At The Car Wash

Today was one of those days where so many things happened I'm having a hard time narrowing down what to blog about.  I suppose I could do the lazy move and just stretch today into several different entries, but I'm sure tomorrow will bring another interesting and as-of-year untackled subject altogether.  So maybe I'll touch on some of today's highlights and expand on a few of them in the weeks to come if by some miracle my children behave like actual human beings over the next couple of days, leaving me with no blog material.  Not likely, but sometimes hope is all I have to keep me going until bedtime.  That and beer.

So this morning I decided to perform the semi-annual ritual of cleaning my car.  It seemed like a relatively non-ambitiuos task....you know, after the 45 minutes of preparation required to have my children accompany me outside--bathing suits, sunscreen, drinks, toys, gas-masks, galoshes, freeze-dried apricots, and a clown that can juggle knives set on fire--I set about washing away the three months' worth of bugs, pollen, road-dirt, milk-shake residue, gum, beach sand and salt water.  And that's just the outside of my car.

At the behest of my husband (and by behest I mean a few hints, several requests, two flat-out demands and one out-right threat), part of today's chore was for me to clean our children's car seats.  I can already hear the collective 'Ewwwwww' coming from both my readers.

Car seats are gross.  No wait, car seats are vile.  Repulsive.  Disgusting.  Possibly harboring the bacteria for (and possibly the cure to) several diseases that had been eradicated before the invention of the modern-day booster seat.  And yesterday, we picnicked on the beach and stopped at Dairy Queen afterwards, and against our better judgment, got our children their own ice cream.  Yeah, not a good move.  Rollie had a blizzard, Elsa a kid's size cone.  It's hard to say who made the bigger mess.  I think Elsa wins for messiest face, but halfway home Jeff and I hear the following commentary coming from Rollie's side of the car:


Which one is going to win?  The red one is going super fast.  The green one, kind of slow.  Why is the green one not going fast, Dadda?  I think the green one is tired.  The red one is getting away!  Hurry, green one, you have to catch him!  


I was smiling and looking through the windshield, wondering which red and green cars Rollie saw racing.  Until I noticed that there neither red nor green cars anywhere else on the road.  That's when Jeff and I both turned around to discover that the race Rollie was referring to was not happening outside his window.  Oh no.

Running down the armrest of Rollie's booster seat were two big, brightly colored trails of ice cream--A red M&M and a green M&M were racing down a river of ice cream to see which would be the first to trickle down the length of the armrest and into my son's naked lap.

We have a winner!  


Rollie, that is disgusting.  Jeff.  Poor Jeff.  He really has no clue.  On the Disgusting Things Rollie Has Done In The Car scale, the M&M race is barely a four.  It's messy and sticky and a total waste of ice cream, but really, a couple swipes with a baby wipe and his seat will be good as new.

Elsa's seat, on the other hand....

Thank God we opted for the brown color scheme when choosing a toddler seat.  Brown is always a safe bet; it's the color of chocolate, cookies, cereal bars, rootbeer flavored lollipops, and other unmentionable substances.  Elsa's brown carseat didn't look too bad from far away.  You could actually smell the seat before you really noticed anything dirty about it (yes, I did say smell).

Upon closer inspection, however, I discovered all sorts of interesting blemishes, vittles stuffed into crevices, and colorful globs of gummy substances on her seat, under the seat cover, inside of the buckle, and on the seat bench beneath.  I'm surprised an army of cockroaches didn't scatter when I lifted the seat from it's spot in the middle of the second row.  Although they had possibly eaten their fill for the day and crawled somewhere dark to sleep off their food-induced coma.

I turned her seat upside down and shook....so much crap fell from its depths that the ground beneath looked like a pinata had exploded.  I wiped down the cover, scrubbed the belts, even used a tiny screwdriver to pick out what looked like congealed yogurt from the plastic chest clasps.  And in a final attempt to rid whatever smell had permeated the seat, I sprayed the seat with Fabreeze.  So now her seat smells like fresh laundry instead of old milkshakes and pee.

I felt a sense of accomplishment when I returned the newly cleaned car seats back inside and tethered them to their respective anchors.  I did something productive.  I managed to clean six months' worth of nastiness, all while the two little piglets were outside with me, splashing around in a deflating wading poor, blowing bubbles, riding tricycles, and only one resulting black eye between the two of them.  So we can safely mark this morning in the Victory category.

The rest of the day, however, didn't go quite as smoothly.  But alas, we'll save that for another time.....