When I decided to be a stepmother I knew that there would be moments.All kinds of moments; and there have been many of them - mostly good, thank the gods. My mom told me that if I had to jump into the middle of child-rearing, than jumping in when the child is 13 was probably one of the hardest ages I could pick. Boy, oh boy... We have my stepson this weekend. When we picked him up from his mom, they had a surprise! We also get to have two additional teenage boys in the house tonight. Yep, they planned a sleep-over - they talked it over with all the mom's - and got everyone's permission but ours. After laying down a couple of laws (The four poster solid cherry bed was NOT made for you to jump on!!), I've made them cookies, given them soda (caffeine and sugar free, of course - if they had any more energy, we wouldn't need power plants in the Southeast anymore), chased them around outside with a hose (the neighbors weren't too crazy about that activity) and now my husband is doing his fatherly duty by taking them to the pool. He said he's going to wear them out. I think we all know who will wear out first. I read a short story by D.H. Lawrence this morning - The Fox . I've loved his poetry, read some of his novels and a couple of his short stories. This was little more.... disturbing, though. For some reason, his characters always disturb me a little, they get under my skin and drive me crazy with the way they constantly do things that seem the complete opposite of what he wants us to believe of their personalities. Reading his stories exhausts me, because I'm always mentally urging the characters to act more like themselves (or my perception of them) and do the opposite of what I know they are going to do. Kind of like raising a teenager, huh?