No ice cream for you

My husband wants to buy an ice cream truck. When I say that he wants to buy one, I don't mean he mentioned it in passing. I mean that he's been looking on Craigslist and eBay at ice cream trucks for sale. He stopped the ice cream lady that comes through our neighborhood to ask her questions about where to get inventory. He even found one for rent and called the owner to find out how much and what the terms were.

He's serious about wanting an ice cream truck.

It occurred to me that he works a full time job during daylight hours, when most ice cream truck business would be taking place. The next time he called me over to look at a "really cool one" on the computer, I cornered him.

"So, sweetie, are you planning on quitting your job or what?"

"Why would I quit my job?"

"To drive the ice cream truck that you are so set on buying."

That was met with a moment of silence. With my husband, silence means one of two things - either I've stunned him and he's speechless, or he's taking a moment to try and figure out how to tell me something. In this case, it was the latter.

"Well, honeysweetiepumpkin, I thought maybe you would like to drive it. Look, it's pink."

Of course. Why didn't I think of that myself? It's always been my dream to drive in circles for hours on end, selling ice cream to sweaty kids with handfuls of pennies.

"What in the name of Blue Bunny would make you think I want to drive an ice cream truck?"

He looked thoughtful. "Ice cream trucks are cool. They play fun music."

Oh, no. I hadn't considered the music. You think It's a Small World is bad twice in a row, try hanging out near the ice cream truck for an hour. There's one that used to drive through a neighboring town that had a unique soundtrack. It played "La Cucaracha" loudly, over and over. In case you're not fluent in ice-cream-truckish, that means "the cockroach." Appetizing, eh?

I told him I would make a terrible ice cream lady, and it's true. Every kid that came up and asked "how much," then turned away with a sad face after looking at a sweaty quarter would get free ice cream from me. I'm a sucker for kids. I also told him that until gas prices fall below "WTF" level, that it's just not economically smart to drive in circles all day to try to sell $1.50 ice cream bars. My final argument was that we couldn't afford the Xanax prescription that I would need to not go bonkers listening to a tinkling version of "How Much is That Doggy in the Window" all damn day.

He's still shopping around for an ice cream truck. He can keep right on looking. When he finds one and buys it, I'll load the kids up in it, paint a tiny mustache on my upper lip, and make myself a nametag that says, "The Ice Cream Nazi," then I'll terrorize the neighborhood. It'll be fun.

Stupid shower tricks

I had an experience last night that left me shaking my head. I walked into my bedroom in a search for Abby's stuffed kangaroo, and I heard the shower running in my bathroom. Knowing it was my husband, I opened the bathroom door to find the Roo Roo.

I bet you think you know where this is going. You're wrong, and I know you're wrong because nobody in the entire world could ever guess what happened next.

My husband said, "Hey, Robin, is that you?"

"No, I'm the cable guy, here to fix your cable."

"Hey, come here real quick I need to show you something."

Husband, in the shower... hmmm. I'm thinking he wants to show me a pimple on his butt or something, so I sighed and started to walk out of the bathroom. He called me back. "No, wait, really I want to show you something."

Oookay. I approached the shower cautiously and edged the curtain back so I could peek in. My husband was standing with his back to me, soapy from head to toe. He instructed me to watch. Watch what? Before I could ask, he farted. I jumped back, surprised.

"Did bubbles come out?"

WHAT? Oh my God. My husband did not just ask me to watch his soapy ass to see if he could fart bubbles.

Yes, he did.

I left the bathroom in a state of shock and walked back to the living room, abandoning my search for Roo Roo. My son saw me and asked what was wrong, and I told him. After he stopped laughing, he noticed my evil eye targeting him for destruction.

"Honnnneeeyyyy can you come here for a minute?"

"Seriously? So I can watch you try to fart bubbles again?"

"No, I really need something. Please?"

I looked at my son and said, "I swear on all things holy, if he farts bubbles at me again, I'm going to throw myself down a staircase."

I so did not want to walk back in that bathroom. It took all my courage to step halfway through the door and ask what he wanted. Thankfully, he wanted to know where his razor was. I got him one of those cool fog-free mirrors for the shower at Christmas, and it has a razor hook on it, but I took it off this afternoon to shave my legs in the sink. Hey, I was about to go in public in capri pants, and nobody wanted to see the forest on my calves without a quick balance-on-the-sink-shave.

I gave him the razor, had a conversation about whose razor it actually was (and it's mine! I bought it, and he stole it!), then left the bathroom. When I went back to the living room, I found my son standing guard at the stairs, hoping to prevent me from hurling myself to my death. Okay, so it probably wouldn't have killed me, but it would have guaranteed that somebody else would be cooking dinner for a day or two, and he surely didn't want that to happen.

I found the kangaroo and snuggled it beside my already asleep daughter in her bed. I stood looking at my beautiful little girl, wondering how in the world she could be the product of a man who tries to fart bubbles in front of his wife.

It's a good thing I love him.

Guns, mud tires and a good ass kicking - ah, the news.

My husband loves to watch the news. He'll turn on the 24 hour news channel and watch it all day long. I hate the news. It's sad and scary, and I know if anything really important is going on that he'll tell me the story, then I'll Google it and get the accurate story.

That might sound witchy, but hey... I never claimed to be nice. The thing is, as much as he loves watching it, he doesn't really pay attention. His mind goes off on tangents when he hears key words. For example, last night there was a story about who knows what, but they said the word "gun." This set off a chain reaction in his head.

"I want to get a right to carry permit."

Uh-huh. Right. We don't do guns in this house.

"We don't do guns in this house, remember?"

"I won't get a gun, just a permit."

And how does this make sense? I asked him what he was going to do with just a permit.

"Keep it for one day when I can get a gun."

Well now, that just doesn't make sense, does it? That would be like getting a giant set of mud tires and having no truck to put them on. He'd want a new truck. He'd look for every opportunity to get a new truck. He'd wish for a new truck every single day so he could use his new set of tires. I told him this, and he looked thoughtful for a minute.

"You are so smart, Robin. That's why I love you."

Any average person hearing those words would assume they got their point across. I, however, know my husband, and I know that's not what happened. There was no point made, just a new idea planted in his head. "You are not getting a new truck with giant mud tires, because you already have one of those."

"Awww, man. But it was a good idea!"

Men. Ugh.

Luckily, his attention is easily diverted. He went back to the news, and I went back to folding laundry. I got a full 2 minute reprieve before his next bright news-inspired idea struck.

"Look, honey, there's a women's self-defense class in Orlando next week. Maybe you should check it out."

"So I can kick your ass more efficiently next time you come up with some hairbrained idea?"

Hey. That's not such a bad idea. :)

The following blog will be a record of interruptions.

Today is Saturday, and my husband is home. I've been trying to get some things done on the computer, and it's not going well. I started another blog, but I can't get further than a few lines into it because my family is running wild around me. About every third sentence, somebody is screaming the dreaded "M" word. MOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!!!

There it is now.


Interruption #1

"Mommy, I pushed a toothpick inside the couch. We're gonna have to take it apart to find out where it is."

Super. This means the next time I try to take 5 minutes to relax on the couch, my butt will be impaled by a wooden toothpick.

Wow. That's all I got typed before the next round.


Interruption #2

"Bryan's being mean to me."

Wah. Let me get out my violin. In my daughters' eyes, Bryan walking into a room without squealing and jumping up and down constitutes his "being mean" to them. On the rare occasion that he actually is mean, they don't come to me - they run crying to their room.


Interruption #3

"Honey, I'm going for a bike ride."

Seriously? He complains on a daily basis about riding his motorcycle to work, but on the one day when he's supposed to be spending some quality time with the kids (translate: keeping them out of my hair) he wants to go for a joyride. I chose to not acknowledge that comment. He's standing over me, probably wondering what I'm thinking. Most likely he's thinking about hot dogs or Pac Man or something equally irrelevant to the topic at hand.

"Ummmm I'll wait until later."

Hmmm. Maybe he was reading over my shoulder.


Interruption #4

"I love you, Mom."

Some people would wonder how I can see that as an interruption. When a 13 year old approaches you with a stack of papers in his hand and throws out the "L" word, he wants something. I'm no fool. I know that was not a "You're a super mom" love you. It was a "I need $500 for football equipment" love you.

Ahhh, it was a request to go to 15 different stores and spend God knows how much money for the perfect pair of cleats. That sounds like a fun Saturday, right?


Interruption #5


"Mommmmmyyy I don't like Emily Yeung, I want Daniel Cook!"



Molly has a crush on this kid that does little 5 minute shows on the Disney Channel. He goes and does exciting things like visiting a karate studio and doing some Jackie Chan moves, playing with bugs at a science museum and so on. When Molly was about 2 1/2, she told me she wanted to marry him. Cute, right?


So Daniel Cook is getting older, and has moved on to soup commercials or something equally exciting, and has been replaced by Emily Yeung. Apparently, Molly has no desire to marry a cute Asian/American girl. She's devastated at the loss of Daniel.



Interruption #6

"Honey, do we have bread?"

Do you see bread in the kitchen? The bread is always in the same place. Our kitchen is Lilliputan sized, and there aren't that many places to look. There is no bread.

"Well, you went to the store."

Oh, no he didn't.


He better be glad for Interruption #7

"Mommy, Molly has mine makeup."

Abby, you don't have makeup. This one's for Daddy. I can hear the yelling from here.


Interruptions#8 & 9, simultaneously

"Honey, do we have any nail polish remover?"

"Owwwww there's a toothpick stuck in my BUTT!"




This is going to be a long day.

My screws are loose, and it's all my husband's fault.

My husband is one of those people that was blessed with an inclination for mechanical things. He can pop the hood of a car, poke around for a minute, and tell you what's been making that chunka-chunka-grind noise every time you swerve to avoid a squirrel. He's good like that.

It seems that Molly was also born with this natural desire to know how things work. Since she was very small, she's had a tendency to take things apart. She learned to pull herself up from the floor by gripping the front of daddy's toolbox. She's one of those kids that you can't leave alone in a room, not even for a moment. She'll disassemble the vacuum cleaner in the time it takes you to race to the bathroom and pee.

We keep a baby gate at the top of our staircase because of a few incidents that I like to refer to as "roly-poly baby tumblings." A few nights ago, Molly found a screwdriver in the kitchen and took the gate apart. I flipped out - that gate is crucial for preventing ER visits! In the midst of my panic, her father celebrated. His little baby girl had advanced to a whole new level of destruction.

The next day he made her a toolbox of her very own, complete with a message of love to his new little mechanic buddy scrawled in Sharpie across the top. That was two very long days ago. In the time since she was gifted with her tools of destruction, she has taken apart the same baby gate again, removed some very important screws from a glider rocking chair, unhinged two cabinet doors and taken off an outlet cover. I also have a small pile of screws of unknown origin.

There is an important lesson to be learned here: Never give a three year old a screwdriver. More importantly, never allow your husband to give your children unapproved gifts. EVER. Oh, and don't slip with the screwdriver when you're replacing an outlet cover.