Sty Roasting Ghost Wrestling

Nothing much to report. HH refuses to validate my sty. "I don't see anything" was the exact quote. In the other corner, #1 son screams, "EEWWW" and refuses to look at me. Somebody is not telling the truth. Either I have reached the "Look away. I'm hideous!" level, or I am still the shell of my former self. The #2 son is the voice of reason. "I see the red, but not the raised up part." Which makes me think he is the truth-teller, because the raised-up part is on the inside of the eyelid. I don't make a habit of walking around the Mansion with my eyelid turned inside out. That's not how I roll.

#1 son and I roasted some marshmallows for dessert after lunch. On the stove. Doesn't everybody? No mosquitos, no smoke. Of course, there is a danger of setting the Mansion a-blaze. The boy said, "I'll get a pan of water ready, just in case." Duh. You can tell he is not an experienced indoor-marshmallow-roaster. I had to explain that you can't throw water on a fire like that, that we would need to smother it with the big copper-bottomed boiling pan thingy that was sitting on the other back burner. Not in preparation for a flaming marshmallow accident, mind you, but because I am just too lazy to bend over and put it in its proper resting place. Next week, I'm going to teach the boy how to light a candle using a rolled-up paper plate. And how to get rid of the blazing paper plate, which is NOT by dropping it in the trash can. At one of my old schools, a kid's house burned down because her mom emptied the ashtrays, and set the garbage bags out in the garage before going to bed. The girl woke up smelling smoke, and got her whole family out of the house before they could die. See? Smoking is not good for you. Which is neither here nor there. They were smokers. We are not. That's why we can never find a lighter when we want to light a candle.

The upstairs noises continue. Last night, from about 11:30 to 1:30, I heard a great commotion from the area of #1 son's bedroom. Usually, the footsteps walk across the kitchen, or around the bathroom. This sounded like a wrestling match. Or rasslin' match, as we say around these parts. It was not the TV. I switched channels and found what he was watching. It's always the History Channel or Discovery or TLC. I could hear his TV through the floor vent, so I know it was not on TV. I know that the dogs sometimes fling the bones of a stray deer haunch about on the porch, or an empty turtle shell if the neighbor has been too busy to poach, but this was not on the porch. That is merely thumping against the cedar siding. This was a clanging noise, and bumps and thumps. The boy has one of those metal-pipe-like bunk beds. It is red and blue and yellow, with a hollow metal frame. This sounded like there was a dog shaking him like a rag doll, whacking him against the pipes, willy-nilly. At first, I figured he was tossing and turning in his sleep, even though I've never heard this noise up there before. Or maybe that he sat up suddenly, and cracked his head on the top bunk frame. But it happened several times, at no regular interval. Then I heard some thumping on the floor of his room. I supposed maybe he had fallen out of bed. Did I go check on him? Umm...NO! Not until I went to bed around 2:00. He was fine. He was in bed. He was breathing. He still had all his bones under his skin. I turned off his TVs and skedaddled to my own bedroom, where HH was raising the roof with his breather.

This morning I told #1 son that I'd heard quite a commotion in his room. He said, "Well, I heard a clanging noise that woke me up! And when I looked over toward my clock, my flashlight had been knocked over." I told him I thought he was restless and whacked his arm on the bedpost. He said, "I thought maybe that was it, too. So I reached out my arm, but it doesn't reach all the way over there from where I woke up." I looked up at his top bunk, and a baby picture on the wall was all crookedy. I asked, "What happened to Baby #1 in the night?" He looked puzzled, and climbed up to straighten it. "Oh. I know. See this big dog? It fell over there and knocked the picture sideways." He put the stuffed animal in a different place, and straightened the picture. I didn't ask what commotion shook the bed so that the 18-inch-tall stuffed dalmation fell over.

The plot thickens.