Something that I have learned in the past few months of living with my brother is that, apparently, being weird is a genetic thing. Mack kind of rolls his eyes at the off-beat sense of humor that both Mark and I possess, especially when we’re calling my license plate “majestic” and cracking ourselves up over random stuff that ultimately isn’t that funny.

Of course, I think that it is a genetic fault that all of us like doing strange stuff to our living arrangements. When I was a nanny for our nephew I discovered that our brother liked to take the toys he’d get in his cereal and hide them around his house making it so you couldn’t see them unless you were a) looking for it or b) at a certain weird angle. I think it took my sister-in-law about a year to discover that her husband was doing this and she promptly made him stop (with probably the message of “oh, grow up!” thrown in there as well).

Needless to say my siblings like to do weird stuff, especially with stuff around the house, with the hope that we’re subtle about it and people won’t really notice it at first. (Just ask Mack who found the Star Trek emblem taped on his workout shirt when he came back from a business trip recently).

Last week both Mack and I were away traveling on our respective trips leaving Mark alone all week caring for our pets. He’d occasionally text to inform me that he’d taught our cat Bucky to say “I love you, Mark” or something equally irritating with the purpose of rubbing in our faces the fact Bucky is a traitor.

Remember who buys your food, brat

Friday night we both got home rather late and immediately went into the house to pass out immediately thus not nothing anything out of the ordinary. The next morning, while eating breakfast, Mark asks me if I had by chance look at the tree by the driveway? Did you notice anything strange? Perplexed, I slowly responded in the negative while wondering the hell my brother had done while Mack and I were gone. As I stepped outside and look towards the street this is the view which I got:

Saturday it, unfortunately, it had fewer sticks but the effect was equally as perplexing. When I asked Mark what was the purpose of such a interesting arrangement he told me that while raking leaves he would run into sticks. Of course what does he do with the sticks? Leans them against the tree just so the neighbors wonder what is the deal with those sticks? and are perpetually confused by the new neighbors.

If you know me you’ll know instantly that I was amused and decided to help with this venture by gathering more sticks to add to the ritualistic pile of awesome. As you can see from the photograph above we are half way around the tree with the sticks. As we sit inside and watch people on the street walk by we all laugh since inevitably everyone walks by and does a double take before walking on with a confused look upon their face.

Awesome.

Do you mess with your neighbors in any way? Or do anything really strange with your living arrangement that makes people double take?

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