Sunday School Is Working

Mornings around here can be frustrating. The first bell at school rings at 8:10, which means that I must hit the shower by 6:30 or all hope of a calm departure is lost. And even then, all bets are off on whether it will be calm. No, actually, I'd have to say the safest bet is that things will not be calm as we're preparing to leave the house. (What a luxury an attached garage must be.)

I have done nearly all that I can to enable my kids to be self-sufficient in the "getting ready to go" department. Their coats and snowpants are hung in plain sight on hooks low enough that they can reach them. Boots and shoes are on an open shelf just inside the back door. Hats and mittens reside in the clear plastic pockets of the huge shoe organizer hung inside a nearby closet door. Everything is within easy reach except, of course, the will to actually put all these things on themselves.

I was having one of my almost daily "getting ready to go" meltdowns as I directed the kids to don boots and place shoes in backpacks. "Mommy has set up the world so that you can do all of these things yourselves!" I ranted as I tugged a hat on a head.

Our daughter looked rather crossly at me and said, "You didn't set up the world, Mama. GOD set up the world!"

Right she was. And what I wouldn't give for a little help from God each morning to find missing mittens or coax a belligerent pair of arms into a coat.

One for the "Not What I Expected" File

After having been homebound for 48 hours by the confluence of my beloved's (well-deserved!) snowboarding trip to Canada and my son's raging, 104 F fever, the kids and I were itching to get out this afternoon. OK, it was mostly me, but I had a plan that would sweeten the deal for them. We'd return three videos that were two days late (I dropped and ran...can't wait to see the late fee on that one) and then drive through McDonald's to get Happy Meals for them and a shamrock shake for me. (I make this sacred pilgrimage once a year. It started when I was 16, and, in its inaugural year, it involved a blizzard, a huge white whale of a car, a ditch at a busy intersection, and two guys, one of whom I was dating at the time and one that I'd be dating shortly. But that's another story.)

The kids were rather frustratedly sipping at their shakes during the drive home—they don't call them "Triple Thick" for nothing—and listening to a collection of catchy children's tunes. "The Farmer in the Dell" was spinning as we traversed our last mile.

When the song ended, our eldest asked, "What does the rat take?"

In the version of this song that I've heard most often, there was no rat—there was a mouse, and it takes the cheese, an inanimate object that concluded things tidily. But in this version, the cat takes the rat, and that was that.

"I know!" our boy said after a pause. "The rat takes the black death."

'Well,' I thought. 'That's something.'

"What do you know about the black death?" I asked him.

"It's a kind of illness," he said.

"And where did you hear about it?" I asked.

"I read about it in 'Why Do Castles Have Moats,'" he said.

I have the Southwest Book peddler to thank for that one. He swooped upon me when I was the young, vulnerable mother of an 11-month-old who was just looking for an adult to talk to. His 19-year-old self was close enough. Sixty dollars later, I think he enjoyed the conversation as much as I did.