Deployment Journal - Day #15

Watched the neighbor kids run out to hug their uniformed daddy, coming home from work today.  Felt mixed about that - happy for them, sad for us, scolding myself for picturing life like a melodramatic movie, remembering how I used to narrate my early childhood days aloud to myself, in the sandbox...

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Also, I added gas stabilizer to the car we won't be driving much for a while.  I thought it'd take five minutes, maximum, so I set Baby in her carseat, but didn't buckle her into it.  Clumsily, awkwardly, I poured and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed, trying to eek the foul substance into my gas tank - something was wrong with the dispenser.  

Nearly thirty minutes later, I'm sweaty, stressed, and hysterically worried that my child is going to crawl out of her carseat and plunge onto the car floor - I'm visualizing her flipping, and cringing, calling to her "Don't move, sweetie!" but my hands are covered in fuming toxins and I keep thinking irrational thoughts like, "Just one more minute!  I can finish!"  So I don't actually go retrieve her.

By the grace of Heaven, I did finally finish - after thinking that mantra for the seventieth time - and rushed inside to seize a roll of paper towels.  I sprinted back to the car, finding my sweet daughter still primly sitting, waiting for me.  Such relief.  I started the car, so it could "run for five minutes" like the stupid bottle told me to, and we went inside and cleaned up.  Folded some laundry, made dinner, took out the trash, washed Baby's hair, watered the garden, IMed a friend.  Then Husband called.  YAY!!!

... Midway thru our conversation, I started ranting about the defective dispenser and suddenly froze.

"Can you hang on a sec?!"

I rushed out to the garage.  The car was still purring.  

My gosh.  It had been almost two hours.

I'm such an idiot!  What else am I forgetting?  How do I even tell him?  He'll worry even more! I wished I could throw something.  But instead, I slid the keys out of the ignition, rolled my eyes, and headed back inside.

Well... at least the car ran for... long enough.