I wish I had the kind of job where I can wear jeans daily. Of course the only person I know who has that kind of luxury is my best friend, Dan, who is permitted to wear cargo shorts, t-shirts, and flip-flops every single day if he so chose. His work even has Hawaiian shirt Fridays. Now don’t get me wrong, I can wear jeans on Fridays and sometimes slip a pair in on a Wednesday or the rare “teacher workday”. But usually it’s some other kind of pant.

So I am living vicariously through my daughter and dress her in denim whenever I can. My wife thinks I should dress more “professional” and now she sometimes complains when I put Claire in jeans several days in a row, to the point last week that Claire was required to wear stretchy purple pants and a pink shirt to day care. She must’ve disliked the outfit as much as I did since when I picked her up they said half way through the day she pulled her pants off and ran (read: crawled) around in her diaper and t-shirt.

Liza’s son, Trevor, is a little older than Claire and he’s huge. His dad’s pretty tall and he will be like him. So Liza is teaching him different words, like “caca” and the other day he came hobbling into their living room (more than likely without his pants). And he pointed to the back of the house while something that sounded like a guttural “cccccc” came out of the recesses of his throat. Eventually his dad followed him back to Trevor’s brother’s bedroom where there was a pile of crap in the center of the carpet. Instead of picking it up and carrying it deliberately to the toilet to flush, so Trevor could learn the lesson, he chucked it in the trash.

Now I don’t expect Claire to crap everywhere and sure hope she doesn’t ever do that (of course, the ferrets think this is their single goal in life, but that’d be a whole ‘nother post), but you never know what it’s like with little kids in the dead of a fast approaching summer. Just yesterday the bank sign said 80 and Donna still wraps Claire in warm fleece hats to cover her ears, just in case they get infected for the umpteenth time. But soon enough our driveways will be hot enough to fry eggs, and I will be having my black lab shaved more frequently by the local groomer who pays close attention to his nether regions, much like Claire and Trevor and all of the ferrets.