Partners in Crime
Folding laundry yesterday was, for me, more akin to organizing berries by color while large birds swooped at my head, loudly squawking in an aggressive attempt to intercept my every effort.
You see, once in a blue moon the kids, well they gang up on me. And the little one's the ring leader.
It all started out friendly enough...they enjoy having warm laundry thrown on them, gathering at the carpet near the dryer like baby birds awaiting worms,and so it started yesterday when I decided to go ahead and grant their every wish, showering them with warm t-shirts and towels and "watch out"s. (If you've ever washed a dog and observed the way he rolls on any and every piece of dry fabric directly thereafter, like he's trying to shed his skin, well then you've seen the way these two roll in warm laundry.)
Now as it cools, they usually lose interest and busy themselves elsewhere--usually, but not today. Today the little one gets the party started by running laps, the end of each lap marked by her trampling my folded piles. The older one just follows suit because it's the only way he knows how to play with her; he has to play on her terms, (she's like that.) And who am I to complain when I see the two kids enjoying each other's company so much?
But I could only take so much before I had to tell the older one he was old enough to know better, and you see this is where the little one is the mastermind, because she knows better, too...but even though she knows better, she also knows that I don't know she knows better, are you with me? (I mean I could make it really confusing from here, but why?)
So the little one begins yelling, "aaaaaaaaah," (This is a long "A" with a line over the top, but not like "aah," as in "ah, i see..." but rather the sort of "aah" that you give to the dentist, the "aaaa" in apple, you follow?) So she starts yelling, "aaaaaaaah," while she runs here and there and tramples my t-shirt piles like a horse on manure, and that's when the bigger one joins in, matching her exact sound, so that their voices become one voice and double in strength.
It was chaos defined. I even thought at one point I caught a glimpse of the little one drop-kicking a roll of socks while I fussed at the scape-goat, but I can't be sure. So they're running and "aaaaah"ing and looking at each other as if they've just found their soulmate, so delighted and high...and then I even get a little high off of watching them go on like this...and then the bigger one picks up another pile with two hands and I stop him. But while I'm doing so, the little one walks over to another, looks me dead in the eye, and without so much as a flinch of her eyelashes, flicks it right over. Hear me when I say there was so much ease, such a coolness, and so little effort in the way she carried out this motion, that it all became crystal clear to me, like a light bulb above my head; every night when I think she's sound asleep in her crib, she's actually flying with her posse to Vegas and dealing out cards with the best of them. I mean, do you know what it feels like to think you know someone, and then....!!!!!!!!
Anyway, that was my morning with the gangstas.
Yesterday evening consisted of Evan mistaking our bed for a trampoline, Shaun's laptop for a soccer ball, his computer cords for a lasso, and the bedroom blinds for a drumset. It wasn't pretty. And all the while I'm "handcuffed" to the television set because that's where our only working phone (the one with a short cord) resides.
I guess I could reason that they had pent-up energy, that they lack discipline, that it was "just one of those days." But it doesn't even matter anymore, because today--today we're going to the park...the one where Evan calls the mulch "milch."
And they can throw all the milch and dirt and "aaaah"s they want. They can use the swings as lassos for all I care, as long as they're tired, and sweating like pigs, and slurring their words when we get back. If that's check, check, and check by the time we leave, then I'm home-free, people!
