June 12, 2006 - 12:42 AM.

Workin' at the carwash yeah

We did a family car wash this afternoon!

Of course, taker of the dim view that I am, I did not think it would go well. The parking area is outside our new tall fence. "The baby will run into the open alleyway!" I cried inside. "He will grow bored of our antics, and run run run! And then I will have to chase him and the washing will be abandoned, leaving our car looking like it went to the Lancome counter and decided against paying to make up the other half of its face."

My husband wonders what the hell I am talking about, especially as makeup has never besmirched my face, even for free at Gottschalks. "It'll be fun!" he insisted, adding unfairly that we have now owned our large regal car for two years and have only had it washed THREE TIMES. We have also not one single time vacuumed it. (We didn't today, either.) And the times it *was* washed, it was at a drive-through. So the car deserves our loving attention, was his horrible point. And the baby could use the running around.

Oh, very well. And I couldn't even get the satisfaction of stomping around having a bad attitude, because I have now got into the habit of Setting An Example, so all I got to do was exclaim brightly that we were going out to the Car Car, and we were going to Wash! and Clean! and Wipe! -- all of which are activities the Punim is currently passionate about, to the point of swiping filthy sponges out of the forbidden Garbage and smearing them across the carpet while exclaiming like the fucking Flylady.

But, of course, J. was right and it was totally fun. The baby is so enamored of the Car Car, for some reason, that he never once strayed into the (Sunday-afternoon-quiet) alley. He was delighted by the spray ("Wrain! Wrain!"), he loved helping me squeeze out my towel, he shoveled soapsuds onto the sandy driveway. I even had a good time wiping brake dust out of the wheel detailing, and it did feel nice to scrub off the grime and again have a car that looks like really fussy old people drive it.

I spent hours at my office today, for the first time in months; of course, what J. doesn't know is that most of the time I was not doing practice work but was crocheting away on the hammock I am making him for his birthday. I bought 7000' of nylon miniblind cord on eBay, and hope I can get it done in the next 2 weeks. Actually, if I had been working on it instead of this entry, I'd have another row done! I hope he loves it - he did ask me to make him one and wonder if he thinks I forgot.

Oh and we bought the baby one of those little foamrubber foldout sofas. Turquoise blue, with Elmo and Zoey and Big Bird and Cookie Monster on it. He adores it; he sits down on it to "hink" during Blue's Clues, and proudly says his name, as if to denote that it is only for him.

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