I came out to my car the other day to load up the trunk with a box of junk to go to the Goodwill and as I put the box down to open the hatch, I was greeted with this message on my back window. Maybe you can’t read it. It says:

“IF only my wife were this dirty.”

NICE! Nothing says classy like a nasty comment smudged into your back window. Who would write something like that?!! Heh. Even though he disguised his very distinctive writing rather well, I knew only someone like Toby would write that. That’s Toby humor for you. He probably got it off some car forum he reads all the time. He’s always showing me car jokes like that.

I know it would give Toby enormous pleasure to have me drive all over town wondering why everyone was giving me weird looks when I pulled up to stoplights. Yeah. That was not going to happen. I immediately decided the trip to the Goodwill could wait and hollered out to Baby Bug that it was car-wash time!

This is something fun we’ve never done before: wash the car. What a novelty! We usually shell out the bucks for the fancy car wash. Mostly because they vacuum and it’s just plain easier. When you have a toddler in tow, vacuuming out all the goldfish cracker crumbs is not something you want to do when you live in the city and there are cars whizzing down your alley about to smash into you any minute.

Yesterday, our neighbor was at work so I pulled the car into her carport and got to washin’. Or rather I got Baby Bug to washing. She LOVED it! What’s more fun than water outside with bubbles and the CAR?!! Wowie zowie! Maybe we can wash the house next, Mom?

She was really good at the bucket-filling part which was essential since our little garden hose did not quite reach to the back of the car—yet another reason why we usually go to the fancy car wash. But times are tough lately and even though I know saving eight bucks on a car wash isn’t really going to make much of a dent in my budget, it was something fun to do together.

I know these pictures aren’t very smiley but I assure you it was loads of fun. It reminded me of being a kid myself. My brother and I used to wash our parents’ car for fun all the time in the summer. There is nothing like a good old-fashioned game of squirt-each-other-to-death over the hood of a car. I have many memories of crouching low by the wheels only to be pelted over the head with bucket full of suds from above. Good times, I tell you, good times. Of course that was back in the good old days before the neighbors called the cops on each other for over-watering the cement lawn.

The car is clean now! Toby ought to be happy. Or maybe he’d rather I went and rolled in some mud.