Holy cow!

I’m sure that I’m not the only one who signed up to bring cupcakes for the kids’ Valentine’s Day parties. I’m even more certain, I’m not the only one whose thoughts were filled with delusions of my offspring all working together on this project, while I took snap shots that we could reminisce over later.

Unfortunately, that’s not quite how it turned out. My first indication that something was wrong was when the smoke alarm went off at 7 a.m. this morning, while all three of my children were engaged in substitute activities, mostly revolving around electrical devices.

My intentions of creating a wonderful childhood memory soon evolved into the more common reality of everyone rushing around frenzied, in hopes of making up the extra time that would be needed to stop by Save Mart to pick up cupcakes.

“Why didn’t you turn off the oven when the timer went off?” I asked my children, as I ushered them out the door.

“Because we’re not allowed to touch it,” my daughter said echoing my years of parental instruction.

“But, I asked you to turn it off,” I tried to reason with her.

“We thought it was a test,” she said with her hands on her hips. “All the other times we’ve ever talked about the oven, you’ve said not to touch it.”

She was right, I always did say that.

So off we went, our first stop was to the post office to drop a Valentine in the mail for the foreign exchange student that had been in my older son’s class last year.

“It would be nicer if you gave it to her in person,” my daughter suggested.

“She is thousands of miles away,” he responded. “She is French.”

“Then why do you call her Chantal?”

“It’s not her name,” said my son shaking his head incredulously. “It’s something she is. I’ll give you an example: You know how you are short? She is French.”

She pursed her lips, squinting at him. “What makes someone French?” she asked vehemently.

I quickly intervened to placate the situation, “If someone is from France they are called French, but French is also a language,” I added with a smile, throwing my older son a disapproving look.

“You mean there are more than two languages?” asked my daughter, mouth gapping in disbelief.

“Yes, there are three,” shared my younger son. “There is Spanish, that’s what Californians speak, and then there is Pig Latin, which is what I’m really good at.”

“I know about Spanish and Pig Latin, but what’s the third one?” My daughter asked perplexed.

“French,” he said throwing his arms out exaggeratingly.

“What about English?” I asked amused.

“That’s a dialect of Pig Latin,” my oldest son clarified with a smirk.

“Exactly!” agreed my younger son, pointing at his brother. “It’s what he just said.”

Just then we pulled up to the post office and parked in front of the boarded up wall. My son hopped out to drop off his letter.

Though perhaps a sensitive subject, it is difficult to overlook the post office’s magnetism for calamity. If it hadn’t been the object of several random, inadvertent collisions, I wouldn’t even think of mentioning it. Still it was hard to ignore just sitting there staring at it.

My younger two were in the back seat speaking Pig Latin, when my older son return and soon we were on our way to pick up cupcakes.

The excitement grew from the seat as Pig Latin was thrown back and forth with the greatest of skill. My older son grew frustrated with their antics.

“Knock it off!” he ordered as he held up his phone to record them. “Or I’ll download this video to Youtube!”

“Sorry, no speak­­­­a-English,” said my younger son making a face for the camera.

Just then a car came out of nowhere and I had to swerve sharply to avoid a collision.

“Olyhay owcay!” cried out my daughter.

A driver had pulled out onto the road in front of us, careened into our lane, over corrected onto the shoulder and then swiftly passed us.

“What is that person doing?” I responded incredulously.

“Probably going to the post office,” said my older son smirking still recording his siblings. I gave him a disapproving tap on the back of the head as my younger two fell into hysterics at his suggestion.

I guess it wasn’t such a bad morning after all. And, thankfully my older son caught it all on his phone for future reminiscence.