Hazard pay

Gently insert fingers into hair.
Massage lightly to ensure maximum intertwine-age.
Take a deep breath.
...
Let it out at the highest possible volume as you yank the ever-loving daylights out of your cranium.
Rinse and repeat.

Mum and Da left yesterday for a five day camping jaunt at a much higher latitude and elevation. Just the two of them, no kids. Well, plus the large group with which they're camping, but no kids for which they are responsible! And I'm in charge while they're gone.

Really Kleptomaniac Demonspawn isn't that bad when she's left alone, but Hypersonic Hyperactive Demonspawn sees it as his honor-bound duty to incite mayhem and discord wherever he walks... and he ran out of Ritalin.

We went to the library yesterday, all four of us, though Buster didn't get anything. Klepto continually confuses me. She's not at her grade level with reading, but was motivated (by forces unknown to me) to get a large book on the life and music of Beethoven and a slightly smaller volume on Harriet Tubman. And she's actually reading them. It's good; confusing, but good.
We all return to school at various times near the end of the month, and I'm having my belated BD party as well.
I'm taking the kids to a local river today to swim and, as Hyper said, "work off our energies!"

Laters!
~Brill