We’ve had the Ody about a month now, and I have been fortunate enough to always be able to find a place to park where I could pull in driving forward fairly near our house. The Ody is great overall, but it has the turning radius the size of a small house. A three point turn on a normal street seems like an impossibility. I could barely parallel park the Volvo, so parallel parking the Ody has seemed like an impossible task.
Tony is gone to a men’s retreat tonight, and so the kids and I went to have dinner and play with some friends at their house. When we got back, there were no obviously large enough places to park within a half a block. I circled a couple times and made a half-hearted try and a couple spots, but nothing looked big enough for me with my non-existent parallel parking skills.
Then I had a brilliant idea — I would just pull the car around and park in the off street parking behind our house! We usually never park there, because it involves going through three locked doors, while coming the the front involves one locked door. It isn’t extremely well lit back there, so I didn’t notice how high the snow really was…until I drove into it and promptly got stuck.
You would think I would know better since I have lived in a snowy climate my whole life, but I just wasn’t thinking very clearly at 8:30pm when I just really wanted to get inside and get my kids to bed. I rocked the car back and forth a little bit, but the tires mostly only spun. I knew that I probably needed a shovel and maybe some ice melting salt to get the car unstuck…but I also had two tired kids in the car that needed to get inside… and I didn’t think I could shovel it out very fast by myself.
The day was saved by our downstairs neighbor. We all went inside and knocked on Michael’s door downstairs. He was home, and came out to shovel the car out while I brought the kids inside, and he even pulled it around front and got it into one of the parking spots that I gave up on. I felt pretty silly making such a dumb winter driving mistake, but at least the problem was solved and the kids got to bed before it got too late. Maybe I need to find a way to practice my parallel parking skills in the Ody (or be willing to park way down the block!)
Given the fact that Madeline is still at least a year or two away from losing a tooth, I hadn’t really given a lot of thought as to whether or not we would “do” the Tooth Fairy at our house. I’m not really big on pretending various people or animals visit one’s house for holidays, but the tooth fairy seems like an easy one to do with a “wink and a nod” so to speak and have a lot of fun with it.
Then while I was at the mall with the kids a week or so ago, Madeline spotted a woman wearing a pretty dress and a pageant-esque banner reading “the tooth fairy.” There was a whole display promoting dental health, including said Tooth Fairy handing out small white bags for teeth. After explaining to Madeline the whole concept of losing one’s baby teeth and expecting that maybe the tooth fairy would exchange them for small coins (which didn’t really phase her, surprisingly enough, despite how odd that must seem to her that her teeth will all fall out in a couple years), I thought maybe she would lose interest until she could herself perhaps be visited by the tooth fairy.
Then, she managed to meet another tooth fairy less than a week later at the Children’s Museum. This tooth fairy was giving out not just one, but two different boxes for storing lost baby teeth! And Madeline got to make a “tooth fairy wand” too.
At first Madeline seemed to have gotten a little bit confused, and referred to the taker-of-teeth as the “Fairy Tooth Mother.” 
We got that all straightened out, and Madeline has been talking about the tooth fairy nearly every day since. In the past few days she has mentioned “playing tooth fairy” several times, but tonight was the first time we had all-out pretend play about the tooth fairy.
Here’s how it went: Madeline wanted to be the tooth fairy first, and as we set the stage, she let me know that the kitchen is the mall — because the tooth fairy lives there, you know? She had several other important instructions to give: You have to go and get your tooth box from the tooth fairy at the mall, then you can go home and lose a tooth…then you can call the tooth fairy on her cell phone, and let her know you need a pick up. Then the tooth fairy comes with her easter basket filled with play money. She’ll take your tooth box and give you money in return. But don’t forget to go back to the mall to get your tooth box back before you need to lose another tooth.
Tonight I witnessed two fairly amazing things. First, our BPOU (Basic Politcal Organization Unit) voted overwhelmingly for Ron Paul. Second, we brought four kids with us to the caucus. We had already promised to watch some friends’ kids, so after making sure the parents were okay with us taking theirs to our caucus, away we went!
The vote was something like:
- Ron Paul — 99 votes
- Mitt Romney — 84 votes
- Mike Huckabee — 53 votes
- John McCain — 53 votes
It seems that Romney won the state, but we’ll see how things go. The next phase of our caucus in March 15th. I’m an alternate delegate, so I’ll show up then and see what happens.
Today is caucus day in Minnesota. It’s also primary day in 23 other states. As much as anyone, I’m excited about today and really want to see what happens when the dust has settled. That said, I just read a wonderful piece over on David Kuo’s website that keeps this day in perspective.
The great delusion of the build up to sort-of-interesting Tuesday is that it is SUPREMELY-IMPORTANT Tuesday. It isn’t. It is just a day when the presidential nominating process takes its largest leap forward. It is just a day when primary elections are held from sea to shining sea. It is just [sic] day shaped by politics.
Read more here: http://blog.beliefnet.com/jwalking/2008/02/sortofinteresting-tuesday.html
God is indeed sovereign, no matter who gets the nomination or wins the election. Perhaps just as important is the fact that the American public still holds far more power to affect change than the White House. I find these to be very comforting facts.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to go caucus tonight, and might even stick around to make sure that my unbound delegate will stick to the issues I care about at the next level of the caucus. I’m just not going to get bent out of shape about this whole deal. I’m also going to continue working for change where it really matters — in the lives and hearts of individuals.
I hope you can do the same.
