“Where is the microchip…?”

I love answering my kid’s questions. The real ones. I do. If I know the answer and can expand her knowledge it’s like, BOOYA! If I don’t know the answer I say, “You know, I don’t know.” She says, “I don’t know either.” Then I say, “Let’s find out.”

And we do.

What I can’t stand are the questions she asks that she KNOWS the answer to and is just checkin’ to see if I’m a dumbass, or the questions that she JUST got the answer to- and she wants to double check for no other reason than to see if I am, in fact, a dumbass.

This is starting to happen a lot.

“Mommy? Did Jonas take his bottle in my bedroom?”

“Well, I don’t know. Let’s go see.”

“MOMMMMMYYYY. Jonas DID take his bottle in my bedroom.” (Unsaid- you farking dumbfuck.)

She’s asking question after question now. Every answer I give leads to another question. A lot of “Why?” That’s fine. It would be more fine if she’d let me answer the first question before asking the second one. She was hammering at me in the checkout line in Target today, and the cashier was trying not to laugh. Bless his heart (not in the mocking way. There are two versions of “bless ____ heart.” One is polite rudeness. The other is genuine). I looked at him and said, “She’s going to be Jack Bauer when she grows up.”

So tonight at the dinner table I’m trying to feed my son and eat my tuna salad pita. Livvie starts.

“Mommy do you FEEL better?”

“Yes, I do. I feel a lot better.”

“Daddy, does Mommy feel better?”

“Livvie. I said I feel better. I feel a lot better.”

………

“Daddy? Do you feel better?”

“Yes. Thank you. I feel a lot better than I did.”

“Mommy? Does Daddy feel better?”

“Daddy just said he feels better. Why are you asking me? He said yes.”

………..

“Mommy-”

Rich breaks in- “Livvie, how do you feel?”

“I feel better?”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I feel fine.”

“Mommy, does Livvie feel better? I’m just asking. Does Livvie FEEL better?”

I choked on my pita and had to leave the table. Livvie thought I was crying. Rich explained I was laughing. When she started asking why I was laughing I choked harder.

I was, after the day we’d had (for many reasons), about to pop. Six years with my husband lets him see that and step in.

I loved my entire family at that minute with the heat of a billion suns. I do love them. But once in awhile something comes along that causes you to take everything in, the confusion on your daughter’s face, the evil in your husband’s eyes, the way your son is smacking the Cheerio dessert off his tray, even the dog lying on the floor waiting for the Cheerios to fall, and you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else at any time else in the world.

I often don’t give my husband enough credit.

So for now I’m going to practice my One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.

“I do not know. Go ask your Dad.”

“And put down that Taser.”