As I was driving across town to pick up Mom for David’s birthday party tonight, I flashed back to last Saturday, when I made the same trip and got bogged down in some pretty serious traffic. I drove past the fairgrounds, as I always do to get there, and crawled past at approximately zero miles per hour for a considerable stretch. I found out only later that there was a Ziggy Marley concert going on, as part of the Harmony Festival. (Plus, they have horse race betting there, and I’m sure there were a lot of people tearing up Big Brown tickets at just about that same time.)

There was no such interference tonight, and I sailed on past the fairgrounds. We made it to the party on time. What it was, if you want to call it a party, was presents and cake. It was just the immediate family, and David got mostly camping gear. Now he just has to find the time to take off work for a few days so they can go camping. The cake was very good, too.

Aiden’s new favorite word, apparently, is “impossible.” I can’t remember the context when I first heard him say it, but I gave him plenty of chances to use it tonight. At one point he came bounding in out of the backyard, announcing that he’d just seen a flying alligator. “That’s impossible,” I told him with a wink.

“It’s not impossible,” he instructed me, “because I was pretending. Actually, I shot it out of the sky.” What could I do but believe him? If you’re pretending, pretty much nothing is impossible.

Kylie was very curious about how everyone got to the party. She asked each of us in turn, “Which one is your car?” And we each pointed our cars out to her through the front window. More than once, in my case. “It’s that green one right there.”

So when it came time to leave, she had a mission. “I will show you which car,” she said, and then got really antsy while we were saying our goodbyes. She stood wiggling by the front door (occasionally saying things like “It’s time to go”) until she could lead us down the steps and out to the driveway. She actually kicked my tires as she pointed to my green car. Of course, I thanked her for showing me the way to go home.

After I dropped Mom off I headed back to my place by the usual route, through the middle of town. Once again, I was thwarted, because tonight is the weekly Wednesday Night Market, when various streets are shut down for a street fair, with arts and crafts and food and such. I wasn’t into stopping and mingling, so I pushed on through as best I could and made it home. There’s too much going on in my county these days. I’m going to have to start checking all the schedules before driving anywhere (while I can still afford to drive anywhere).