Page 41 of Too Close To Call

I chuckle. This kid cracks me up. I unload my arms on the counter in front of Daisy. “Okay, what do you want on your sandwich?”

“Do you have peanut butter?”

I look at the plethora of options spread before her, shrug, and go back to the pantry and grab the peanut butter.

Daisy ends up with a crustless peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich and I make my regular everything-I-have sandwich. I add a side of potato chips to mine, but Daisy wants carrots and hummus with hers. I don’t have tiny carrots like she wants, so I cut up full-length carrots. I also don’t have hummus. Who really likes the stuff? Daisy settles on dipping her carrots in ranch dressing.

“Are you excited about starting school?”

“I already know my teacher. Her name is Ms. Burton. Mommy says I get to pick out my own backpack and lunchbox. And Auntie Carina is already working on my school wardrobe.”

My mouth remains open with my sandwich poised in front of my face. A designer school wardrobe? For kindergarten? I grin. Yeah, I can see Carina and Daisy into that. I bet she’s going to be cute.

After we clean up the kitchen from lunch, I run upstairs to put on my bathing suit while Daisy searches for a kid program she wants to watch for the allotted hour before we can swim.

I’m gone maybe three minutes tops and what I hear coming from the surround sound system makes me sprint to the living room, vault over the couch, and land in front of a confused Daisy. She looks up at me as I reach for the remote and tips her precious head. “Why does that woman not have clothes on?”

Don’t judge. I’m a grown-ass man and I can have whatever I want to watch on my own television.

“She had a pretty dress on, but she took it off. And look, she didn’t hang it up. She tossed it on the floor. Mommy says we should always pick our clothes up.”

“Um…”

Daisy tries to peer around me, but I block her until I can hit the correct button to turn the television off. I give a relieved sigh when that mission is accomplished.

“Maybe she’s going to put another pretty dress on.” Daisy looks up at me and offers as an explanation. I nod in agreement.

I’m not going anywhere near that. “Why don’t we make cookies? You like cookies, don’t you?”

Her blue eyes light up. “I do. I like oatmeal raisin cookies best.”

So do I. “Great! We’ll need to run to the store. I don’t think I have any raisins.”

Daisy looks up at me and says, “Then I need to change my clothes.”

I shrug. I don’t see anything wrong with the blue shorts. Who knew clothes were so complicated? “Sounds good. Let’s go.”

I put the remote on a top shelf and run back upstairs to throw on a t-shirt over my head and settle on wearing my board shorts. Back at the cottage, Daisy picks out an orange romper thing and wears silver sandals.

Then her hair presents a problem. She wants it in a ponytail. I never realized how difficult that maneuver is to accomplish. How do women get it all to stay in place while twisting an elastic around the tail of hair? It took me four tries to get the bumps out. Evidently bumps are bad things. It was touch and go for a while there.

The next problem we have is Daisy’s car seat. I don’t have one. We end up taking the golf cart I have to run back and forth to my folk’s house. I felt like Daisy should wear a helmet, so I found an old motorcycle helmet I had when I was a kid. It’s still huge on her, but she’s safe. Who cares that it takes us longer to get there? The kid is having a ball. I even let her stand between my legs and drive.

While we’re out, we stop for ice cream and she wants to swing at the park. All afternoon, friends ask why I’m with Daisy. Which leads to me explaining about Tori’s cut and turning down their offers to help. More than once, I’ve fielded comments about how much Daisy looks like me and my mom.

I think Daisy and I are doing great together. We have a wonderful day in our search for raisins. No ice cream is spilled on her outfit. No knees are scraped on the slide or swings. I even teach her how to turn her underarm into a squirt gun in the pool. The pink gunk on my toenails doesn’t wash off like I’d thought, though. I’ll need to do a bit of research on how to clean it off, but I’m honestly not worried about it Daisy has turned out to be the coolest kid I’ve ever been around.

Until…

Two hours later, I’m changing my mind. It all started when Daisy went to the bathroom and ten minutes later calls out, “Okay, Case, I pooped. You can wipe my bottom now.”

I tell her to hold on and immediately put a call in for reinforcements.

“Please, Kimberly. Whatever you want is yours. How about a thousand bucks? What about my Z? Just please…”

Kimberly sniggers and I lose all hope that she’s coming to my rescue. “Sorry, Case. You’re on your own.”

Shyanne said the same thing. So did Jen and Ashley, who’s back from her honeymoon and got rather testy that I interrupted her. “But I thought kids her age could wipe their own ass?”

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