These Boys

These boys who live in this house, I mean. They keep my attention from actual dawn until I lay down my head at night.

In two weeks, Matt is doing that Tough Mudder race. Have you heard of this? They have them all over; it's basically a twelve-mile obstacle course that combines trail running with various feats of physical endurance. I think there's, like, climbing over walls and shinnying through a corrugated pipe filled with muddy water. Also there are live electrical wires you have to dart around? And maybe fire? It sounds made up but I think it's real.

Anyway, a bunch of guys from his company are doing it as a team. And one guy's wife. We were at the company Christmas party when I first heard this discussed, and a few people were like, "Come on Becky! You should do it! Jen is doing it!" And they started to make those noises like they were going to cajole me into it. And Matt was like, "Don't even. She's impervious to pressure, y'all." I mean, there was no way. I don't like to run and I don't like elective dirtiness and I feel zero compulsion to be one of the boys.

So there's no way I would have signed up for that, but I am an enthusiastic supporter of the effort as it is undertaken by others. They have been training for it quite diligently. Just now as I was climbing into bed, Matt was down on the floor doing his last set of push ups. Which inspired me to drop and do the ten push ups I can do. Or, I mean, I might be able to do more than ten, who knows. It's like the question of how high can a kangaroo jump? Nobody knows, because nobody has ever known how to really motivate a kangaroo.

So he has been training, but I think he is now in the phase of training where you doubt your training and whether it has prepared you. I don't know, he's tough, and as I said to him, you can do anything for three hours. Hee! I think that whatever happens, it will be a good story for him to tell. Hank is quite interested in this whole thing, and we'll be there to watch and cheer.

Speaking of Hank, I'll leave you with one other moment from my day. He and I went into Target to buy dog food. As we wheeled the cart down the aisle, he said, "Mom, what kind of car do we have?" I answered that we have a Kia minivan. He asked why we got that kind of car, and I answered, distractedly, that we had wanted a minivan and that was a nice one.

"Okay," he said. "Well, I would have appreciated a Cadillac."

Indeed.

"Oh, for sure, me too," I said. I winked at the woman down the aisle who had whipped her head around to see who this little bon viveur was.

Taking this child anywhere usually involves some amount of winking at strangers. Sometimes shrugging.

Then we went to Mother-Son bowling with his school. I played Laser Tag, y'all. I may have gotten really into it.

xoxo