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By Root 476 0

problem with having four extra boys for the weekend is mainly a logistical one. As crazy as it may sound, on the weekend in question I decided I actually wanted all four kids to come along. If I could figure out how to transport and host them, perhaps some grateful mother would be willing to take a boy or three off my hands for an extended period, sort of a parenting karma payoff. But I am obliged to take along my already existing children; there is just no way to legally drive all this extra miniature manhood, too. Back in my day, we would just pile in the back of the station wagon, but Ralph Nader has ruined all that good clean fun, and the law requires me to provide each of these children with an actual seat and safety belt.

“Peter, we’ve got a problem.” I turned to my husband to come up with a solution. It was Thursday night of a long week, so my synapses were not properly firing; there was no way I could solve this one. Peter’s plan was simple. We made sure Blake was up for a crazy weekend, rented a second car, split up the crowd, and headed for the country.

I was awakened on Saturday morning by the sound of a go-cart and a dirt bike outside my bedroom window. Ah, the dulcet tones of boyhood. The very next thing I heard was someone yelling that the refrigerator had been unplugged sometime during the week and all the food had gone bad. Cleaning the fridge was the first of many disgusting tasks that I would need to attend to over the weekend, but with Blake there I could face anything.

Our manny is the best of both worlds. He can be quite the outdoorsman, and is great for organizing things like campfires in the woods, or canoeing on the pond, but his gayness really comes in handy on the domestic side of things.

“We need to buy paper plates. Let’s just feed everyone on paper plates all weekend,” I said to him in an attempt to simplify things. Shopping, cooking, and cleaning up after three meals a day for nine boys and three adults was a daunting prospect.

“I looked at them, but I didn’t buy any,” he responded.

“I understand it will be hard for you,” I said. “But I don’t believe the boys have invited Martha Stewart, so we’ll just have to use the ones from Christmas.” Screw our carbon footprint. This was about survival.

We did, in fact, survive, though getting some of the boys to follow my plan of staying outside proved to be difficult. Some New York City kids have zero tolerance for the outdoors and are more comfortable experiencing it through a video screen. They love to watch baseball for four hours instead of strolling outside and picking up a bat and ball. If you can convince them to take a bike ride, they measure all distances in blocks.

“How many blocks to the covered bridge?”

“It’s half a mile. There are no blocks in the country.”

All in all, the kids were moderately well behaved—and no bones were broken, always a benchmark of success for me. The ultimate upside? For the next year, any time my boys ask to invite a friend I can say, “You just had friends up.” Meanwhile, I am still awaiting that invitation from another mom to take my kids away.

MUCH LIKE A BELOVED DOG, MY TORTOISE, FRANK, TRAVELS WITH US to the country on the weekends, and when the weather is nice he spends his time outdoors in his own picket-fenced pen. He is very quiet, wandering in and out of rooms and traveling back and forth from the city to the country without complaint. He eats what he is given and is about as housebroken as anyone else in the family. He is essentially the perfect child. Is he cuddly? Not really, but after scraping kids off my body all day I welcome an animal that knows how to keep his distance.

One day in the country, Peter decided he wanted to take some movies of Frank with a new high-definition camera. He put Frank in the yard and filmed him walking around in excruciating detail. I’m not sure, but I think Peter was planning to have Frank be the next big star on Animal Planet. After taking a few minutes of footage, Peter left him outside his pen to go scout a different location. Tortoises are faster than you