This was the bumper sticker my airline pilot husband said we should get, as he drove our new VW electric vehicle into the evening, kids asleep in back. He was fiddling with the headlights lever, trying to sort out what the hell made the auto-mode kick back to manual, and why he kept flashing people.
“DON’T LIKE MY DRIVING? CALL ZE GERMANS,” I said.
“ANGELA MERKEL IS MY COPILOT,” he said.
Then we were both doing that kind of snort-laugh that feels spasmodic, like when the doctor hits your knee to test your reflexes and you accidentally kick her in the face— all of which was as necessary right then as oxygen, or the soft-serve ice cream place he drove right past despite my kindly reminder that Scoops was open for eight more minutes.
Having recently had one car shit the bed (hence the new one), a microburst total our barn (and scrape a few limbs across the hood of the new car), and a well-pump quit, we were in that universe where things elbow their way straight past Horrible into Very, very funny.
My daughter: “Mom, there’s a giant bucket of water by the toilet!”
Me: “Grampy went and filled a wagon of water buckets for us at the neighbors so we can flush.”
[Panting] “Over 200 pounds! Five 5-gallon buckets, but I figure there was a bit of slosh on the way back. The good news is you can pull the wagon around to whichever door is closer to the toilet you want to use!”—Grampy
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There’s a difference between having a Plan and having a plan. The capitalized kind gets me into all kinds of trouble, namely the formation of Expectations, which spit in the eye of pleasure.
The Plan: