MELTY MINTS AS WEAPONS...OR TOYS...EITHER ONE...

See these lovely little melty mints? In most homes, these are food. A luscious little treat one might eat following a lovely dinner spent with those you cherish being with. Perhaps they are passed around while loved ones chat during delightful and twinkling conversation. That's not the case in our house. In our house, they are weapons. They fly through the air, getting caught in your hair, zinging past your ears, stinging your cheeks, etc. The smaller ones are deadlier. At high enough speeds, they whistle.

Two nights ago, the hubs brought these home. It appeared innocent enough. "Here", he said tenderly when we had a moment to ourselves. "I thought of you today" and he handed me the mints. "Do you know that I think of you throughout the day?" he asked lovingly. My heart melted....not unlike these pretty little mints. I kept them close by all day and nibbled on them as I worked on papers and cleaning and between errands. They were a nice reminder of something sweet and romantic that my meat-and-potatoes type of husband did. Awwwwww

Last night, as we were all three sitting around the table, IT began. Peter and I were playing our game, "Quiddler" and Eli was playing on the computer. I saw something fly just over my direct line of vision and then heard a "Yow!" I didn't think much about it as these two tussle quite a bit. There is always wrestling and macho threatening. Heaven forbid if Eli scrapes himself or says the word "ouch" cause then, it's all over. In the past, Peter was shot three times and still drove himself to the emergency room. When my son, Eric, heard this, he looked at his brother (The "other" Eli-Big Eli) and said, "Dude, do you know what this means? This means we can never whine about ANYTHING EVER AGAIN!" But back to little Eli-if the poor kid so much as whimpers, his dad will say, in the least-therapeutic, most pseudo-threatening, creepiest voice ever, "Awwww, you want me to rub that for ya?" And then I fall over with laughter, just at the sheer creepiness of it and even Eli laughs and puts his hands up and forgets what he was complaining about.

Anyway, the melty-mint food fight commenced. Those guys can wing some mints. This morning as I was vacuuming, I found mints in places that mints, I'm certain, have never been in this apartment before. But I can say, with relative certainty, that they may, indeed, find their way there in the future....because this is Peter's house...and mints are weapons...or at the very least, toys of choice.