Little Hooligans on the Prairie

And with a huge WHOOSH - South Dakota breathes a sigh of relief that the PM clan has left its once-hallowed borders.

We're on the final leg of the trip - South Dakota back to the Twin Cities via Steinbach. Not entirely on the way, but what's a 7-hour detour when it means dropping off the kids at Grandma's for two whole weeks?

So just a short pit stop in Manitoba before The Husband and I head for home. My plan for this afternoon is to clean out the car. Which, given that we took a teensy-tiny Jetta and stopped in five different places plus drove over thirty hours in it, will likely involve kerosene and a match.

And now: Vacation Picture Dump

Washing clothes like Ma did at the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum.

Walking around Sylvan Lake, trying to convince The Boy he did not need to catch a minnow.

So deceptive - looks so calm, doesn't she?

Triumphant hikers up Harney Peak - a 4.5 hour round trip! (Thinking: If anyone goes any closer to the edge, they will get a time-out AND lose their DS, I am totally serious.)

Checking out the paleontological dig at the Mammoth Site.

Mom Teddy for president.

This is the test tunnel at Jewel Cave to see if you are svelte enough to go on the spelunker's tour. It is 8.5 inches high. The Husband is not going on the tour.

Mom, are Jackalopes real? Only at Wall Drug, dear.

Bringing her jackalope for a visit to her natural habitat in the Badlands.

My best part of the entire trip: Cracker Barrel. I love Cracker Barrel with my whole heart. (I look a little bit crusty because it is the last day and while my mouth is saying, ooooo, fried apples and hashbrown casserole, my eyes and furrowed brow are saying, another picture?)

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Head Out on the Highway...

Here's the view from the front seat for the next week:

The Husband looks a bit disgruntled here. He off-loaded the "load the iPod" responsibility to someone else, and The Essential Leonard Cohen is not what he had in mind.

The Girl is doing some hardcore Baum-ing with The Patchwork Girl of Oz. Please do not let your eye linger on that tell-tale golden-arched box beside her. The only time we let them have Happy Meals is when we're leaving on a road trip - for true!

The Boy is watching "The Muffets" - not so much a second-generation hip-hop musical version of a nursery rhyme, but more a mistaken swapping of F's for P's.

Yep, the PM family is out on the open road, following that time-honoured tradition of the Summer Holidays Driving Trip. We've never actually taken a trip with the kids anywhere other than from here to Canada (something The Girl tearfully reminded me the other day, protesting that "some of my friends have been to DisneyWorld five times and I've never been ANYWHERE!").

I loved road trips as a kid. Well, I love my memories of them, which is the point, right? We often hiked out to the left coast to see family, and I remember how ah-MAY-zing it was to stay in a hotel (pools! cable! coffeemakers in the bathroom!). I remember the excitement of eating in restaurants Every Single Meal (more often than not, the Golden Arches). I remember stopping at various tourist money-sucking traps attractions and overloading on kitsch and tacky souvenirs.

So far, no fighting, good sleeping, and nothing lost. Clearly, this state of affairs in entirely unsustainable and I give it another hour or two before it descends into irritable, dirty, sticky children and grim-faced parents admonishing their brood to Sit Down and Be Quiet so we can Have FUN! We've carb-loaded on stale continental breakfast, hit the 4ft x 8ft hotel pool (complete with murky lukewarm hot tub) and are now waiting out the rain so we can slosh around in the leftover mud at the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum.

In other words, a perfect start.

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A Fistful of Dollars

So I was doing my annual digging out cleaning of my car the other day in preparation for our upcoming roadtrip and found a bunch of change in the dashboard.

I didn't have to count it, as I had already been informed by The Boy that there was $8.37 all told, a fact he had discovered the other weekend when Someone was denied entrance into IKEA for bad behaviour and had to figure out a way to pass the time while having his time-out in the car with The Husband.

The handful of change was a bit grubby (note to self: put the lid on lip balm if you are going to leave it in the car in summertime), but nestled in the middle, bright and beautiful, was a twoonie.

I'm convinced that twoonies are the best pieces of currency that exist. Sure, we all know and love the loonie. But I have a special place in my heart for the twoonie.

Twoonies came out when I was still paying my way through school by waitressing. The impact on my tips was remarkable. People don't like to give bills - they somehow feel that it's something they should put back in their wallet.

So loonies were pretty standard fare until their twice-as-nice cousin showed up. The problem with the loonie was that 10% of two meals at the restaurant where I worked (heaven forbid anyone ever tip 15%) tended to hover somewhere between $1 and $2. It was closer to $2, but when customers were torn between a loonie and a $2 bill, you know they always chose the coin.

(Except when I worked in Steinbach. Then the loonie was oh so carefully pocketed and a shiny quarter - or possibly two for those with some largesse - left parsimoniously-yet-pompously behind.)

But - oh! - when the twoonie came out. Suddenly it was okay to round up to two bucks. It's just a coin...and it's a bit heavy...and it doesn't fit in my wallet very well...I'll just leave it behind.

Back in those days, a twoonie went somewhere, too. It bought Timbits. It bought a cup of coffee. Best of all, it was essentially a slurpee in a convenient little carrying package.

Now, America doesn't have the twoonie. It doesn't even have the loonie. It does have a dollar coin - I found some of those in the car, too - but no one uses them. This I cannot understand. Coins for small denominations = awesomely portable and sah-weet when you discover that what you thought was a paltry quarter is actually eight times that amount.

Dollar bills? Much, much less awesome. In addition to decently-denominated coins, Americans also hate credit cards (despite their love of credit, it would seem). Or, at least, few people use them for everyday sorts of things, presumably just using them to rack up large online purchases. I find myself obliged to carry cash down here, and all too quickly my compact twenties transform into grubby, clumsily folded messes of dollar bills.

My wallet is always too full to close, which in theory would be a sign of wealth, but when what initially appears to be a fortune sums up to a total of $13, it doesn't seem all that wealthy.

Also: while I'm ragging on American currency - this all one colour thing is not my favourite. Especially since they don't have a loonie or a twoonie. I peer into the aforementioned straining-at-the-seams wallet and see a pile of money. It could be anywhere from $13 to $100. Of course, it's not altogether likely that it's $100 - but it could be and I'd never know.

In Canada, a walletful of money means you are rich and a pocketful of change means it's time to head to Sev. In America, it means that you can probably buy a tall coffee at Starbucks, but lunch is a gamble and you won't know until you fumble through all the individually folded bills, dropping them all over the floor, and do some desperate math before you invariably reach for a credit card while praying that it will be accepted.

Although, as an American I know once pointed out helpfully, if it's all one colour no one knows how much you put into the offering plate. Which kinda makes me want to drop a fistful of twoonies into it and see what would happen.

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Shop Much?

The Boy: Hey Mom, can I do This Little Piggy on you?

PM: Sure.

TB: This little piggy went to market...

This little piggy stayed home.

This little piggy ...um... parked at Wal-Mart.

This little piggy went to Target.

And this little piggy went ALL THE WAY HOME!!

(For the record, I must protest that I do not shop at Wal-Mart. I do my shopping for mass-produced-by-Chinese-workers-in-pitiful-and-melamine-laden-conditions-for-pennies-a-day items at Target, thank you very much. I've got Standards, folks.)

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Vendredi V - Aaaaand GO!! Edition

Our munchkins, like most, tend to be less than loquacious when queried about their day.

"How was school/Kids Club/Sunday School/hanging out with the neighbours today?"

"Fine."

And that's it - fine. We try to press for details - well, what made it fine? - but they usually just go back to complaining about eating their supper.

Our solution has been that tried-and-true method of parenting: shock and awe. With kids, your best bet is to catch them unawares and scare the pants off'em so that before they realize which end is up, they're doing what you want.

So supper often goes something like this:

PM: Hey, The Boy...THREE BEST THINGS THAT HAPPENED TO YOU TODAY AAAAND GO!!

[He jumps out of his chair, swivels towards the interrogator with a panicked deer-caught-in-headlights look, and blurts out the first thing that comes to mind.]

The Boy: Uhhh, I played Apples to Apples?

PM: WOW, THAT'S ALWAYS A COOL GAME. ONE!! [I thunder]

TB: Ummm, I got to go outside three times?

PM: SUPER!! PLAYING OUTSIDE IS AWESOME FUN. TWO!!

TB: [desperate for a third item] Errr, ummm, oh! Ashley didn't hurt me today!

PM: EXCELLENT NEWS!! LIFE IS ALWAYS MORE FUN WHEN YOU'RE NOT GETTING HURT! THAT'S THREE!!

TB: [relaxing now that he's off the hot seat, little suspecting...]

PM: Okay, now THREE WORST THINGS THAT HAPPENED TODAY, AAAAAND GO!

And so on.

Might sound a bit mean to shout at your kids like that, but they actually quite like it. And it gives us twelve different things to talk about, so mission accomplished.

And so, given that I'm feeling less than loquacious myself today,

TOP 5 BEST THINGS THAT HAPPENED TO PM THIS WEEK AAAAND GO!!!

1. Riding my bike! I managed to drag my sorry butt out of bed twice this week and get on my bike despite the siren call of my warm, cozy covers. And I'm so glad I did - given the timing of my ride these days, I hit Lake Harriet just as the sun is rising. Riding in the crisp air, watching the sun rise over the rippling water...makes the fact that I'm on my bike instead of in my bed at 5:50 much less grim.

I CAN SEE WHERE THAT WOULD BE A LOVELY START TO A DAY! ONE!!!

2. Meeting my yoga instructor! I met my awesome instructor while on one of the aforementioned bike rides. She admired my arm warmers, and I got to pretend I was alll that and a pair of handlebars as we biked along together and chatted, she on her fancy-fast bike and me on my croooooser.

I'M SURE SHE TOTALLY SAW THROUGH YOU, BUT, HEY, AT LEAST YOU FELT COOL FOR 10 MINUTES. TWO!!!

3. Eating like a champion! It was Friday today - that means Chipotle for lunch! Plus, my coworker talked me into a Chipotle run yesterday, too, so that's double my pleasure, double my fun.

THE VEGETARIAN BOWL WITH A SIDE OF CHIPS - FAN-TAS-TIC! THREE!!

4. Going for a walk with a friend! I can't decide which was nicer yesterday - the walk around the lake or the friend with whom I enjoyed it. As a transplant, I must say that life sure is nicer when you've got someone to chat with who doesn't life seven hours away.

HUZZAH FOR LOCAL COMPANIONSHIP! FOUR!!

5. It's over. It's been a particularly long week with all sorts of "fun" (by which I mean super stressful) moments at work and lots to keep up with on the homefront. Now I can just breathe a sigh of relief, go pick up my kids, uncork a bottle of wine, and settle in for a nice evening of peace and quiet.

YOU DESERVE A BREAK TODAY, MS. KIT-KAT! ENJOY, BE CALM, AND RELAX. FIVE!!!

(Well, peace and quiet-ish.)

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AUGUST?!?!

This? Is why you should never use the calendar that comes from the school. Initially delighted that someone else had gone to the trouble of marking in all the no-school days and given me a free calendar, I placed it prominently and tried to give our lives some semblance of order by putting all of most of a few of our commitments on it.

I was all smug in January because I didn't have to go out and buy a calendar like those 2008 losers - I just flipped a page and, hey presto! it was 2009.

Not so smug now, I'm afraid. Last week I flipped the page and, hey presto! ads for orthodontic services and music lessons.

School year calendar = ends in summer = no page for August. And because there was no page for August, I didn't write anything down for this month. I just filed it away in that less-than-reliable-since-I-had-babies mental organizer, hoping it would stick.

(It hasn't, which is how I've already double-booked us for something accidentally.)

Worse, without a physical presence, August had a tenuous existence and seemed like something that would eventually happen at some point, but was so far off it wasn't anything to worry about (see: retirement, turning 40, losing those stupid five pounds for good, the rapture).

So *flip* and suddenly I've been attacked by a month that I totally didn't see coming. Plus my August is shorter than most people's. We're leaving for a family vacation next Friday, immediately after which we drop the munchkins off in Steinbach for a glorious horrible two weeks of doing grown-up things like restaurants and moves in the theatre missing them terribly.

They'll only return on Labour Day, which means that I now have exactly 8 more days to get ready for school as opposed to the entire month like everyone else. Plus getting them ready to spend three weeks away from home.

So, lesson learned: next year, I'm buying a calendar for 2010, even if it's a stupid "Kittens of the World" one (since I'm too cheap to ever buy one for retail and by the time they're marked down enough for my pocketbook, the good ones are gone). Maybe then January will be the month that time forgot. Because nothing important happens in January, right?

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