Jim and I both work full time. Unfortunately his career tends to be time and a half plus more during most work weeks. His travel and commuting schedule have been quite intense lately. This leaves me playing the role of "single parent" five days a week. I was the one who opted for the teaching profession and the daily commute of seven minutes. Hey, I'm not complaining. We agreed early on that one of us would have to be around in order to teach our future kids how to read! That someone is yes, you guessed it...Mama Plod.
My girls are very different little people. Addison (9 1/2 yrs) is our sensitive, acoustic guitar playing, animal loving, poetry writing hippie chick with a dark side. The dark side is the part of her that's really good at pushing my buttons and making her sisters cry at will. The sensitive side is the one that writes the lovely apology poetry boasting that I "shine like stars twinkling in the night and am loved forever" causing me to cry! Gracie (6 yrs) is simply Graceful Grace. Our drama mama and future, ballet dancing attorney, judge, artist, hairstylist? She wakes up happy and singing every morning, mainly because she is a great sleeper (unlike her sisters). She continues to sing even after her older sister looks at her sleepily and barks "Shut up." The singing usually gets louder at this point! Our youngest daughter, Chloe is affectionately nick named Tiny. Chloe is no fool when it comes to social politics. She watches and learns. Chloe never lets me forget who has a time out and what it was for. She also likes to remind when these time outs were cut short, who is due for flu shots and vaccines and when she has been treated unfairly. She has also been known to tell Jim that he's wrong and should say sorry. Chloe, like Grace is usually right. She is also adventurous and a daredevil. For her 5th birthday all she wanted was a motorcycle but settled for a motorized Razor scooter. There is never a dull moment in our home.
After Grace and Chloe's shared dresser broke for the 50th time in the past year we decided to replace it. In reality Jim was fed up with crawling under it and repairing the damn thing. We packed up the troops and were headed to you guessed it...IKEA. The land of inexpensive, home furnishings. The kind that don't last forever but that you won't shed a tear over even after it has been turned into an abstract artwork with Sharpie markers. We wandered for 3 hours in circles because everyone knows that the arrows on the floor don't really lead you to the exit. They don't lead you anywhere but into another blasted circle! - but it's worth it for that furniture...or so you think before you get the boxes home.
As Jim turned the corned of the couch I noticed that he was limping. He lower his head and shook it in disbelief. He then announced,"I never knew how many things could go wrong in such a short amount of time." I looked up. "What do you mean?" was the only thing that came to my mind. I shouldn't have even asked that! --This is the story of the 5 missing minutes according to Jimbo.
His first words were...I think that I broke my foot. I told him to sit on the couch and asked him what happened? Did he need ice? He told me more. Jim had decided to move the old dresser out by himself. It must be a crazy, dude thing. This dresser was huge! The dresser fell apart 3/4 of the way down the driveway. The entire thing landed on Jim's foot! In his pain and anger my normally rational husband decided that the BIG,BAD,DRESSER needed to leave our property asap. Better yet it could no longer stay on our block. In his pain and anger Jim decided to pull his pick up truck around to the front of the house, as close to the dresser as he could. He was reversing and somehow...remember the pain, it got in the way. His hands somehow slipped off of the wheel while the truck was in reverse and he backed into my Trailblazer, which was parked in front of the house. It looks like someone took one of those Ginsu knives and sliced the front, driver's side corner off of the car. It's bizarre...a clean cut! Bye, bye bumper. Did Jim get the dresser in the truck? YES!- of course he did!...Then he hobbled into the house. Being sleep deprived fools we laughed and laughed...even over the fact that we'll never get ahead financially if we keep driving hurt!-never a dull moment.
