Aunt Stinky and the Car Creatures

[written earlier but saved for a busy day like today]

This was the first year in a long time that my entire family has been together in one place. I think there were 15 of us at dinnertime, which is just the immediate family but includes my cousin/godmother. Luckily my sister has a house that can accommodate that many for dinner.

The first night we all had dinner I had a lot of energy. And, though I forget what we had for dinner, a lot of gas. I've noted before that I am very much a gassy girl, but there are some days when I surprise even myself. This was one of those days. And I was being silly with the nieces and nephew, and pitting myself against my nieces' fart machine (which is their favorite fun thing, much to the chagrin of my brother in law), and winning. :-) Thus, I was given the name Aunt Stinky.

Well, Aunt Stinky can also be pretty messy. My car tends to have, lets say, a number of items in it. And I tend to not use a garbage bag, but rather just put things under my legs in the driver's side. Yeah, perhaps that's moving beyond messy - but I do throw it out eventually! Anyway, my husband has always joked with me about my car - that you can do a treasure hunt in it and always find something. On the way up to my sister's we were snacking and both he and I dropped something, and it seemingly disappeared. His comment was that the rat living in the car got the morsel.

So, one morning we took one of my nieces with us on an errand. Their parents are rather neat freaks, sort of, and so I warned her not to make comments about my messy car. But then my husband starts with the story of the rat living in the car, and the rat has a pet cockroach, and the cockroach has a pet flea. And he got my niece to name all of them (Lenny, Fred, and Joe respectively.) I dropped them off with my mom while I did one errand on my own, and then sat with my mom for a while to visit. As I sat, I knew something sneaky was happening, though I wasn't sure what. I found out when we went into the car. My niece had drawn a rat, cockroach, and a flea and taped them to various parts of the inside of my car. It was quite cute, and they are still living there today.