Signs it's time to wash the car

I recently came across some half-finished blog ideas that I started and then abandoned months ago. This one was from last spring, but since we're currently in the middle of winter car angst at my house, it seemed appropriate to post it now.

Signs that it’s time to clean the car after a long winter:

1)   Your four-year-old says from the back floorboard of the car, “Look mom, I built a sand castle!”

2)   You notice a child eating half a granola bar on the way to gymnastics. The last time you handed out granola bars in the car was when you were visiting the pumpkin patch.

3)   If your children ever go on the lam from the law, the FBI could easily lift their fingerprints off of every interior window in your vehicle.

4)   Now that the temperature has finally climbed above 30 degrees, you find all seven missing mates to the glove/mitten sets you’ve been replacing all winter long.

5)   The dog refuses to get into the car by himself due to an unfortunate experience involving his entanglement with a half-eaten Tootsie Pop.

As it's only January, and we have a good two months before spring arrives, none of this is cause enough for me to run out today and clean my car. But come March, it will undergo the annual scrubbing, vacuuming, waxing routine, and I will threaten my children with a new no-food-in-the-car rule, at which they will promptly laugh because they have heard it a dozen times before and are aware that the first instance in which we're running late will see me tossing a couple of PB&Js into the back seat like it's feeding time at the zoo. But for now, I will embrace the chaos, hang a Sand and Sun-scented air freshener from my rear view mirror, and pretend that the sandcastles in the back seat are part of some bizarre beach vacation.