Oh, I know...

I said I was taking a week off, but the most extraordinary thing just happened--believe it or not, I am now the proud owner of a silver, 1965 Corvette Sting Ray small-block roadster with red interior!!

A miracle, indeed! It came with this note:

Terry

Could not locate a Tuxedo Black 67 on short notice.

Merry Christmas anyway!

Nate

Well, I just gotta say what a wonderful, unexpected surprise it is to receive such a gift, even if the maroons down at the Post Office nearly destroyed the derned thing when they ran the Priority Mail envelope through their dumb ol' machines.

I made Little Boy run out to the mailbox just now (what good's having kids unless you can send them on mindless errands for you) and he came back with a stack of stuff and a mangled envelope swathed in clear tape.

Utah?!

I opened it up, and there in all its shining glory was a brand new Johnny Lightning 1:64 scale 'Vette. (None the worse for wear, thank goodness--I'd hate to have to go down there and get all postal on 'em.)

Anyway, thanks very much to my good buddy Nate McCord out there in The Promised Land for the great Christmas wish come true! I will drive my new car all over the top of many tables and possibly head out across-floor.

While I'm here, might as well go ahead and fill you in on some more stuff--Reba's at work this week, so I am home with the three younger kiddies. Oldest is spending today and tomorrow at her other grandparents house, so it's only 3/4 of the madhouse it could be.

Had to get up early this morning to maintain peaceful marital relations with my bedmate. For some reason, she really has a thing against me staying in the bed if she's awake. "You are going to be sure and get me up in the morning, aren't you?" She knows to be all coy and sweet when she says it, so I'll maintain the quiet complacency of a puddle of butter. "Yes, sure will." AARRGGHHHH! How DOES she do that!? Clock went off and I flopped over onto her and breathed on her and told her it was 6 o'clock. She eventually got up, and then proceeded to go get all the kids up so I would be forced to wake up and tend to them after she left. She's very crafty.

She went on to work, and out of equal parts duty and terror, I got up and got moving. The kids were all stacked up in Cat and Bec's room, tearing apart the boxes of stuff they came home with yesterday from Ashley's grandparents. They always give them too much--but that's a story for another time. Anyway, tons of wire ties and bits of cardboard flinders everywhere.

I grunted and went and put on some jeans and scared myself by looking in the mirror to get the old heart pumping. I came back through and told them to throw away all the bits of ephemera and plastic sprue and after that, it's been a blur of having to put batteries in this, and fix this, and make this work right, and why's it doing this, and such like. I had such high hopes of cleaning at least one room today.

Oh well, they'll only be young once, and the house will be a wreck forever.

In other news, Oldest got her first kiss.

And for some odd reason, I don't have the thoughts I thought I would think. I always figured I would fuss and fume and such, but as I mentioned last week, the kid--tall, all Adam's apple and bone--is just too nice to want to really hurt too badly. The teenagers from church went to see White Christmas at the Alabama Theatre Saturday night, and at first he thought he was going to have to be out of town. To her undying credit, Oldest decided to go on anyway because she likes the movie. Good girl. I told her I was proud that she decided to go on by herself--no use thinking she had to have some boy (no matter how nice) to make it fun. And then, plans changed and he got to go, so they were both just beside themselves.

They had a good time, and according to the debriefing administered by my G2, Mrs. Oglesby, he managed to overcome her defenses just as they were turning into the driveway at the church building.

You know, you gotta figure that was probably a pretty special something or other--a night at the Alabama, a wonderful old movie, and furtive smooches in a crowded fifteen passenger Dodge van.

As I said, it's hard to fault the boy. Other than he wants to be an architect.

Time to go referee a fight downstairs, so I'll sign off again for a while. Once more, many, many thanks to all of you who left such warm comments below for the second anniversary of this silly mess. It really does mean a lot to me.
posted by Terry at 4:21:00 PM