Last weekend, while we were in Ukiah for Shannon’s birthday, Steve took Stella on the mother of all field trips. It was the Sunday morning after the party and, as the sun started peeking through the blinds, I heard the usual early morning commotion. When I asked Steve what time it was, he replied with a simple “You don’t want to know,” and handed me some aspirin and a tall glass of water…for my…sore muscles.
The next thing I know, I am hearing the pitter patter that I instantly recognize as Stella’s straigh-legged-no-upper-body-movement-except-her-head-bobbing-up-and-down running style. I roust only to find her running around the expanse that is Shannon & Ryan’s property. She quickly came running up to me wearing — wait for it — her fleece footed pajamas with her Teva sandals — on the outside! (This is one of those moments that is making me realize that I need to have my camera at my hip at all times.) So, she is babbling in her Stella-speak something about “payyyyyy” and holding a rubber ball fashioned as a globe. I instantly began to realize that a lifetime had passed during those few short hours of slumber.
With Steve’s help, Stella goes on to tell me the story of how they got to go to go to the land of low priced enchantment that is known as WALMART (i.e. the only retail establishment actually open at 6:00 am on a Sunday), and got to buy “EhmoEhmoEhmo” (for those of you who don’t speak ‘Stella’, that is Elmo). So as the story continues to unfold I realize that “payyyyy” is actually pancakes and that before he even has to tell me, I know exactly where the story is headed.
Me: “Duuuude, don’t tell me you actually took her to McDonalds!”
Steve: “Well yeah, and I had to ask the lady at WalMart where it was.”
Me: “So let me get this straight. You took our daughter to WalMart, in her pajamas, with sandals over them, at 6:00am on a Sunday morning, while her mother was at home sleeping off one too many glasses of wine, then proceeded to McDonalds where you bought her the toxic troika of pancakes, sausage and hash browns?”
Steve: “Yeah, and she ate the entire hash brown all by herself.”
Me: “You do realize that, in the period of a couple of hours, we have just become the people we make a sport out of mocking?”
Steve: “Yeah, but can their kids do this? Hey, Stella, where is Antarctica?”
Stella proceeds to spin the globe in her hands until the blue blob of Antarctica is side-up and says, “actica.”
Me: “I give up.”