Firewood, Firearms, & Firemen

Animal lovers read at your own risk:  

The three F’s:

Firewood

Firearms

Firemen

All these very ominous words suspiciously start with the same letter as that perniciously troublesome word: “Father”.  

Is this chance?    I think not.

Last Saturday afternoon Chloe and I decided to spend the day at the local bookstore while the boys headed for the barn to cut and stack wood.  And that right there is where this little narrative goes wrong.  Right from the start, which is to say that Chloe and I leaving the boys on their own was our first mistake.  Male brains make way better decisions when estrogen is nearby and unfortunately on this Saturday, it wasn’t.

First, the firewood:  We needed some.  But the getting is not as labor intensive as you would imagine.  In the modern age, cutting and stacking wood is not what it used to be.  Mark uses his chainsaw while the boys man the gas-powered wood splitter.  Barely an ounce of sweat is produced by these activities.  Stacking the wood is another matter but we still don’t feel sorry for them.  Especially since I helped split and stack the incident-free weekend before.

Out behind are barn is plenty of wood, it just needs to be cut up.  There were a dozen large timber trees that Mark had gotten off a property that had just been thinned.  Mark would cut sections off the tree into rounds, roll them to Mitchell who’d split them, and toss them into a pile for Connor to stack.  How wrong can that go?

Wrong enough. 

At some point during Mark’s chain sawing, he cut through the tree and it looked as if it were starting to bleed.  He stopped the chainsaw, wondered if he’d cut himself and inspected his hands and legs.  Nothing wrong there.  He returned to cutting and more blood gushed from the tree.  Once the tree was sliced through he discovered a squirrel --or more accurately, two halves of a once whole squirrel, who made the unfortunate decision to take a cozy winter nap inside the tree right smack in the center of his cutting line. 

The boys decided the best plan of action would be to cremate the poor squirrel by piling up all the excess bark into a big mound, setting it on fire, and tossing in the upper and lower regions of their fallen comrade along with a jumble of associated guts. 

The bark pile was set ablaze with a brazen amount of gas, sprinkled with squirrel parts, lit with a match, and then they went back to work.

Soon more cutting and splitting ensued and once more another tree began to bleed.  Apparently our tree was a squirrel duplex and another cruel eviction had been served.  This time when the tree split in half they found its occupant miraculously alive yet horrifically mutilated beyond repair.  Now what?

Well according to testosterone this is where the second “F” comes in:  Firearms.

Mark went and got the gun.  Had estrogen been on the scene, any gaggle of girls would have been running away from the grisly scene to seek refuge in the house leaving the poor squirrel to meet its maker unassisted.  This is not the way of testosterone.  In sharp contrast, the boys were posturing as to who among them would be the best henchman to put the thing out of its misery.  Somehow Connor prevailed.  In some bizarre male bonding experiment a proud father loaded the gun and unleashed the weapon into his son’s hands.  Soon the deed was done.  Squirrel dead, young boy hopped up on adrenaline. 

One more for the crematorium, which was fully ablaze by this time.

With that, they set off back to work once more cutting and stacking.  They weren’t at it long when a few visitors showed up at the barn.  These visitors brought with them an enormous fire truck.  Yes, the third F: Firemen.

Mark looked up at the fully clad crew, put down his chain saw and said, “Let me guess…today is NOT a burn day.”

They smiled and nodded.

Mark has never been known for his fact-checking.  He had simply surveyed the valley surrounding our house, spotted several smoke plumes, and assumed it was a burn day.  Unfortunately it was only a burn day for the government.  So when the local fire department saw the smoke they jumped in their biggest firetruck and came to check things out (my theory is that perhaps they got a tip from an irritated neighbor who had had it with the copious amounts of chain-sawing, gun-firing, and fire making going on next door).  But soon they admitted they weren't really concerned about the now identified fire and that they were simply bored and this gave them something to do.

Meanwhile Connor got a little nervous as this was his first brush with the law (that we know about anyway) and was hoping the firefighters wouldn’t notice the dead carcasses in the fire--or the gun.  He was relieved when they finally left and he "wasn't arrested".

At the end of the day when Chloe and I returned nothing about their firewood shenanigans was ever mentioned.  But late that night, right before bed, we always ask our kids what their favorite part of the day was.  Connor couldn't contain his excitement over the days events any longer and bluntly stated,  

“I got to shoot an animal and the fire department showed up.”

And there you have it.  Quite a contrast to girls day at the bookstore.  When a Father's in charge anything can happen, and around here it usually does.

Washer Wars: A Magnetic Mystery

Over the last couple of weeks I've spent a fair amount of time INSIDE of my washing machine.  The interesting news is that I've discovered I can fit inside a washing machine, the futile news is, really, when would that little absurdity ever come up naturally in a conversation?  "Hey did you know I fit inside a washing machine?" Of course IF somehow I did manage to figure out how to wedge that bit of hooey into a conversation I'd leave out the part that it's a huge front loading washer in order to give off a deceitful impression that I'm super skinny and possess serious flexibility skills.

But the reason I've been spending quality time inside my washer is the real scuttlebutt.  Over the last two weeks something major has been banging around in my washing machine every time I run a load.  I toss in a bunch of clothes into an empty machine, turn it on, and sometime during the washing or spinning cycles the most ferocious banging sound thunders from my laundry room.  This is no ordinary clink of a few playground pocket rocks mind you, it's an earth shattering

Bang! Bang! Bang!

I'd know the sound of playground rocks when I hear them.  I'm an expert in playground rocks and what they sound like in ANY household appliance--including blenders (which is the very reason I firmly believe boys of any age should not watch infomercials).  I've got a jar full of playground rocks in my laundry room.
One curious month several years ago, I decided to collect and put into a jar every single rock that came out of my washer or dryer for 30 days, just to see if it was really that bad.  It was.

This "30-days-of-rocks-in-my-laundry" jar still sits on a shelf in my laundry room.  It reminds me of the exact reasons why motherhood has driven me occasionally insane and what a fabulous mother I am for having not killed any of my children...yet.

So the recent unidentifiable ear-splitting clash inside my washing machine for two weeks strait had me declaring war on whatever it was.  After each load and accompanying thrashing, I'd throw myself into the thing and give it a thorough groping as if I was working airport security.  And what did I find?  Nothing.  When I'd run another load, guess what I hear again?

Bang! Bang! Bang!

And as soon as I heard it, I'd be there waiting for the end-of-cycle buzzer and throw the door open expecting to find a toaster or a hub cap or something inside the tub.
But what did I find?  Absolutely Nothing. 

Again I run another load.  Bang! Bang! Bang!  Wait for the buzzer, throw open the door, pull out all the clothes, just sure I was about to find a set of fireplace tools or perhaps a skateboard but nope, I always found nothing. Just me inside a washing machine and the echos of a thousand curse words.

I was officially more agitated than the appliance.

Look for yourself...do you see ANYTHING on the bottom of the tub here?

Nothing. 
For two weeks I was driven insane.  I was officially at war with an unknown enemy.  I needed a battle plan.

I decided to run yet another load but this time I was determined not to wait for the buzzer.  I just stood there staring down that machine like I had challenged it to some sort of high-noon western quickdraw. With hands at my side ready to rip the door open at the slightest sound.

It took ten full minutes, but there it was Bang! Bang! Bang!
Out flew my pointed index finger and in heated frenzy I put the thing on "pause" and clawed all the wet stuff out, and dove head first inside the danged thing once again.  This time I decided I wasn't coming out until I solved the mystery. Water was seeping onto the floor but I didn't care, a casualty of war.

Now you'd think that living on Planet Earth with all that gravity business that a simple check of the lower half of the tub like I had been doing would have been adequate.  Alas it was not.  However reasonable it thought it was to assume that whatever it is banging around in there would surely be found resting at the bottom of the tub...underestimated one important force of nature...

The Boy-Factor.  Rock loving, magnet loving boys.  MAGNETS! Like an idiot, I never bothered looking anti-gravity UP.  Why would anything be stuck to the top of the drum?  Unless of course it was a giant magnet.

AH HA! See it now??

Yep, there it was all the time...somewhere on the TOP of the drum each time I checked.

The mother of all magnets.

A huge, heavy, bang-inducing magnet.  For two weeks this thing drove me mad.  

So what did I do with the thing?  I looked up at my jar of aggravating playground rocks and just shook my head.  I thought my machines and I had seen it all. Then I went in and stuck it back in Connor's room on his metal wall. I figured if he ever left it in his pocket again and tossed his pants into the wash, it would only be fair to use it to magnetize him to the wall for a lengthy Time Out.

Next time something bangs in the dryer, I'll be looking down for playground rocks (or toasters and hubcaps) and UP for gargantuan magnets.  Until then, I'm pleased to know I can fit inside a washer.

Washer Wars, another domestic triumph.  

Pint-Sized Plagiarizers

Parent Teacher Conferences are always an eye opener.  These little meetings are always a surprise.  Kinda like a parole board hearing, you're never really sure how it's gonna go.  With certain children in the house I go into these meetings fairly confident and with some of the other kids, well, I must admit I pre-medicate with  Alieve (that all-day strong stuff) just in case things take an unexpected turn.

These conferences are not unlike having your palm read.  There's a large amount of uncertainty that comes with the territory.  Almost always, there's at least one teacher who drops some sort of curious revelation about your kid that you just didn't know.  But this year it was not the teacher but my own kid that filled me in on his own scholastic scandal.

It was AFTER a middle school teacher conference, that was going really really well I might add, that I learned of a sneeky misdeed.  As I left  the classroom, intoxicated with relief, I made my way out into the hallway where my son pointed out HIS OWN misdeed.

He said, "Hey mom, see my math project there on the wall?"  He was pointing to the math project in RED:

He went on, "That's Sev's right next to mine in green.  He got a better grade than me and mine even had more detail than his."

"That happens sometimes," I reassured him.

"No mom.  Look at them closer," he said.

So I looked at Connor's...

Then I looked at Sev's...

"Uhhh, Sev sure writes a lot like you do," I say.

"Yeah, well, that's cause I wrote his for him."

Huh??

He sheepishly shrugged his shoulders, "Mom, I was at his house and he had to get all his homework done before we could go outside.  So I told him I'd do his math project for him so we could get done faster."

I was still staring at my son.

"Mom, that's not the bad part," the little  charlatan insisted.  "The bad part is that I put more work and details in mine and Sev got a better grade than me!  Isn't that crazy?"

I just shook my head.  The kid may not be a full blown plagiarizer just yet but from the looks of things he's teetering on the slippery slope between flippant forgery and fraud.

I may need another Alieve.

And to think, Teacher Conference had gone really well up until that point.

10 Minute Pioneers

Our neighborhood had a little power outage the other day.  It lasted all day.  Actually, all night too.  And my guess would be that if you asked any of our kids or any of their friends who were at our house during the whole ordeal, they would probably not call 12 hours without power a "little" outage.

Long ago Mark and I used to live on a ranch way out of town and back in those days, the first snowfall often brought several feet of heavy snow and along with it, a power outage that would last days and sometimes an entire week.  So a half a day without power is hardly noticeable.  We quickly learned how to prepare for any power outage in grand style.

Now that we live right outside the city limits and power outages are rare, we're a bit out of practice but nonetheless prepared with all our old stuff.  No sooner does the power go out, everyone in the Skillman household quickly springs into action.  We head directly to the flashlight cupboard and take out a battery operated lantern.  With that, we then head to our pantry and set flame to our plethora of kerosene lanterns and then go out to the garage and get "The Box".  Within minutes you can hardly tell there's been an electrical interruption.  And soon neighbors begin to call wondering why our house is so full of lights and why our power isn't out like everyone else's.

During our latest outage, the boys got all excited and prepared to brave an evening without things that plug in.  This time, Connor's friend Severin was over and he couldn't have been more ecstatic.  He pronounced with giddy excitement that he loved power outages because he always wanted to be a pioneer.

They all began to make plans on how much fun they were about to have braving a black-out; read some books, pitch a tent indoors, cook on the BBQ...But after about ten minutes Severin is wondering if the phone works so he can call home and see if the power's out at his house too.  He's decided if it isn't, he just might want to go home, taking Connor with him, so they can resume gaming.

Mitchell checked the phones, then suddenly he gets an idea and heads strait for the garage to rummage more thoroughly through "The Box".  Soon, he comes back with a hand-crankable TV that could have only of come from some sort of Armageddon catalog.  Mitch winds the thing up and a smile spreads across the faces of all my stalwart pioneers.

Soon, the kids (including Mark) abandon their frontier fantasies and gather around the TV set...happy to be spared from an annoying lack of power.

Apparently, pioneering had lost its pizzaz...

Bottom Feeders

Mitchell and his friend recently discovered a new way to make a quick and easy buck: become bottom feeders.  This, by definition, is one that feeds low on the food chain; a scavenger.  And that, by no coincidence, would be the exact methodology for Mitchell's newest enterprise.

Due to my advanced motherly-radar-system [MRS], Mitchell's exploitations were uncovered before the whole ordeal could be officially classified as a major scam.  Thankfully this mommy gig
has helped me develop a keen sense of awareness-what I call "parental paranoia".  This basically means I can spot a little white lie as soon as it's uttered by any of my offspring, I know when unbrushed teeth are being falsely passed off as brushed from a mile away, and I've developed a keen eye which enables me to discern when a flagrant case of boxer fraud has been committed-which is when a child claims to have changed their underwear after being sent up for a shower when indeed the boy is clean and the underthings are not.  But most important of all, I can hear the sound of a scam a mile away.  Which is exactly the sound I heard over the weekend.

And what exactly does a scam sound like you ask?  Well, in this particular case it's the sound of a ten-year old boy rummaging repeatedly in his penny bank.  The third time I heard Connor run upstairs followed by the rattle of change, I officially raised our personal homeland security threat level to orange and launched a full-blown investigation.

After a quick minute of motherly detective work this is what I uncovered:

Connor has a Wii but spends most of his life dreaming of the day his brother Mitchell will let him get on his X-box.

On this particular day, the day of the incident,  when Connor had his friend Severin over, they spent a good part of the morning begging and pleading with Mitchell to let them play a game on his x-box.  And of course Mitchell spent a good part of the day repeatedly telling them NO.

Then MItchell was suddenly seized with the thought that here was an opportunity to make a few bucks.  So Mitch and his friend came up with the big idea to start charging the boys by the hour for the privilege of playing the x-box, which the two naive 10-year olds were more than happy to pay. 

 

Every hour on the hour you'd hear them bound up the stairs and raid Connors penny bank..

 

At first I thought it was so nice of the older boys to finally let the younger ones have a crack at the x-box.  Until I soon realized that the older boys were in another room unusually content with video games made "for babies".  The kind of video games that collect dust and are only played by young girls and small uncoordinated children, games like "Mario Party" and "Disney Princess; Enchanted Forest".  Meanwhile the younger boys were playing war on the x-box.   Hmmmmm...something wasn't adding up.

 

Then at the sound of change rattling from upstairs, it suddenly clicked...I was hearing...A SCAM.

In all, Mitch had made about 10 bucks before I figured it all out.
TEN BUCKS! A small price to pay for being a gullible little brother.

And now...as for Mitch...next time he wants to eat I think I'll charge him ten bucks for a fork and perhaps another ten for the plate.  We'll see who's the bottom feeder now!

Mancake

Mitchell and Connor got that mid-afternoon snack attack.  Apparently they got tired of the usual chips, cereal, and ramen that they usually forage for, so they decided a round of pancakes might be a nice change.  The smell of pancakes began to waft through the house and when I passed through the kitchen this is what I found...

Chloe's had her girl cousins over for a solid week and I think the poor boys have been suffering from an overload of estrogen that's been swirling about the house.

It appears that the boys have had enough of the girly stuff going on around here and have decided to boldly make some sort of food statement by making "Mancakes".

When You Work For Your Dad

Now that summer is here, Connor has decided to hang out with his good friend Severin a few days a week.  The big catch is that Sev has a summer job.  He's been hired by his dad to work down at the family shop so he can earn a little money for scout camp.  Sev's Eleven, so as you can imagine, the sort of work he's doing is probably everything the real workers don't want to do...sweeping, weeding, cleaning out the gutters-grunge work.

On the days Connor spends the night he gets up and goes to work with Sev.  And while Sev gets paid, Connor's working for free on a "help-your-friend-with-their-chores-so-you-can-go-and-play-sooner kind of deal.

Sev's keeps an official time card to keep track of his work hours and when Connor goes down to help he can't resist tracking his time too:

The thing gave me a good laugh.

At first they started out working nice even hours.  On June 16th they both put in a solid two hours of work.  But then the next day they only put in 1 1/2 hours.  Did they get more efficient? Or just plain sick of working already?

Then, I think they realized actually counting up hours was doing MATH and realized that math should not be apart of any 11-year old's summer vacation.  So they switched to the method of simply listing the time they clocked in and out without trying to figure up the figures.  They'd just as soon leave that for dad...he's not on summer vacation.

Next I wondered what started happening on June 17th because they began to clock out at uneven hours.  They both showed up to work at 11:30-a nice even number.  Then they suddenly quit working at 2:13pm.  2:13pm?  I figured Sev's mom must have called them in for lunch or something.

But my favorite entry of all are Sev's last two entries when he clocked in at 8:55am one morning and 9:03am the next.  That's the serious perks that come from being employed by your dad.  You can show up at 9:03 and nobody's gonna fire you.  And even better than showing up at three minutes past any hour, he can leave at 11:52 just because he feels like it.  Perhaps he got hungry, thristy, or just because it got too hot outside and he decided he'd rather go home and swim in your pool than keep weed whacking.

That's my kinda job.

I only hope Sev's dad majored in math since he will need to rely on these skills to figure out what to pay his son.  He's gotta figure out what to pay a kid who worked 2 hours and 57 minutes on one day and 1 hour and 40 minutes the next.

When Boys Get Crafty

Have you ever seen Perler Beads?

They're these little plastic meltable beads that kids create different shapes and designs with using sturdy little peg boards.  When your creation is finished, you can iron it together permanently, thus insuring that once it's been melted,  your child's masterpiece can last as long as Michelangelo's ceiling and be admired for generations to come.

These are a few of Chloe's latest creations:

It's just the kind of thing girls love and just the kind of thing I disdain.  Any toy/craft with tiny pieces tend to make me crazy-though lucky for me these sorts of things somehow have a way of mysteriously disappearing from the house when the kids go off to school.

However,  I've recently decided that Perlers are not so bad for TWO reasons:

1. Unlike Legos, one pass with a vacuum and the headache's gone.
2. It can occupy a bored girl for hours and hours.

What I did not realize was that Perlers can actually entertain bored TEENAGED BOYS equally as well.  Who knew, right?  But it's true.
  
During spring break, Chloe and her cousins Madi and Janelle spent many long days making creations of every color, size, and shape.  Initially the boys around the house largely ignored the craft fest going on at the kitchen bar.  But around day three a strange thing happened.

It happened when the girls decided to take a little "craft break" and went to spend a day or two at Madi and Janelle's house.  This left us with a house full of testosterone.  To my surprise, I came into the kitchen and found that the boys had commandeered the Perlers and began a massive crafting frenzy of their own.

What did these boys make, you ask?  Of course they did not make cute little girl shapes, or silly monkeys, or pink lizards and geometric flowers.  Nor did they even try to make sports shapes-which would have been my guess.

What they were making was WAR.

Spread across the bar were dozens of tiny little army people.  Blue army guys and green army guys all placed in strategic formations.

...and of course they made little army tanks to go with them:

After CRAFTing and ironing legions of warriors together they raided the house in search of some sort of advanced weaponry to wage a little warfare.  Their weapon of choice?  Rubber bands.

The onslaught lasted for hours.  And for several weeks after,  I found the carnage in obscure corners of the house.  Poor little green and blue decapitated soldiers who'd gone MIA were later vacuumed up from under couches, rugs, and unlodged from obscure corners about the kitchen.

A day or two later, when the girls came back to resume "Project Perlers", they began to complain that there were no green or blue Perlers to craft with.

"Where'd all the blue and green ones go?  They're all gone!" The girls grumbled.

"The boys used them all up." I answered.

"The boys?" they said with scrunched up faces.  "The boys don't craft!" they insisted.

Unfortunately for me I don't think I convinced the girls that the boys really did use the Perlers...or an IRON for that matter either.  They still think I sat around for two days secretly crafting up green and blue creations.  Thanks to the boys, my good craft-free name has been called under question.  Lets hope the photos will once again restore my good name.

Nerf Gone Wrong

Most of our family squabbles are worked out in one of two ways.  By a decisive game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, or we shoot it out with our arsenal of Nerf guns.  These methods usually solve everything, including marital spats.

The boys around the house apparently do not understand the simple reasoning behind "foam-based weaponry" which is--to AVOID human harm.  They've been complaining for years that the firepower just isn't enough so satisfy their hunter/gatherer, testosterone amp-ed need for violence.

I arrived home one afternoon and found this scene:

Apparently my guys were not the first to suffer from the pains of inadequate "fire power" offered by Nerf.  When the boys Googled their awful plight and actually found a website...

They spent the entire afternoon "modifying" every Nerf gun in the house.

Thank goodness for Google.  It's so good, it hurts.

ONE Perfect Student

Spring Break always starts with a BANG:  Parent/Teacher Conferences.

I've got to confess that High School Teacher Conferences tend to slip my mind.  Most likely because of the popular teenage trend to stealthily cover up the fact that they're even going on.  This year, with a little help from a certain someone,  I actually remembered and made a plan to get down to the school and visit with Mitchell's teachers.  And, since I was making the effort to go, I decided to bring my tight-lipped teen along, just in case the ride got bumpy.  Thankfully it was a blissful day largely filled with compliments and congratulations for the boy. (Large exhale, big sigh of relief.)

But not without a few interesting (and blog-able) notes:

First, from his English Teacher:

I'm excited to report that she gave ME an A+.  When we showed up she turned to Mitchell and said, "First, your mother's turn."  It turns out she's read the blog.  And she gave me an A+ !!   If only Mr. Sharp and Mr. McBain were still teaching at the school, I would have drug her over to their desks and had her give my two favorite english teachers a full report on my improved english scores and then begged them to expunge my high school records.  But unfortunately they're both retired.  drat!  (Although perhaps this is a good thing as Mr. McBain may have double checked my poor blog for its syntax: namely my erroneous use of comas, semi colons, and my overzealous exploitation of parentheses.)  With that swirling in my mind, I continued a very fun and  lighthearted conversation with his english teacher.  After a bit Mitchell got impatient and had to finally interrupt and say, "aren't we here to talk about me??"  (hush child!  I'm finally getting good grades.)

Mitchell was happy to redirect the conversation AWAY from our family's life exposing blog and back towards himself, that is, until it suddenly took an unexpected detour.  His english teacher turned her attention from the blog to the boy and generally told me he was an overall great student.  Then she leaned in toward him in a sort of covert way and in hushed tones she said, "Mitchell, can you think of any reason there might be a concern for your grades in this class?"

Mitchell face looks puzzled, he furrowed his brows, and gave a look of total bewilderment.  You could see his mind scanning his english class routines and wondering how things could be so concerning when everything seemed to be going so well.  Then Mitchell's face slowly smooths out and he raises his brows and says,  

"Ohhhhhhhhh.  The Chair?"

She gives him a nod.  "Yes the chair."

This is when I discovered that Mitchell has fallen asleep a few times in the cozy chair he has chosen to sit in to read during class.  His teacher tries to suppress a grin long enough to stay composed and suggest he read something a little more lively than "The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics" during class time in an effort to stay awake.  To which I heartily agree that said book does NOT scream "gripping page turner".

Then the report from his science teacher: 
It just so happens he goes to this class with his cousin Bryce.  She reported to me that Mitchell is pretty quick and smart when it comes to science (no surprise there) but that he has a little bit of an issue documenting his brilliance on paper and actually handing in such evidence (...no surprise here either).  Paperwork is not this kid's forte.  His cousin Bryce, on the other hand, is a little more challenged by the concept of science (and quite frankly, who the heck isn't??) and that often forces him to write everything down, work it out on paper, and turn it in.  Then she looked up and said,

"If I could combine Mitchell's brain with Bryce's paperwork,

I'd have the perfect student."

So I take that as a compliment...even if it's only HALF of one.  I am thrilled that between my sister-in-law and I, we've got  

ONE PERFECT BOY!  

So with that, my plan is to duct tape these boys together, brain and brawn, and get them successfully through high school.

POST NOTE:  Around "press time", I discovered Mitchell just found an exciting new book to read in class that he's certain will solve his sleepy problems.  His new book?  "The Physics of Superheroes".  It has a cartoon-looking cover that deceptively looks like an attention-grabber.  But when I cracked it open, it was the same droll stuff as before; do we really need to know that that gravity is 15 times greater on Krypton than on Earth?  And that when the Flash runs, he's surrounded by a pocket of air that enables him to breathe?  Seriously kid, you're scaring me.  Where's your cousin?  I'm getting the duct tape back out!