The Night Of The Grinches
by Candida Eittreim 

I should have known, smelled it, had Mommy radar go off..... something! It has been an idyllic and peaceful Christmas. We spent lots of quality time with our boys, baking, shopping, reading stories and just hanging around together.

The boys had been unusually good, frighteningly so. They had given their last
dollars to a boy raking lawns for Christmas money. On Christmas day, they
opened their presents and actually waited while we opened ours. I was filled
with pride at my angels. I should have known.


One of their favorite movies this season was the Grinch with Jim Carrey.
They've watched it over and over again. This afternoon it was stormy and
dreary, so Dave lit a fire and we all grabbed our favorite books and snuggled in front of the fireplace. Justin was snuggled under a binky reading Call of the Wild, and Cam was lying nearby with Tom Sawyer. I fell asleep about half an hour later, dreaming happily about my perfect Christmas. 

When I woke up, I noticed Dave was still sound asleep, but the boys weren't
there. As I stumbled into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee, the first clues
hit me right between the eyes. Bits of hair, green dabs of something and a
bottle of glue were scattered around. I hurriedly fixed the pot and went searching for the two miscreants. At first I couldn't find them, but the evidence was mounting to confirm a horrid suspicion forming in my head. Outside the bathroom door I found more hair and green daubs of some substance all over the door.

When I opened the bedroom door, I let out a scream that roused the whole
neighborhood. Poor Dave, fearing arson, rape or murder came running at full
tilt, brought up short by the vision facing us in the room. There my 2 angels
sat, covered in bits and tufts of greenish hair. On their hands, their eyebrows and everywhere they could think to put it. But.... Where did the hair come from, you ask? From their freaking heads which were bald in huge patches, speckled with green goo and God knows what else. Cam asked me, after I stopped
gasping for breath, do I look like the Grinch Mommy?

Dave was making strange strangled sounds, deep in his throat, his face a
nice shade of plummy red. My hands were twitching convulsively as I took a
menacing step towards the little monsters. When slowly it dawned on me, my hero, the love of my life was laughing! Throwing up my hands in disgust, I left the 3 of them there, the 2 green covered idiots and the Brainiac rolling on the
floor.  Men!

Three hours later, shaved bald, sans paint and hair, with very warmed bottoms,
my two errant angels, thoroughly worn out by their adventure and cleaning
up, went to bed. And I... wrote this post Christmas story just for you.

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