Sorry You Missed It

So the flatbed truck came and hauled Moonshot’s car away yesterday.

What? Am I so far behind on my posting that I haven’t told you what happened to Moonshot’s car? Oops. I haven’t yet told you about the young idiot who, in the middle of last Tuesday night, took far too wide a turn and dragged his car across the driver’s side of Moonshot’s parked Ford Contour? In that case, my lack of recent blogs has probably kept you from hearing that the kid tried to drive off, but that the damage sustained to his Saturn was so great that it died only a half a block down the road and that he then got out and ran. You would have no way of knowing that my amazing neighbor Tom and his son literally ran from their house upon hearing the crunch and chased the driver, called the cops, and woke me from my slumber. And your not knowing that would be a real shame…because Tom deserves some major recognition for his heroic actions. But the even greater shame is that you’ve missed out on laughing with Moonshot and I at the 18-year-old imbecile who, upon smashing a car and abandoning his own vehicle in the middle of the street…ran the block and a half to his house, went inside and hid. Brilliant, eh? Even had Tom’s son not followed him, it would have taken the cops two seconds to find him since his plates were registered to that house. And they did find him. Hauled him off to jail in handcuffs for leaving the scene of an accident and for driving without proof of insurance.

It really is a shame you missed it, cuz you would have enjoyed the story. You’d have gotten a kick out of the cop who answered Tom’s question “Is he drunk?” with a straightforward, “No, I think he’s just stupid.” You also would have appreciated my frustration at the long-winded cop who stood on the porch of Casa de Gren for way too long, pontificating on whether or not the kid might actually have insurance as he claimed or maybe he and his mom were sharing one insurance card and swapping it back and forth (“See that all the time,” he said), and several other theories he had on the case but for which he had no real reason to even hazard a guess. Moonshot and I, in our sleeping attire, looking as haggard and as uninterested in his theories as parents of a newborn might look when their sleep is interrupted by such an event halfway through their child’s normal sleep cycle, could only wait for him to wear himself out so that we could sleep and deal with it in the morning.


And I’m sure, as loyal readers of my life, you would have worried with us when we realized that with the Contour out of commission, we had no car that could hold Norah’s rear-facing car seat (curse that tiny Mini backseat.) But I can only imagine that you would have sighed with relief when Jet loaned us his Avalanche...I know we did. And I have every confidence that you would have been pleased as punch when we found that the reckless kid did, in fact, have insurance, and that the insurance company has been taking good care of us ever since and is sending us a check that we will put toward a Subaru Outback

But my biggest regret is that had I told you the story, my opening statement that they hauled away Moonshot’s car would not have seemed so strange to you. It really was unfair of me to subject you to such a startling claim…when you clearly had no frame of reference with which to understand it.

So, I can only apologize for not telling you that story…it was a good one…and I think you would have enjoyed it.


Norah Update


I also realized that my last update was the day before Norah’s check-up…horrible of me to keep you hanging. The short answer is that she’s wonderfully healthy. Her jaundice is gone, her heart murmur is gone, and she is gaining weight like crazy. How crazy? Well, last we had checked, about two-and-a-half weeks prior to this weighing, she weighed 8lbs 3oz. Last week, she weighed in at 11lbs 2oz. That’s roughly a 40% increase in size in less than three weeks. I can’t even imagine. She’s now in the 95th percentile for weight, length, and head size. So, she’s proportional…she’s just a big kid. She continues to spit up huge quantities of formula, but other than that one complaint…she really is a pretty easy child. She’s going about 3-4 hours between bottles during the day and 4-5 hours at night. That means we only have to wake up once to feed her since we can feed her right before bed and right after I wake up. And even better is that Moonshot takes that middle-of-the-night feeding since I wake up and take the morning one. I have no complaints.

All in all, things are good. We still have our days when she’s fussy. This tends to fray our nerves and causes us to wonder what we were thinking when we decided to have a child. But then she does something cute, we melt, and everything is fine again. We’re looking forward to our memories glossing over the hard parts. It is clear to me that this happens. People are shocked when I mention my occasional frustration. They say things like, “But babies are just so sweet…how could you get tired of them?” It is obvious that nature has devised a system by which we only remember the cute faces they make and just kind of skim over the midnight scream-fests. In this way, evolution has ensured that we will ignorantly march into parenthood again. So, for now, I just smile and nod when people say these things to me…and wait for the blissful forgetting.

Late Breaking Update!!

Several days ago, the Little Miss began smiling in her sleep. Very cute, good for a few “oooh”s but it lacked the ability to pump up our personal egos, so we have been waiting for her to smile AT us. Waiting for that magical moment when one of us would walk into the room and her face would light up because she recognized us and loved us. But she’s been rather stingy with her love. First she saved it only for her dreams. Recently she’s been sharing it with her Pooh mobile, but only if we keep a safe distance. But today the final insult occurred. She’s now decided that she loves Arlo. Yes, she grinned her fool head off at our lovable pooch…but still can’t bring herself to give us more than a lazy, one-sided smirk. Now, I’ll freely admit that Arlo is far more lovable that either Moonshot or me, but I’m just hopeful the Norah will eventually decided to shower her folks with some well deserved smiles…hopefully sometime before her teenage years when she reverts to hating us ;)