Double Trouble

Matthew and Stephen are testing the limits of my patience this week. I'm sorry to report that I am failing.

They were playing upstairs yesterday morning while I was downstairs on the phone with my youngest sister in Maine. Suddenly I smelled a strong scent of perfume.

"Hold on a second," I said to my sister. "Guys! Am I smelling perfume?" I called up to them.

"No," answered Stephen.

"You're not in my room, are you?"

"No," answered Matthew.

Like Fox Mulder I want to believe so I continued talking on the phone. The windows are open. I rationalized. Maybe someone wearing too much perfume just walked by our house.

But the scent didn't dissipate. Taking the cordless phone with me, I went upstairs to investigate. The upstairs hallway smelled like a bordello. Of course, the twins had gotten into my perfume and, of course, they had lied about it. I was more annoyed at them for lying than for having played with my stuff.

I hadn't realized the full extent of their depredations until later in the day when Stephen announced, "I cleaned up the mess in your room."

"What mess?" I barked.

He looked a little scared and remained silent.

I got hold of myself and told Stephen I wouldn't be as mad if he told the truth.

"The blue stuff. On the window," he whispered.

Blue stuff? He showed me the window he meant. I didn't see anything at first until I noticed a tiny smudge of pale blue cream on the sill. I recognized it immediately as my Camille Beckman lilac hand cream. The boys must have been playing with it along with my perfumes. I felt relieved that it wasn't something worse and reminded Stephen to stay out of our room.

So today they confined their mischief to their own room. I heard Stephen calling Matthew for assistance and should have investigated then but didn't. Later, after they had come down for lunch, Matthew had mentioned something about glue.

"Glue? You guys don't have glue in your room do you?"

Once again, they denied it at first, but after repeated questioning, they admitted that they had been gluing pictures to the wall. Each claimed the other one had done it. I suspect that it was probably Stephen's idea but that they had both had taken part.

The glue had already started to dry by the time I found out what they had done. I tore the papers off the wall and had the boys wipe up as much of the residue as they could with a sponge. I had to scrape the rest of it off with the blunt edge of a knife.

"I'm going to eat lunch now," Matthew announced, heading for the door.

"Oh, no, you don't! You're going to sit here and watch me for as long as it takes me to finish cleaning up the mess you made."

So they did.

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