Mullet Man and His Coughing Engine

Nathan’s nap time schedule has been all over the place this past week. He’s totally off kilter, napping only 30 minutes at a time and waking up crying.  He recently went through a great napping phase, however. The past month or so he was napping twice a day for one to two hours at a time.

I can’t say I’m surprised that his naps have changed yet again.  His nap issues have been well-documented throughout this site, like here and here and especially here.  Nathan tends to go through these transitions. We have had to deal with Angry Nap Phases multiple times already. He’ll sleep great for a month or so and then he’ll grow a temporary second head and will morph into Angry Naptime Baby.

Well, today I was able to get him down for his nap. Paul was working from home, so we both gave Nathan kisses, cajoling him and smothering him with big bundles of love. After he finally fell asleep, we tip-toed around the house, cringing at each pained creak our floor made. It’s an old house so creaks and groans are a common occurrence. So anyway, I was surfing the Internet when all of a sudden, I hear a car roar into the driveway, complete with skidding gravel.

It had a really, really loud engine that sounded sick with the whooping cough.

And Nathan was sleeping.

A man sporting a mullet climbed out of the driver’s side while a little boy, probably about 8 years old, jumped out of the passenger side.

They slammed their doors.

Which really irritated me. I mean, I have a very grumpy baby who hasn’t been sleeping well finally asleep in his room! Then the man opened the trunk and retrieved a jack.

He slammed the trunk closed.

He jacked up the car, laid on the ground, and stuck his head under the body. In the meantime, the engine continued to run, coughing like an old man who had been smoking for 70 years. The little boy jumped back into the car, so I turned away from the window and sat back down.

The little boy honked the horn.

I’m sure he didn’t do it on purpose because it wasn’t a blaring I-don’t-give-a-damn honk. It was a little honk. Dainty.

It was a Horn Poot.

But still. I had a sleeping baby in the other room!

By this time, I started to get a little irritated. Ok, a lot. They continued to open and close the doors and the trunk, making all kinds of noise and commotion.

Nathan still slept.

Finally, the mullet-sporting man fixed whatever was wrong with his car. He sauntered around to his door, got into the car, and proceeded to rev the engine. Multiple times. Like he was parked in his driveway and not some random strangers’. The engine sputtered and coughed in protest. Then he backed out of our driveway, gunned the engine, and took off in a cloud of black smoke and flying driveway-gravel.

Nathan woke up.

He was not happy.

He only slept 20 minutes that time and he was screaming indignantly about being woken up prematurely. I scooped him out of his crib and took him outside, his favorite place to be. Within minutes, his tears dried and a bright smile shone on his face. He soon forgot about being rudely awakened by a mullet man and his coughing engine.