cat named pig

The story of this day is a tale of trust and naiveté, of trust betrayed and of mass destruction; and a tale, ultimately, of redemption. It is also a tale involving many, many tubes of brightly colored paint, and, later on, a car tire so flat and destroyed that the whole bottom half of it appeared to come completely off the rim.

Anyway, the story: Matt was volunteering at a tree lot this morning, and my friend Sara and Siena’s best friend Avery came over for a playdate. The girls wanted to watch a movie, so we set them up in front of the TV (which is upstairs in our bedroom, at least until our basement is finished). Sara and I wanted to talk to each other for five consecutive minutes, so we went back downstairs. As we sat chatting, realizing we were approaching naptime and things were likely to deteriorate soon, we even remarked to each other how well they were getting along, and how we didn’t want to disturb them when things were going so well.

Oh, the innocence of that time, those peaceful moments before they came to the top of the stairs and called to us, giggling hysterically.

Nothing could have prepared us for what we saw when we went to the stairs and looked up. They were purple, blue, and neon pink from head to toe. I noticed, through the haze of my shock, that Siena appeared to be naked and Avery was wearing nothing but her hoodie sweatshirt — she proudly turned to point out to us that her butt was fully covered in bright blue paint. 

But it gets better. Or worse, really.

We rushed upstairs to discover that, in addition to painstakingly covering each other in paint, they had coated a good 30 square feet of the wood floor, as well as part of the wall, window, and window blinds, and numerous items of laundry lying in a nearby hamper. While we were downstairs congratulating each other on raising children who could play together so nicely, they were systematically destroying everything in sight. 

The scene that greeted Matt when he arrived home? The two girls in a bathtub of purple water, a large load of laundry in the washer, and Sara and me frantically cleaning while discussing various punishment options.  

…. 

Later: After tears, apologies, and naptime, Siena and I headed my mom’s to pick up some Christmas decorations we had moved to her house when we cleared out our basement. We stayed for a while, because it was clean there and she made nachos for us, then we headed home. We made it less than a block before I pulled the car over — something was wrong with the front driver’s side tire. So wrong, in fact, that when I got out to look at it, I saw the rim of the tire touching the ground, while the black part of the tire was twisted behind it.

This is so far out of the realm of what I know how to handle that I basically flipped out. Hysterical calls to Matt and my mom resulted in a plan: she drove us home, then Matt headed out to change the tire and get the car off the street. Further phases of this plan (like getting the car out of my mom’s driveway and one day using it again) remain to be worked out.

As my mom drove us home, Siena repeated several times, “We’re so mad and frustrated. We wanted to just drive home in our silver car. But it got such a bad tire, the tire was totally off and totally broken; it was so bad. So we’re super frustrated and angry and sad. But it will be OK.”

There was my three-year-old, displaying more empathy and patience than I had been able to muster all day — trying to make me feel better because she could tell I was worried about the car.  And I was really glad I had decided not to turn her out into the snow after the paint incident, or post her on craigslist under FREE (Will Deliver Within Metro Area), like I maybe wanted to, just a tiny bit, earlier in the day.