Episodes

I.
I brought James his bowl of cereal. Cinnamon Cereal. It's the Aldi version of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and he thinks it's spectacular. J bought a box of it for me over the summer on a vacation week, and I turned my nose up at it. "Why would I eat that? That's kid's cereal!" (This was dishonest of me. I love sugary cereals. I always eat the worst-for-you cereal I can find when we're visiting her parents.) I didn't get into it then, so James got the box, and James loved it. He loves it so much that he insists on sipping out all the milk with a straw once he's finished the actual cereal part. And he hardly ever finishes all of the actual cereal part with anything else.

Buying Cinnamon Cereal is a once a month treat for him. When he knows it's in the house I usually hear him making noise in his bedroom earlier than usual. At about 7:30 or so I'll go up to his room and open the door. This morning he was sitting on the edge looking at the door, and as soon as he saw my face he said "Hi Daddy, we have some Cinnamon Cereal?" He asks for it when he gets up from his afternoon nap too, and then when we tell him he can't have cereal at 4 in the afternoon, would he care for cucumbers and hummus, he starts to sob that he needs it and he wants it to be morning so he can have cereal again. His deep disappointment is worsened by the fact that he's in the midst of a horrible sugar crash at that point after a morning of being out-of-control wired.

So this morning, I poked my head in his door and he said "Hi Daddy! We have some Cinnamon Cereal?"

I brought him downstairs, and went into the kitchen as he scrambled into his booster seat.

"I wanna big bowl."
"I'll pour you a big bowl."
"Make sure my bowl is big."
"Okay, it's a big bowl of cereal."
"I want lots."
"Yup."

I'd eaten already, but I needed to leave in 20 minutes, so I repacked my gig bag while I sat at the table with him and chatted.

"Daddy?"
"Yes?"
"You will not go anywhere today."
"What's that?"
"You will not go anywhere today."
"Hmm...well, I do need to go to rehearsal today."
"Why you need to go to rehearsal?"
"Why it's your job?"
"Because hat's what I do to get money."
"Why you need to get money?"
"We use money to buy Cinnamon Cereal. So I'm going to go to rehearsal today to get some more money to buy more Cinnamon Cereal. That's how we pay for it."
"You be back by suppertime?"
"Um, I don't think I'll be back by suppertime today."
"When you be back?"
"I'll be back a little after bedtime. Should I come say good night to you?"
"Yup."

J padded down the stairs holding Owen a few minutes later.
"Good morning, James! How's your Cinnamon Cereal?"
"Mommy, I'm havin' lots in my big bowl. Daddy is gonna go to rehearsal to buy me more."


II.
My carpool sat around a table at Wegmans with empty lunchplates stacked in the middle of the table and half-full cups of tea (really hot toddies, thanks to a surreptitious bottle in a handbag) steaming in front of us.

"How's the outlet table?"
I craned my neck to check.
"Still taken."
There's only one table with access to a power outlet in the Dewitt Wegmans. It's almost always taken when we arrive, usually by an old person who isn't even plugging anything in. We wait until they leave, and then we descent to power our devices as we kill the four or five hours until concert time.

"Okay guys, I need an idea for a date with J on Sunday night."
"Dinner and a movie."
"It needs to be something we can do in the house, because we won't have childcare. And it needs to be cheap. On the free side of cheap, actually."
"Hmm...so no dinner out?"
"Nope."
"You should...play a game. Bananagrams is fun."
"We don't have Bananagrams, but that could work."
"You should make dessert together."
"You can spend a little bit of money, right?"
"Yeah, a little."
"Okay, if you to a Joann's Fabric--"
"I'm curious to see where this is going to go."
"Yeah, what does a bass trombone player do at Joann's Fabric?"
"Shut up. So, if you go to Joann's Fabric, and you buy some spare fabric you could make a blanket together."
"That could be really nice, actually."
"Just to confirm, this is something you've done before?"
"Shut up."
"Can you make dinner together?"
"I'd like to give her a break from making dinner together."
"Can you keep her out of the kitchen and make dinner for her?"
"Possibly...but I'd kind of like to hang out with her, and I have trouble in the kitchen sometimes. Like with pizza, I've had no luck at all."
"Maybe you should have her make dinner while you practice Clarke Studies. That sounds like a great date all around."
"That's how it usually seems to go."

"Hey, I think they're getting up from the corner table!"
"Nope, just stretching. False alarm."

III.
"Thank you all very much for your patience. The committee would like to thank you all for your playing this afternoon, they said they heard some really, really fine playing and that the level was phenomenal across the board. They are going to hold one more round, a final round, and they'd like to hear four out of the ten of you. Okay, 4 out of 10 chance, those are good odds. So, for the last round, the committee would like to hear numbers 102, say 109, number 104, say 109, number 108, please let the last number be 109, and number 110. $*&# it. The rest of you, good job, sorry it didn't work out this time, thanks for coming down.

"Hey congrats, play well in the final round."
"Thanks, good to see you again."
"Congrats, good luck!"
"Safe travels back."
"See you at the next one."

"Hi, my name is Roy Smith, I have a reservation to fly from Charlotte to Rochester tomorrow morning? Yes, that's the one. Yes. Yes, I was wondering if there was any chance that I could get out on an earlier flight this evening. At 7:00? Yeah, that'd be great. Now, what what sort of fees would there be to get on the earlier flight? Oh, really? Wait, I'd get $10 back? That's fantastic? There's no fee, and I can go home tonight?"

And that is the story of how Southwest, even though they advertise too much during football games, is a wonderful organization. The orange juice was good too.