How my kids spent Saturday night

Sunday morning, I woke early and stumbled down the stairs to get a bowl of cereal. I couldn't help but notice a swirl of sticky notes, in the shape of a snake on the wall below the stairs. The notes spelled out a very long word: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. As I looked around blearily, I noticed sticky notes everywhere, stuck to walls and furniture and pretty much every object in the house. On my laptop, I saw a note that said, "Don't panic," and two others that said, "You may need to purchase some new sticky notes for some reason."

Yes, during the night, the boys had decided to play with sticky notes. They'd written on them —adding song lyrics, lame jokes, quotes from books, corny puns, lines from movies, scientific formulas, or random facts — and posted them all over the house. They'd used 500 of them. Yes, FIVE HUNDRED sticky notes.

The note on the water jug near the door, the one Shaggy Hair Boy takes to Ultimate Frisbee games, read, "Dihydrogen Monoxide." A pink note on the vacuum cleaner said, "I suck." Attached to the fern plant was a note that said, "Fact: Fern Gully is one of the best movies ever made." The note on the piano said, "Play me. Harder. Better. Stronger. Faster." The metronome had a pink sticky that said, "My beat is correct." Two books on the shelf were labeled, "Impossible Germany" and "Unlikely Japan, " which shows that my kids have been listening to the Wilco CD I've had in my car all summer.

The note on the refrigerator said, "Put food in me," a line from the Simpsons. Even the photos on the refrigerator received captions. I've always liked the photo of my niece, with her pale skin, flyaway hair, and mysterious smile, but now it seemed creepy when accompanied by a note that said, "I will eat your soul." The grocery list, which itself is sort of a post-it note, hangs on the refrigerator. Under the list of food items, Boy in Black had added another item: sticky notes. And then he attached another sticky note with an arrow and the words, "Now that is irony."

The more I looked, the more sticky notes I found. They were inside the cupboards, inside the refrigerator, inside the freezer. I pulled a china plate from the bottom of the stack, and found a note that said, "Eat me." The note on the revolving corner cupboard said, "You spin me right around, baby. Right around. Like a record player." The fortune cookie that had been left on the table had a note that said, "Often wrong." Inside the dishwasher, I found a note that read, "This is not dishwasher safe." I stepped on a note that was just lying on the floor. I pulled it from my sock. It read, "Don't tread on me."

All yesterday and all today, I kept finding notes. Some made me roll my eyes, some made me laugh. It was like an Easter egg hunt, except with paper and words. Shaggy Hair Boy assures me I haven't found them all yet, that they will be popping up for months to come.

One note said, "500 sticky notes + nothing to do = fun time."