The great Pop-Tart rescue

WHEN WE LAST spoke, I had finished up painting the bathroom, using the tip of a little finger to catch a tricky little corner over the tub. In an uncommonly rich gesture, the little girl was off looking for some old clothes so she could help.

Meanwhile, the Merlot was gurgling in the hot garage while I stood at the end of the driveway watching the clouds roll from right to left. I have a farmer’s feel for the weather. My toes swell and my joints quiver. And when clouds roll from right to left, I know their smuggling in some monsoonal moisture.

“If I wanted monsoonal moisture,” I told my wife, “I would’ve moved to Guam.”

“Go ahead,” she said.

“I’m just saying ... “

“I know what you’re saying,” she said, and turned back to retrieving a Pop-Tart from the DVD player.

If you think all this sounds like a bad sitcom, you’re wrong. Because there is hope here. There is character, compassion and an almost noble sense of stick-with-it-ness. That’s my term, stick-with-it-ness. You can use it if you want.

“I got it!” my wife yelps.

“What?”

“The Pop-Tart,” she said. “And part of a $5 bill.”

“I wondered where that went,” I said.

“Yay, Mommy!” said the toddler.

See, these aren’t just columns. They are almost novelistic examinations of American life. We are, by my count, one of the last middle-class families living in Los Angeles. That alone is worth a chapter or two. Talk about stick-with-it-ness. Last time anybody got a decent raise, Lincoln was chasing Mary Todd around a White House bedroom.

Those were the days, the Civil War. Seems so quaint now, an enemy we could see.

Now all we’ve got is environmental gloom, a shaky economy and the faint whiff of World War III.

Anybody got any good news?

“I do, Daddy,” says the little girl one night at dinner.

We do these mandatory Sunday dinners now, corn-pone attempts to gather the increasingly busy kids in one place -- to catch up, educate, mock, enlighten, tease, challenge, entertain and look each other squarely in the eye. In other words, a family dinner. They’re not perfect. Which, to me, makes them perfect. I’m sort of a connoisseur of failed good intentions.

On this night, all four kids sit round the table, and you can see the little bones in their jaws working on the chewy grilled beef.

They are like Indians trying to soften fresh leather into shoes, turning the meat over in their mouths, looking for weak spots in the sinew. Could’ve gone with a better cut of sirloin, I suppose. Next time.

“You have good news?” I ask the little girl.

She mumbles something about going to church camp for a week.

“That is good news,” I tell the little girl, though I will miss her every day. Considering her bloodlines, she is strangely courageous in the way she marches off to summer camp, chin up and hugging her favorite pillow. It’s an uncanny amount of poise and verve. At least for us.

“Anybody else got any good news?” I ask.

My wife reminds us that we’re going away to the beach soon, where the waves always seem to massage away care and worry, and rinse life down to its barest components. Sun. Sand. Lime. Tequila. Aspirin. Coffee.

But there’s more to rejoice over. Turns out someone hosed down the front porch without me even asking -- a first.

Then one day the toddler, invigorated by the cooler weather, locked himself in my closet. We found him quickly. That’s good news, I guess. When captured, he was sitting on my dress shoes and sucking on my favorite yellow necktie. Probably tasted like soup.

“I’ve got more ties,” I told him after the rescue.

“You know, I’m kinda full,” he said.

“Look, this one tastes like vermouth,” I said.

“Catch me later,” he answered.

At dinner, my wife tells us how she got the DVD player to work again, good news indeed. I remember her writhing suggestively on the floor next to the TV -- flashlight in hand, like the girl from Ipanema. Sometimes, I think she fixes the DVD player just to torment men like me. You could sell tickets.

Later that evening, I notice that the clouds are again moving in the proper direction -- left to right, left to right -- meaning that nature’s air conditioning is fixed and we can all venture outdoors again.

Even in tough times, small pleasures seem to endure. Anybody got a Pop-Tart?

Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com or at myspace.com/chris erskine.