Super Water Warrior

Who needs a toddler when you have a Spouse who will provide mess, crankiness, cute moments, and hours of entertainment, AND has the added benefit of being able to get in the car and pick up the dry cleaning if you’re too tired? Today the Spouse and I were in the grocery store shopping for necessities. While I looked for alfalfa sprouts and over-priced organic yogurt (good health is reserved for the rich…the rest of the masses have to eat sugary Yoplait) he came bounding across the linoleum carrying none other than the nefarious SuperSoaker 30 of childhood ambushes and summer camp games.

We need this, he said, it would be very useful for our home…our 690 square foot home. I’m still a newlywed so I acquiesced, knowing in the back of my mind that after a year or two I would look back and wonder what I was thinking.

The Spouse proudly carried his prize around the grocery store and into the car, and when we arrived home he tore into the brightly colored packaging, impatiently trying to unwind all the twisty ties. Once liberated from its bindings, he hastily filled the squirt gun with water, pumped, primed, and then whisked outside where he proceeded to squirt the entire exterior of our condo balcony. Every spider living on my potted geraniums was dispatched of with ruthless precision. Ladybugs and beetles could not withstand the wrath of the squirt gun. Every plant was watered with cold acuracy.

Victorious, he returned; socks dripping, hair flying, baby-blue eyes flashing. He stalked into the bathroom and subsequently soaked the shower stall. He was helping me clean, he told me. It’s better than having a hose because you can take it inside.

Right now he is hunched over his laptop, writing code, with his glasses reflecting the sunlight so I can’t see his expression. I think he might know I am writing about him. He’s probably checking my blog from his location at the dining room table, and thinking he is pretty smart for preempting me. Little does he know…

There is a gray man who works in my office. A small, self-contained man, with neatly trimmed hair, shaved chin, and pressed clothes. He looks like he pays his taxes on time, does yard work on the weekends, drives a well-tuned, reliable Japanese car – probably an Accord. Even though his name is written in a Plexiglas plaque next to his office I never remember to read it. When I pass his open door, it is all I can do to keep from stopping to gape at the bare walls, the slate-colored computer screen, the books neatly arranged on their dust-free shelf, and him, sitting like a little puff of fog behind his stony desk. Somehow it has been arranged that the lighting in his office is half as bright as the light in the other offices, and is distinctly…gray.

No matter what color of shirt he is wearing, his complexion resembles young cement. As he walks through the halls the color around him seems to drain away, and his cold gray eyes never show any light when he greets people, greyly, without smiling.

I spend a shameful amount of time thinking about this gray man. I wonder if he always looked like this or if it is because he has been working here at ACME CORPORATION for too long. I wonder if he has a gray little wife and two shadowy children. I wonder if he can see in color or if, in his gray world, everything looks as bleak as he does. I wonder, not without terror, if I will be as gray as him someday.

I noticed a curious thing as I was driving around on Phinney Ave in Seattle, the day before Easter. I had every intention of re-visiting my new favorite boutique, The Frock Shop (the only boutique I have ever heard of that is affordable, check it out Seattleites: 6500 Phinney Ave. N. - http://www.shopfrockshop.com/ ) and after spending about 20 minutes trapped in University District traffic I was intensely frustrated when I became embroiled in an entirely different kind of traffic on Phinney, near the zoo.

The cause of this congestion? Mothers. Mothers everywhere.

Hair in pony-tails, pushing strollers, dragging toddlers and diaper bags and sometimes evening fathers, they migrated to the zoo in a slow, nose-wiping, scolding caravan. They clogged the crosswalks, snapped at impatient drivers, and herded their broods across uneven Seattle streets like geese with goslings under their wings.

Apparently the zoo hosts an annual “Bunny Bounce” every year on the Saturday before Easter. I later looked up their website and read that the Bunny Bounce offers exciting times, with “amazing egg hunts for children ages 1 to 8, crafts, bunny encounters, an egg ‘n’ spoon walk, photos by Team Photogenics and eggs-citing zoo programs throughout the day”.

Slowly I inched my vehicle through the crowd, looking out for large headed children that might try to dive under my tires. As I rounded the side of the zoo I saw something else. At the West entrance was a loosely assembled crowd of sign-holding protestors. If I wasn’t so busy trying to keep from squashing children with my car I would have paid closer attention to their signs, but they said something to the effect of “save the bunnies” or “don’t buy bunnies” or “bunnies can’t bounce when they live in your garage” or something.

An hour later I emerged from, another fabulous boutique called Lil Paisley with a green and gold vintage necklace clasped in my sweaty palms (also affordable and terrific – I swear this shop is smaller than my office cubicle: http://stores.lilpaisley.com/ ) and dodged giant raindrops as I jumped into my car. The unseasonably warm rain disturbed me. Although rain in April…or July, or September, was completely normal for Seattle, 70 degree weather and rain was eerie. I meditated on this as I drove home again, once again past the West entrance to the zoo.

The rain increased. It must have been disturbing to the protestors, previously seen picketing outside the zoo as well, for they were nowhere to be seen – perhaps they had taken shelter in a corporate coffeehouse nearby, or the RedMill burger joint up the street? The mothers, however, plowed on, determined that their children should have “bunny encounters”. This is oddly funny to me. As a homeschooled kid, I certainly know how stubborn a mother can be. Come to think of it, my mother would probably be just as tenacious – “You’re going to have your bunny encounter, and you’re going to like it! I didn’t drive all the way out here to let you wimp out from a few little drops of rain!”

Top five annoyances for the week of April 2, 2007 (in order)
1. The fact that H&M doesn't have an online store so I can blow my paycheck on their cheap, trender clothes
2. The crackly paper toilet seat protectors that fall into the bowl before I have a chance to sit on them
3. Friends who move far away so I can't spend time with them any more
4. The fact that for the last several years I thought that the chorus for "Float On" by Modest Mouse went like this: "We'll all float on a cake..."
5. Picking up after myself at home