you sure you weren't dropped on your head?

Geez...I didn't think I would make it.  Finally its relatively quiet, I'm sitting, and there are no situations in which parental intervention is required!

It was a looong night.  Five 14 year old boys is pretty much the equivalent of  a herd of baboons...do baboons come in a herd?...I don't know, but you understand what I mean.  Although, really...I've watched a lot of Animal Planet, and baboons might have more common sense!

First let me say that I should have known better and been prepared...when my son asked me if his friends could hang out after school at our house...well I should have asked how many friends...and for how long.  But I didn't.  Apparently, unless otherwise specified, hanging out after school has many definitions... technically after school on a Friday is really all the time between 3pm Friday and whenever mom finally looses it and sends everyone home.  
       So after a wonderful afternoon of yelling and xbox, I found myself cooking dinner for, not 6 people, but 11 people... 5 of which eat A LOT!!! So not something easily accomplished on the fly! 

The fun then moved (thankfully) to another room in the house so they could play pool.  At least that's what I thought they were doing.  When the boys came to ask me for super glue cause one of the ends had come off one of the pool cues...well once again some sort of warning sound should have gone off in my head, but no, I just handed the glue right over...like a big fat dummy!
  
       Not 10 minutes later my spidey senses are alerted to trouble by the loud, girl-like screaming coming from the pool room.  But did I go to investigate after the first round of screaming?  No, I said to myself "they're a bunch of boys...screaming is normal." and just told them to keep it down.  Did that bring the screaming to an end? NOPE! In fact, the screaming intensified to crazy, little girl shrieking levels.  Nothing to do then but go check.

    What wonderfulness did I find you ask?  Well apparently it seemed like a great idea to find out what would happen if one of the boys put super glue on his hand and, with the help of his 3 friends, held down the 4th friend and glued his hand the other boy's leg.  Now I know you and I would know this was not a good idea.  In fact I'd wager to say that this idea would probably never even occur to most of us. 

The loud, high-pitched screaming...well that is the natural consequence of tearing your super-glued hand from your friend's leg!


Apparently, hairy palms do not come from where we were told they come from...





...and waxing in an infinitely easier, not to mention more effective and less painful way, to remove unwanted leg hair!

So...half a bottle of nail polish remover and some very red skin later, hair and glue is gone from all affected limbs and I have gone to bed in sheer bafflement.

But was that the end of this adventure? NO, of course not!  They then played several games on the Kinect...which of course necessitates a lot of jumping and swinging of arms and legs.  So...back down the stairs I come after the lovely sounds of crashing and breaking of glass.  Yup...if you're jumping around and swinging your arms...as baboons are wont to do...make sure you remove all glasses full of soda from the near vicinity! 

Clean-up...further scolding...and I'm back to bed to get some sleep for my mental health.

But not for long....because, obviously, we are not in the library, and the concept of quiet voices is lost on baboons. 

Fortunately,  I have ear plugs and dad has VERY short fuse.  So around 2 am silence finally descended in our home.

This morning the boys all buckled down and completed their science projects...which by the way is the original reason I was given for why all 5 of them needed to be in one place (my house).  Projects complete they then sort of cleaned up after themselves.  They took my white tablecloth, which they failed to remove prior to the project making, outside to shake off all the... whatever that was all over it. 

Did you know its windy today?  And when 2 people shake out a large piece of fabric outside on a windy day...well it makes kind of a wind sail effect....

"HEY!! Let's take the tablecloth out front and go windsailing on our skateboards!!!"  Some large sticks and a few meters of duck tape later....and you have a windsail...and a no-longer-usable tablecloth.  I'll admit...it was pretty dang funny to watch! (once I got over the demise of my tablecloth.) 

  They ran in about 1/2 an hour ago...consumed almost a whole pot of chili...and are now back to xbox.  So that's why its quiet...when you're killing zombies all your limited concentration needs to be focused on your objective...no unnecessary talking!

  I hear that in a couple of hours some parents might be coming by to take some of them home....there's still hope that at the end of the day I will have some sanity left. 

A slight, but shining hope!!