Last week we found out that #1 will be needing braces. Badly. I mean, I knew that his teeth were a little bit messed up, but when the orthodontist showed me his x-rays it looked like he'd been chewing on trucks. Luckily the orthodontist works with a payment plan for those who don't have insurance such as ourselves, but we will still be paying in the end $8,000. Let me write that again. $8,000. For teeth. To be straight. UnBelievable.

I was griping to a friend about the expense and she offered up an idea. You see, my mother in law has a quasi-farm. She raises chickens and the occasional pig or three. #1 is over there every day in the summer while hubby and I are at work and he helps out by doing chores. The other day he butchered 10 of her chickens and she offered to pay him if he finished butchering the rest. In chickens. What twelve year old wouldn't love to be paid in poultry?

My girlfriend had the bright idea to have #1 set up a chicken stand not unlike a lemonade stand. When she told me this I had the immediate visual thought of my son standing at the side of the road wearing overalls without a shirt and one strap undone, with a piece of hay jammed in his jacked up teeth, with dead chickens hanging from a stand that said:

Chikens $5!

In my vision he also spoke with a southern accent. Not sure why.

It may actually come to this.