The Unremarkable Tuesday

Yesterday morning, as Audrey and I were walking out of the hospital after her shot, we saw an elderly man walking in.  He was slowly making his way with a cane, wearing navy blue shorts, a white polo shirt, and his Korean War Veteran hat.  The man was probably in his 80s or even his early 90s, and one of his legs looked like it had taken several skin grafts over the years.  Though he shuffled slowly and slightly stooped, his clothes were pressed and he moved with pride among the younger uniformed soldiers.

We had just finished a hectic morning of shots and 18-month check-up questions:  Is she talking?  Does she know 10 words?  Can she throw or kick a ball?  After we give her the shots, would she prefer a Dora or Disney Princess sticker?  Audrey should have been very tired or angry or something, but she was happy because she got grape Tylenol and Audrey exists on a plane where shots and questions don't bother you as much as the injustice of someone stealing your hot pink monkey blanket.

Into the sunlight she charged, fresh from the adventure of the revolving door, with a confident stride and a smile on her face.  As we came up to the veteran and I noticed his cane and his slow gait, I tried to redirect her around him.  My hands were full of prescription bottles and paperwork, so I was rearranging things to pull her out of his way.

Her smile only got bigger.

"Well isn't she pretty?" he  said, as she hurried directly into his path.  I reached for her hand, hoping to move her out of his way so he wouldn't lose his balance or something, but I didn't make it.

Audrey reached for the man and hugged him around the legs, smiling.  For a moment, the only thing that mattered in the world was this happy little girl in her gingham dress, hugging the man who was once willing to give all for his country, bathed in sunlight in front of a hospital on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday morning.  I stopped for a moment, ready to corral my daughter or support the man who needed a cane to walk to his doctor's appointment.  

The man just laughed.  Audrey smiled, looking up at his happy face.

You never know when your day is going to be made, or when a toddler knows better than you how to make someone else's.  I wish I had a bottle that could hold that man's laughter or my daughter's smile, and the way the sunlight framed their moment together.  

In that unremarkable parking lot, on a rather unremarkable Tuesday morning.

Number One Rule of Legos

We got Sebastian a Lego truck this weekend because he's 3.5 years old and we were really ready to deal with a bit more small parts and frustration at play time.  The "City" truck/motorcycle trailer we got is a bit easier to put together than the Spiderman set he wanted, but we totally jumped the gun.

Tonight, he needed to put one of the Lego men on his motorcycle and brought him to me to make sure the hands were gripping the handlebars.  The kid is a bit detail-oriented.
I took it and said "Okay Bud, the Number One Rule of Legos-"
"No, Mom, it's Number Eight."
"What?"
"It's the Number EIGHT Rule of Legos."
"Um... okay..."

I guess someone's been paying attention.

Fruh-lat Spice

Okay, Sebastian's three and a half years old and there are some words that I haven't really corrected yet, like "spice."  When he was about 18 months old and on a tasting tour of anything that happened to be on my plate, he first encountered spicy food so he learned the word.  Around the same time, he asked for a sip of my soda and that was the only word he had to associate with it, so he now refers to any kind of soda as "Spice."  Instead of correcting him, I just tell everyone around him what he's talking about.

We were out of cranberry juice tonight, which Sebastian likes to have after milk at dinner.  Of course he didn't believe that we were REALLY out of juice, so he inspected the fridge himself.  We didn't have juice, but we DID have a little bit of Spice from three weeks ago!  What a treat!

Except it was super flat.  Like just-the-syrup-flat.  Disgusting.  The is partly because we got it three weeks ago and partly because every time Sebastian sees a bottle of soda, he likes to shake it.  This is obviously not a person accustomed to opening a soda bottle.  The kid is so sheltered, right?

I told him it was flat and would be disgusting, which he also did not believe.  How could Spice be disgusting?  He asked very nicely for a glass with ice, so I gave him a little bit.

"Mom!  This isn't Spice!"
"Yes it is.  It's Flat Spice."
"Fat Spice?"
"Flat Spice."
"Fruh-LAT Spice?"
"Yes."
"Mom, how do you get Fruh-lat Spice?"
"You make it.  It's very special.  You have to wait a long time to turn it into Flat Spice."
"Oh wow! Dad!  I have Fruh-LAT Spice!"

Aaron gave me a "this is a longshot" look about Flat Spice being "special," but this looked like an opportunity to avoid wasting what was left of the Spice in the bottle.

That thought lasted about two seconds.  I dumped the rest down the sink and, though Sebastian drank the little bit I gave him, he definitely didn't ask for any more.  I don't think Flat Spice is ever going to catch on.

The Almost Rotten Pineapple in My Fridge

Two and a half weeks ago, my mom and I went to the grocery store.  The few items we needed turned into several items the kids might want which then turned into a bunch of items I could use.  We found ourselves in the produce section at the end of our journey to get a watermelon, grapes, bananas, and apples for the kids.  This is when my mom asked her usual "Is there anything else you need or want or could use?"
I looked around.  We had the basics and more food than could fit into the fridge.  I was searching my brain for something else we might want, when my eyes settled on the huge selection of pineapple.  We had just had kabobs and I do love pineapple, so I grabbed one.  It was also an opportunity to teach my mom how you can tell if a pineapple is ripe, which I learned from a woman at the produce section the week before who told me to pull a leaf from the top and if it comes out easy, it's ripe.  (If that is incorrect, you might wait a while to tell me.  Read on.)  We picked a good ripe one and finished shopping.
The rest of the pineapple's story that day was rather boring.  We got home, unloaded the groceries, had dinner, packed up my mom, and sent her off to the flight where I traded her for a box of donuts.  The next week, I got back to work, the kids got back to daycare/preschool, and we all got back into our routine.  It also got very hot around here so we haven't been grilling much which means no kabobs and no specific reason to cut the pineapple.
Through all of this, the pineapple sat on the counter and kind of blended in with its surroundings.  We maneuvered around it while cooking and doing dishes, moved it from one side of the kitchen to another and never really thought about finding a place for it.  I noticed it a few times, on the way out the door in the morning, at the end of the day when I had already settled on a snack that was far less healthy for me.  It was turning a little more tan and a kind of bright yellow on the bottom.  Whenever I got around to cutting the thing, it would probably be half rotten.
Then, last week, after a long day at work when the kids were being heiny-heads (my new favorite descriptor as of three months ago), I decided I needed to get that pineapple off my counter and out of my thoughts.  I grabbed a knife and began cutting, expecting the jump back at any moment from disgust at whatever kind of rot had settled in.
What greeted me was a delicious smell of fresh, perfect pineapple in a beautiful golden shade that was like sunlight made solid.  Even the center was not too hard.  This was, as Gordon Ramsey would say, the most AMAZING pineapple, and with each cut, I had visions of myself snacking on it in a state of utter bliss.
I should tell you that my husband loves to cook, and loves to learn new techniques.  We had a set of crappy knives that he made better by watching YouTube videos on knife care.  Not even kidding.  Gifts are easy for him: quality pots and new kitchen gadgets make his face light up.  The new gourmet knives I bought at Christmas last year sent him over the moon and he's taken care of them to keep them nice and sharp.  Very VERY sharp.
"This is perfect," I thought.  "This is the perfect pineapple and I'm going to make this crappy day that much better by sharing it with Aaron and the angels will sing and all the fairies will get their wings and I will grin like an idiot.  Now I only need to make ONE...LAST...SLICE...AAAHHHHHH!"
I... embarrassed myself.  To anyone else the cut was not that deep or that bad, but I didn't realize that cutting the side of my nail could bleed that much or that the juice of a delicious pineapple would sting that badly or that I could scream that loudly after the kids went to bed.  Aaron came running in because he recently cut HIS finger (same finger oddly - the left ring finger which means we're soulmates or should take some kind of hint about our marriage).
I sent him away in supremely dramatic fashion.  I needed a Disney Princess bandaid and some solitude to get over my disappointment, to wallow in the punishments that God dishes out when all you want in life is to feast on the pineapple that you neglected for a week.
Then I got over it and called Aaron back, but he was already in bed.  I threw out the two ruined slices of pineapple and shoved the rest into a bag for the fridge.  My finger throbbed, so I took some ibuprofen.  I didn't get to write that night or the next because it honestly hurt that bad.
That was a week ago.  The finger feels better, but no one's eaten that stupid sliced pineapple wasting space in our fridge.  I think Aaron's grossed out and I don't blame him.  A part of me thinks that I should eat that pineapple to justify the sacrifice of my finger and the typing I haven't done this week, maybe assert some kind of hunter-dominance over the conquered fruit.  Another part of me thinks it's probably fermenting in there and I would get sick just by opening the bag which would be the ultimate defeat.  I also realize that if I just throw the thing away, I'll be admitting defeat.
I'm at a point where every time I open that stupid fridge and see that stupid pineapple in that stupid plastic bag, I get a really bad cramp in my pride and I'm not hungry anymore.
I think it'll be a while before we have kabobs at our house again.

All at once

As I walked out of my bedroom a moment ago, the cat darted across my feet to find sanctuary from Sebastian, who loudly proclaimed "I need to go potty because I'm peeing on myself." While he was walking into the bathroom, Audrey was walking out holding a bar of Irish Spring which she was scrubbing with a baby wipe, which means the wipe canister is somewhere in the house with its contents strewn all over a floor.

I don't have any answers for this.  I think I'd like to phone a friend.

A Little TOO Quiet...

Audrey is sitting quietly at the dinner table waiting for the watermelon Aaron is cutting for dessert. She is also spitting on the table and wiping it off with her dress. This is not a coincidence. Since she's quiet, it is also not my problem until we're finished with dessert.
Yeah, it's seriously like that tonight.

New Disney Movie: The Plunger And the Washing Machine

"Whoever so pulleth off this plunger..."

(Hey, it's harder than it looks!)