Nothing Says "I Love You" Like a Hubcap

Ever love someone so much that you'd do anything for them?
Like even search the world over for the perfect hubcap for them?
Well, that's how much I love my friend Whitney.

Poor Whitney lost her hubcap.  And, well, to be perfectly honest, it made her car look like a total beater.  And that just wouldn't do. 

I first met Whitney at the baseball fields this past spring.  At the time she was a college student and local basketball phenom to boot.  Whitney is the kind of gal that makes friends everywhere she goes, which is why I like her.  She started showing up and watching almost every baseball game Connor's team played because she knew some of the kids he played with.  From her gregarious grandstand antics, I could tell right away we were gonna hit it off.

Whitney's so likeable that in my cell phone's directory she's listed as "Whitney Awesomeness". 

So when I spotted her car with a black eyesore where her hubcap should have been, I sprung into action.  How hard can it be to find a stray hubcap??  These little auto accoutrements seem to lose themselves all over the place and there's some unwritten car creed that if you find one by the road side you dangle it like a piece of jewelry from something high to attract the owners attention should they come looking for it.  And I was now looking for it.

I can't think of anything that says "I love ya" like a hubcap. (Except maybe dark chocolate.)  And so began my serious cap quest.

Shockingly, once I began looking for stray caps I never saw any.  Some sort of freakish hubcap shortage has overtaken the Northwest.  A solid week past and not a single cap in sight.

On the second week I finally spotted my first lost hubcap.  It had been propped up in the middle of a median strip.  And not just any median strip.  It happened to be the mother of all median strips if there ever was one.  This little concrete oasis harboring the hubcap was ominously dividing  SIX lanes of traffic.  Smack dab in the middle of mayhem.

This would require planning and expert stealthyness...and perhaps a trip to the ER should it go wrong.  But I was undeterred.  Undeterred because by a stroke of luck I happened to have a passenger with me in the car!  Poor Nick didn't know what hit him.  I made several U-Turns and circled the cap like it was some sort of prey and began to discuss a little "strateg-ery" with my unwilling companion.  Then all of a sudden  the traffic eased for just a brief moment--it was now or never!  In a moment of impulse, I swerved to the little island, jammed on the brakes, and shouted "Go! Go! Go!" at Nick.  Panic struck, poor Nick hopped out of the car in a state of shock and awe and ran for the safety of the median.

I circled several more times before finding the right time to come back and pick the poor guy up.  He was a little freaked out by the time he made it back to the safety of the car and once inside he gave me "the look" for pressuring him into such a crazy stunt.  But I could tell, underneath his anxiety, it was the most amusing thing he'd dared to do in a long time.

When he handed over the hubcap and I immediately knew...but I just didn't have the heart to tell him at that very moment...that upon closer inspection the darn thing was obviously way way too big to fit on Whitney's car.  I'd find a time to tell him later after he'd calmed down, that he'd risked his life for nothing. [sheepish grin.]

While he caught his breath and his elevated adrenaline levels subsided back to normal, I drove to Whitney's place, stuffed the giant hubcap in her little porch mailbox and left her a note that said, "I love you this much".  She'd know it was from me.  Who else loves people with hubcaps?

Another week went by before I found the second one.  Again I had to circle around.  By this time I should have had a bumper sticker on the back of my car that says, "I brake for hubcaps" cause that's about all I did when driving.  My eyes were surveying the roadsides for her illusive cap.   This time the second one I found was just a block away from the coffee shop where Whitney works.

Look at that beauty!  I swerved off the road and grabbed it and delivered it to her ASAP.  Her break wouldn't come for a while so we'd just have to wait for the moment of truth and see if it actually fit. 

Two hubcaps.  That's an unmistakable friend right there don't you think?

Turns out, the second time's the charm.  It fit!
(okay, okay, I do realize that they don't quite exactly match, but it stinkin fits and looks waaaay better than the hub-less eyesore of yesteryear.)

 And now, her car looks just as legit as her friendship is.   
A happy ending indeed.

Let's just hope she never loses her muffler.  I draw the friendship line there.

Suggested Reading

I forced poor Nick into going on a little jaunt over to Barnes and Noble with me.  He's not really a reader, which is to say he can read but prefers not to...that is unless you give him a picture book with football or wresting photos in it.

As you can imagine, he wasn't really excited about my invitation for a little adventure at the bookstore, but Nick being the lovable guy he is, he came anyway.  As if that wasn't enough strain on his good nature, I proceeded to heckle him the entire drive about his ill disposition towards the written word--which I think may have irritated him a wee bit, as you will see shortly... 

Once we got to the store I challenged him to go and find some books he could recommend I read:

The little smarty pants came back with this book for me:

And this one for Mark:

Lesson learned: Never heckle a non-reader and then sent them free in a bookstore.  They will find a way to get back at you for insulting their intelligence with a little impish war of wits.

Well done Nick, well done.

Do Not?

Connor and Nick were super excited when they spotted this in the store recently:

It's a Double Barrel Shotgun that loads up like the real thing. 

Apparently they've been watching re-runs of Elmer Fudd or something because they got really excited about snapping the thing in half to load it up as if it were "Wabbit Season".  As soon as they spotted it on the store shelf, Connor and Nick were unloading their pockets and pooling their money together to buy it. 

Before we even got to the parking lot the boys had the thing torn out of the box and had it loaded and ready to go just in time for a shooting spree inside my car-- which I might note, made for a lovely drive home.  If lawmakers think cell phones are the number one distraction for drivers they need to think again.  They've obviously never tried to navigate a car while it's "Air Warrior" passengers were engaged in "double barrel dart blasting" practice.

When I got back to the house, I picked up the box the boys had carelessly discarded inside my car and I noticed this little warning printed on a small area on the back of the box:

Within the first ten minutes of shotgun ownership, these boys had defiled Do Not number 1, 3, 4, and Warning numbers 5 and 6.

Apparently the makers of our fine new shotgun DO NOT have any experience raising boys.  If they had, they would know these warnings highlight the exact reasons why kids like Connor and Nick love to buy stuff like this.

...Meanwhile, the people and animals mentioned in DO NOT #1 have all run for cover until target practice is over or, blessed be, when all the darts have been safely lost--whichever comes first.
 

Shopping with Boys

Just a few days before school started I decided I'd better get serious about back-to-school shopping.  I'd put it off long enough,  which is a classic move on my part.  I always seem to wait to the very last minute to shop for school because I detest it so much. The reason?  This loathsome ritual is the horrific sign that the end of summer is near.  And while most parents loooove sending their kids back to school, I rather like having mine around and being free from school schedules that seem to get in the way of fun family adventures.

But school was just around the corner and some shopping needed to be done.

This year's Back-to-school shopping quest was quite different because I had no daughters with me--this time it was just the boys. Four of them in all.

• Mark (playing the part of 'mature parent')
• Nick (cast in a supporting role as 'helpful friend')
• Connor (playing 'the little brother' in this scenero)
• Mitchell (cast as the lead as the 'college bound student who is in desperate need of some new jeans').

• Oh yeah, and me (playing the part of 'woman perilously trapped shopping with F-O-U-R boys')

Our first stop was for, of course, for jeans.

No sooner had I zero-ed in on the size we were looking for and had forced Mitchell into a dressing room with a pile of pants to try on, I begin to hear a ruckus coming from somewhere in the store.  Naturally I ALREADY KNOW who's probably behind all the noise and I go to investigate. This is what I find:

Nick ('supportive friend') is outfitting Connor and making him pose with the store mannequins.  Mark ('mature parent') decides he's not letting Nick outfit him in real clothes but eventually agrees to try on the entire mannequin by posing behind the headless ones. By the time Mitchell found the right jeans Nick had Connor in several outfit combinations and paraded him around the store to pose by the remaining mannequins and scare the customers.

Then we were off to the shoe store.  How much trouble can you get in there??

The answer is:  A LOT.  We weren't even in the store for more than two minutes when this debacle happened:

The pairs that fit Mitchell's enormous feet were
a wee bit too high up for Mark to reach:

And instead of him smartly asking Nick

who stands at 6'4" and CAN reach the box...

 (apparently Nick was too busy trying to get Connor 
to try on the goofiest looking shoes in the store.)

...Mark just tugs at the lower ones...

Mark spilled the entire stack of shoes!  Unfortunately my stealthy i-phone camera skills didn't reach the crime scene in time to capture all the shoes that fell to the floor. Mark had managed to stuff a few back before I got there because he knew I'd be coming with my camera. [These folks have been blogged too many times to let their guard down anymore-dang it!]

I may not have gotten the optimal photo shot but I did get the last laugh...

When we went to buy the shoes, the lady at the checkout, with a scoffing look, loudly told all the boys that 'this is the very reason why, when customers buy a pair of shoes, we always check that both shoes are the same size.' 

[secret message received.] 

After that crazy outing I made the boys take me out for some chocolate.  It was while sitting there eating chocolatey goodness amidst a pile of shopping bags I realized that while our summer adventures may be over, I've learned that if I'm really in the mood for an escapade,  and school's still in, all I need to do is take a bunch of boys shopping...and bring my camera.  Almost as entertaining as a summer road trip.

Cart Cardio

Went to Target the other day to pick up just a couple of things--certainly not enough to merit using a shopping cart. A handled basket would have worked. But it seems Chloe had other plans.

Chloe, who had convinced Mitchell's friend Nick to come along with us, decided she wanted to ride in a cart. And not just any cart, mind you. Chloe wanted to take the HUGE ride in cart for a spin around the store. So she talked Nick into pushing her around in one while they followed me in the store. Nick, being a good adopted big brother to both Connor and Chloe, caved into her request and strolled her around.

You know the summer doldrums have finally hit when your kids look for entertainment by doing random weird things. Well that's what happened with these two. One thing led to another and soon the two of them convinced me to push them around the store.

 

I think I've discovered the perfect workout for mothers. All you need is a a bored little girl, an extra large teenager (also suffering from boredom), and a ride-in Target shopping cart. Your calves will be sore the next day but they're sure to get all nice and toned! It was excellent cardio AND it amused some bored kids.

 

Borrowed Brothers

As far as sibling struggles are concerned, Connor won the brother lottery.  His older brother Mitchell is very mellow and mild mannered. Lucky Connor. It means that he has the great fortune to escape the traditional hazing that usually befalls the youngest male who lives in a home that harbors at least one older brother under the same roof.

Unfortunately Connor doesn't seem to see it that way.  Instead, he has decided that in-home hazing is a right of passage, an inalienable right, a truth that he holds to be self-evident, that as a younger brother he should endure a traditional sibling smack-down every now and then. Connor took matters into his own hands and decided to outsource the job by borrowing some big brothers.

Borrowed Brother #1 is Nick.

Nick is Mitchell's good friend who stands about 6 foot 6 inches high with the physique of a linebacker whose favorite past time is to watch WWF on cable TV and then come to our house and try out the moves on his eager sidekick "ConDog". (For those of you with a largely estrogen based home WWF stands for World Wrestling Federation-or so I'm told.)  Connor has been "flea flicked", "bad slammed", "splash pressed", and "chokeslammed" all over the house by Nick. All while Connor sports an enormous grin from ear to ear--though admittedly his eyebrows are simultaneously raised in strange contortions that can only be described as having the consistency of two parts foreboding and one part fun.

Borrowed Brother #2 is his cousin Tanner.  Tanner is almost as tall as Nick but still scrawny enough that he couldn't really pull off a flea-flick on The ConDog.  Tanner's fiendish forte is that he is good at being a smooooth talker.  So while Nick fulfills Connor's perplexing need for physical torture, Tanner plays the role of beguiling brother. It just so happens that Tanner is also a younger brother himself who knows all to well the perils of letting an older brother convince you to throw caution to the wind and do something absolutely stupid. So to help Connor learn how to avoid this sort of painful pitfall Tanner considers it his duty to temp him into dangerous situations, thereby teaching him NOT to ever, ever, ever, trust an older brother's pernicious plots. Tanner is what we call a self-appointed mentor of mayhem.

Last week Tanner's latest scheme was to convince Connor to let him stuff him into a trash can. Later that night Connor was laughing as he told us all about his odiferous adventures as Houdini of the heap.
"It only took me 10 minutes to escape!" he boasted with a self-satisfied grin.

Seriously, what is wrong with this kid? 

Then recently Connor wrote the following letter to one of Mitchell's friends who used to live nearby and was yet another "borrowed brother" who helped fill Connor's self-imposed pain quota.  When I read the letter things got more confusingly clear.

Apparently the exhilaration of getting stuffed in a trash can AND having the pleasure of getting "choke slammed" are all interactions considered by Connor to be brotherly bonding moments--but getting his head accidentally whacked into a couch's arm rest (I believe that sorta move would technically be called "The Facebuster") is apparently where Connor draws the line...

...at least the kid has one.

I was beginning to think the boy was crazy.