10 sure-fire ways to make your mother nuts in one afternoon...

1. While in unusually long bath (a.k.a. daddy is home alone with kids) grab and remove cap from brand new Bumble&bumble Conditioner.
2. Proceed to dump out conditioner and re-fill bottle with daddy's shaving cream.
3. While in bath that is ridiculously long and un-witnessed, take mom's department store facial wash and squeeze out all contents to make a new "squeeze water gun."
4. Shoot water over every inch of just freshly cleaned bathroom.
5. While dad is still at home and mom is out - go to her office and proceed to load 3 dvd's at a time into each computer drive, leave them for mom to find.
6. Before leaving office, proceed to unplug charging iPod cord and re-plug both ends into most inconspicuous openings of the printer and jam them in.
7. Later in afternoon - appear to be playing nicely with brother in basement. Remove hidden hairspray bottle and deftly squirt into both ear canals. Pretend that you have no idea what your mother is talking about when she asks you why you smell like flowers. Only admit the truth under duress.
8. After being shooed outside to play - grab ridiculously inefficient "wet-mop" that has a floor cleaning chemical inside that works at a push of a button. Proceed to spray every square inch of pile of powdered sidewalk chalk (of which you spent two hours pounding 10 large chalks with a brick the day before). Step into gooey blue-green mess and leave your footprint every where you go for at least 60 full steps.
9. After some r&r following the "wrath of mom," grab hidden bottle of nail polish. Empty bottle into newly-filled-and-ready-for-garden-watering rain barrel. Slowly and nearly incoherently admit to being the cause of the oil spill in the rain barrel.
10. After each instance, look up at mom with big, teary brown eyes. With a quivering chin say, "Oh, I didn't know that would happen. I didn't know that would be bad..."

How much wood would a...?

I found the complete first season of "Woody Woodpecker" on DVD at our local library. My boys have been totally enjoying the annoying antics of that crazy bird, watching an episode after school each day. My favorite part about this situation is that Sam comes home from school and shouts at the top of his lungs, "Toby! Want to watch 'Woody Woodchucker' now?" Every time he says it I chuckle, I can't help myself. And then I chant (in my head) "How much wood would Woody Woodchucker chuck...?"

He's not slowing down...I'M getting quicker!

While happily typing away at my computer I was ALMOST finished with an intricate project that only needed to be printed. About 10 seconds into said printing, everything went dark and quiet...

1 second: "What happened? Did the power go out to our neighborhood"
2 seconds: "No, the lights are on in the basement...IT'S the breaker box!"
3 seconds: "Dangit! I put that kid's scooter too close to the breaker box! He found it!"
4 seconds: running. stairs. running.
5 seconds: Greeted by Toby in the garage: "He did it, he did it, he did it" (pointing at Sam)
6 seconds: "Samuel, never, never, never flip these 100 switches off again! How the heck did you do this in 1 second? Never, never, never touch this box again."

1 hour later: still resetting clocks, my printing job, and still in disbelief that he found, opened, and switched off the entire breaker box. Seriously? And people wonder why I often end my day with a glass of wine...