I’ll totally regret admitting this in the morning.
July 12, 2010
I freely acknowledge that I am not a vision of marital bliss by the time Adam arrives home most nights. He’ll walk in the door, announcing his exhaustion, and I’ll stare at him with something bordering on wrath. Carrot peels from dinner prep stuck to my face, driveway chalk crusted under my nails, a laundry basket wedged under one arm, I begin my oft-repeated litany on how he has NO IDEA WHAT TIRED REALLY IS.
Since both giving and receiving this speech can become dull after a while, I work diligently to mix it up a bit, peppering the diatribe with comments like I HAVE NEVER WORKED SO HARD IN MY LIFE and YOU TRY ENTERTAINING A THREE-YEAR-OLD ALL DAY and—my current favorite—YOU WOULDN’T EVEN KNOW WHAT A VACUUM IS IF IT HIT YOU IN THE FACE. (I find that this last one has a certain 1950s fishwife je ne sais quoi.)
Adam stands at the counter patiently, removing his shoes and mixing a cocktail as I continue to remind him of how lucky he is. On his train ride to and from work, he can read the news, relax along with some music. At work, he can participate in intelligent conversation, make critical decisions, brainstorm with peers. The socialization! The lunch options! The utter and complete lack of Curious George and twisted car-seat buckles and bunny-shaped macaroni and cheese!
Yes, I like to suggest regularly that his job is easier than mine. But on days like today, days of sandcastle villages and sunblock-scented salt air and drippy plastic cups of watermelon slush and a little girl who roars with joy every time a wave splashes her, I remember something else: I would never, ever say his job is better.
Three months or so after Easter, I have a Good Friday confession to make: I hit a bunny. With my car. On Good Friday.
I’m still not sure how it happened, except that I was driving and then there was a bunny in front of the car, and then…then there was no more bunny. It was as if it just suddenly materialized inches in front of me, in the dark. I’d make a reference to Bunnicula (oh, Bunnicula, how innocent you seem in these days of sparkly vampires and shirtless werewolves), but that seems a little disrespectful.
Anyway, I hit it and it was dead and the entire thing was beyond awful. (And, yes. I turned around on a nearby side street and drove back to check and it looked dead. Then when I went back two minutes later to check once again, this time to make sure it was a bunny and not a house cat that I should report to Animal Control, it was gone, which means it wasn’t dead but close to it, having dragged its little body, fur tacky with blood, into some nearby bushes ohgod ohgod ohgod.)
I’m telling you, you hit a bunny two days before Easter and it is factually impossible not to take it as a bad omen. It’s like plowing into Santa’s sleigh an icy week before Christmas, or accidentally smothering the Tooth Fairy with a pillow.
Plus, hitting a bunny is so much worse than hitting most anything else. For God’s sake, bunnies look like THIS:
The bad news: Unlike with Peter, one dose of chamomile tea at bedtime was not going to cure what ailed this bunny. The good news: Also unlike Peter, this bunny was not wearing a small blue jacket with brass buttons. If there had been one single brass button in sight, I would have driven to the nearest bridge and promptly jumped off it. A dead bunny I could survive. A nattily dressed dead bunny? I’m not so sure.
But back to the omens. While hell has not quite yet raineth down, someone on high has been screwing with me. Since that night, I have had four, FOUR, bunnies run across the road in front of me. Happily, I managed to not hit any of them. Such effort often requires Evel Knievel-type feats of driving, involving much jostling of Aura in her carseat and much screaming from pedestrians. But for now, those four bunnies run unscathed, free to dart merrily in front of other unsuspecting cars.
Therefore and In Conclusion, given that I am putting such effort into not killing bunnies forevermore, I feel that it is only fair to ask the shortest person living in this house to STOP REMINDING ME.
Because, honestly? That green one with the bow tie is starting to freak me out.
Oh, how time passes. Was it only a month ago that I said I was going to write a post on our First Family Trip to New York City? I apparently have come to my senses sometime between then and now, since nothing is more brain-numbingly boring that someone else’s account of her vacation. Except maybe a photo slide show. That’s what they used instead of water torture at Guantanamo. Seriously. My sources are solid.
Anyway, the only part of the NYC trip that anyone else might find remotely enchanting is this:
Okay, so maybe not that. But this:
Yep. Aura and Adam played a rousing game of Whack-a-Mole next to Chris Rock and his kids. While Adam did have a ten-second conversation with him about why the line for tickets was moving so slowly (computer down! so exciting!), neither of us acknowledged who he was, because that would be creepy and weird, even though both of us could recite the entirety of his HBO specials.
But then this guy walks up to Chris Rock, right smack in the middle of his little girl bearing down on a particularly frisky mole, and starts quoting one of his bits back to him. Though Mr. Rock was gracious, it was truly horrifying. Much like a photo slide show, in fact, but ten times more humiliating. Like a naked slide show.
ANYWAY. This leads me to ask: Which celebrity would I ever care about enough to approach? Sure, I’ve enjoyed John Irving’s novels for many years, so I guess I could quote a line or two from A Prayer for Owen Meany or something if I found myself in line behind him at the grocery store.
But that just smacks of literary wannabeishness. I think it’s a lot more likely that I’ll simply spot Bruce Willis in Target someday and choose to yell “Yippee ki-ay, MOTHERFUCKER!” at the top of my lungs. Granted, it’ll be an expensive moment of spontaneity. First there will be the whole arrest-and-paying-bail thing. And then you have the cost of enrolling Aura in some kind of retroactive deafness therapy. Eh, hardly worth it.
Thank God I live in eastern Massachusetts. The biggest threat around here is bumping into John Malkovich while moseying around Cambridge. And I’ve seen In the Line of Fire enough times to know you shouldn’t go near that one.
(So, come on. Who would you choose to approach? Because someone out there has to love imagining self-humiliation as much as I do. Action movies, too.)
