Even The Birds Are Against Me

I try not to antagonize the children. Really. They would disagree with that statement, but I swear that my Life's ambition is to keep everybody happy. So, when it's time to throw out old toys, I wait until the girls are at school or asleep, and then I get to work. I have a system. If the toy is big, I first hide it in the basement. After it has been "out of commission" for a  couple of weeks without anyone noticing, I feel comfortable throwing it out. Sometimes, the children have gone into the basement and rescued their toys. Very frustrating!  The smaller toys are thrown out right away. And since we own everything in triplicate, I have to make sure I throw out the entire "set". A lot of thought goes into the chucking of toys. I do this because I don't want to antagonize the children.

Most of the time, this has gone off without a hitch. There was that one time that the girls were playing outside and their toys (that were in garbage bags by the shed) started singing and playing music. Dan, very cleverly, made a lot of noise by dancing about to muffle the sound of their treasures being tossed. The girls were amused by his antics and never caught on. I thought that he had lost his mind!

Yesterday, there were crows out my side door. I could hear them, and I knew that they were getting into the garbage. I raced over to the door, threw open the blinds, and scared the birds away. Then, I inspected the mess they made, and then I saw this:

The crows had separated the toys from the garbage, and then placed the toys on top of the shed! Wow. The crows were antagonizing my children. Maybe it's payback. The girls do like to chase crows and other birds away from our house. Whatever the reason, I envisioned the twins coming home from school. As the bus passed by the side of our house, the twins would look out their window and see their toys on top of the shed. And then they, like their father, would wonder what I did all day.