Quid pro Quo aka The Stink Bomb

Oh, no. Now I’ve done it…

I had to run out and do some errands today, and when I came back home, the baby was awake in her crib and Fran was just around the corner brushing her teeth. I guess she didn’t hear me come in—at least that’s what I was banking on when I decided to mess with her head…

I took the baby (I guess she’s a toddler now :( ) out of the crib and set her down right in view of Fran, who still didn’t realize I was home and turned around to gaze, open-mouthed, at the child who, in her mind, had just descended four feet from the top of her crib and was standing there smiling up at her with all 10 teeth.

There was quite a long pause, almost a minute.

“Mike?!”

Since I didn’t know EXACTLY where she kept the stun gun (or the glock), I decided to let her know I was there…but for a moment there was some high anxiety that our child could self-levitate..

In my mind, this gets her back for “stink bombing” my car—every time she’s in it…

Unfortunately, when it comes to car settings, I just like it set up the same way all the time—I like the AC on (even in January), and the air recirculating. That way, I don’t have to be on guard in case there is a dead skunk, or stinky bum, or rotting coyote, or whatever there could be in the road ahead of me…

When Fran drives my car, she puts on settings that even the car designers didn’t even realize were available. I can’t decipher the settings (There’s like a guy playing tennis, and someone’s foot on fire, and…is that a mongoose?) , so I have to punch buttons wildly to get it back to the way I, the primary driver of the vehicle, like it. And she likes the outside air, which takes us to the stink bomb.

East of our house is the mall. West of our house is the dump—a nice, active, ripe, stinky dump blowing it’s dumpiness all over the road. Guess who goes east and who goes west? So everytime I drive it after her button-pushing mania, I get about halfway past the dump (which, unfortunately, is the way to the highway, the way to the office, the way to my customers’ offices, and pretty much everything else I need to do) when I realize what’s happened. Well, halfway through is too freakin’ late! You either have to “ride it out” and let the dump permeate the car and wash out over the next…2 days, or close off the outside air and open it again when you get far enough away from the dump, if your air supply doesn’t run out by then. In the meantime, dump-air is unleashed inside your car, bouncing off the windows and dumpifying everything in its putrid wake.

I’m really afraid that after continued exposure to this malodorous air, the inside of my car will turn “dump color”, which is that grayish, greenish, orange-ish brown color that is the same color that the bottom of the trash can looks on beef goulash day in elementary school…

No matter what I’ve asked her to do (like, “hey, don’t mess with my settings”), I always seem to get stink bombed.

So, I’ve been ordered not to report any stories about Fran in my blog, but here’s a bootleg:

If you’ve read much of my blog, I have reported (truthfully, I promise), that during my life I’ve had very vivid dreams, usually when a very difficult decision is coming up (new jobs, also back in college about meeting with a teacher who turned out to be my mentor, about buying an engagement ring, other stuff, too). It’s probably happened about 4 or 5 times in my life, but when it happens, the directions are as clear as if someone wrote them down for me, and I’ve always done what was told to me with excellent results.

Of course, Fran knows about it and, although it hasn’t really happened to her, she seemed impressed of the power of following your inner voice.

So the other morning over coffee, Fran casually told me that she got a message early in the morning, “just as clear as I am talking to you” to get up every morning at a certain time and run for an hour to get into better shape. “It was overwhelming,” she told me.

“Wow! So what do you think?”

“I told the voice ‘Shut up!’”, rolled over, and went back to sleep…

Oh, no. Now I’ve done it…