Sunday afternoon Leta refused to take a second nap so we were forced to try and keep her awake until an acceptable bedtime. Enter problem, stage left: TIME CHANGE. She was miserable by five o’clock, and when Jon would suggest we just put her to bed I’d morph into my X-Men character, BEAR MOM WITH FANGS, and clarify, “It may say five o’clock on your watch, but in her reality it’s only four o’clock. Too early.” And then I’d claw his eyes out.
To try and pass time we met some friends at the dog park. They have a daughter who is only a couple days older than Leta and they were dealing with the same dilemma. We discussed our respective strategies to prevent any evil cat naps from happening before bedtime often mentioning that it may say one thing on our clock but our kids’ clocks read something entirely different. Here’s where I mention that our friends are Mormon and she called me up the other day to confess that she had found my website. “I feel like a practicing Jew who is sneaking a peek at Hitler’s blog,” she whispered into the phone. I welcomed her to the Dark Side and told her that because of this she wouldn’t be allowed to take the sacrament next Sunday.
When we returned home from the dog park Leta commenced the troll crawl, the crawl with the thumb sucking and the head on the floor. Jon, exasperated, walked up to me and said rather sternly, “Can I make a request? Can you stop counting backwards? It’s really annoying.”
I was stunned and sat in silence for several seconds. All I could think was, “Did I count backwards in public? In front of our friends? Did that embarrass him?”
“Okay,” I agreed, but I wanted him to explain why it was so embarrassing. “Why don’t you want me to count backwards in front of our friends?”
“What? Heather, I want you to stop saying that it’s five o’clock when it’s really six o’clock. That’s all. The time has changed and we need to accept it.”
“You mean you’re not mad that I counted backwards in front of our friends?”
He stood there shaking his head. “How deranged to you think I am?”
Well, he married me, didn’t he?