* Today is Joshua’s Birthday. He doesn’t make a big deal out of it, he doesn’t want gifts and cringes when I wish him Happy Birthday. Today we are having pork stir fry and Jell-o poke cake. The cakes are currently stuck in the pan. I am afraid of ruining the cake, so I am waiting for J to come home and help me out. Once they are out of the pan, I will ice them with whipped cream, yummmmmmm.
*Benedict is scooting all over the place. Yesterday he chased a toy car around for 20 minutes and moved from one end of the living room to the other. He gets up on all fours now and tries very hard to crawl.
*Margaret loves her little Benedict. The other day she got to stay up a bit late and we let her hold him and give him his bottle. She sang to him, patted his head and gave him loving. She told us that she wanted to grow up and have a baby of her own.
*Margaret threw a fit today because we could not go to space in a rocket.
*Karol is reading everything in sight right now and is doing a pretty good job of it! He is also learning about odd and even numbers as well as ordinal numbers!
*Caecilia is such a cute little girl. She likes to “suggle” now and brings her own pillow and blanket to do so. She also suggles with her stuffed animals at nap time and bed time. When she wakes up she comes to us and says “Moning”.
*Joshua installed a Boggle type game on our phones and we are able to play against each other, so yesterday and the day before, we were sitting in the same living room, playing against each other. I won most of the time. If I didn’t win, it was because I was distracted by a small child in the middle of a game.
*Last night I ran to the store to pick up a few things for today’s dessert and headed home. On my way home, I saw the temp gauge on “H”. Yikes. I pulled over and tried calling Joshua. He was taking care of Benedict and did not answer the phone. So I sat at the gas station for a bit, waiting for things to cool down, and played Boggle.
*While waiting in the van, with my doors locked and sitting in a well lit area, I was approached by a young man. I cracked the window and he asked me if we could give them a jump, their battery was dead. I said no, and explained why. The young man thanked me, but his friend, who did not hear the conversation gave me an attitude and said “What, you can’t help me, I got the cables”. Uh, no, and certainly not now.
*That reminds me, on our way to Mass two Sundays ago, we passed a woman who was on the side of the road. She looked like she was wearing a police jacket and held her hand up, indicating for us to stop. Now, since we have moved to GA, we have encountered three checkpoints, where the officers are just checking for drivers licenses. Since this woman seemed to be dressed like a police officer, I pulled over. J got out and she asked him if he could push her down the road, 1/4 mile to the nearest gas station. Joshua said he couldn’t as we were on our way to church. I felt bad, but she had a cell phone and the road was pretty busy, so someone else would probably stop and help her. And the road was pretty busy, I would hate to have my husband pushing her car down the road and get hurt….and he is just one guy. So, he got back in the van and we went on our way to Mass. Would you have helped? Part of me feels like we should have, but part of me says we did what we could…and wouldn’t have even stopped if she hadn’t waved us down like a made woman, wearing a police jacket.
*Back to the van, we think it has been leaking radiator fluid for a while and worse case scenario is that we have to replace the radiator. While it isn’t something I want to spend money on, I am willing to do so and thankful that it is something that is not too terribly expensive.
So, how is your midweek going?
Hmmm — I think Matthew would have pushed her car down the road, but he is quick to disregard personal safety. It’s hard to know exactly what we should do in the moment, particularly when we’re caught off-guard. I think I would at least have offered to drive the woman to a safe place to wait. From there she could call a tow. It’s rather unfair of her to ask someone to risk their personal safety pushing her car down a busy road. The other consideration is having a stranger in your car when you’re with your children. Usually, it’s safer with women and you can gauge on a case-by-case basis, but I would never do that alone with the children and never by myself.
We also don’t have much room in the van, with the kids in it, anyway. I think that J did offer to take her back to get a gas can, but she really wanted her car pushed to the station.
Also, she was pulled off pretty far off the road, so she was certainly in a safe area, with plenty of houses near by.
After having worked in a Maximum Security Prison for 8 years with thugs who explained all their ways of getting innocent people to put their guard down, I can tell you that Bill would NOT have stopped. He would have called the highway patrol to let them know there was a motorist in need of help. Good call on the “jump” too. I think intuition helps us make these decisions and any police officer will tell you that if you have the slightest doubt – listen to it.
Happy Birthday Joshua!