnant all the time, and I finally realized that was not going to work.

Anyhow, as I was saying, I am surrounded by pregnant people. Yay, babies! Ahem. Two of my closest friends, their pregnant bellies (still tiny yet), and their many already-born children were here today in order to give me a reason to bake Valentine cookies. One lives across the street from me.

Then there are the neighbors to the north. Two out of three are pregnant. The third lets her boyfriend spend the night quite frequently, and better be filtering her water.

In any case, all these expectant ladies around the house lead to some interesting dinner table conversations with my six- and seven-year-old sons. They have a better-than-average understanding of birth. We have discussed many aspects of plant and animal reproduction. But we've never quite gone all the way to the question that came up tonight...

"Mom, how do you get pregnant?"

That, my friends, left me tongue-tied, looking at the clock, and noticing that it was WAAAAYYY past bedtime, and maybe-we-could-finish-this-very-interesting-conversation-Some-Other-Time.

Goodness gracious, people, I don't want to give the kids nightmares! I need a PLAN! So, when and how did you explain the S word to your kids?

Oops! I stole my own car!

Yeah, so, um, I'm a big dork. But let's start at the beginning...

The police department called this morning to let us know they found our Ford Focus wagon, which we reported stolen last week, in the Barnes and Noble parking lot a mile away from our house. Praise God!

My mom took Scott to go pick it up, and it appeared to be in the same condition we left it in. Weird, huh?! Yeah, I thought so, too!

How odd for someone to steal a car and take it to the bookstore, of all places -- and then just leave it there! (Apparently, it had the same amount of gas in it Scott remembered from the day before it went missing, so they couldn't have gone very far.) Maybe they just needed a ride to work?

And how weird that they took it to one of our FAVORITE PLACES! In fact, my mother and I had just been there a few days before... when was that exactly... oh, yeah, I met her at B&N for coffee, and then we took... her car... to go to TJ Maxx. Wait a minute, did we... go back and get my car?

Ohmigosh. Oh. My. Gosh. OH MY GOSH!

Yes, I actually completely forgot having left my car in the parking lot of Barnes and Noble last Monday.

Now, obviously, I was not the only one with a failed memory. Rewind to the morning we woke up to no car in the driveway. All we could remember of the previous day was Scott taking the boys to the library in the morning. Then our neighbors came out to see what the police car was doing in front of our house, and reported that they remembered seeing our car in the driveway late the night before. We concluded that it must have been taken between midnight and six. Not just one neighbor, mind you. A neighbor to the north said he had company over late and checked the street at midnight. Our friend across the street remembered looking out at 10.

What does this say for "witness" accuracy?

Alright, I'm really not trying to point the finger away from myself. I'm perfectly aware that I'm the idiot in this story.

So, anyway, praise God that our neighborhood's crime rate hasn't gone up! And our insurance rate won't increase! And we only lost $175 in rental fees! (Ouch.) And lots of people at the rental place and insurance agency (not to mention my parents, friends and hopefully you reading this) got a good laugh today!

Anyone have a recommendation for memory enhancement supplements?

If only there were a photo to go with this post...

I wouldn't be publishing it.

(Thank you for all the well wishes and prayers for my camera! I believe it's just the flash that's out, so hopefully the camera shop can fix it. In the meantime, I thought I'd share a little story that needs no photo. Or, at least, no photo would be appropriate!)

A few weeks ago we were cleaning up the backyard in anticipation of a playdate the next day. The kiddie pool was pretty gross. Leafy matter from a week's worth of windy days floated on the top, and the bottom was coated in a slimy film from the kids' muddy feet.

But before I could scrub it out and refill it, I had to empty a couple hundred gallons of dirty water onto the lawn. (Lest you concern yourself with wasted resources, I'd been watering the garden with the pool water for 2 weeks, and the lawn needed a good soaking!)

I let as much water out as I could by pushing down on the blown-up sides, and lifting the corner so the water could flow out the tiny valve in the bottom. But it was obvious I needed to leave my old leather garden shoes on the patio, and go in barefoot.

But what about my pants? My long jeans were also splashed, but I didn't want to totally soak them. Neither did I want to go inside with my dirty feet. And I didn't have any shorts that fit anyway.

Fortunately, it was a weekday morning. Our neighbors on the south are my parents, and my mom was over visiting anyway. To the north, on the other side of a 5-foot wall, are three apartments. The back apartment was empty, because our neighbors had just moved out. The woman who lives in the middle was at work, and the front neighbors were out, too.

So, I thought, what the heck. I took off my jeans and tossed them over a patio chair, leaving my knee-length apron over my blouse for modesty, and told my mom to be on the lookout!

Then I got to work, using all my strength and momentum to push and pull the sides of the 6' by 4' pool, slowly but surely sloshing and pouring the water over my bare legs and onto the grass.

The pool was almost empty when I heard a truck engine. A large maintenance truck was pulling down the driveway that runs along the other side of our north fence. It stopped in front of the empty back apartment -- directly opposite where I stood.

Oops. So much for weekday privacy.

I looked around, trying to figure out what to do. My mom was on the patio with my jeans, laughing at me, of course.

I figured that as long as I stayed close to the wall, the maintenance crew couldn't see below my shoulders. I carefully dumped out the last of the water, and propped the pool up against the wall in front of me.

Then I waited until both workers appeared to be inside, and quickly backed away from the wall and across the lawn, grabbed my jeans, and walked backwards up the steps into the house, my mother and I giggling the whole way.