The Perfect Storm

So you know when you're trying to get cook dinner and the kids are hanging off your legs and you just want them to give you a second and do something else? And then you just make it worse? Yeah.

This was going on the other night with Molly, and I thought I'd let her play in the garage. Bryce was in there working on our chicken coop (yay!), and she loves to hang around when he's working, so I got her shoes on and sent her out there. Pretty much so she could hang on his legs instead of mine. Nice, I know. My car was in the garage, and playing inside of it is another favorite past time of hers, one which I generally discourage, but whatever. I thought she'd want to work with Bryce. He thought otherwise, and let her into the car. Not realizing that I had both sets of keys inside. This isn't normal, but she'd lost one pair playing in there the other day, and I'd opted to grab the spare set instead of searching through old goldfish and fruit leather wrappers in the back seat. So after awhile, he figures out that she has, of course, locked herself inside. And asks me for the spare keys. We sort of laughed about it, because eventually she'd figure out how to unlock it and she was safe and we weren't in a hurry. And then she turned on the windshield wipers, on high speed. Porter innocently grabbed one and managed to jam it up. So this wiper is fighting itself and can't move and is likely breaking and we can't fix it from the outside. We ask Molly to pleeeeeaaaase push that little button on the door, no not that one, no farther down, no the other way, pleeeeaaaase. And she tries and misses and gets kind of annoyed and just gives up and shakes her head. Won't open the door. Doesn't really get it. We try getting angry with her. That works even better. At this point Porter's in his room and everyone is getting mad at everyone else. For this thing that's a little bit everyone's fault and really nobody's fault. And after much time, I manage to break into the car (only because I had to call a locksmith once and I saw how he did it), and the wipers are off. And Molly is out. And everything is okay. And dinner is burning and we are all mad at each other.

FAIL.

Luckily, we all realized soon enough that it actually was kind of funny and not a big deal. And that maybe I should clean out my car and find those missing keys.

I'm Cooking: Parsnip Risotto, with Grilled Salmon and Salad. The risotto was a nice, unusual side dish. I used dried rosemary and scaled the recipe down and still had more the enough for us. I really like parsnips, and this was a good way to use them up. Bryce and a friend of his from work liked it too, although the verdict is still out with the five and under crowd.