Life down here on earth

So much better than Valentine's Day

It's a holiday, so I'm lying in bed 20 minutes past the time I normally get up, trying to sleep in even though my mind is already racing with things to do today.

Two boys shuffle into the room in brighter moods than you would think this early in the morning.  "Hi, Mom!" they chime.

"What are you doing in here? I'm trying to sleep."

"We came to snuggle," they say.

As they huddle under the warm blankets, one on each side of me, there is a collective sigh of contentment.

After a moment one says, "I already took a shower.  No one even had to tell me. I just knew I needed it."

"Yeah, when you can smell your own self it's pretty bad."

The other says, "I can smell my own breath.  I probably should brush my teeth."

"Yes, you probably should."

And then, just as quickly as they arrived, they are up and leaving.

"Wait! Where are you going?"

"We're going to play Wii, " says one.

The other says, "Happy President's Day, Mom.  I love you."

And they are gone again.

It was THIS BIG!

First, a little background. The kids play this game on the Wii called Animal Crossing. You are a little character with a cute little house in a town full of cute animals with their own cute houses.  You wander around and fish in the river or plant flowers or chop down trees.  You buy and sell things at the store.  The raccoon who runs the store sold you your house and you have to earn money to pay him back.  You sell fruit or fish or other things to earn this money.  You can take your time paying him back.  Raccoons aren't the type to rush you about that sort of thing.

Now, here's the story.  I was downstairs fiddling with the camera on my phone when I heard a horrific wailing.  Then there was yelling and the sound of a few things being thrown and then stomping.  I stopped what I was doing and waited.  You know how it is when you are driving and you first hear an ambulance siren somewhere in the distance?  You know you need to be prepared for it, but you don't yet know where it's coming from or where it's going so you continue on slowly knowing that any minute that siren will be blaring directly next to you.  It was like that.

And the wailing came running down the stairs in the form of an 8-year-old in his underwear and the only word I could make out was "chicken nuggets."

It took a while to sort out the story, but here's how it went down. Sam was fishing (in the game) and had his sights, or bobber, on a really big one (you can see the fish's shadow under the water) which he was certain was this one rare fish that is worth a lot of money.  At a crucial moment, for we know fishing is all about timing, Jack jumped at Sam and yelled in his ear, "CHICKEN NUGGETS!" which caused Sam to jerk his hand and the fish got away.

Sam was furious.  You don't know pathetic till you have a little boy curled up in your lap crying because, "I needed that money for my LOAN!"   He kept going on about how those fish were rare and he wouldn't have any of our saying that he couldn't be sure what kind of fish it was or that there would be others.  Who would have thought that Sam's "one who got away" story would come from a video game? 

I made the mistake of chuckling a bit about the "chicken nuggets" part because that's a pretty funny thing to blurt out of nowhere. This only made Sam more angry and gave Jack the idea that he was off the hook because he was funny.

Sam's temper doesn't show itself that often, but when it does it's a doozy.  He didn't speak to Jack for the rest of the night and slept in his own room instead of the top bunk in Jack's room for the first time in months.  They both went to sleep a little sad.  Jack, because he's been reading scary books at bedtime and likes to have company in his room to ward off the ghosts and Sam, because he wasn't sure when he'd be able to pay his mortgage. I didn't tell him there's a lot of that going around these days.