Snapshots

So this morning, Ee asked me to help her take out a toy McDonald’s cash register that my mother-in-law had given her. My mother-in-law has bought the kids like four cash registers, all complete with annoying sounds.  Anyway, when I picked it up off the shelf, the thing rattled, which was unusual.  Upon closer inspection, I found all the missing spare keys that had disappeared from the junk drawer recently.

Somebody’s kids are grumpy this morning.  Manfrengensen and I went out last night, left two of them with a babysitter and took the other one to a moon bounce birthday party.  We dropped him off and went for Mexican.  Damn, those Mexicans can sure cook up some tasty vittles!  

After that, we had some time to kill, so we took a drive through a neighborhood near our own where the houses are, shall we say, a bit more expensive.  And some of them were ostentaciously huge. Some of them were certifiable compounds. One looked like something out of an Jane Austen adaptation.  Another looked like a building on an Ivy League campus. But others looked more reasonable. Manfrengensen said, “This looks like the kind of neighborhood where afternoon tea is obligatory.”  I said more like afternoon cocktails. We pulled up in front of a gorgeous brick number with a FOR SALE sign on the lawn, that looked like it might almost be in our price range, but the fantasy in my head dissipated just then, when the Talking Heads sang  “This is not my beautiful house” on the radio. Kind of reminded me of when Manfrengensen bought a Jetta in 1999.  We signed the papers at the dealer and got in.  As he turned the key in the ignition, the radio spat out Cracker: “A million miles, a million miles…” A lattice of coincidence lays over top of everything…

I don’t necessarily fantasize about having a nicer house.  It would be nice to have just a little more room though.  And a basement that doesn’t breed cooties.

In any case, I guess everyone went to bed too late and got up too early.  I know I did.

Moments from Parenting

Ee brought her toy camera to me this morning.  It has Buzz Lightyear on it and was, at one time, filled with candy.  “Cheese,” she said.  Then she went to her brothers and did the same.  To me, she reported that she had “cheesed” them.

Last night, T3 came over to me and furrowed his brow.  “Do you know what kind of face I’m making?” he asked.  I guessed: angry? thinking? “No,” he said, “I’m retermined.”

A Brief Movie Review

Manfrengensen and I watched this really great movie the other night called Rocket Science.  A small, indie-movie about a stuttering teen who joins the competitive world of debate teams in order to win an illusive love, it was really cute, hilariously funny, and took us in a completely different direction than we expected it to.  Highly recommend.

Today I am retermined to go to the gym and not to get stressed about anything.