Rozey Thorn Trees

Me: (patting Laura's belly) How's baby doing? Laura: Good. Quiet, not yelling, not crying, not waking me up:  "Mommy? Tap, tap, tap. Are you awake?"...  She's the best kid we have, right now. Me: Haha! My loud laughter cues our two girls to come into our room, climb onto the bed to get this snow day kickstarted, ready or not...

We're going to have a Peanuts character! Just kidding. It's a girl! I'm surrounded by women!... And very very happy : )

Trying to find a movie on Netflix: Me: You don't watch horror movies, do you? Laura: No. Life is a horror movie. We're surrounded by horror every day. Just turn on the news to see horror. It's all over the place. If you don't see horror, you're not paying attention. Me: Okay. Just checking.

Last night, in the TC Library parking lot, I dropped my wallet. No problem. I reached down and picked it up, then drove straight home, just four minutes away. Uneventful, right? Except this morning, I couldn't find it anywhere. Not in my pockets, not in the house, not in the car... After church, I cleared out the car again to find it. Nothing. When I walked back into the house, the phone rang. "Hello?" The caller asked if I had lost a wallet. "Yes! I was just looking for that!..."  On the way out the door, I asked Laura if she had any spare cash for reward money, and I jumped in my car to meet this guy, 11 minutes away. Turns out that he's a young man working on a road repair crew filling cracks at a bank parking lot. I got my wallet back and gratefully handed him a twenty. "Where did you find my wallet?" He and his tar-stained buddies found it about a mile away in the middle of Hwy 31. "What? Really! In the middle of the highway!..." On

Me: Ugh! Technology is both awesome and annoying! Laura: Just like children. (cue the sardonic chuckles of two very tired parents...)

We pull into a McDonald's drive thru for a late night snack on our drive back home from a holiday trip. I order Egg McMuffins with ham for everyone because they're cheaper and have fewer calories than cheeseburgers, and because Laura has never tried one before. In front of us is a car with a personalized license plate that says "PRINCESS" using a creative combination of letters and numbers. I laugh aloud and crack a lame joke about the chances that Royalty is placing an order on the royal credit card. When I pull up to the window to pay, the cashier says, "Don't worry about it. The lady in front of you paid for your order."  "What!"  "The lady in the car in front of you just paid for your order!"  "Wow, that's great!" I say, but m y face flushes red as I recall my judgmental comment. I glance over at my wife and say,  "If she only knew what I just said about her!"  I look up and catch the benevolent pr