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My father drilled into my head at the tender age of 16 that I should never, ever, ever, ever let my car’s fuel gauge fall below 1/4 of a tank.

This would have left more of an impression on me if my ’71 VW Bug had had a working fuel gauge at the time.

But make no mistake, that car was wonderful.  If I made a right turn too fast, the passenger door would fly open and the horn would honk.  I kid you not.  If I had the windshield wipers on at the same time I had the radio playing, the music would stop every time the blades hit the top of their arc.  I KID YOU NOT.  There was an enormous crater of a dent in the front of the car from when the previous owner had, er, miscalculated.  This, of course, led us to name the junker “Dimples.”

I never ran out of gas with Dimples because I was so full of anxiety about it that I would stop and top it off every chance I got. (Back when gasoline was less than $1.00 a gallon!)

My subsequent cars had working fuel gauges, thankfully.   Life was good.  I never ran out of gas.  Of all the automobile-related calamities that befell me during my youth, never once did I have to make the call, “Um, Mom, can you bring me some gas?”

So last week, after I had loaned my car to a friend and forgotten that he warned me that he had not had a chance to refill my gas tank, I found myself driving a lonely country road in this situation:

ACK!  HOLY CRAP!!!!!

I did the first thing that any woman on the brink of panic would do in such a situation, and immediately whipped out my cell phone to record this calamity for future comedic use on my blog.  I believe that I read maneuver in a driving manual once.

You’ll note that my speedometer reads 25 MPH, despite my absolutely empty tank.  How can this be, you ask?

Simple!  I was coasting down a rather lengthy hill.

And there, at the bottom of the hill on this lonely country road, was a Mom-and-Pop Gas station that, filthy and run down as it was, seemed like Nirvana to me.

I coasted down into the station in a blaze of triumphant glory, and began pumping that liquid gold into the tank as happily as a little girl while laughing and dancing a 220 lb jig.

Which freaked Mom-and-Pop out.

The lesson here?

Always start your novice drivers out in dangerously broken down beaters.  It will give them the survival tools they’ll need later on in life.

At least, that’s all I came away with.

Critter thinks he is the Bee’s Knees because he’s got a true gift of hiding.  Any game of hide and seek he will win because he is the MASTER of fitting into places there is no way on God’s Green Earth he should be able to.   He’s 10 years old, and 55lbs… and of COURSE he makes it work for him!

But he’s getting cocky.  I’ll find him in the craziest squeezes and he is so dagnab proud of it he boasts about it.

I can’t allow that kind of cockiness.  Sure, he’s good, but he’s never spent an entire puberty squeezing into Calvin Klein jeans that were three sizes too small because he couldn’t bear the thought of being a size 16.

And yes, I got them zipped.  Sure, I spent the day in perpetual agony and chaffage and wedgies did occur, but by golly I squeezed into those babies.

You know how Brooke Shields bragged that ‘Nothing gets between me and my Calvin Kleins?’

Well of course they didn’t!  Nothing more could have possibly squeezed in there!

So to your cockiness, Critter, I want to say, “WHATEVER! Spend a day in a pubescent girl’s pants and we’ll talk.”

But then I realize that might not sound the way I meant it, and I end up merely saying, “Good job, honey.”

Which explains a lot about the current state of Critter’s ego.

I had just pulled my home-made bacon, jalapeno, and cheddar stuffed potato skins out from the oven for an after school snack with my munchkins, when My Captain called and informed me that our family doctor had just called him, admonishing us to eat better, maybe drop some weight, and watch our carb intake.

As he told me this, my gaze dropped to the piping-hot pan of high-fat, high-cholesterol, high-sodium, high-calorie yummy comfort-food goodness before me, and dear friends…

I shamelessly perjured myself.

But seriously, look at these:

Perjury smergery.

Don’t judge.  Just shut up and grab a fork.

We try to have weekly family meals.  The whole gang loves it, with the slight exception of Critter, who hates anything that drags him away from playing….even if it’s an amazingly scrumpdilicious menu like homemade noodles or chicken and dumplings.  I tell you, how he came from my womb is beyond me.  And no, I didn’t drop him as a baby.

Much.

But during our last family meal, Grandma Jane couldn’t make it.  She’s got one hell of a social life, that woman.  She’s always going out to dinner or to shows or lectures or ballets.   Her past includes such accolades as former congressional aide, former manager to the national chapter of Kiwanis, past president of numerous charitable and volunteer groups, and most impressively, mother of two exceptional boys who grew into mover and shakers.  Oh, and me.  But she tries not to mention that if she can help it.  Two out of three ain’t bad, after all……

I jest. She loves me more than she knows.  I tell her that all the time.

Back to dinner last week…  Grandma was busy and did not join us.  Critter was at the table with us, actively avoiding his veggies, and out of nowhere whispered, “Dinner tastes better when Grandma is here.”

My Captain and Varmint missed it, but I caught it.  And if you don’t think I shared that little epiphany with Grandma Jane, you’re woefully mistaken.

There is something about having Grandma around, so entirely accessible, that gives our family so much more depth.  It calms me, because she’s my ma, after all!  She is a sounding board for Varmint, when her mama is not approachable on any given subject.  She’s a safe haven for Critter, when he’s been constantly disciplined at school and at home.  She gives assurance to My Captain that his wife might one day grow up.

It’s a dagnab shame that everyone is not as lucky.  It’s sad that not everyone can go to Grandma’s orchard for a liberating run in the sunshine after a long school day.   And it’s amazing that Critter, at such a young age, appreciates the value in having Grandma so deeply enmeshed in his life.

That’s rare.

And not a bad lesson for me.  I’d do well to take heed.

Let me promise you this.  It’s not the orchard.  It’s not the proximity.  It’s not even the sunshine.

It’s her sure promise of open arms.

Someday I’m going to be that.  The one with open arms.

There are people who’s life’s goal is to become president, or a doctor, or a school teacher, or a firefighter, or a businessman.  Those are all noble professions.

Me?  I just want to be Grandma Jane one day.

Winter Storm Saturn has arrived here in Dickerson, Maryland, and my Varmint and Critter and I are enjoying the snow day, while My Captain is staged with the Collapse Rescue Team.

We all slept in,…well, we all had the potential to sleep in.  When I crept downstairs at the tender hour of 8:00, I found both children, who fight getting up on any other school day,  sitting in the family room of the little cottage eating Jolly Rancher popsicles, and watching DVDs of The Carol Burnett Show.

It’s like I’m back in 1978…

…only 50 pounds heavier, and sporting substantially more facial hair.

On the agenda for today we’ve got:  baking homemade cinnamon rolls, making cookies, painting snow with spraybottles filled with food coloring and water,  enormous quantities of sibling bickering, and at least three Mommy-meltdowns.

We LOVE snow days!!!