Along the Way, You're Bound to Hit a Speed Bump

We got a strange phone call last night around 7PM. It was DTE, our electric company, telling us in a suitable recorded voice that our power would be "interrupted" for approximately 4 hours on Tuesday, starting around 9 AM. So I called my neighbor, who I was supposed to have a play date with in the morning.

"Did you get a call from the electric company?"

"Um, no. Why?"

explain, explain, explain....

"I don't think so, but I have some voice mail. Let me check it and call you back."

She checked, she called back. No message. The question remained, then, was her power going to be cut off too? It wouldn't be huge except that my children have been devils with intent the last three days and the only thing that will contain them is food and TV, not in that order. So we didn't feel like hanging around if we were going to be without TV for the savages. We made alternate plans to go to the mall for the morning and even try to eat lunch out. I must tell you, Reader, that my last few attempts at going out with the children have been less than relaxing. Trica and I tried, about 5 weeks ago, to have lunch out and we decided it was easier (and substantially cheaper) to eat mac and cheese at home.

So, after getting some air in my slowly leaking front tire, we trekked over to the nearest mall. The girls all had a fabulous time in the play area. Mary very nearly skipped (as much as a 20 month old can) and Emma and Zoe discovered the slide was wide enough to hold both of them at the same time. That was nice. Encouraging, even. This was not without problems, as I only brought a single stroller and Emma decided, to the point that her toddler feet would not budge from the middle of the parking lot in the 26 degree weather, that she wanted to ride in a stroller. Not THAT stroller, which is Mary's stroller, but SOME stroller. After much coercing and coaxing I got her into the mall, where her feet made that obnoxious decision again to stick the the ground. So, Emma got a ride on my shoulders while Mary was pushed in the stroller to the place in the mall where I could rent a double stroller. All was happiness and glee at that point, as the girls decided the mall stroller was very much like a roller coaster and they began leaning precariously over the sides and exclaiming at the sheer fun of it.

We went to lunch and had the normal issues you would have if you were at lunch with three toddlers. First, there is not enough room to move all of the tantalizing table paraphernalia out of reach of all of the kids. Then comes the issue of kicking each other with their feet. And no matter what, when the food comes, they only want to eat off of other people's plates. And there was the issue of the forks returning to their cousins, the under-table-dwellers. Trica and I were exhausted after that. All in all it was not horrible, but only what we expected. Unfortunately, Emma decided we were all having so much fun that she was NOT going to go home. She is still crying about that right now, upstairs, where she should be taking a nap and not keeping Mary up with her wailing and gnashing of teeth.

As I drove home, Trica called from her cell phone to tell me her power, according to her husband, had just gone out at 1 PM. When I got home, mine was back on, with the obvious signs that it had been off at some point. At least I can do laundry and check my emails while Emma screams and protests the injustice of it all.

All in the space of a regular morning with two little kids.