A Quiz to Start Your Week

What is the relationship between the two photos below, both taken on Sunday?



Is it:

a) When the family isn't paying attention, the dog goes crazy with anything that involves packaging and boxes;

b) While Mama is grading papers, and Daddy is in charge of the children, the older child "mysteriously" slips away from Daddy's notice and wreaks havoc trying to figure out what on earth these little sticky strips wrapped in pink paper are all about, an experiment he feels entitled to undertake because when he asked about the "light sticks" in the next box over, he got a most unsatisfying answer and was not allowed even one to play with;

c) When a girl who doesn't generally need a nap konks out after lunch due to a whole weekend of outdoor activity, she gets so well rested that she has a hard time falling asleep that night; which means she asks to sleep in Mama and Daddy's room; which means she can't sleep in their bed either; which means she looks for something more interesting to do than sleep; which means that since she's already destroyed pretty much all the necklaces in the junk jewelry box that lives on Mama's dresser, she'll explore the next-best thing: funny sticky strips wrapped in pink paper.



(Answer at the end of the post.)

In other fun activities this past weekend, we planted flowers in the porch pots, raked the thatch out of the grass, doused the dandelions with weed killer, tamed the periwinkle, mulched, swept, and generally presentable-ified the yard. (With the exception of our own horrifying presences in it. You'll see in a moment what I mean.)

Also, we continued our losing battle against water in our basement, mustering a box fan, shop vac, and brand-new dehumidifier into the arsenal. Nothing, it appears, can win the fight against a lot that happens to be slightly downhill from our next-door-neighbors', particularly given that their sump pump vents directly into our yard at the perfect slightly-uphill spot.

But really the crowning glory of the weekend was when we got to be That Family. You know, the one that lets their five-year-old run around in the front yard in his Mickey Mouse t-shirt and Transformers underwear and nothing else. The one with the mother who witnesses said child jump onto an old, rusted, very small, used-to-be-red tricycle with one wonky wheel, and vroom down the driveway clenching the handlebars while hunched over the seat and standing on the trike's back.

Barefoot.

Wearing nothing but a t-shirt and underpants.

While riding a rusty, squeaking, wobbly, much-too-small-for-him tricycle down the hill of a concrete driveway.

And when the trike invariably crashed, and he moaned about his sore ankle, the mother of That Family looked up from her raking and said in her tired voice, "This is why I always tell you that you need to wear shoes for riding a bike. And why I've been telling you since you came out here to go inside and put some pants on. If you did those things, you wouldn't get hurt."

To his credit, the child stopped his belly-aching.

To her credit, the mother did not stop her raking.

Unfortunately for our future bank accounts, there were no reality TV producers anywhere in the vicinity to film what was surely the most mortifyingly trashy half-hour in our family's history.


(P.S. The right answer to the little quiz is C -- though it should be noted that Son has in fact voiced resentment on more than one occasion that the "light sticks" are off limits. At least Daughter didn't follow up the festival of package opening by wearing them on herself in any way, right?)