It wasn't my fault...

Flower, Flower, Flower.

I am doomed.

Sister A is going to be furious with me. I'm serious. This could be it. I've locked myself in and I am not answering the phone.

This morning A and hubby K took daughter O to swim camp. O was extremely excited! She couldn't wait to leave. In fact my little O was so distracted by her efforts to rush her parents into the car that I got 2 squeezey hugs and a kiss from her with out begging or bribery. Yea me!

With their departure I got the twins for the day. Yea me again!

We had a great morning. We went to the beach park where after kicking their tiny buttocks in badminton I sat and read for a while (NewFoundLand by Rebecca Ray and it is a dee-light! I think I'll have a lot more to say about it later.) H and S threw anything they could lift into the river. Then it was off to our local bookstore where H picked out Pinky Pye (having read and Ginger Pye and loving it) and S was thrilled to get the next book in The Little House series, By the Shores of Silver Lake. Then it was back to their house where we had lunch and rode our bikes for a while.

This is probably about where the decision making started going south. Don't get me wrong nothing ended in tears (unless you want to count mine which should be flowing in about 18 minutes) or a trip to the emergency room but well, I am hiding out right?

The weather was beautiful and surprisingly summery. Hey! Cue the Beach Boys music and let's go in the pool. The pool was terrific. There was splashing, there was floating, they was interpretive dance. Two hours later we exit the pool. Now we're all logy and brain tired. You know that feeling? You're comfortably cool and feeling lazy and weak?

I'm not quite sure how what happened next happened. I swear it really is a blur. I know that we were playing Who Can Cheat The Best At Candy Land --a family favorite-- and then suddenly I had Sharpies in my hand. And. There was H next to me still in his bathing suit and with a lot of exposed, unmarked flesh. The perfect canvas.

I'll admit it. I'm weak and I guess S is too because she had a handful of markers and I had a handful of markers and H now has some "tattoos". There's a Mom heart with wings on his left arm, a hula girl on his right arm, a battleship on his stomach that he can make roll with the waves if you know what I mean, a pink heart of his left cheek--lower case cheek, and he now has brown chest hair.

This was when the phone rang. It was A to say that she and K were at our local exit and would be home in about 15 minutes. All of a sudden my life was an 80's teen movie. Man oh man did I snap back to reality with a vengeance. I hustled H back into the pool and S and I tried to scrub the Sharpie off him. I know, I know. It's a permanent marker. I was paniced. I thought that the chlorine might help fade him a little. When that didn't work I got him out and dressed. Everything was covered that could lead to questions and sentencing as an adult.

By now H and S both knew the amount of trouble we were about to be in and that it was going to go much worse for me. Confessing and throwing ourselves onto A's mercy was not an option. Hey we weren't raised to give in. You don't confess if there's any kind of chance you can beat it. The three of us worked out a little scenario where in H keeps his clothes on and tubs and scrubs himself before bed everyday for the next 5 years.

Did it work? I don't have a clue. As soon as A and K walked in the door I bugged out. I'll tell you I now perfectly understand how the insanity defense works. I do have a history of "tattooing" children without parental knowledge. When O was a baby I put a temporary tattoo of a rose on her bottom and a dove on her shoulder and then took her to meet A at the pediatrician's for a check up. I cannot tell you how angry A was after the examination. As I recall "you idiot moron" and "it's on her permanent record" were both yelled at me numerous times. This time it was not premeditated. It all happened in a too-long-in-the-pool induced haze.

That's it. I shall use the Pool-Brain Defense and maybe someday I will have unsupervised visitation once again with my wonderful nieces and nephew . If there is any incarceration-ing involved will you promise to bake me a cake with a file in it? And a hamburger too, can there be a hamburger in there?

On the lam,
Happy