White Lightning Axiom: Redux

After the apple picking adventure, we zipped back to the G&G HappyFunTime B&B to pack up some items for our friends Lucy and Digger. They are expecting twins as soon and we want to help out a bit by giving them some things that they will need. Things that you use for a year and cost a fortune for no good reason. So we load up the tank and head north towards the NY Throughway. Why PA and NJ have a turnpike but NY has a throughway is odd, but to each his own. About an hour north, there is an Outlet center that we planned to meet at. An hour. Yet more driving.
We get there with little effort and only a few moments of borderline slumber on my part. The Wife and Kids however take the opportunity to doze off every so often.
We get there some time before 1500 and immediately stumble over each-other as we are parking. Nothing ever goes this well! We chat a bit, but I am not much at small talk and pleasantries due to fatigue. Shameful. While we were trying to get a bite to eat in the food court, the Twins saw a Bob the Builder ride on the other side of the mass-consumption corral and just HAD to go over and play with it. There was space for only one tot in it and Jacob had already asserted his territorial dominion. Alexis went into a flying fury over this and I had to pull her away to prevent damage or injury to any non-metallic object within 3 meters. It was a total melt down and the only thing I could do is to hold on to the writhing mass of screaming outrage and get her to the family Tank ASAP. I could at least bolt her in and let the scene play out there. This would take a bit of time to finish so I got out a book my Big Little Brother loaned me and started to read. A short later, I was sitting on the back bumper, listening to the melodious wails and lamentations of contempt, My Hero-Dad puttered by in Mom's car. He found a nearby parking space (more strangeness) and we talked a bit while we scanned the horizon for signs of the rest of the scouting party. True to her nature, Alexis stopped crying and turned on the charm machine. She pretends that nothing had happened and that her face is puffed and reddened for no other reason than that she was exercising. We quickly unbolted her and head out on a quest to locate the lost recon team. We found them quickly after running across the Donner party and some fellow who called himself Jimmy H. Union guy of some sort. The child's clothing store was not a good place to keep the kids out of trouble for more than 12 seconds, so the Grandparents and I head out to the toy store down the walkway. Yeah, toy store ... so much easier to control agitated children there, right? Ahem, well, since the aisles were about two inches wider then the Toddler APC, not really. They grabbed everything they could lift and we ended up trying to find the least offensive toys with the greatest durability factor so that we could occupy the kids until we got to the checkout. Alexis latched on to a fluffy puppy much like her current stuffed puppy (this one is named 'puppy', much different than the other one named ... 'puppy') and since Jacob was quite interested in the Guns and Tanks ... I searched the store over for anything that looked like a train. A train that he could not fit in his mouth or use as artillery pieces. The only thing I found was an electric model HO train set with 3 cars and an engine ... for 30$. Holy smokes, these things cost 30$ when I was a kid. There is no way I could pass this up. So I grabbed the box (it was about 2 ft by 3.5 ft in size) and let him hold on to it. He was stunned. The magnitude of the box transfixed him as I ran it past the cashier. Alexis would not relinquish her 2000lb/sq inch pressure grip on the puppy, so we had to run her over the bar-scanner to get the price. The whole while, Jacob had to have at least one hand on the box ... just to make sure no-one took it away. Hilarious.

Once we were back at the Tank, we put the kids back in and started transferring all the booty to Lucy & Digger's new Family Tank (Theirs is an Import Type 97... not an A1 Abrams). We did our typical long good-bye dance and promised to meet more often. Then we were on our way back to the G&G HappyFunTime B&B. Not much else to report but another hour behind the wheel. One thing that the Wife and I found odd was a fire in the middle of a field where a farmer was disposing of some old dead-wood. The fire was not odd, but the 3 cows just standing about it were. There they stood, just staring at the fire. I had all kinds of 'Far Side' lines running through my head. Evil cows, test firing their dead-wood missile attack battery.

# posted by mdmhvonpa @ 12:11 AM