This is cross posted at the new, experimental blog ... you guys let me know if that thing is working out at all.

What Could Go Wrong?

School was canceled in our area today because of fog.

Because of FOG.

And I'm not talking about zombies -crawling -out -of -the -ocean -to -take -revenge -on -the -residents -of -an -idealic -bayside -town kind of fog. I'm talking about a little bit of mist near the ground.

The thing is, in this area, there've usually been a couple of schooldays missed because of snow by this time of year. But this December has been warm, and I guess the school district has some snow days that they have to burn through or lose them next year. So they canceled school today because of fog.

I'm working graveyard shift and Wendy (who is blogging again, by the way) had to leave for finals this morning at 7:30 … which meant I had to forego some sleep today and stay up with the kids. Wendy expected to be home around 2, so about 10:00 AM I decided that I was going to lay down and try to sleep for a while.

I'd be in my bedroom, 30 feet down the hall from the living room, where the kids would be watching TV. What could go wrong?

With three kids under the age of ten, I should have known better than to ask myself such a stupid, stupid, stupid question.

Now, since my son lives with his mom during the week, there were only two kids here today. That's still two too many for me to think I could get away with actually sleeping. But I tried. I set the kids up with an early lunch at 10, and I put snacks on the table and water bottles were in the fridge. The TV was tuned to Cartoon Network. Normal people should have been able to function without BREAKING EACH OTHER'S FEET for three hours under those circumstances, right?

Well, no, nobody actually broke anybody's feet, but when Wendy woke me up this afternoon, this is the story she had to tell:

So I got home about 12:45 and both kids were sitting on the couch screaming at me as I was trying to open the door. Liam was screaming "Willow keeps hitting me!" and Willow was screaming "Liam broke my feet!" Both kids were sitting on the couch WAILING with rage at one another … and Willow, who insisted that both of her feet were, in fact, BROKEN, was sitting with both feet contorted and twisted into the most godawful shapes imaginable. If her feet were hurting it was because of the way she was holding them.

Turns out that the kids had started fighting about something (God knows what) and Willow's plan of attack had been to punch her brother randomly and Liam's plan of attack had been to make more of a surgical strike: he singled out his sister's feet for an intense bombardment of punches and kicks.

You might need to know Liam to appreciate this. 'Round these parts he's known as "fists of pudding."

And Willow (known locally as "THE drama queen") was more than willing to accommodate. Liam's plan had been to win by isolation-and-immobilization, and it had worked. Willow couldn't walk, and she was happy to demonstrate this by getting up and walking all over the house in an exaggerated wobble, feet twisted into knotty little fists. And, for good measure, back stooped and bent and both arms flailing about. Oh, yes, the drama queen was fatally wounded and would never recover.

Willow brought her mother up to date: "Darrell told us when he went to bed not to answer the phone, not to open the door, and not to wake him unless there was an emergency… and Liam has been screaming for Darrell but he hasn't woke up!"

(I thought I'd made it clear to them that if they needed to wake me they should actually WALK INTO THE BEDROOM AND WAKE ME, not sit on the couch and scream. However, with Willow's recently crippled feet and Liam's concentrated barrage of pudding fists, neither of them were willing to leave the couch… so apparently Liam had started screaming for me while all this was going on and I'd somehow slept through it.)

Wendy wanted details. "You tried to wake Darrell? Why? Was there an emergency?"

"Yes."

"WHAT WAS THE EMERGENCY?"

"We were hitting and kicking each other."

"That's NOT AN EMERGENCY!!"

So Willow (as I write this she's running up and down the hall and singing … apparently the Lord has taken pity on her and healed not only her mangled feet but also her deeply scared psyche, since she seems to have forgotten the whole thing) explained to her mother that yes, it was an emergency since they were both the victims of horrible acts of violence.

These are the people I live with.

Wendy and I decided to send the kids to bed early tonight for the crimes of

• Breaking feet


• Lying about having broken feet


• Generally acting like turds

Which should work out so that I can watch the hour-long episode of The Office before I have to leave for work tonight…

And, hopefully, drive home tomorrow morning through a fogless sunrise to a childless house.

Labels: Personal