The Grapes of Seth

This son 'o mine never fails to crack me up.

I came home from a night of treadmilling, and Seth came bursting into the kitchen sliding sideways past me. "Do we have any grapes? I need a grape," he said, as he opened the refrigerator door. I told him I was fairly sure that we did not have grapes. I was actually QUITE sure that we didn't have any grapes, but that didn't stop him from frantically rifling the fridge, nonetheless, after which he turned to me and said "do we have a candle? I need a candle."

I reminded him that candles require fire to be of any use, and that Seth and fire stopped being a good idea like..........well, never. He kept badgering me frantically about a candle, and he went gliding -- no joke -- into the living room to get one. He came back into the kitchen asking whether we had a lighter. I pointed out that any lighters we had likely went out the door with his father, and I doubted there was one here. I told him to use a piece of spaghetti, which is the way I always light candles. He asked about that "clicky thing we use to light the fireplace," and I directed him to where it was.

I seemed to be having a problem getting an explanation as to why he needed the non-existent grape and a candle, when he informed me that he'd been watching "really interesting videos" on youtube. I asked if they involved things blowing up. He responded, "not exactly." So far this whole thing has not instilled confidence in my situation, and I barely had my jacket off.

So The Boy finds the candle, then comes in and lights it with said clicky lighter thing. Then blows OUT the candle. And semi-immediately clicks the lighter above the candle. The lighter lit. Like normal. Disappoinment on boy's face. The process was repeated. And repeated again. Each time, a sigh of disappointment. Finally after the fourth time, he pronounced that it didn't work. I asked him if he was supposed to be creating a fireball of death or what, and he responded, that no, the grape was supposed to kind of melt into a ball of protoplasm.

Except that he never found a grape. And I still have no idea where the grape was supposed to be put, since all he was doing was lighting a candle, blowing it out, and then clicking the lighter.

Sometimes I am fairly certain that Seth and I are not in the same orbit, but I want to be in his, because it is a very happy place where people are easily amused. Even without the grapes.

The Manly Man-Boy

So I discovered the other day that despite the fact that only two people live in this house now, there were EIGHT bottles of shampoo or conditioner in our shower. Eight. There are slightly less shower gel bottles -- four, to be exact. And one is a smaller one from a gift set that Thomas gave me, so let's call it 3 1/2.

Seth was a little concerned, however, at his lack of manly options. Apparently, as he says, he just didn't feel right showering with pink girly smelling shower gel. I pointed out that there was one bottle of manly Avon "Oak" that had perhaps an inch of stuff left in it, but he wanted to get something else the next time we went to the store.

So tonight, we went out into the night and went shopping at Kroger. When we got to the skin care aisle, he made a beeline to the manly smelling stuff which was, in typical teenaged boy fashion, Ax. I turned the corner to the next aisle while he was perusing his options, but heard him say something about "attraction." I asked him what the heck he was looking at, and he replied with "Dark Attraction." I pointed out the many ways of wrong that sounded to me. His reply was that "Dark Attraction doesn't exactly sound like something I want to be rubbing all over my body."

The boy has a point. I didn't even look to see what he put in the cart, but I can tell you two things: 1. It wasn't pink. 2. It was not Dark Attraction.