Kitchen Disasters

Hannah came to my house (I know this because we danced (and drove) to music the entire 15 minute trip while Hannah was in the back seat of the "vertical hotrod.") When we arrived at my place, she quickly became annoyed upon discovery that her outdoor "kitchen" had been replaced with a garden space instead of the pond that had been there previously; her main source of "soup."

Hannah had to use her imagination for her "kitchen" (don't we all?) Her kitchen was made up of a couple of weird garden pots, some random utensils out of my kitchen, the requisite hand towel she'd hang off a branch of a fuchsia and plenty of fantasy. (She may as well start now!) Then she'd mix pond water soup (my fave!) using an oversized wooden spoon that one of my kids made in high school wood-shop inside an aged, rusty cast-iron dutch oven that was sitting outside in all kinds of weather long before I was born. She'd insist I sit while she served the soup in a wooden bowl, saying "pretend I'm the mommy, okay?" asking me repeatedly "do you like your soup, baby?"

It was just recently that I made the decision to give the dutch oven away using freecycle. I was torn. I figured it was worth something but who would know if it was just sitting in my yard? Donating the dutch oven upset Hannah though lucky for me she did not remember exactly what items had gone missing, she only knew things had a disappeared. I single-handedly destroyed her outdoor kitchen. The nerve! I kinda thought she'd not notice the disappearance - similar to the  way I'd not notice my kitchen were gone if someone took everything. I told Hannah I'd work on getting her another kitchen (maybe requesting something on freecycle again.) She said, "Can you get me a pink one?" *eyeball roll*

Then we argued about the number 3 and if the number 3 was the 3 middle fingers on a person's hand or if it could be any 3 fingers. We walked downstairs to see the cleaned, freshly painted apartment. We looked through the redwood trees at the ocean. We yelled at a mama deer by calling out her name "deerie." (too bad she doesn't understand the English language!) We poked sticks inside of gopher holes to see if we could get to the end of the tunnel (while I secretly hoped we'd poke a gopher in the nose but thought as long as I kept my thoughts secret, I'd not create still more bad karma). Then we saw the mailbox with the leprechaun party inside where the leprechauns can only come out by using magic or wait for the mailman. Then we drove to see the cross in the tree. Then we argued about the other cross in the tree, the cross in the tree of which I was unaware, and the cross in the tree with which Hannah got really peeved that I was unaware.


After all the number 3 arguing, deer-screaming and gopher-hole poking, we drove back to Grandma's house. We put the fuzzy blanket around Hannah while she sat in her car seat in the back of the hotrod, where Hannah fell asleep wrapped up in fuzzy and dreaming of perfect pink kitchens just as we pulled up the road.