Hey, Dad. Guess what??

It's a nice, beautiful Spring day here in California. And it's been a nice, beautiful Spring day for me and the kids too. Thank goodness. I needed some time outdoors and some excellent behavior...on the kids' part and mine...to go with it.

Yesterday, Mam announced that she was potty trained. Uh, yeah. Whatever. I've been working on potty training this child for about a year now. I'm not a pusher. She has not been pushed along the way, but that means the progress has been slow. I assumed she wasn't ready. Apparently, the time has come. And it couldn't be more welcome. She turned 3 a couple of weeks ago. I guess we'll see. A few months ago, things looked this promising for about a week, but it didn't last. It turned into a laundry marathon and she went back to pull-ups.

I had a bad day on Wednesday or my experience would have been posted before now. Let's start at the end of the story.

Husband called and said he was coming home. I was in a funk, lying on the family room floor. I asked where he wanted to go out because I just wasn't motivated to cook. He came home. We piled in the minivan. About halfway to Country Gourmet, my beautiful, sweet little boy piped up. "Dad, Mom got pulled over today."

Uh. Thanks, Smunch. I didn't really think I was going to get away with it, although the oh-so-intimidating police officer didn't give me a ticket in the end. He was still a big jerk while not giving me a ticket for an infraction I've barely even *heard* of anyone getting ticketed for. I ended up in the "Keep Clear" portion of the street because the light was green, but the traffic hadn't moved yet. Whatever. Obviously, it was the coolest thing ever for my little boy to see a police officer close up. I was respectful, but the litany of expletives going on in my head would have been horrifying if it had leaked out. Ugh.

The following is the actual conversation:

Officer: You know, it says "Keep Clear" for a reason
Me: Yes. I know.
In my head: Do you think I'm a moron and I make a habit out of hanging out here?
Officer:What model Toyota is this?
Me: A Sienna
In my head: You pull cars over all the time. It's a Toyota. It's a minivan. What the hell do you think it is?
Officer:You have two kids in the back.
Me: Yes I do.
In my head: Leave my kids out of it. And yes, they're in their 5-point harnesses and they think you're cooler than God. I don't.
Officer: I'm not going to give you a ticket this time, but I'm here a lot and if I see you do that again I *will* ticket you.
Me: I appreciate it. You won't see me do that again.
In my head: Do you think you'll ever even see me go down this street again? You as*hole. It's *so* obvious you just camp out here waiting for people to make this mistake during rush hour, so you can pull them over in the middle of the right turn lane and stop up traffic to piss everyone off!

By the way, there wasn't anything even *resembling* a stutter as my severely dysfluent son announced my transgressions to his daddy. Maybe it's really getting better! Smunch did tell me the next time he sees that officer, he's going to arrest him and put him in jail and never let him out. My little hero.