best idea ever

Yesterday afternoon, the five of us spent some time driving around Asheville looking for a used tire to make a tire swing. The original wooden swing that Stupiddaddy had rigged up came crashing down a couple of times and in any case had failed to maintain our kids' interest. The seemingly ingenious replacement--the capsule of our old jogger, which had many sharp metal edges jutting out but was lots of fun and made it easy to imagine they were blasting off into space--took a chunk out of Lilah's forehead. So we decided a tire swing was the only way to go. 

As we drove, the kids did a whole lot of screaming at each other, and "Stupid" was bandied about quite a bit, and there were several rounds of "No I didn't/Yes you did." Tensions ran especially high after we found a suitable tire and heaved it in, because all three of them wanted to touch the tire but only two of them could do it at once. 

In the car, though, there's not a whole lot you can do. You can't send anyone to a different room, or take away a toy. So I just looked at Stupiddaddy and rolled my eyes. 

"We need a Taser," he said.