Drinking and Driving

N likes to go grocery shopping. His favorite grocery store is Stacy's "pantry" out in the garage. He will peruse the aisle, make his selections and then diligently bring them one after the other into the kitchen and leave them on the kitchen floor. If we fail to watch him or catch him early in his shopping spree we will end up with a pretty-well divested garage and a whole lot of canned goods and soft-soap containers clogging the thruways of our kitchen. I was out grilling (my favorite excuse to read a book in the sun with a bottle of wine at my side) when N began his most recent foraging for pantry fodder.

"Daddy, you all out of chocolate milk!" he said, bringing me a small box of chocolate flavored soy milk. While I actually don't mind soy milk, it certainly did not sound too appetizing halfway into my grill-time Merlot. I passed, thanking him nevertheless. He was not easily brushed aside. He went back to his shopping, assembling little stacks of canned pumpkin next to the stove, but every five or ten minutes he'd come back to me with his not-so-tempting offers of chocolate milk.

"It's delicious," he reminded me. A swig of Merlot and a second refusal sent him off to build a small fortress of mushrooms guarding access routes to the refrigerator.

"Daddy, you need chocolate milk," he tried again shortly. (I hope he's this determined when it comes to getting into college.) I brandished my newly emptied wine glass at him before topping it out again and off he went to leave bags of pasta like so many driftwood logs against the dish washer.

Eventually either my Merlot bottle was empty or the grilling was done, so I hoisted myself up to tend to things. As I looked down at the foot of my chair I momentarily feared I'd had much more wine than I thought: there was a small row of little heretofore unseen chocolate milk cartridges lined up neatly next to my chair, just in case I changed my mind.

L's friend G came by this afternoon and brought, wonder of wonders, a kiddo-size Barbie^® Jeep, perfect for top-down cruising in the school parking lot across the street. The girls were giddy as G's Dad Kenny got them set up. Soon they were off roaring through the parking lot at close to 0.5 mph - without seat belts to boot. Talk about life on the wild side.

You know, driving with your hands up isn't the quickest way to instill confidence in your father's trembling heart.