Interesting day. One of those days where suddenly out of nowhere God starts talking in a way you can hear Him on all sorts of topics you've been bugging him about and not getting a response...  ever had that happen?  I want to keep all of that to myself for now, though. Sorry, family, that's why I'm not answering the phone.

Fortunately, there's always something to write about around here.

Yesterday Mike and I took our cars to the Cadillac dealership in another town. We just like them better, so it's always worth the drive.  His truck needed a repair of some sort (due to the last time I kinda wrecked it when I went offroading in it), and I don't even know what was wrong with mine.  The owner of the dealership asked MIke about the mud all over the place. 

So Mike told him I like to go 'mudding.'  Dealership Owner was... stunned.   Not just that of the two of us, I'm the mudder - but that Mike actually lets me take his VERY nice truck to do it in.  He promptly took us to the other end of the lot and started pointing out trucks to me that would be more suitable for such purposes. He pointed to a midnight blue pickup.

"No. Too pretty," I said. 

He pointed to a royal blue Chevy next to the first one.

"No. You don't get it. That's a nice truck! I want a junk-y, dirty, dented, nasty truck with big tires and lights on top. Redneck." 

He nodded slowly, surprised, and then asked someone to bring out a red Silverado that they weren't even going to put on the lot. This particular truck has so many miles and is so ripped and dirty inside that they were just going to have it taken off by a wholesaler.  It isn't dented -- there are grills and bars all around it so that it CAN'T get dented. It's four wheel drive and can definitely handle mud. The inside is filthy with ripped leather upholstery, Bud Light bottlecaps everywhere, and a butt-ugly widemouth bass Christmas ornament hanging from the rearview mirror. The windshield has a bullet hole in it and the back window has a white decal of two bucks locking horns. The engine is ginormous, dual exhaust, and it shakes the ground with the most beautiful loud purr ever. 

I took it for a test drive with the same guy who sold us our two other cars.  He directed me to the nearest dirt road, and raised his eyebrows slightly when I complained that it was riding 'too smooth.'  He tried to find some mud, but there wasn't any to be found.  He showed me the four wheel drive options, and I played with them while getting in and out of a ditch.

Maybe it was the bass, mouth wide open, dangling from the mirror. Or the bullet casings on the floorboards... or the carefully centered deer decal.... but it was truck-love at its best. 

We got it. 

Very fun. I got it stuck last night, but only after thoroughly testing it out on muddy farmroads and incorrectly concluding that it was so tough there was no way i COULD get it stuck. Oops. 

This morning it wouldn't start.  Totally dead battery.  (I'd forgotten that part of having an old truck with lots of miles.)  Since my usual car is still at the dealership getting who knows what fixed, I called Mike. He asked his friend (who has kindly assisted in my stuck in the mud escapades before) to come help. He breathed new life into the battery while Seth-1yr and Caden-3yr managed to get into a spitting war in the backseat. Caden-3yr was outspitting, so Seth-1yr got him back by taking the lid off his sippie cup and sloshing its entire milky contents across the seat at Caden-3yr.  It was, as Helpful Friend pointed out, the PERFECT truck for that to happen in. The truck had a distinct Dirty Dog smell before, but now there's some old milk fragrance to mask that.

Helpful Friend said he had a name for my truck. "Mutter's Mutter!" He said proudly.  I blinked a couple of times. Smiled.  Said, "Ummm. I like it if you like it, but I really don't get it..."

"But it's a play on words.."

"Yeah, I figured, but... I still don't get it..."

He's a patient guy. He then explained it and I caught that he was actually saying "Mudder's Mudder."  As in Mother's Mudder.  AHA!  Much funnier.  He sooo nicely followed us to preschool just to make sure that it would start again.  (It did)

And Mudder's Mudder is far better than what Caden-3yr calls it. He tries to say Mommy's Monster Truck, but he doesn't really have the 'tr' sound down yet, and he substitutes with an "f" instead.  It's... attention getting. And yes, he IS at that age where he has to yell everything. Uh HUH.

So I took Caden-3yr in to preschool, who was appalled at the indignity of having to arrive late, and I stuck my head in the door to talk to his teacher. "Sorry we're late! Got an old truck to go mudding in, and it just wouldn't start this morning!"

She laughed and said, "What...? I don't see you doing that at all! You're so TINY and so FEMININE!" 

I snorted in such an unfortunate manner that spit sailed into the preschool classroom. i intentionally did not check to see Caden-3yr's reaction to this. It was soooo feminine though. I thought she was kidding, but she actually wasn't.  It was an effective way to erase a misconception, at least.

Well, that and a big red dirty truck with its own signature smell.