Four of my seven grandchildren live in what I would call the Deep South....the really, really Deep South. Visiting them is always an adventure. Like now, for instance. I'm sitting on the back deck with my ipad while the children play in the woods behind their house. Freckles is on the four-wheeler, zooming around and around and around the yard while Fancy hollers at her to come and help with the construction of a "fort" in the woods. A verbal war ensues.
"La,la,la,la....I can't hear you!"
"You can't ever, ever, ever play in here because you didn't help!"
"So what? I don't want to play in there anyway!"
"Shut up, Freckles!"
"YOU shut up!"
Wise Guy, the official ADHD member of the family, has been working on the building project for about an hour now. That's gotta be a record. Oops, spoke too soon. He is now flinging acorns at Freckles every time she zooms by, tearing up the yard and coming dangerously close to tipping over at each turn, not to mention that she's doing her best to run over Bigfoot and make it look like justifiable homicide by provoking him to throw sticks at her.
Bigfoot just ran in the house to show his mother where the stuff is to get started on his English class project, which is due tomorrow and which he has known about for two weeks. I guess he got her squared away, because he's running back to the woods to work on the fort. Freckles was just ordered to get off the four-wheeler for reckless driving and she went stomping into the house. Fancy, the oldest child of the clan, is uncharacteristically focused on the construction of the fort, probably more to avoid studying for the geometry test she has tomorrow than to spend quality time cooperating with her brothers. Wise Guy, aka, self-proclaimed 'Defender of Evil' announces that he has to poop and goes inside, stopping on the way to show me where he got a giant splinter in his hand.
Earlier today, this blended family of crazy kids was getting along just fine playing Guitar Hero; and by getting along, I mean they were laughing at each other's farts without rolling on the floor gagging and making throw up noises, and singing the "One Pound Fish" song in unison until their mother is ready to strangle them all.
There is something oddly appropriate about the whole 'grenade as part of the decor' in this household.
