MARAUDERS! "GRWAMMYPAM! GET HIM!"

It was a quick step to the deck, and a couple of jumps down the steps and a few more paces to the truck to retrieve my sunglasses.  I was back in a hurry 'cause the weather was nippy and I wanted to get inside quickly.  Reaching for the gold door handle on our red front door, it opened before I could make contact.  I recoiled in surprise.  And more to my surprise, this little 3 year old girl in her pink frilly dress had opened MY door!  Holding a favored stuffed animal in her other hand she reached out toward me with her right and swooped it invitingly to the living room, "Come on in!"

ROFL, okaaaaaa, Miss Lilly, I think I will enter my own house, ha, ha, and I laughed, "Thank you!"

Once inside, Jayden comes up to me, "I'm playing with your treasure, and Alayna wants one, too.  Can she have the big box?"  Looking at Jayden's little hands, I see he's holding a little metal treasure chest with which they're welcome to play.  But I wasn't sure about the big box.  So I follow him back to the playroom combo guest bedroom to investigate.  Gotta play.  I just gotta play pirates.  So we sing "Ho, ho, ho" and make up words that has them bouncing on the bed, LOL.

Ho, ho, ho!  And a bottle of rum!
We are pirates on a looting run!

We'll plunder some ships
And steal some gold

Rob all their treasures
From out of the hold!

Amber, emerald, ruby, and jade
Marauding pirates, we love a good raid!

And the large pretend "jewe's" (they leave out one syllable of the word jewels) that were meant to be diving toys become a color identification lesson.  Which one is blue?  Which one is square?  Which one is orange?  And Miss Lilly's upturned face looks at me like "I don't see an orange one, you're a silly GrwammyPam."  So, I pull it up from the orange bedspread, hold it up to the light so the sunbeams can shine through, and sure enough, it's not orange, it's red!

But those "jewe's" have to have a bath when kidlets leave.  They feel rough with dried food, and they smell funny, like peanut butter!

These three dearly would like to maraud and explore the great upstairs.  Many times over the months they've had to be called back after getting a little too high up the staircase.  Lately though, I've had a little help, a saving grace.

These grandkids are not sure they like bugs.  Miss Lilly definitely isn't sure.  Even after I collected some in a ziplock bag so she could safely see them up close, and she could watch them walk about under protection of plastic, she's still not sure.  She's very curious, though, even while thinking they're icky.

My saving grace?  It was a dark spot on the wall of the stairwell.  Miss Lilly is sure, and has convinced Jayden, that its a stink bug.  Miss Lilly says she doesn't like "stink-a bugs that crawl on the wall."
"GrwammyPam!   Get him!"

"Argh," GrwammyPam sheds her granny glasses and dons a tri-corn hat and sword, "Pirate Pam to the rescue!  Get him!"

RECALCITRANT COW AND PRECOCIOUS PIG

Recalcitrant Cow stood in the middle of the corn field that had been hacked and hewed by the farmers for fall harvest.  She had eaten her fill and was ready to come in to slurp water at the trough.  Farmer Furd was calling and calling and going unheard.  Recalcitrant Cow, in rebellion, still had her headphones on and was dancing like a dingo on the open prairie in the corners of her mind.

Precocious Pig, as young as he was, knew trouble was brewing.  He had seen it before from the brother redhead Farmer Fred, his eyes going wide, his nose not so cherry, and his wide little belly, not shaking like jelly, his dimples not so merry!

There'd be mayhem and murder, for sure.  There'd be unguent and entrails; for Precocious Pig -- HAPPINESS -- VICTUALS!  If the great detective were narrating he'd say, "The game is ahoof!"

Finally, Recalcitrant Cow turned her big head and her one moo-cow brown eye ever so slightly and saw a hazy gray shadow of a man waving violently.  Warily, but curiously, she took off her headphones and heard Farmer Fred's upsettedness in sound surround.  You must know, cows are myopic, but they can hear the scream of a bat, and this guy was no bat!

Farmer Furd and Farmer Fred were creating a hurly-burly!  With so many black beeves out and about like pepper on corn, Recalcitrant Cow weens, tho difficult to ascertain, they were beckoning only her with a stag-horn.

So anxious to get to the gulp, she plowed, nay, plunged pell-mell -- right into the fence.  Right into the fence she went, and, was electricized!  "Grunt" she leaped away like a scampering lamb on catnip!  Durn!  Like a calf on a youtube video, she'd forgotten once again about that barrier, Energized by Duke.

Back at the barn, Precocious Pig was squealing with glee, "Another run like that and I won't need a sign around my neck "Eat more beef."

"I won't make another run like that.  I don't wanna be a burger!"  Recalcitrant Cow, kept mooing, "I'll tell Farmer Furd "better thin your herd." "Eat more bacon!"  And she swung her big hairy head high.

With a butt bump, and a tongue swipe, she went end for end, stumping through the barn floor straw.

Precocious Pig did the limbo under udder, oinking on the other side.

And on and on they went.

Until Farmer Fred, having enough of the calamity, said, "Go on get, you beasts!  Unless you want to be part of a hecatomb feast!"

Calmly, with turbulent emotions in reserve, they filed out of the barn into the farm, to return to their  ingestion digestive craves.

Tail curled, snout in the smut was Precocious Pig.
Tail swishing flies, sandy tongue tugging grass was Recalcitrant Cow.

Shaking their heads, Farmer Fred and Farmer Furd, rehashed what they thought they heard, "s'mores of beef?"

"Thin the bacon?"

"Let's be done with this.  Let's take 'em to a barbecue."

That very next Sunday they all came to the family picnic!




**As part of a challenge from son Ian, I read The Iliad.  Here I used terms I learned in the Iliad, as it was translated by Samuel Butler.