The children know that I have to be cajoled to go anywhere with them in "Fretful", for various reasons. En took it upon himself to clean my fridge. Now I was at his beck and call. Can we...? Can We...? CAN WE...? Go to...PETCO? That sounded like a good request. Petco is only about 10 minutes up the road (as the crow flies). I would have to, of course, take my nap first and then...(maybe). En carried his clay tools. He was remaking the face on one of the action figures and took all of his clay tools to do this, while we were in the car. This is a very odd thing, for me to agree to have these sharp instruments in the car with us and I nearly put my foot down, but it will be okay; if you put them in something so they are not flying around the car. He got a ziplock bag to put them in( I called that his satchel). Several arguments ensued, because the other boys couldn't get En's attention. So after the carefully carved face was completed. Ezra, determined to get En's attention. Pulled all of the clay off of the face of the character. What a pain? I heard no grunt. I heard no yelling, just, matter-of-factly telling me, what he did. (I felt like I was in the book Little Women, where Amy threw Jo's manuscript in the fire). (What a meany is my Ezra!, younger siblings know just what to do to crush the heart of their elder, they seem to study this.) He gave Ezra his attention after that, I must say.
Well, we went to the PETCO and there were sharks there, which was part of the discussion as to why we had to go there. Now don't you go reaching in and crushing the sharks, Ezra, do you hear me? Ethan is a big boy, but the two of them never want to go in the same direction. I haven't the patience to chase them both simultaneously and you know how I feel in stores. We spent about half an hour to an hour oogling at the animals and wishing for one of each kind. Do you think Emma would eat a parakeet, Mom? No, Emma is very gentle with little animals, honey. We will see, when we get a moment we will give her the opportunity. When we walked out of Petco, it was later than we thought, maybe we spent more than an hour in there. I was too busy keeping my eye on Ezra.
We picked up Elyse and then went to Ben and the car was struggling, I knew, but hanging in there. We have a makeshift fan contraption that was melting in the heat of the day. After these months of putting it together, layers and layers of goo and electrical tape had congealed together and it wasn't holding on. We have to plug it in, everytime we turn on the car, or it will overheat. I kept pushing it in and it kept coming out. I think we can make it to pick up Ben and then home. We travelled, seemingly effortlessly to his job and sat outside waiting for him. I looked at the fan contraption.
When Ben came out, we plugged in the fan and set off. 2 miles from his job and just before the highway the thermometer started to rise, perilously. Uh-oh that means the fan is not working.
We pulled into a parking lot and lo and behold the radiator was spewing and sputtering. "Oh fretful, what will we do with you?" Ezra was soaked with sweat, so I sent the children to the store together to enjoy some air conditioning. Ben and I set out to fix the connection to the fan, once and for all? What will we do for tools. Does anybody have a scissor? Elyse, looked in her "Barney bag". Nope! What will we do? Enoch...can we use your satchel? His clay tools were just the right combination of sharp and dull instruments to recreate the connector. Ben and I took the tools and worked together to recreate the current to the fan and it worked. We bought some more antifreeze and oil and "Fretful" was back on her feet again. It was a whole lot more complicated than that, I must say. We picked up the children from the parking lot and travelled home in a "new Fretful"(so to speak). She had gotten our attention, like Ezra and we had gotten hers. What a kind providence that En decided to carry the satchel!
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