Heart-shaped balloons.

Well here's the question of the day--- How many red and pink heart-shaped balloons can fit into the passenger seat of a two-seater car? (Answer: 16.)

I went to the local Dollar Store to get those Valentine balloons this afternoon. I use them as decorations around the living room, dining room and breakfast room, then give them away to the couples as they leave at the end of the night. At a price of just a dollar for each balloon, it's a pretty and festive way to decorate-- you can't resist smiling when you see balloons floating up towards the ceiling.

The customer ahead of me at the Dollar Store was buying 36 balloons--- one for each year he and his wife have been married. He didn't pick out just one design, either... he stood there and carefully made a colorful selection of all those balloons. To get them out to his car, he had to tie the ribbons to a shopping cart and wheel them across the parking lot, and I'm sure his vehicle wasn't a two-seater.

As I got to my own car with my 16 balloons, a guy pedaling by on a bicycle saw me unlocking the door to my little car and he said "Now this I need to see!" He stopped pedaling and stood there with his bicycle, watching what I was doing. "Do you think you'd want to be trying to fit those into that there trunk?" I had no intention of telling that man that there was more room in the passenger seat than in the trunk, and besides-- I could just see that trunk slamming down on a few of the balloons as I tried to close it. I just smiled at the man and prayed that the wind wouldn't kick up until I had all the balloons inside the car.

I did have a system-- I had a small umbrella in the car and I wrapped all those balloon ribbons around the umbrella and set the umbrella on the floor in front of the passenger seat. Then I started to arrange the balloons, getting as many as possible near the floor of the car, using my purse to anchor the ribbons. "Would you be liking some help there, missy? All those balloons might just lift that itty-bitty car right off the pavement." I told the man that I was doing just fine, thank you, and told him I'd done this before. (I resisted the urge to tell him "This here ain't exactly my first rodeo.")

When all the balloons were safely in the car and low enough so I could see out of the windows, I shut the door and went around to the driver's side. Before I got into the car, I told my one-man bicycle-riding audience to have a happy Valentine's Day. He tipped his Astros' cap to me and told me "Y'all do the same, missy." And off he went. (I also resisted the urge to tell the bicycle man that I wasn't his missy.)

Before I drove from one end of that parking lot to the other, some of the balloons near the top of the pile started to shift a little bit. In order to see out the passenger-side window, I had to use my right hand to move two of the balloons towards the back of the car... not an easy thing to do with high bucket-seats. To see out of the passenger-side of the windshield, I had to keep my right arm extended over the top five balloons. Thankfully, I only had to stop at one red light on the way home, and -- miraculously -- I didn't see one sheriff's car as I passed by the police station.

I'm sure anyone looking at my car from the passenger side saw just a window full of red and pink Valentine balloons. If I couldn't see out that window, then surely no one could see in.... it must have looked like the car was driving itself.

But I got home safely, got the balloons into the back door without losing any of them to the breeze, and now they're all around the living room, dining room and breakfast room. Looking around at the arrangement, I could have bought half a dozen more... but there would have been no way to get six more heart-shaped balloons into my little car unless I took a chance with the trunk. When I told my husband that, he said I could have brought home as many balloons as I wanted if I had thought to put the top down on my car.

Now that would have been a sight-- driving down the road with the top down and holding onto thirty-seven red and pink heart-shaped balloons. (I can hear that man now--- Yee-haaaaaaw, missy!)