Speed

We took a little trip to see Aunt Bess (Carolyn's sister) in Des Moines last night, and fate allowed us to understand the interpretive key of our present lives. To explain, a selected chronology of the trip:

1. We leave the house with crying baby (who often cries when being packed into the carseat--which, beautifully, is a portabebes in Spanish). Pete cries through Grinnell and for the first couple of miles on route 80, and then settles into his customary vehicle slumber.

2. We arrive at Babies 'R' Us, and I add a second apostrophe to the store's name to indicate the second missing letter in "Are." Then we go inside, strolling Pete. As long as we keep rolling, he stays awake and calm, sometimes verging on drowsiness. If I slow down or stop too long to look at something, he careens into fussiness, and I get moving again.

3. After we leave Bess's house, Pete cries again until we hit the onramp to I-80 and settles down on the proverbial dime, exactly as he did the previous time we drove that route.

4. A point placed out of sequence for maximum dramatic effect: while at Bess's, we happen onto the first part of the movie Speed, whereing LAPD bomb squad dude Jack (Keanu Reeves) must keep a bus running at more than 50 MPH lest it explode. See! See! We are living in Speed, and baby crying is the bomb on the bus! Now we can rest easy.