Why are we having burritos?

A little bit of context

So there is a burrito stand about eight blocks from the house. They have THE BEST breakfast burritos around! Not only they are so good, but they are also quite large. The only issue is… they are not cheap so, with three teenagers in the house, having breakfast burritos from the burrito stand has become a “special occasion” type of deal.

Marnie (my wife), is pursuing a Psychology degree through LeTourneau University. She keeps a 4.0 GPA by the way, and I am very proud of her for that... anyway, Marnie is convinced I have ADHD. I don’t necessarily agree but what happened last Thursday may suggest she’s right.

It is around 9:45 in the morning. Marnie is out of town visiting my in-laws, Michael (our oldest) is out of town working and I am home with our two youngest, Emily and Jacob. I have served breakfast and Jacob and I are sitting at the table waiting for Emily. After a minute, she walks in the kitchen (still wearing her PJs and not fully awake) and pauses before sitting down. At this point I can see the confusion on her face when she asks “Why are we having burritos?” I’m sure I had the same confused look on my face while trying to find the answer to her question …after going through the sequence of events in my head prior to that moment, I finally answered… hmmm… because… we ran out of trash bags?

We looked at each other kind of confused, while Jacob laughed quietly in amusement (this happens quite often at our house) So… what happened earlier that morning? Let’s go back a couple of hours.

We have four pets and trash pick up on our street is Thursday mornings. One of our pets is a guinea pig named Nutmeg. Guinea pigs can really stink up their cages. So every Thursday morning, I make sure Nutmeg’s cage is clean and the dirty hay is in the trash outside just in time for trash pickup. Early that morning I took all the trash from the house outside and then proceeded to clean Nutmeg’s cage. While cleaning the cage, I realized we were out of trash bags so I rigged some plastic I found in the garage, wrapped the dirty hay from the cage in it, and took it outside. Now, we can’t be out of trash bags at our house so I decided to make a quick trip to the store (which is about a mile away). On my way there, I remembered Emily was having trouble with her car the day before and the shop opens at 7am. I knew she needed her car for the weekend, so I decided to call the shop before I arrived at the store. After talking to the mechanic for a minute, he said “I am not that busy right now so if you want to drop it off right away I can work on it. I can’t guarantee I’ll have time tomorrow as Fridays are usually pretty busy”. So I decided to turn around and drive Emily’s car to the shop first.

I arrive at the house to pickup Emily’s car and I could not open it with the clicker. The key was locked in the car because we could not shift the gear to the parking position the night before. Because of that, the key was stuck in the ignition. What do I do now? We only have one key (we haven’t looked very hard for the spare key). Fortunately, I recently cleaned my home office and I remembered that while cleaning, I saw a very small brown box full of keys and clickers inside a black crate, so I went to my office to look for the small brown box. I checked a couple of crates and “Yes!” I found it and quickly looked inside. The spare key AND the other clicker were actually there! I was so excited I had found the spare key! I ran to the car and opened the door. When I turned the key to start the car… nothing.

The engine wasn’t turning, there were no lights, no clicks, no sounds of any kind… the car was completely dead. OK, now what? So by now it’s starting to rain and I go around the house to get the other car. I park it next to Emily’s car, get the jumper cables, jump in Emily’s car and again, I turn the key and… nothing.

At this point I am starting to feel a little discouraged… I get out of Emily’s car, adjust the cables and try again and this time it started!! That engine just purrs and I love it! I realized a light on the ceiling console was the culprit so I turned it off. I unhook the jumper cables, park the other car and drive Emily’s car to the shop.

By now it’s 9 o’clock and as I walk in the shop I get a call from Jacob. “Where are you?” “I’m at the shop with Emily’s car” “I need to go to my class” Crap!!! I forgot about that! Jacob (our 15 year old and the youngest of our kids) is taking dual credit classes at the local college. He normally goes to class at 11am on Thursdays, but this particular Thursday he needed to be there at 9:30 (he had told me the night before). I said “I’ll come back to the house as soon as I can and I’ll take you. You are going to have to get there a little late” He said “no”, he didn’t want to get there that late (and he was right, he would’ve gotten there pretty late). So I am feeling awful because I am doing all of this running around and rushing for one kid while totally neglecting the other. So once I was done dropping off Emily’s car at the shop, I got a ride home.

When I arrived at the house, I was feeling so guilty I had forgotten Jacob’s class. I knocked on his door. He opened and I said “As a peace offering, do you want a breakfast burrito?” He laughed and repeated “as a peace offering…” He said “I’m not mad” which made me feel better. Nevertheless, he accepted my offering so I went to the burrito stand, got us some delicious breakfast burritos and that’s how we got to the beginning of the story…

When we were done with breakfast, One of the kids (I can’t remember which one) was going to rinse off their plate and says “why is there no water?”… I just close my eyes, exhale in disappointment, and said “I was supposed to go and pay yesterday and I forgot”. So now we have no water and still no trash bags.

The end