Prodigal Son Returns

The boy child is home again, and life is back to normal, and by normal, I mean not anywhere near normal, probably more idiosyncratic than normal. Grady was barely home ten minutes before a fight broke out - like I wasn't anticipating that.

I'm not too sure about Grady's camp. My guess is they didn't have bathrooms, or if they did, the kids didn't get time to use them, because as soon as that boy walked through the door, he was straight to the bathroom and I didn't see him again for nigh on forty minutes. That is why the fight broke out, now that Sid has discovered the window in the basement bathroom, she set up shop outside and subjected Grady to a barrage of questions. "What are you doing ?" I'm not sure why she really needed to ask that one. "How long are you going to be?" followed by "Hurry up you're taking too long " and "Aren't you done yet ?" and on and on and on. No wonder when Grady finally came out he was ready to rip her arm off and beat her with the soggy end.

Now Grady is back home, it is time to clean his room - which I know wont go over too well. Grady's idea of a clean room is if he can make it from the door to his bed without impaling himself on a piece of Lego. Unfortunately for him, I have more exacting standards. One day in a desperate attempt to get him to clean his room, I let out a shriek and told him I'd seen a mouse run across his floor. I hammed it up a bit and almost had him convinced to dive in and start de-cluttering, but I must have overplayed my hand because he saw right through my ruse. Apparently it was my scream that gave it away. He reasoned that as I am the only one in the house actually willing to catch a mouse, I would also be the one person least likely to scream if I saw one. He was right dammit, with the parade of mice that shimmy across our floors, it would take a lot to make me react.

Meanwhile, on a different note, when I had to take Lindsay to work, Sid's current favourite song was playing. However it does contain a bad word, not one that she hasn't already heard from me, mind you, but she doesn't need to hear it anywhere else, even I have standards. So usually at that point in the song I turn the volume down momentarily, which Sid doesn't appreciate. Tonight she told me "Don't turn the song down mummy, I'll just cover my eyes". I'm really not sure how that would work, but maybe it made sense to her.