Day: yesterday
Time: the Arsenic Hour (a.k.a. between four and five pm when we all pace around waiting for Hubby to return home)

Begin scene.

Dren: [while assembling fish tacos for dinner] JJ, get back into the Timeout Corner.
JJ: NO! [insert protests and a variety of flailings of the body]
Dren: JJ, I mean it. You’re in time out for three minutes.
JJ: NO! [insert running into the Timeout Corner walls].

Three minutes later.

Dren: [hollers from upstairs where she is changing El Poopito's diaper . . . for the third time in four hours] JJ, you can come out of time out now.
JJ: [bumbles into the room with a finger stuck in his ear] Babble babble owie babble babble pick up babble babble ear babble babble ball babble babble [makes swooshing noise and motions for an object decending].
Dren: Oh, Lord.

Ten minutes later.

Enter Hubby.

Dren: Sigh. You’re gonna be so excited to be home.
Little A: Slurp [partaking of dinner]
JJ: Big!! Trouble!!

Five minutes later.

Hubby: Hello, Providence Medical Group?

Five minutes later after the pleadings of Dren, who did NOT want to go to the doctor’s office, urgent care, or the E.R.: she had fish tacos to consume.

Hubby: Hold. Still.
JJ: ARGH!
Hubby: [wearing his head lamp and using a toothpick that will either liberate said object from toddler's ear canal or cause permanent hearing damage if puncturing important bits'n'pieces] STILL!
JJ: ARGH!
Little A: Slurp.

Five more minutes in which a number of pokings, a number of “STILL!” commands , and number of howls, and a number of instructions on how to jump up and down while leaning with the blocked ear canal side of the head to the ground were given

Hubby: It’s a rock.
JJ: Band-aid?
Little A: Belch.

Fish tacos were then consumed. And all God’s creatures continued to live through the evening with unblocked ear canals.

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