Tales of Me and the Husband

Did you get through it?  Some of you are probably thinking: It’s so true.  How’d he get it so spot-on?  That Bill Cosby… he’s a genius.  Right???  I mean, talking to the ceilings!  Having one kid take up residence as “the Informer” (that’s William in our home).  Steve and I laugh our heads off as we watch his whole skit and look at each other like, “YES.  YES!  YES!!!  This is so true!”  So, while our household can feel anything but normal, apparently it is quite normal.

I thought I’d share some of the recent crazies with you.  The ones that have us scratching our heads and banging them against table legs.

Lindsey’s backpack is full to the brim.  Which is saying quite a lot because the backpack is about as big as she is.  She sneakily puts it away in the coat closet so I rarely get to actually peek inside but when I do the backpack looks at me sadly as if to say, “I am so heavy.  Please ask her to clean me out.”  No rhyme, no reason, just papers haphazardly stuffed inside any which way.  At her recent parent-teacher conference her teacher actually said, referring to Lindsey’s desk and backpack mess, “I have never seen the likes of it in all my teaching days.”  So, when I do see this mess, I demand that she clean it.  Then, she’ll hand me the papers that were sent home with her intended for parents.  It’s a great little routine we’ve got going.  Some of these papers are timely, as you can imagine.  It’s December.  The paper reads: “September 15, 2011.  Someone in your child’s class was sent home with a serious case of head lice.  This is no ordinary head lice.  It is a special breed: one that actually feasts on your child’s skin and burrows their way deep into their brains.  Please check your child routinely and, if a girl, have them wear their hair up.”  Two months too late.  Thanks, Lindsey!

Nathaniel comes home from college from time to time.  He never ceases to bring his laptop with him.  Cause here, at the Hunt house, there are time limits on our home computer.  On his own HP, no such thing!  The big college student can waste his day away playing on his very own computer while his siblings look at him, green with envy, as the home Mac counts down their time: “Parental controls log-out in five, four, three, two, one…”.  Yes, they would like to kill “parental controls.” They would also love to get their hands on Nathaniel’s computer–particulary William: “A computer without time limits?!?  I could be on that for hours without Mom and Dad noticing!  I could order me the entire Lego catalog!”  (Not sure how he thinks he could do that without a credit card–clearly he has not thought this all the way through.) But here’s the problem: Nathaniel locks his computer.  It’s some new-fangled security that actually requires Nathaniel’s fingerprint to log on.  It’s just a normal HP computer but has this crazy (and unnecessary) technology.  Now, you may know that 11-year old William wakes up early.  6 AM early (always and forever.  No matter how many times I tell him, “YOU ARE NOT MISSING ANYTHING.  NOTHING IS GOING ON DOWNSTAIRS AT 6 AM!!  GO BACK TO SLEEP.”). Well, one morning when Nathaniel was home, around 6 AM, there was the locked computer right next to a sleeping Nathaniel, a sleeping Nathaniel that won’t be seeing the light of day till around 1 pm, because he very likely went to bed only three hours ago at 3 AM. It’s right there! Unused–locked and, yet, unused!  Knowing that everyone is still sleeping, William recognizes an opportunity–he could get lots of important Lego-research done during these prime quiet hours. But what to do? With the Mission Impossible soundtrack playing (softly!) in the background, William hatches a plan. Climbing on to his  brother’s bed (mind you, Nathaniel is 18 and 6’4″) and standing over and straddling this sleeping brother’s head (yes, this is a  bad idea!) with the computer in one hand and his brother’s index finger in the other, he gently attempts to swipe it over the fingerprint reader in hopes that it will unlock. Well, despite this valiant effort, suffice it to say, the monster awoke. You can imagine what happened next!

You can’t make this stuff up.