starting this blog has made me keenly aware of how uninteresting i can actually be. it's a little sad, but it really comes to me, largely, as a relief. i spend much of my time feeling pretty chaotic - which, in my mind, somehow guarantees good blog material - but finding that i am not as exciting as i had hoped is better news than being such a complete lunatic that i have constant chaos to write about. i guess the best way to put it would be saying this: if there were hidden surveillance somehow involved in this analogy, much of the footage would look like a fish that inadvertently landed on a poop deck. i'm just flopping and flailing around my life... just loopy, spazzy, and remarkably gangly for a fish. just twitching around trying to remember what it is i am supposed to be doing. chaotic? quite. interesting? not so much.

today when i was a few blocks from picking up annalee from pre-school, i lost all power-steering capabilities. i describe that like it is a super-power b/c in the world of mini-vans, power-steering really is a magical power that propels my big, silver van around corners with ease, and without thought or concern on my part. today, i lost the magic and gained a true respect for the super power behind power steering. i kept driving (which you should apparently never do). but, i was just a block or two away and while lights on my dashboard were flashing, and there were beeping noises in surround sound... marlie (3 years old) concurred that our car didn't look broken, so we kept moving. i have a seriously deep fear of being excessively late (or forgetting altogether) to pick up one of my children from school. so far, so good. and i wasn't about to let a really heavy steering wheel stop me from a perfect record.

needless to say, when i went in to get annalee (on time thank you very much) one of the pre-school moms asked me if i drive a beautiful, fashionable and super cool silver mini-van, and i replied (with my flowing hair blowing in the wind) "why, yes... yes i do." (okay. so, she really just asked me if i had a silver van, and we were inside where there was no wind and nothing was flowing. but i am trying to liven things up a bit.)

i told her that it was my van, and she informed me that she saw something hanging from the bottom of my van and when i turned the corner and barrelled through a huge puddle, she saw that it was no longer in the shape of a loop but was in two pieces. we got the car towed and are assuming the loop was a belt, and is not a belt anymore. but is simply evidence that the flashing lights and the beeping sounds are in fact a warning to stop driving your vehicle or you will make a bad thing worse. i, however, have no regrets b/c instead of seeing annalee sitting in the office alone (probably broken out in hives) because i wasn't there... was worth the inevitable cost of fixing a hanging loop. and that, ladies and gentlemen, is what a gangly fish on a poop deck looks like in human form.