The Dad and The Daughters joined me in Edmond. They cheered us on as the starting gun sounded, and they cheered us through the finish line. Daughter 1 even ran across the finish line with me. No, that's that entirely true. She shot way ahead of me just to show me she could.
On the way home, The Daughters sat in the middle seats of the minivan doing their homework for the weekend, The Dad sat shot gun and worked on his lesson plans for the week, and I drove us home. Since I had downed about 1,562 ounces of water during the course of the race, we had to stop. We had to stop a lot. At one of these shots, Daughter 2 was being more bouncy than normal, so I set the parking break as I dashed in to pee.
When I returned and we were all safely buckled up again, I reached down and popped the emergency break. Just as soon as I pulled the lever, the hood popped. The reason the hood popped is because we don't have an emergency break lever-it's released by pushing in on the break pedal. We do, however, have a hood release lever.
The Dad looked over at me and said, "Did you just pop the hood?"
I glanced at him and said, "Yeah."
He still stared at me and said, "Why?"
I sheepishly said, "It was an accident."
Being the great guy that he is, he unbuckled and closed the hood. After he returned to his seat and buckled up, I reached down and to release the break and, instead, popped the hood again.
"Heather!"
"Yeah... sorry."
He fixed my mistake yet again only to have me accidentally do it one more time. I know! I can only offer this as an excuse: My body was not used to having that much oxygen inside my brain. I was doing all kinds of crazy things.
The third time The Dad went out to fix the hood, I snapped his picture. He immediately came around to the driver's side. I just knew he was going to take my phone and erase the pic because if there's one thing he hates, it's having his picture taken. Instead, he made me get out and he drove us the rest of the way home. Some men just have no sense of humor.
This post was part of Arkansas Women Bloggers ThanksBlogging in which we were to take pictures of something outside for which we are thankful. I would like to think I conquered this challenge. Bam.
