Sticky Situations

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Things are well-fastened at my house.

An elaborate system of bungee cords connects doors to one another so that "you need to know the unlocking secret" to enter a room.

Fear of being tangled like a helpless fly prompted me to remove the ones strung between doors in the hallway. Forgetting the web in the middle of the night could leave me as bait for the dreaded bungee spider.

Various arrangements of electrical- and duct-tape striping code the orange cones I once used to coach soccer practices. The coding has something to do with guiding guests through the house vs. women in cleats around a soccer field. I've received the explanation a few times. Next time I should probably take notes.

And we just had a long series of one-page bedtime stories from The Jumbo Duct Tape Book, immediately preceded by a conversation along the lines of "No, we don't really duct tape dogs and horses." (A conversation to which Luke paid rapt attention in the hopes that the message would resonate clearly with @.) One hundred pages down, 329 to go. My eyes started crossing at page 78.

All of this is very serious business to @.

My first inclination as the "aha!" expression creeps across his face as he lunges for his tape-laden backpack is "Wait, stop, no!" But watching the scenarios unroll is fairly fascinating and I have to remind myself that as long as no dog, mom, child, or piece of furniture is harmed, it's all good fun.

Unless there really is such thing as bungee spider.
And I forget to unweb the hallway.
In which case, I'm basically screwed.

P.S. Dear Mom and Al, Thanks for the plethora of industrial-grade fastening devices now festooning my humble abode. Should the bungee spider be real -- well...

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