Change I can believe in

The girls and I had a scheduled date to go pick up Kieren, Dayden and Kiersi and take them to Nanny and Poppy's house for a festive Christmas Tree Decorating Party, and on our way out of town, we decided to stop at the car wash and vaccuum out the van.

Vaccuuming out the van is a job that we should undertake at least once every two weeks. Plus, I keep plastic grocery bags in there to keep the litter at a minimum, but here I must be frank: Meelyn and Aisling are PIGS. I've never seen anything like the mess they can make. My area -- the two front seats and the little cargo net in between -- can stay relatively tidy for a month or more, but everything behind those seats? Chaos. Like a band of refugees camped there for a month with only basic santitation. This is something I don't understand, since both girls require at least an hour's prep time before they'll consent to step their dainty feet outside the doors of our home. What, then, could lead to such pristine creatures to wildly abandon water bottles, used-up spiral-bound notebooks, Arbonne catalogs, gum wrappers, cast-off sweaters/jackets/sweatshirts and empty lip gloss containers all over the van from their seats to the trunk?

So we went to the car wash. We had four quarters, which was enough to get started, but I could tell it was going to be an eight quarter job - there were little bits of gravel, scraps of dry leaves, a couple of soda straw wrappers and a general sprinkling of fuzz that needed to be swept out, so I walked over to the change machine while the girls shoveled out the area around their seats.

This was a different car wash than the one we usually use, and their change machine was different too. The machine I'm familiar with is a fancy-schmancy one that asks you how you want your change returned to you and gives you the choice of inserting $1, $5, $10 or $20. I noted that this machine also allowed you to use bills in the same denominations, but I didn't pay attention to the fact that it wasn't asking me how I wanted my change returned until I'd already inserted a twenty dollar bill.

It became immediately apparent that this machine? IT WAS DIFFERENT -- when twenty dollars in quarters came spilling out of the coin return slot, as if I'd just won a tidy little jackpot on some sort of car wash lotto.

Getting all those coins from the change machine back over to the car nearly tore the lining out of the pocket of my coat. Oi.