Hubby's solution...

Have I mentioned that my husband and I are the parents of teenagers?  Two teenagers, to be precise.  With two more rapidly approaching teen-hood.  Add in the boys that are now quasi-members of our teen zoo and all the buddies that drop in for food hang out here, and there is a distinct lack of brain cells circulating in this house.  Parenting teens is a great exercise in multiplying fractions.  One teen, one brain.  Two teens, half a brain.  Three teens, a quarter of a brain.  The herd of teens running around our house?  Oiy!
 
For the uninitiated to this teen phenomenon, it goes something like this.  Teen brain wakes up and realizes it has a sister.  Down to half power.  Somehow, the brain still manages to get ready for school.  Then the teen body carting this brain around steps onto the school bus where most of the remaining brain cells get sucked into a vortex of co-mingling teen brain.  One of my kids says she sleeps on the way to school.  I think she is actually experiencing a state of shock while her brain tries to adjust to the current loss of function.  Or perhaps she is getting ready to bail out any remanining cells upon entrance to the great brick building called high school.  It really is an amazing phenonenon to behold.  High school functions in some special kind of time warp.  Distinctly separate from the reality most adults inhabit.  The teen brain just doesn't stand a chance.  The vortex of brain cells is too strong.  Soooooo... when the teen steps back off the bus in the afternoon, still reeling from the onslaught of "teen-brain-itis" and with teen friends in tow, we are dealing with something like a genetically altered version of the kid that slept at our house the night before.           

The sharing of brain cells has resulted in, well... teenagers.  With all the prerequisite loss of logic.  And a hefty dose of sass.  With some pouting thrown in for good measure.  My husband has always relegated dealing with teenagers to me.  Something about having all girls and possesing the respective anatomy.  Like estrogen is some mystical element vital to accessing a teen girl's brain.  He fails to understand that there is very little brain left to work with and I am actually an adult and therefore, by nature, thrown out of the teen-brain loop.  But I've gotten used to dealing with teen-brain.  Perhaps a better description is that I'm a bit numb to it.  I've developed a strong resistance to getting sucked into teen reasoning or reacting to erratic behaviour.

I should know better than to leave poor hubby unattended during an outbreak of teen-brain-itis.  Really.  He is inaduquately prepared.  And missing estrogen.  But I left the house briefly last night with one of our teens to return a boy to his actual place of residence.  When I returned, hubby described the horrific aftermath of my less-than-60-minute desertion.  The remaining teen ran into computer problems trying to print out a report.  Functioning on end-of-the-day brain power, this was a serious issue and quickly escalated to falling apart.  Enter unprepared dad.  Sensing rapid loss of control of said situation, he reacted the best he could.  He gave our 16-year-old a TIME OUT.  Pointing to a chair and everything.  Needless to say, this did not go over well with said teen.  By the time I arrived home to plug the printer in, dad and teen were nearing some cosmic eruption of epic proportions.  Yes... I just said, PLUG THE PRINTER IN.

Have I mentioned the vortex that seems to have engulfed our home?  And that it feeds off of teen brains?  And that we will have a third teen in January and a fourth teen in a year and a half?  Multiply by all the additional kids hanging out here and it sure makes for interesting life at the little brown house on the hill....

Sooooo... since I can't seem to catch a picture of a teen detatched from other teens, I'll leave you with a photo of hubby and me.  This was taken a couple of days before the printer issues, so there may be a bit more gray in hubby's hair now....