The Birds

Sunday's warm temperatures brought people out and about; I went for a walk and saw kids playing and adults taking down holiday decorations. My husband decided to wash my car, because:

• he is sweet;
• he wanted to wash the salt and sand off the car;
• he didn't purchase a car wash (and save .20 a gallon!) while pumping gas at Fletcher's earlier; and
• the birds are at it again.  

Our feathered friends haven't flown south for the winter, probably because Olney winters have been unseasonably warm recently. And like local deer, the birds seem to have found plenty to eat, as evinced by their multicolored droppings all over our driveway, cars, and garage door. Yes, you read that correctly -- garage door. How does THAT even happen? How globs falling from the sky manage to land on a vertical surface partially covered by an overhanging roof defies physics to me!

My poor husband frequently laments the birds' attraction to our cars as toilets. However, I pointed out to him that unlike the doomed people in Hitchcock's macabre classic The Birds, we are not being attacked by homicidal fowl. I asked, "Which situation would you rather be in: menaced by beasts of flight or having your car pooped on by them?"

Besides, having bird droppings land on you is supposedly a sign of good fortune. If this superstition is true, we should win the next lottery.

Witnessing the rise of The Purple Octopus

Twice daily we pass the horse farms on Norwood Road. Twice daily my older daughter (age 4) points out to my younger daughter (age 2): "Horsies!" The younger yells each time: "I see the horsies!"

Twice daily we pass the construction on the old Stained Glass Pub building at the corner of 108 and Georgia. Once, I said to the girls: "look at the construction!" With the next passing, I didn't say anything. When we crossed the intersection again the next morning the older one said to me, "Mama, say to us 'look at the construction, girls!'" And so I do, twice daily.

One morning the girls were being silly and instead of yelling "Horsies" on Norwood the older yelled "Sea turtles!" The younger responded, while pointing to the horses: "I see the sea turtles!" If horses could hear my girls they'd have an identity crisis. Their species classification is now reassigned, twice daily.

Now we watch the walls going up for the new Fair Hill Plaza. I told them that the expansion on the corner will be a new restaurant called The Green Turtle. Each day we inspect the progress and (as I've been instructed) twice daily I ask, "How's the construction coming, girls?"

And twice daily they respond, according to their agreed-upon script: "We see the Purple Octopus!"

Dude, Where's My Car?

No parking lot in Olney is large enough to misplace your car. You have to hike across the TJ Maxx/Shoppers lot if you try to combine clothes and grocery shopping, but you'll never really lose sight of your vehicle. You can always spot your car in front of the CVS shopping center even though navigating through that lot resembles a game of Frogger. People who snag an open space in the post office's postage-stamp-sized parking lot can't lose their car if they tried. On the other hand, if you have trouble spotting your car in the underutilized (and thus seemingly vast) parking lots at Safeway or Roots, then you must have forgotten what your car even looks like.

However, even when you do remember what your car looks, you might not be able to find it once you leave Olney. Yesterday I took my kids to DC and parked at Union Station. After a few hours of traipsing from one museum to another, we straggled back to the garage and entered "The Parking Lot" Seinfeld episode. Despite reciting "Level 1, Stairs 2," I could not for the life of me locate our car (which, in case you haven't already figured out, was on the first level by the second stairwell). Just as Kramer hauled around his new air conditioner, I carried one of my exhausted elementary-school-age offspring. My older child needed to go to the bathroom like Jerry and George did, but I didn't want an officer to catch anyone urinating in a dark corner (as Jerry and George were). Finally, like Elaine in dire need of getting her pair of goldfish home before they die, I had a pair of kids about to fall asleep ... and I would have died if I had to carry both of them back to our still-invisible car.

After about 20 minutes (shorter than a Seinfeld episode!), I located our car and (luckier than the Seinfeld characters) successfully started the car. Fifteen dollars later, I escaped from the garage and was on my way back to Olney... where the parking is free.