Worth 1,000 Words... and about $4.50

This is what my car looks like on the passenger side.

Guess what happened?



My daughter happened, that's what.

Not the younger one. That's too predictable.

No, this was the 10 (almost 11) year-old.

Monday when the kids were out of school we went to Target. Camryn brought along a new book by her new favorite author, Liz Kessler. She'd just gotten a delivery of Emily Windsnap books from Amazon (thanks, Grammy!), and she couldn't put the book down. I can totally relate. I'm that way with books, too.

So we arrived at Target, and fearing that her precious new literary treasure would (gasp!) be stolen right out of our van, Camryn put it somewhere that wouldn't tempt a thief.

And the dash became jammed.

It took two days and numerous attempts to open the glove compartment. Finally we gave up trying to carefully open it and we just pried it open with a screwdriver. The latch broke. Glove compartment would no longer stay closed.

Hubby removed the whole thing last night in hopes that his magic putty would fix the lock. He's all McGyver-like that way.

Alas, his epoxy tricks didn't work, and now we have a gaping hole in the car. I told the kids they'd get sucked into the engine if they weren't good in the car. (No, not really, but wouldn't you be the tiniest bit tempted?)

That "I'm going to hide my FOUR DOLLAR BOOK" has turned into a "NOW WE HAVE TO PAY A COUPLE OF HUNDRED DOLLARS TO PUT THE JUNK DRAWER BACK INTO THE VAN."

I see two positives in this situation.

(1) At least my daughter prizes literature enough to want to keep someone from stealing it (I'm stretching, I know...)

and

(2) This will follow her for a lifetime. It will be a story told countless times over, repeated to new friends and heck yeah, new BOYfriends and will be held over her head at the most convenient times. ("What? You want me to buy you WHAT? Well, I could've afforded that if we hadn't dropped 2 Ben Franklins to fix the glove compartment. Remember that, sunshine?")

Oh, yeah. This will be fun.