Elf had a load of mulch delivered down the front of the house on Friday. Her masterplan to get it up to the backyard was to pay 25¢ per bucketload to the boys and any other kids we could press-gang on the weekend. On Sunday morning Marcus, Cameron and Lana got into the task eagerly, in fact so eagerly that Elf soon decreed a $10 cap on what she would pay any one urchin. I acted as foreman/tally clerk. I was also preventing Winston running out the open gate, and reading news off the internet, cumbersomely copied from the net-connected computer downstairs onto this offline laptop.
I think all three kids got up to $10 in the end. Michael participated occasionally, but kept swapping his bucket for smaller and odder containers, culminating with a medium-size jam jar.
I am also paying Marcus 10¢ a time to blow his nose at the moment. Before I "monetized" the situation, every time I would ask him to blow rather than snort disgustingly (he was usually reading or playing games on his i-pod at the time) he would complain that blowing his nose hurt. Apparently it hurts a lot less when it gets you 1/30th of the way to a pack of football cards.
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