Since our family is temporarily reduced to one vehicle car pooling these days, I am forced to remember why I enjoyed the brief time I spent carting my oldest - and just my oldest - to and from school… the radio. No husband. No little one. No splitting the audio between the front and back seats of a sedan. Say what you will about minivans, but there has to be something said about riding a miniature school bus and not being able to hear much of what’s going on behind you. While this is heavenly for DVD playing and radio listening, it’s not so ideal when someone spills Chex Mix all over the back seat. Or gets car sick. Good times.

This morning, while playing family jitney - BFam and I up front, the petrie dishes in the back - I had the pleasure of hearing some smooth jazz [at the behest of my husband; something that NEVER happens] fight with Sirius 116, AKA Kids Stuff. Don’t know what Kids Stuff is? If you’re a parent, take every child’s program you’ve ever been forced to watch with your spawn, gut the television monitor, and leave the sound. There is your Kids Stuff and the end of that smooth, shiny surface you call a wrist. Excuse me while I go slit them.

It didn’t take long before Kids Stuff won the Battle of Noise, and I all but begged BFam to let me at least die with my sanity by turning off my smooth jazz which was now sounding like Chris Botti on Ritalin. With one audible train wreck playing, I tried to make the most of this moment. The moment when you realize, yet again, that this goes on until they move out. And, yes, that could be some time in their forties the way things are going. And, yes, this is called parenthood. And, yes, you aren’t alone. And, yes, you have every intention of cutting out your uterus and burning it because you are never, EVER doing THIS again, or, better yet, throw darts at your husband’s penis because, really, you could give him a catheter at this point and call it a day. And you know what happened? I heard a song I liked. A song from my own childhood.

And I suddenly felt an extreme urge to call my mother and tell her, I’m so sorry. Now I understand.