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I. Conversation with the Parking Attendant

"You're going to have to go around, sir."
"I'm a musician."
"Sorry, you're going to have to take a bus from the lot."
"Isn't there musician parking?"
"Are you a performer for this concert?"
"Yes."
"Can I see some kind of identification?"
"They just told us to turn in here and that there would be musician parking."
"Can I see your instrument?"
"It's in the backseat. Beside the palm tree."
"You don't look like a performer."
"Well, I still need to change into my suit."
"There have been a bunch of other people that said they were performers."
"Right. I'm part of a brass quintet."
"There have been, like, ten."
"Yeah, I think there's a string quartet playing too."
"Okay, I'm going to let you through, but you need to be real careful."
"I'll do that."

II. Owen's Chair

It's no secret that Owen is a messy eater. He dribbles food all over the table, his clothes, and his wooden table chair. We probably don't clean his chair as often as we should. We recently broke one of our dining room chairs, and I decided I would check to make sure that the hardware was intact on all the others before I threw away the parts of the broken one. I took the booster seat off of Owen's chair and...immediately decided to throw Owen's chair away. The base was in decent shape, so I screwed that into the top of the "broken" chair (the wrong way at first, so it was sloping down, and then the right way the second time) and put the moldy/hairy/food encrusted chair out with our increasingly large pile of trash.

III. Flora

There was a palm tree in my car because we wanted a larger plant in our dining room in our redoubled efforts to simplify and clean up our downstairs. Our family photos are going into the stairwell, all stackable surfaces are getting decluttered, and we've swapped around pantry and cabinet spaces. But without any of that background, it was a spectacular excuse for being able to tell the other trumpet player at the quintet gig that I couldn't give him a ride back to the parking area because I had a palm tree in my car. (He didn't argue his way through security like I did.)

IV. Dinner-time

Me: <using a pizza cutter to slice up Owen's pizza into manageable bites while rocking Felix's bouncy seat with my foot>
J: You're doing some impressive multi-tasking.
Me: Yes, but if I mixed these up then child services would probably get involved pretty quickly.

V. Face-Time with Grandma

J: Grandma's on the phone! Come and say hello!
Owen: Grandma! We have a new baby, and his name is Felix!
Grandma: Oh...yes!
(Grandma had come up and spent a week with Felix after he was born, and we had just spent the past week with Grandma at her house in Pennsylvania.)
Owen: And we have another brother and his name is...JAMES!
James: Grandma, look! I'm a super-hero! Ka-pwing!
<Turns around, displaying a "cape" of toilet paper dangling out of the back of his pajamas>

VI. Calvin and Hobbes

The first thing James "built" from Calvin and Hobbes was a transmogrifier. I don't think he's brave enough to attempt pronouncing it yet, but he requested the leftover box from our new coffee-maker and had it set up in his room (top-down) when we checked on him. I found another couple of books in the basement recently, and he's been enjoying reading Yukon Ho! to himself and out loud to us. Or, as he pronounces it, Yoklum Ho! Also, he taped two chairs together to make a time machine for him and Owen to ride on.