Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

A man should learn, and learn young, how to treat a lady. And my little man is learning from the best of men, just how it should be done. He's already learned that if he hits his Mommy in front of his Daddy he's certain to get a much longer time out than he would've if he were alone with me. He's learned that kisses go a long way towards smoothing things over; and, he's learned that flowers smell pretty.

When Mommy needs five minutes to herself, Daddy takes Collin with him to the market to pick up whatever we need for dinner that night. Or, he takes him to pick up whatever we don't need, say a pack of straws or sticks of dynamite; whatever I can think of at the moment to get them the heck out of the house so that it's completely silent for ten whole minutes.

Frequently, Daddy comes back with the ingredients for dinner, the pack of straws, the dynamite AND a bunch of flowers because, as he says, he couldn't resist and they were on sale. I find it hard to believe that Vons puts flowers on sale every time he's there, especially since I'm there equally as often and never notice these elusive sale signs. Still, flowers given under the pretense of a lie smell just as sweet. Although, once I got two bunches handed to me, and I'm pretty sure they had to have been on sale for that luxurious of a purchase to have been made.

But this week, Collin brought me flowers. I'm fairly certain he decided to buy them too. That's what I'm telling myself, as he's the one who proudly paraded through the door with them. As he is the one who carried them in, I think he lost sight of who they were for and then proceeded to bash them about on the floor. Alas, my poor gift was a bit ruined.

I think he might have gotten the idea that all flowers come into our house to be tortured...see the sunflower torture chamber below. I swear I read that this is what you are supposed to do to sunflowers when they droop. I'm attempting to "harvest" my seeds. I don't know though, this looks totally weird and I'm embarrassed when I open my garage door, like the neighbors think we have some sort of horticultural slaughterhouse going on.