Road Pizza

I find it better to tattle on myself before others can.  Or in this case slightly AFTER my wife has told the world.

Here goes:

It's Friday night.  I had to pick up Chloe and go to the bank.  I decided that we would have pizza for dinner, too.  So, after taking Chloe out of the truck to go to the bank, I put her back in.  She was exceptionally helpful. wanting to open the strawberry sucker they had given her instead of get buckled in.  Just as I was about to close the door a lady stopped her car behind the truck and said, "You dropped a piece of paper, sir."  I looked down.  It was the receipt from the bank.

So, we drove up to the pizza restaurant.  It's a take and bake facility.  Chloe accompanied me into the restaurant...sell-it-before-it's-cooked-store.  We ordered and watched our uncooked pizza being made.  She asked me all manner of questions and shared her sucker with me, which I reluctantly tasted, knowing eyes were watching me.  It finally got done and we took the pizza out to the truck.

I put the pizza on the roof and put Chloe into her seat.  She tried to hold her sucker out of the way, but dropped it.  It was clean so I gave it back to her...I couldn't SEE any germs on it.  Besides, my truck is clean, sterile, mostly not dirty, not a swamp with creepy crawly things.  She got her sucker and I finished the buckling process.  I closed the door and got in.

We drove away.

I decided to ask Cora, via text, if she needed anything else before we went home.  She texted me back: "Wine."  Until the hard liquor goes public, wine is easiest.  I thought that was a capitol idea and pulled over to turn around.  It was THEN that I thought to look for the pizza.  It wasn't on the passenger seat, which was taken up by mine and Chloe's bags...not on Chloe, not beside Chloe..."CRAPPPPPP!!!!!!"  (I may have said a different word...)

Chloe: "What wrong?"

Me:  "I think I lost the f---ing pizza."  blink...blink... "I lost the da-, f---, sh--, I lost the pizza, honey."  Keeping my language clean in front of the kid has never been so hard!

Chloe: "Where pizza?"

Me: "The road, Chloe.  The ROAD."

Chloe: "Road, pizza?"  giggle, giggle.

Me:  "Not funny. But, yes."

Text from wife about wine:  "sorry but it sounds really good."

I reply:  "so does pizza...f---ing thing was on the roof."

Speeding a little now.  Rounding corners.

Wife: "oh crap."

Me: "going back now."

Chloe from backseat:  "where pizza?"

Me: "Be quiet."  All the while I'm thinking, I have to buy ANOTHER $15.00 pizza.

I get to within a quarter mile of the pizza place and see something on the side of the road.  It's got plastic...possibly spinach...zucchini...it's MY PIZZA!!!

I pull over.  There it is.  There are a couple pieces of zucchini on the ground around it, but otherwise it is intact.  The cellophane is surprisingly intact!  There is but a small portion open to the elements.  Score! 

"Where pizza?"  "It's right here."  "Ooooh. On road?"  "Yes, but not now."  I spend the next few minutes down playing my part in the near disaster to my two-year-old.

So, we went to town and got the wine...incidentally, our recent overturn of the ancient law that hard liquor be sold ONLY by the state is about the take fruition!  As I walked through the wine section of the local Safeway, I noted that there was an isle closed off.  Inside that isle were bottles and bottles of hard alcohol covered by opaque plastic.  We are definitely waiting for the 1st of June!  I know I am!  We ended up leaving the strawberry sucker in the Safeway parking lot, since it finally found a slightly less than clean spot on the floor of my truck.

I got home and put the pizza in.

Cora pulled in shortly after.  Her smile said to me that something was funny.  Turns out my poor luck with pizza had caused her no end of joy.

Have I ever mentioned my wife's strange sense of humor?

We ate the pizza, neither of us lost a tooth and it was good.

Later this evening, she related the whole incident to her mom.  I honestly think it was unlady-like for the both of them to carry on laughing so hard.  I really don't see the humor in it.