I Almost Rendered Earlie Late

Honestly, I should have expected this.

I can’t expect to get pictures accidentally sexted to me every week of PTO mom’s breasts to write about.

I can’t expect to have rotten eggs spontaneous combust all over me and have to have dead baby chickens hosed off whilst stripped naked in the front yard, every week.

If ridiculous situations, like back-handspring falling while bowling at a charity fundraiser, continue at this pace for this long…

…surely someone is eventually going to die.

It started innocently enough.

I wasn’t trying to kill someone else, I was going to kill my kids.

Not really! Come on. Figuratively, as in the way northerners yell, “I am going to kill you!” to their kids.

I live in the south now and “southern” parents don’t threaten to “kill” their kids.

It took me a while to figure out that “southern” parents have other threats.

They might say…

“Take you back behind the woodshed.”

“You wanna go pick out a switch?”

These are all phrases parents express…

“You’re in deep crap mister/sister!” in “The South.”

We moved into our home six years ago. For six years my three boys have treated our foyer light fixture as a carnival game.

Do you remember Webkins from several years ago? They were like Beanie Babies but bigger and fuzzier, (I bring up the latter as I am sure it makes them more flammable and I will get to that in a moment.)

Well, the little stinkers decided one day to toss Webkins into the light fixture. It is a fun game, I am told. They worked their way up the stairs like a game of “PIG.”

When I began screaming that they were going to burn the house down and how would I get the small petting zoo out of the lantern and…

“I will have to pay a man with A VERY BIG LADDER to come and fish the stuffed animals out of the light fixture and I AM GOING TO USE YOUR MONEY from YOUR piggy banks!”

I normally take pictures of these antics but I was too mad.

It was bad enough that I hated that darn light fixture for inaccessibility to clean, the fact that it is a glass bowl and it holds dust and that just about every other fixture in the house had been updated but this one, now the thing is going to burn my house down.

*We have a hard enough time GETTING homeowners insurance. Those stories will be future posts for you to laugh at because those things are always funny when they don’t happen to you. Our last claim though, I couldn’t STOP laughing. I was snorting on the phone with the insurance agent whom I woke up out of bed because I am that “mature.”

Back to THIS near “we are going to be homeless” story.

Then my husband, Jim, came home from work and heard all about the fun the boys had that day. I was all hands-on-my-hips and head-shaking and pointing at the ceiling.

Jim walked up the stairs to the top of the landing and reached his monkey arm out and pulled the chain to the light fixture and dropped the fuzzy kindling down to the delighted boys, (they were looking at me with satisfied smirks and if I didn’t know better I would say their Webkins were smirking too.)

Then began the regular task of trying to put things in the foyer light fixture when the boys were bored, because Dad could fish them out when he came home.

They shot Nerf darts, rubber bands and my personal favorite straw wrappers. Thank God blowing straw wrappers off of straws that far is impossible because they would have fo shizzel caught on fire.

Look closely at the bottom of the glass bowl, rubberband.

See how dusty and gross the glass gets.

Then guess what happened?

The light fixture began trying to Kevorkian itself. It started turning brown around the light bulb bases. You can see it in the picture above.

I FINALLY HAVE AN EXCUSE TO REPLACE IT!

So, I call “That Guy With a Really Big Ladder.”

It turns out his name is Earlie.

Yep, Earlie and I love it and had I known you could name a person Earlie, I would have named one of my little people Earlie, (I usually don’t use people’s real names on here except mine, my husbands and Crazy Sarah) but I had to share his name. Heck, I wish I was named Earlie! “Hi, I’m Earlie.”

Here is Earlie about 22 feet in the air.

I was not paid to share my near manslaughter moment via the stunning new Ballard Designs chandelier I ordered called “Orb Chandelier”  but I did share my story with them and I think they enjoyed, (or as they put it laughed really, really hard and we all know I love to make people laugh much more than killing people.)

I took a picture of him and his big ladder to show the boys when they came home from school and to share with you. I knew I was going to eventually write about the things little boys do to entertain themselves and use the old light fixture as an example.

But I didn’t tell Earlie I was going to take a picture.

I didn’t want to distract him.

I thought I turned off the flash.

But I didn’t.

He saw the flash of light and thought he had electrocuted himself.

Then he yelled.

Then he began wobbling.

I began saying, “I am so sorry!”

He swayed.

I gasped.

He regained his balance.

I paid him more that the bill stated.

Jim and I went out that night to celebrate…

NOT KILLING EARLIE!

And that is the story about how my boys led me to blogging and my blog almost led to manslaughter.

A little history here so you understand that there is a pattern here with my kids and “making baskets.”

We have these above our master bedroom print

We have this table in our bonus room between two recliners floating in the center of the room and it looks great from all around. And totally utilitarian as well!

We have three of these above all three of our boys desks in our bonus room / school room / kids lounge.

We hung this in our entrance in the large size and in bronze and without the optional crystal.

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