I opened one eye, squinted glasses-less at my clock, and yup, Monkey1 was right on time.
"Wake up!" she whispered again.
Some time ago I plugged the Monkeys' night light into a timer, so it turns on at bedtime and turns off at "wake-up time." At the beginning I had to remind the Monkeys, "Is the nightlight off? Go look. It's not day time yet." Now, Monkey1 is very patient and punctual about waiting for the light to turn off and to wake me up.
It was Valentine's Day.
I had forgotten to put out the Monkeys' gifts the night before, but even with Monkey1 underfoot, I got them on the table without her noticing. When she did notice the heart-shaped bowl, the tiny blank notebook, and the pink toothbrush (Barbie on her toothbrush handle, Dora on the one for Monkey2), she was delighted.
A toothbrush? Yes, a toothbrush. After all, if anyone else gave my Monkeys something for Valentine's Day, chances are it probably would involve chocolate, in which case they certainly needed something exciting for their teeth.
Today, we had another driveway to clear. On the way there, my car's coolant function started acting up, so once there, we dug out the extra car too.
The driver's side door was in a four-foot drift, and as I cleared the passenger side door, I recalled this had a habit of sticking, particularly on days when I was really dressed up and then had to figure out how to climb over the stick shift. Today, I ended up climbing in through the backseat.
I started the car, the windshield wipers started flailing, and I could not turn them off. One blade came off while my husband waved and shouted, but I couldn't hear him. He finally yanked open a door, "Turn off the car!" I did.
As he tried to reattach the wiper, I noticed that as I breathed, I could see my breath. I noticed that even after several breaths, I continued to see my breath, unlike when I'm outside on a cold day, when after a few breaths, it can't be seen anymore. H'm. What made the space inside of the car so much colder? Unable to think of any scientific reason, I turned my thoughts to all the movies where the hero must do some task racing against time, like water filling the car, to rescue the heroine. The inside rearview mirror fogged up. The passenger windows fogged up. The windshield fogged up. I decided my hero was not winning this race and I had better find something else to amuse myself.
He snapped the windshield wiper back on. Ah, the hero triumphed.
Turns out, there was no chocolate on Valentine's Day -- fortunately, because I had forgotten the Monkeys' special toothbrushes at home.
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