The Jogging Stroller

A few weeks ago a neighbor brought by a jogging stroller she had been telling me about for the last six months or so.  Her kids are too big to use it and she had wanted to sell it.  Out of politeness I told her I'd be interested in seeing it, but I was content with the hand-me-down bike/jogging stroller I already had.  There's nothing worse to me than spending money - one of my almost comic weaknesses.  But when she was in my yard, with the stroller, ready to give it the boot, I reluctantly paid her for the stroller and hoped I wasn't making a mistake.

That's how good things tend to come in my life.  When somebody kind of forces me on into the better.  The new jogging stroller separates #5 and #6 so it is so much harder for them to punch and kick each other out of boredom.  And there is a huge sunshade for each.  I can pull that thing over them and they go off into contented-zone-land, like I've pulled their eyelashes down over their eyes and left them to dream of easy fields to plow and perfect harvests to reap.  

So now #4, #5, #6, and I go out on the trail together a few times a week.  #4 rides her bike like a champ next to me.  She has a helmet covered in frozen characters with a blue plastic crown stuck on the prow of it.  It makes me smile to see that wild girl with her helmet crown peddling determinedly next to me.  We go about 4 miles every time and she only complains when we go up one particularly long hill right in the middle of our course - the point where we all want to complain I suppose.  At the end of our run we stop at a park and play for fifteen or twenty minutes.  The mornings are still cool enough for all of this to be exceptionally pleasant and a little on the mind-bogglingly perfect side.  

I love the parts of life, no matter how small, that are just so pretty it's hard to believe they belong to me.