No Honey, That Sounds More Like Mel Gibson

We're driving home from school and the girls are excited because we've got double vanilla cupcakes at home with princess sprinkles, and tonight we're going to watch Despicable Me and daddy's got dinner in the oven. And one of these days I really am going to write a blog thanking the powers that be for seeing fit to bring a long line of men who cook into my life, one after the other. My life looks pretty much like the Saturday afternoon lineup on the Food Network.

And does that make me Nigella?



Of course it does.


We turn onto our street where two blocks down from our house is a police blockade. And standing in the middle of the road is a cop with a big gun--a really big gun. I don't know what to call it, I don't write books about guns (actually I do but I just call them 'rifles' and get on with it), but this is the gun that Agent Sydney Bristow would use if she was going to play at sniper for awhile. Or--well here:



The cop is holding Dean Winchester's gun. He's got it sort of at half mast, he doesn't hold it nearly as convincingly as the actors do, but still. I am driving home from Kin-dee-garten with Goldilocks and Little Red snugged up in pink cowgirl boots and mittens in the back seat and lo, we have driven into a scene from a Harrison Ford movie, and not one of the ones where he cracks a whip.

Little Red says, "Maybe those bad guys stole someone's kid" and I say "I'm pretty sure it has something to do with drugs" before wondering if 6 is really the appropriate age to give your child the 'drug dealers live up the street and mommy waves to them when she goes out to fetch the paper' talk. I mean honestly: What would Harrison do?

He would not leave without his daughter and his wife. Or his wife's suitcase. But that's just smarts.

Intrepidly I steer my mini-van past the blockade (blockade, four cop cars in the street, same diff) and I'm not really panicking or worried--I only do that over things like parenting or writing and not, as it turns out, nearby criminal activity. But we pull into our driveway and I can still see that gun from my porch and I think:

Maybe it is time to move out of Longmont.

I am Vesuvius and I never know if Nigella is talking about food or sex. But it doesn't matter.