If you ever have teenage boys staying with you, one thing you learn is that the REAL food groups are Fruity Bits, Gushers and Root Beer. A chocolate birthday cake can also come in for a mention, along with Cocoa Krispies and Sprite, Root Beer in a bottle and Apple Snapple, which is fun to say even if you are dubious about how much actual juice is in it.
When I inherited these two male teens on Sunday night I brought them directly to the grocery store where all these items got quickly gathered up and plunked into my carriage. (Well actually we had to hit Micky D’s before we could even GET to the store, that’s how hungry they were - we basically ordered everything on the menu. And, I should maybe say, this is the same grocery store parking lot where a certain spine-tingling thing happened that I told about here the other day.)
Anyway, this handsome lad above, Enderson by name, is the younger of our two house guests. He offered to make beans and rice the way his mom fixes them, so we bought all those ingredients too and, once home, lined them up on the counter - which is where they have remained unmolested ever since.
They chose their rooms right away. With the State Wrestling competition the next day and both of them competing, they wanted to settle right in, so upstairs we traipsed in search of beds.
We have one newly fixed up guest room we jokingly call “the Bed and Breakfast room.” Rayvoughn claimed it. “OH yeah! I see myself in here!” he said, as soon as we walked in. "Got the little desk for studying, then flip my laptop around at night catch a little Netflix action from the bed..."
Then we just had to find a place for Enderson. The big attic room wasn't available; Dave and I took it out of the running just last weekend as part of our attempt to clean out the crawl spaces.
See? 
The room below wasn't available either, being in off-and-on use by our son Mike who, since moving back from Brooklyn where he had a real studio, is working to complete his final 'commission' in it before switching careers from Maker of Art to Whatever Comes Next.
the work station: easel and chair
I tried pitching Enderson the really small room under the eaves with the crib and changing table right by the narrow bed but no. "I don’t want to be up here all by myself!” he said. "Even if it means you get your own bathroom?""I don’t need my own bathroom.”
So back down we went to the second floor where we had one last option: the room generally in use as an office with the big roomy armchair that turns into a bed. Sort of. He liked that so we made it up with sheets and hunted down a couple of pillows.
Then all they had to do was inspect their singlets for the next day’s wear. Both were torn all along the upper hems at chest level; that’s how rough the sport is. Could I maybe sew them, they asked? Did I have a machine by any chance?
So sew them I did and an hour later with that last job done to bed we all went, curled up in each in own room, all cozy, within ten feet of one another on the second floor.
David and I got up the next day and did our same-old jobs as grownups in the world. The two boys got up, got themselves to the high school parking lot, boarded the bus to States and at the end of two long days of panting, grappling and pinning, brought home a Gold Medal apiece.
All of which is to say how amazing it is to me what the young can do, and the excellently coached, excellently trained young especially.
Still it does make you wonder if there really aren't benefits to a diet of sugared cereal, Sprite add Smart Food after all.
