infant->child-> adolescent->young adult->adult

So I think Charlie and I learned something valuable about ourselves this morning.

We're no good with chaos.

I mean. No.Good.

Yes, we've been here for 1.5 years, but we still don't entirely understand the whole plowing the streets concept. It seems (to us) to happen at random and all of our neighbors understand it and have their cars moved to the right sides of the street... but we really have no clue what's going on.  Last night, Charlie saw everyone move their cars to "our" side of the street, so he left his there. This morning, right after the first plow went through... all the cars mysteriously ended up on the other side of the street. Huh. That's never happened before. It's normally a pretty long turn-around time for them to come back and plow the other side.

We were about to leave to go down to the Farm and take care of the chickens, so he didn't move it. Whoops. Then they plowed our side of the street... and we were in the way. So Charlie went to go start his car to get it warmed up for our trip. As we were all ready to go, Charlie suddenly said, "I locked both of my keys in my truck." So he then started TEARING through the house looking for another key. TEARING. Stomping. Yelling. Throwing stuff EVERYWHERE. Pulling boxes I didn't know about out of places I didn't know about.

I tried to calm him down. I said "this happens" and "it's not that big of a deal" and stuff nice, calm wives say to their husbands. I offered to stay home and take care of the keys and that he should just take my car to the farm until we realized his work keys were also in his truck. The truck that was running.  I finally called the locksmith, and WHILE I WAS ON THE PHONE WITH THEM and they quoted me $35+, Charlie screamed "I'm getting a ticket!" He actually used much more expressive language than that, but you get the idea. I screamed back, "GO TALK TO THE POLICE OFFICER" "WHAT AM I GOING TO SAY?" "TELL HIM YOUR KEYS ARE LOCKED AND YOU CAN'T MOVE YOUR CAR" "YOU GO TELL HIM" "OMG! JUST GO TALK TO HIM" etc.

Then there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth.

He missed the cop, but hunted him down up the street, to which the cop replied there was nothing he could do now that the ticket is in the system. And that in 20 minutes someone would be there to tow his truck.

The same 20 minute timeframe the locksmith gave us as to when he would come unlock the truck.

At this point we're both freaking out.

Locksmith comes. Before the tow truck (yay!) and does 3 minutes worth of work and says, "That will be $180." "Umm... excuse me?" "Yeah, the $35 is just the service call." Wow. Fortunately, Charlie's insurance supposedly covers everything, so we should get reimbursed. But I'm telling you, people. It was like 40 minutes of CHAOS.

We had a family snuggle when the locksmith left and decided we have a few things to work on before we have children and things get more chaotic more often.

At what point do you become a "real" adult?