Charlie Manson

I don't know what overcomes daughter sometimes. I'm happily laying on the bed, fairly late last night, watching The 4400 and she jumps into the doorway in a Power Ranger-esque stance. However, something seems not quite normal. So I call her over & she does her special skipping/hopping/jumping walk and winds up next to my bed. Again in the Power Ranger-esque stance. Except now I can see that she's got pushpins tucked in between her fingers so that the spikey ends point out.

"Where did you get those?" I ask.

"I found them." She says.

"Where?" Sweartagod it's like pulling teeth.

"In the wall." She helpfully replies. At least she's not a liar, or rather a good liar, yet. I have her show me. The wall being the Eldest's bedroom wall & the pushpins recently being responsible for holding up his teenage treasures. I am briefly thankful he's still in California & can't see the havoc she's wreaking on his stuff. I take the pins, only to find them not much later stuck into my mattress... luckily not on my side.

Apparently just thinking about the eldest transmitts some kind of intercontinental thought wave because he calls at almost that exact minute. Harry Potter is on TV, am I watching it? I quickly flip to the Disney channel and it turns out the East coast is about 20 seconds behind the West coast. He takes great joy in telling me what's about to happen. Like he's got wizard skills, not like he's seen the movie, read the book or anything. Anyone else listening in on this conversation would be really confused why this grown man thinks he's this funny. Fifteen really is a funky age. His voice is all grown-up, he's much taller than me and yet he takes such enormous pleasure in kid things still. Secretly I hope he never outgrows this completely.

In the meantime daughter is jumping up & down on the bed. On me. Excitely begging to speak to her brother. I put her on speakerphone, to her delight & his dismay. Another psychic connection occurs as squareboy starts screaming on the eldest end that he wants to talk to his sister. Eldest puts squareboy on speakerphone too. Daughter & squareboy spend at least a minute (trust me a minute is really, really long) screaming at each other. Think whale "song". It's possible the whole country heard this over the speakerphones.

After the screaming daughter starts telling squareboy all about her new favorite movie with the bloody worms. She lisps a little, and it's over speakerphone, so it takes both squareboy & the eldest a good 4X to understand the bloody worm part. Eldest is incredulous that I let her watch Tremors. Until I remind him it's one of his favorite movies as well and that he, and his brothers, all saw that at way too early an age. Besides, it's not like I meant for her to see it. I was watching the SciFi channel and she walked in right at the part where the jackhammer guy jackhammers into the Graboid. Hence the bloody worm reference. It's really more of a comedy than a horror flick. Really.

Daughter & squareboy finally have enough and the eldest & I chat until I remind him that he's got The Count of Monte Cristo and Kon-Tiki to read by the time school starts in three weeks. Each book is over a thousand pages. He grumbles something about Clift Notes, I grumble something about honor & integrity and he hands the phone to my mom. Great. Second time today I have had to argue with a grandmother about the joys of summer reading. Number two also has summer reading he hasn't really started. While I'm firmly on the boys side, summer is summer, I also don't want either of them starting the school year off with F's.

I hang up the phone to find that daughter has become Charles Manson. Quick digression... can you believe there's a Charles Manson website? Anyway, she's gotten into the pens, again, and her forehead is one big, black tattoo. I'm not in the mood for bath #3, and I'm not in the mood to describe bath's #1 and #2, I turn off the lights and we go to sleep.