Stuck at Home

I'm stuck at home. When I was a teenager without a driver's license, I thought that a car and a license were my ticket to freedom. And yet, now I have both, but I'm here. Stuck.

Yeah, I know. It's all in how you look at it, but I tend to be a glass-half-empty kind of girl, so these kids in my house sometimes seem like handcuffs and ankle chains to me. Our 1992 Buick Park Avenue died recently and so I am stranded on this desert island. I wish it were a dessert island, because then I'd be gorging on chocolate mousse and cheesecake drizzled with caramel sauce and carrot cake with thick cream cheese frosting. But I digress.

Even if I had a car--no, a van, I am trapped here by Babygirl's nap-time. It's not exactly that I'm inflexible. It's just that I will not, cannot, choose not to alter her naptime in any way. Okay. I'm inflexible. Some things are sacred, though. Cows in the streets of India and my baby's naptime. Mess with either and you risk coming back in your next life as a gnat. Or a politician. Or me.

But if I had a car, I would have to figure out a place to take these children that:
1) They would all enjoy;
2) Would not cost me a fortune; and
3) Isn't too far away.

That rules out hiking, going to the ocean, Chuck E. Cheese, malls, restaurants, museums, zoos, water parks, stores, and pretty much all public places and areas where almost-2 year olds are apt to throw fits or get kidnapped or run into traffic or get scared. For instance, how fun would it be to go to Pike's Place Market? All the sights, sounds, smells?

It would cost twenty dollars just to park. Then my kids would want to eat and they'd probably get kidnapped or they'd need to go to the bathroom and then Babygirl would have a fit and I'd have to carry her kicking and screaming past the tourists and the fish-throwers and drive back home in heavy traffic while the baby shrieks in the back seat and the kids complain that their feet hurt and they're thirsty and can we please stop by McDonalds?

My kids seem happy, even though they are just here, stuck at home. With me. The twins are watching an old movie (Lion King) from their preschool days and YoungestBoy's out in the backyard wearing a red bandana as a cape and Babygirl is napping. I've had three Diet Cokes and half a bag of baby carrots and have avoided carrying the laundry downstairs for as long as is reasonable. Maybe we'll go to the pool tonight.

Someday I won't have a two year old and I won't be Stuck at Home and we'll go somewhere and do something. But not today.

Now, if I could only figure out a way to get stranded on a Dessert Island, I'd really have something to anticipate.