Be careful what you ask for. (And how many times you ask for it!)

I didn't sleep on Friday night because I was super busy texting the universe.

I can't stand texting (ever since I dropped my qwerty keyboard in the toilet at my daughter's soccer game) but I did it anyway because I was so worried about my three sons freezing to death at the Klondike Derby, which is another name for slumber party in the snow for scouts.

I only had one teensy request of the universe: PLEASE KEEP MY BOYS WARM! But I had to keep pushing RESEND because the universe never texted back--probably doesn't have a qwerty keyboard either--I totally get that, but still . . . when snowflakes the size of nickels are dropping like that great slot machine in the sky just hit the jackpot, and your three sons are NOT snug as a bug in a rug under your wing, you get a little trigger happy.

Particularly if your world looks like this:

However, I think I may have inadvertently, kinda sorta . . . how should I say this . . . irritated the universe.

Ticked it off, so to speak.

When my boys arrived home I said, "Didya stay warm? Didya? Didya? Didya?

That's when my 13 year old showed me his hands.


And his legs.




Not only had he stayed warm, he had been cooked. literally! Slow cooked, like a Kalua pig in an underground Imu.

He'd been smoked.

The scouts had done the ole' rock/tinfoil/heater trick--the one where you warm a rock up in the fire, then wrap it in tinfoil, then wrap it again in a towel and VIOLA, it's a home-made heater.

All the other scout's homemade heaters worked like a charm because their mothers refrained from texting the universe over and over and over, but my boy's homemade heater just kept getting hotter and hotter and hotter and hotter.

It burned through the towel, two sleeping bags and the ground cover.

It burned his little buns too, but I'm not at liberty to post photographic evidence of his cherry cheeks, so you'll have to take my word for it.

When we got my boy home he immediately jumped in the tub and started scrubbing.

But his fingers still looked like smoked sausages.

On the upside, he now smells just like a luau.

On the downside, I keep wanting to roll him in sea salt and smother him in poi.

Anyways, there's a lesson here. There's a definite lesson here:

We really need to get the universe a qwerty keyboard.