A Whale of a Tale

My husband never knows what he's going to run into when he calls on his way home from work. To any government agency listening in on the line, our phone conversation this evening would have seemed crazy...or like we were talking in code. To him, it's just another day at our house: "Hey wifey. What are you doing?" "Walking around the house looking for something that looks like a whale." "Okay..." "I'm thinking the 5-gallon Abita water bottle that I use to clean out the fish tank looks like a whale." Then, his first words after walking in the door weren't "What's for dinner?" but instead, "Ahh, I see we're in the whale-making business." Our kitchen floor was covered with a cardboard diaper box cut in pieces, a box cutter, the aforementioned 5-gallon water bottle that I was wrangling, some seriously sticky duct tape, paper plates, scissors, an entire Saturday newspaper that I'd torn into strips for paper machee, and the twins in their carseats as they fusssed at me for daring to do something that didn't involve holding them. After working on the whale all evening, I asked what he'd do if he needed a huge whale for some event. His reply: "I'd go to the party store."