Sunday, May 14, 2006

Nineteen Days Left of School

This has been an unreasonably harried year, in my opinion. I’m working a great part-time job, which I love, but which is decidedly not part-time. I’m finally seeing the light at the end of the grad-school tunnel, but at the end of the tunnel is a big fat thesis paper that I’ll have to, you know, write. And of course, my brilliant and wonderful child is two years old, so he’s on his fourth time-out of the day as I write this.

Because of all of that, I feel I deserve a little slack, frankly. Slack for dressing a little less nice, for taking a little longer to grade papers, for not cooking dinner multiple times per week. And slack for things like this:

As we were driving to Dan’s parents’ for a little mother’s day lunch, we heard a bumpy rolling sound in the vicinity of trunk of the station wagon.

“What did you leave back there?” I asked Dan in an accusatory tone. He didn’t know, but we assumed it was something left over from his trip to the grocery store that morning. Whatever it was, it bumped and flipped every now and then, as we traveled at sixty or seventy miles per hour down the highway. I peered into the hatch, but I couldn’t see anything. “God,” I said, exasperated, “What is that?” I’m sure I rolled my eyes a couple of times. I mean, really, couldn’t he be more careful about unloading?

Finally, as we exited the highway, I saw something fly off the top of the car and land on the windshield wiper.

“Oh my gosh!” I shrieked. “Pull over! It’s my phone! Pull over!” I lept from the passenger seat to recover my cell phone, which I’d apparently left on top of the car, as I put Shef into his carseat.

It wasn’t the first time something like this happened – I’ve also left my wallet, sippy cups, and other little things up there on occasion. And for this spacey behavior, I certainly deserve some slack.

4 comments:

jdoc said...

I was witness to the wallet incident. You seem to have good luck recovering the items at least. I grant you all the slack in my power.

LH said...

i'm all about the slack.
kudos to you for recovering the phone! That was savvy for sure.

Martha said...

i think the roof thing is genetic. i was lucky in retrieval as well -- coffee cups, wallets, purses, target purchases. perhaps the genetic part is we can't turn the brain off and just do one thing at a time, like put the kid, stuff and self in the car. it will stop when you stop having to put a kid in the car seat. maybe.

Undomestic said...

I can totally relate. One time I drove off with an entire stack of graded papers on top of my car. Luckily, a neighbor of mine helped me retrieve them all. I've also left coffee cups and CDs up there.

Now that I have a mini van, there's a rack or something that prevents me from putting anything up top.