MyThreeDaughters

After 12 and a half years of mostly bliss, but with periodic spans of utter disgust and contempt for each other, I have parted with my trusty 1998 VW Jetta. (Oh, come on, what did you think? I wouldn’t hock the wife for 2,600 bucks).

Turns out, there’s this bizarre bazaar called Craigslist, and a lot of people are at the bazaar right now looking for cheap, reliable cars. And “The Scooter Car” — as the girls named it — drew many inquiries and was sold in 48 hours.

So it was that “Dave” came over last night to cinch the deal. Fontaine was in the kitchen writing Valentine’s notes as Dave and I talked. I gave him the owner’s manual, the keys, and finally told him, “Hey, it’s almost 13 years old so I can’t make you any promises, but I’ve told you about everything wrong that I know about. I can’t think of anything else…”

Fontaine looks up.

“Daddy, did you tell him that the doors stick shut sometimes?”

Uh, doh, doy, die, “Oh yes, the doors stick shut sometimes, but usually only when my face is red and I feel like a jackass.”

“How about gas, is there gas in the car, Daddy?”

Yes, full tank.

“Daddy, what about that time the EGR valve and the MSG sensors failed, sending the car into a tailspin, causing that accident that bent the car frame?”

Oh yeah, well, there was that, but Dave bought it and drove away anyway.

Now, Fontaine’s nicknamed the new car, “The Newter Scooter.” She just means it’s the new scooter and it rhymes, but for some reason, I don’t care for the sound of it.

Tonight, Wife worked, and I loaded the three girls up and took them to Moe’s. It’s Fontaine’s favorite place to eat, and the other two have finally found things they like (so that’s a “Moo-Moo Mr. Cow, a Mini-Masterpiece and a Power Wagon.”).

Now, go back with me an hour. I got Rosebud out of her crib after her nap, and she pointed to an orange kids’ bowl and said “Baby Jesus” was in there. She had been taking care of “her.” (She is Rosebud, you will hear her roar, and if she says Baby Jesus is a she, I’ll roll with that).

When we started to suit up for Moe’s, Rosebud insisted that Baby Jesus go along. None of us could see Her in the orange bowl with some sort of face painted on the bottom, but Rose insisted that She was in there and was indeed hungry. So when I buckled Rosebud into her car seat, I had to be careful to work the straps around Baby Jesus.

On the ride there, I did briefly wonder what chain places Jesus might frequent, if She happened to be walking about America in 2010. Would She go to Starbucks or the indie coffee shop? Would she eat Tex-Mex fast food?! Would She being driving an SUV like us, or maybe a righteous hybrid?

At Moe’s, the three girls, myself and Baby Jesus went through the line with Rose questioning whether the Moe’s employees had shouted “WELCOME TO MOE’S” when we came in, and demanded several additional “WELCOME TO MOE’S”-es from one particular worker.

Once we sat, Rose ate a couple of triangles of quesadilla, then offered a corner to Baby Jesus.

“She’s hungry,” Rose told her sisters.

Fontaine looked at Elizabeth, and Elizabeth explained in pure monotone:

“Baby Jesus is a bowl.”

Then we all kept eating. The Savior represented by a Chinese-made orange plastic bowl and munching on a cheese quesadilla at Moe’s Southwestern Grill.

Nothing unusual here.

(Picture above: “Baby Jesus” eats Her first quesadilla).

I walked into the family room this evening, and came upon what was obviously a camp site thrown up by homeless people.

I first spotted a flat-roofed structure and thought that was the entire thing. But beyond that, I noticed an A-frame, and peeked in to see they had fashioned furniture from couch cushions and blankets.  They seemed to be using the front portion of the shelter as a hang-out room, and the room in the back as sleeping quarters.

There must be more than one of them, I thought, because behind the green-roof (a part of the compound not visible in the photo) they even used cushions and blankets to create trundle-style beds. Clearly, they had been here a while.

It was all well and good, and I even privately commended whoever they were for an ingenious ability to survive on their own, but then I noticed something. A lamp lit up their living quarters. These scoundrels had run a cord and were stealing our electricity.

These rascals weren’t surviving on their own. They were bleeding us dry.

Not only our electricity, but then I saw they had stolen some of our groceries, our couch cushions, our kitchen chairs. They had made off with a sum total of at least four years of pre-school and one year and counting of private school tuition.

Obviously, they had been using our bathrooms, because toilet paper has been vanishing at an astonishing rate.

Then, in the back corner of their lean-to, I lifted a blanket and discovered they had also pilfered much of our youth and almost all of our sanity.

Who were these people, I wondered, and how did they get into our house?

Fontaine’s American Girl Molly McIntyre — wow, that’s a lot of nouns in a row — is now reminding me of the old Saturday Night Live segment with John Belushi talking about his favorite Irish phrase, “Luck O’ the Irish.” Belushi goes on to give details of the agony and demise of several Irish people, showing that it’s really “Luck O’ the Irish –BAD LUCK.”

Enter Molly McIntire (sure, she’s an American Girl, but she sounds pretty Irish).

Molly, one of Fontaine’s Christmas gifts, was previously sentenced to an American Girl-brand wheelchair, due to Fontaine’s fascination with people in wheelchairs. A previous post about poor Molly’s plight was one of the most popular ever here at MTD.com (aside from one entitled “Mommy Missing; Missing Mommy,” though Wife speculated that people probably clicked on that one to see if she had permanently fled the premises).

So, here’s an update. In one of her few attempts to hobble around without the wheelchair, Molly fell and broke her leg, as you can see in the photograph. She is not very good on crutches. Then, on top of that, she came down with a cold, and you can see she is well bundled and resting on the couch in the other photo.

It would seem that Fontaine is taking excellent care of her, but appearances would be misleading. When questioned as to why Molly was covered in blankets on the couch, she explained that Molly had a cold.

“I gave her mine,” Fontaine said.

Then she smiled.

Is this like when a fireman sets a fire and then rushes to put it out?

Yeah, men might like to sprawl on the couch and watch sports on weekends. (And some weeknights.)

We might think a gourmet meal is a steak and potato.

We might be a little hairy and not have skin that’s all smooth and silky and soaked with Shea butter from L’Occitane en Provence, and we might not smell good, we might have been workin’ the same haircut since 1997, the same favorite sweatshirt since 1989, we might, in fact, have bodies “like Jeeps, for getting’ around,” as Elaine on “Seinfeld” said.

We might, like Cavemen, still get a huge kick out of cooking meat over fire.

But sorry, women. And buck up, fellas.

Guess which chromosome – out of all the chromosomes, I think there are 365, no wait, that’s days – is EVOLVING the fastest?

Why?

Y.

The Y chromosome.

That’s us, boys. I wasn’t sure when I saw the news, so I looked it up.

The writer – apparently an overly evolved man — takes pains to point out that this discovery doesn’t mean that men themselves are evolving more quickly.

I guess he’s evolved into a chicken – or else he’s seen my friends and I sitting around watching football.

It fell out of the back of Rosebud’s kitchen-table booster seat.

It hit the floor not as a splat, but as something hard. I picked it up and looked at it, then put it on a white piece of paper and got out my camera phone.

Wife knows what’s up when I get that out.

“Oh, don’t write about that,” Wife said. “Sometimes, people come to our house and eat.”

Click.

Whatever it used to be, it had dried up after someone had stuck it in the plastic flap-opening built into the back of the booster seat for no apparent useful reason. Maybe, it used to be green, because there was a green tinge around the edge. Or maybe it became green along the way.

“Well, if they have kids and come to our house to eat, they won’t be surprised,” I said. “But OK, I won’t write about it.”

Besides, it’s not Wife’s job to periodically clean out the plastic flap-opening that was built into the back of the booster seat for no apparent reason. We haven’t actually doled that task out as a chore.

Besides plus, the next time someone comes over, it’s not like we’re going to serve them the shriveled up hardened green sliver for dinner. (We’d serve them the usual: a Trader Joe’s cereal bar and a glass of orange juice.)

“Oh, whatever, write about it, I don’t care.”

Any guesses what it is? Rather, what it was?

I hate balloons.

I never thought I’d have occasion to hate them, but, again, I hate balloons.

Oh, a kid, grocery story clerk says, take a balloon. What color do you want?

I don’t know, the child thinks, what color will look best lying around my parents’ living room, or on the couch, or sitting like a shriveled pruin underneath the kitchen table or beside my bed two weeks from now?

Yeah, yellow sounds good.

So when we were tidying the house a few days ago, and when they all went upstairs, I got a sharp knife out of the kitchen drawer, and I turned the music up…

What happened next is best described in the headline. And the photo.

Sometimes, I wonder how I’ll get into some topical Dad subject like the near-meaninglessness of college bowl games these days, and then one of the girls just comes through.

It was New Year’s weekend, and Elizabeth and I sat in the family room, while Some Team played against Some Other Team in Some Bowl Game. Neither of us was watching closely; I was on a laptop, she was lining up dolls.

But Elizabeth was watching more closely than I thought.

“Daddy, I see that one of the team is from America…where’s the other team from?”

Huh?

“I saw an American flag on the helmet of the one team,” she said, sliding another little person into a spot in the dollhouse.

Oh, I thought, the flag emblems that teams of almost every sport and every level slapped onto their uniforms in the days following the 9/11 attacks so that we would all forever remember 9/11 – and then forgot all about them.

Oh, they’re both from America. They’re…

“Then why are they playing against each other?”

Ah, heck, I don’t know, basically, it’s just a fancy scrimmage. How’s that?

The appeals to Santa for more gifts have now reached the Praise Phase. Straight from the corporate management books, Fontaine’s throwing morale-boosting sentiments at the Jolly Old Elf.

“Dear Santa,” she began her fourth amendment to her Christmas list, “thanks for your hard work!”

(Not to mention, I could really use two more things.)

You have to pump up the Big Man when your first list contains 18 items, not counting numbers 19 and 20 that were added to the back of the envelope. (I took the opportunity to scan the list, before sending it to the North Pole.)

Now, here’s one of the many great things about really young kids. Her entire list could be had for, probably, less than $250. If I listed 18 items – a new car, Bose surround system, some exciting home improvement like gutters or a new AC unit – it’d probably run $2.5 million.

I’d have to say my favorite item on Fontaine’s list is: “Black kids telescope,” referring to the desired color, not that it should be made for use by African-American children.

I also like that the items are not prioritized by number, but by number of times the word “please” is written below an item. I have to assume, “would be nice” makes it a completely optional item.

But if I were Santa, my feelings of self-worth would have rocketed higher than my sleigh when I was thanked for my hard work, and I’d probably bring her even the “would be nice” items.