Actually, it’s more like take the 101 to the 405, then the toll road to I-5, and scoot down the coast to grandmother’s house but there aren’t that many rivers and woods in Southern California.  Nevermind that, the grand girls are coming for Thanksgiving and they will have a surprise waiting for them.  There’s a bit of a story here so please read on. 

A couple of years ago Kongo got this frantic call to come pick up a hand-made doll house that Mrs. Kongo had negotiated on the side while doing some interior design work at a client’s home.  It turned out after the negotiations that the doll house wouldn’t fit in her car.  So Kongo, naturally, dropped everything and raced up the freeway to meet Mrs. Kongo.  Well, it didn’t fit in Kongo’s car either so he had to put the top down and gently wedge the new home between the seats.  After receiving appropriate caution warnings from Mrs Kongo, the monkey drove it home at no more than 50 MPH with one hand on the house and one hand on the wheel trying desperately to avoid a Wizard of Oz tornado scenario that would have sent the house up into the air over Interstate 15 never to be seen again until it fell on a wicked witch.  Well everything worked out, wicked witches were spared, and the doll house made it safely home where it then sat gathering dust for almost two years!

It seemed that Mrs. Kongo  worried that the girls “weren’t old enough” to play with the doll house?  Huh?  I mean, come on, they’re little girls and this is a DOLL HOUSE after all and how long was this thing going to sit unused taking up Kongo’s parking spot in the garage anyway?  Finally, as the girls reach the “mature” ages of 5 and going on four, Mrs. Kongo, full of the holiday spirit, deemed that they were old enough to play with the doll house.  Whew!

It’s not like the girls never had anything to do when they visited.  There were the true to life, girl-sized stainless steel shopping carts complete with snack-sized boxes and cans to put in them that were used to race about the house crashing into furniture, Kongo and his monkey troop was always up for games, there was the pool of course during the warm months, iPads, Wii games, kids show channels on TV, feeding the fish in the koi pond, a neighborhood park a few blocks away, and plenty of places to play hide and seek.  The girls were never bored.  They just didn’t get to play with the doll house.  In fact, they didn’t even know about the doll house.  That’s all going to change in a few days.

To prepare for the big gala open house, Mrs. Kongo made a special trip to some specialty Doll House Store over in Pacific Beach to make sure she had “the right stuff.”  She spent a lot of time dusting and cleaning two years worth of garage soot off the hand made shingles, reattaching peeling wallpaper, and hanging curtains.  Then the whole thing was set up in the middle of the front room, right in front of the fireplace (hmm), and each little artifact placed just so.  Kongo wondered aloud whether Mrs. Kongo had ever had a similar doll house as a child and her quick, “NO!” answer said a lot.  Kongo is starting to get the big picture here.

Anyway, Kongo thinks the doll house is actually pretty cool and spent some time exploring it.  Now that everything is set up just so, he’s wondering how long that will last.  Most likely about two minutes, but those first, greatly anticipated squeals of delight will make it all worthwhile.  Of course all good things will come to an end and we KNOW that two little girls playing with this doll house together is going to end up in at least one “time out” within the hour.  Hopefully, it won’t turn into a “shopping cart rage” incident and nothing gets broken too badly.

Kongo earnestly hopes his oldest son will see the joy in his daughters eyes and want to take the doll house home with them so Kongo can once again park in the garage.  But the way this is really going to turn out, Kongo can feel it, is that “there isn’t enough room in the car.”

Travel safe this Thanksgiving.  Have fun.