I'm Totally Going to Break Stuff

“Yali? What do you have in your mou… Chocolate? Where did you get chocolate?”

The guilty party beckoned one hand rapidly to me, doing his best to say, “Come! Come!”

He led me to the kitchen trashcan to reveal Exhibit A: a pile of stale mini M&Ms.

“Oh, come on, man.”

It was another school day, another work day on the house. Because the guy buying our home of nine and a half years was utilizing a small FHA loan to make his purchase, our house had been raked over by the government for flaws. And we were paying for it.

“I hate painting,” Oxbear told me by early afternoon, drenched in sweat and paint flakes.

After school at the Silverspoon’s, Puck labored under the new 4th grade homework load at the counter while Yali ran around in the front yard chasing butterflies.

Two hours later, Oxbear and I drove back home to keep working.

“I’ll pack up the kitchen if you paint the basement steps,” Oxbear suggested.

“Deal.”

I stood back to look at those steps that, according to the report, were “peeling”. They weren’t peeling. At all. But I still had to paint them because the government said so. I opened the can of shiny gray paint and prepared to begin.

“Is it really necessary to paint the bottom of the steps, too?” I asked, staring straight up at the old boards.

“Don’t you love me?” Oxbear replied.

I probably grumbled something and got busy painting with the spiders. Something out of “The Agony and The Ecstasy”, trying to keep paint from dripping into my eyes.

Meanwhile, I heard a lot of glass and ceramic clinking around upstairs.

“I’m totally going to break stuff,” Oxbear called down to me.

“That’s okay.”

A few moments later…

“I’m totally going to break everything.”

“That’s okay.”

I was halfway done with the stairs and no longer interested in trading back. Besides, I knew there was at least one very good reason I never put fancy china on my wedding registry.