Ice Cream Truck.

Hot day, walking up to the store.
Little boy up the street, maybe 9 or 10. He's standing by the trash can at the curb wearing that little boy expression that says, "Mom asked me to do something a minute ago, but I can't remember what it is, and...oh, look! There's a bug!"
As I approach, we both hear chimes in the distance. Tinny music, bells, whistles. His expression changes--he is the wanderer in the desert catching sight of an oasis. He looks at me, but he whispers the secret to himself, as though he can barely believe it.
"Ice cream truck," he whispers.
"Ice cream truck," I confirm.
He tears up the steps to his front door. You never know when the tinny music will fade. "ICE CREAM TRUCK!"

Plug

'K, I was thinking of just writing Kevin a thank-you note for how he took care of my car for me this week, but thought--no, I'll write him a li'l testimonial instead.
I took a trip this week. Every time I get ready to go on a trip, my car starts acting funny. This time, I think it's because it knew I was renting a car for the trip and it was jealous. Whatever the reason, it was making an obnoxious squealing noise. No problem, though, right? For a week I was going to be a two-car household of one person. What better time to take a car in to get checked out? Except of course that I was going to be, yes, away on a trip. So I asked Our Glorious Leader (remember? He knows about cars) to help me. He works on cars, but his specialty is the outside, not the inside. So get this: he took it for me to a place--Auto Foreign--that does work on car innards, and then when the work was done, he picked it up and brought it home for me too. Isn't that so cool?
A guy like that deserves to have a plug for his business on this blog, so:

Visit Center City Collision!

The car's fine, by the way. Apparently the car has an early-warning system to let you know when the brakes are going out--they start squealing. "If you hadn't taken it in," the guy at Auto Foreign told me, "it would have started grinding."

St. Puppy-Pants

We had a loss in the family this past week. Go to Bean's Blog (the June 10th entry) to read all about it.

Overheard

As I walked to the Speckled Bird last night, two little boys were walking in front of me.
Boy #1: Man, I can't wait until I get my next corn snake.
Boy #2: (no reaction; has heard it all before)
Boy #1: I think I'm gonna name him Sly.