“This Is My Summer Cottage, and I’m Not Going to Work as a Free Babysitter for Your Sister.” My Husband Dropped Off His Sister’s Six Children Without Asking—and Bitterly Regretted It
“Go to hell with your stupid computer!” Yelena shrieked, grinding the gears as she shifted.
Candy wrappers flew from the open windows of her car. The old crossover lurched forward, leaving two black tire marks on the dusty road. Six children of various sizes stood outside the gate of my summer cottage, resembling a band of young pirates preparing to storm a seaside tavern. The smallest one, Arseny, was already methodically picking his nose while eyeing my carefully cultivated strawberries.
Saturday morning. Nearly thirty degrees Celsius outside. My project was due in four hours.
I shifted my gaze from the settling dust to the fence. The phone in my hand vibrated. It was Alexey.
“Katya, what’s going on over there? Did you throw a tantrum at Lena?” My husband’s sleepy sigh came through the phone over the sound of the television. He smacked his lips as he chewed a sandwich. “My sister only asked you to watch the kids for three hours. What’s the big deal? Lighten up. You’re sitting at home anyway, moving little cards around on your laptop. It’s not like you’re working on a factory floor.”
“Of course, Lyosha,” I replied sweetly. “You’re absolutely right. They’re only children. They’ll play on the grass.”
“Exactly! See? You can be reasonable when you want to!” my husband said smugly before hanging up.
I ended the call. The Champions League final was already unfolding in the strawberry patch. The eldest, Artyom, took a running start and kicked a ripe Gigantella strawberry. It exploded against his white sneakers with a wet splat.
Little Arseny was loudly snapping a branch off a young pear tree that I had carefully nurtured for two years.
Should I show my emotions? Start screaming?
No.
A plan formed instantly.
I went inside and pulled a whiteboard, a box of multicolored sticky notes, and a heavy sports whistle from the trunk. The whistle was a souvenir from my university days.
A polite smile appeared on my face—the kind that usually made the programmers in my department turn pale.
I stepped onto the veranda and raised the whistle to my lips.
A sharp, deafening blast cut through the quiet summer afternoon.
The six little bandits froze in place. The whistle cut their shouting off mid-sentence.
I calmly walked over to the outlet on the summer veranda and, with one easy movement, unplugged the black router. Its green lights blinked and went dark.
At that exact moment, a collective groan from the children swept across the entire cottage community. Half-watched videos froze on six smartphone screens.
“The Wi-Fi is dead!” little Arseny squeaked tragically, shaking his phone in the air.
“Quiet, team!”
I placed the whiteboard on an old wooden table. The dry plastic click of the marker cap made the children flinch.
“Starting now, the rules of Scrum methodology apply here. Sprint Number One begins immediately. The objective is to regain access to the network.”
Artyom, the eldest, scowled and shoved his hands into the pockets of his shorts.
“What’s that supposed to mean? We’re going to complain. Mom said we were just going to play.”
“Your mother has gone to a bachelorette party at a spa. Forget about your mother. Right now, your only client is me.”
Using a black marker, I drew a thick vertical line across the white surface. I divided the board into four columns: Backlog, In Progress, Testing, and Done.
“The router password will now be changed every two hours,” I announced, placing the first yellow sticky note on the board. “The price of the new password is fifty story points. Motivation points, in language you can understand.”
I began methodically attaching multicolored notes to the board.
“Task number one: weed the strawberry patch without damaging the runners—fifteen points. Task number two: collect dry branches for tonight’s bonfire—ten points. Wash the dishes after lunch—fifteen points. Learn five English words using my flashcards—five points for every person who passes the test.”
The children stared at the yellow notes as though they were members of an isolated tribe seeing a compass for the first time. Laziness battled severe internet withdrawal in their eyes.
“What happens if we just take the router?” Artyom asked, narrowing his eyes as he clearly considered a rebellion.
“Minus ten points for the entire team for unauthorized interference with the project architecture,” I countered, attaching a red penalty note to the board. “Any fighting, screaming, or damage to the strawberries results in a rollback. Think carefully. The clock is running.”
The heat melted the air around us. The children stood in front of the board, shifting their eyes between the red penalty note and their screens.
Artyom clenched his fists, exhaled loudly through his nose, and turned toward the others.
“All right, team,” he said through gritted teeth. “We won’t survive until evening without TikTok. Let’s do it.”
Capitalism entered the cottage yard quietly, rattling galvanized buckets as it came.
Once Artyom understood the heavy burden of leadership, he immediately assumed a managerial role. He glared at the subdued group and pointed at the board.
“Okay, Arina and Sonya, you’re on dish duty. Vasya, collect the branches. Senya, sit on the porch and memorize the English words, or we’ll lose five points because of you! Move!”
Six-year-old Arseny sniffled, sat down on a wooden step, and buried his face in the glossy cards bearing words such as “apple” and “garden.” His fingers, stained with fresh soil, tightly gripped the cardboard.
Work began in earnest.
The girls organized an assembly line that would have made Henry Ford envious. One scrubbed the plates with a sponge, the second rinsed them beneath a stream of cool water from the garden hose, and the third dried them with an old towel. The dishes practically squeaked with cleanliness.
Artyom circled the strawberry beds like a hawk.
“Don’t swear!” he hissed at Vasya when the boy tripped over a bucket. “Swearing costs us ten points! Do you want to lose YouTube? I’ll tear your ears off before Katya has time to deduct the points!”
By one o’clock, the first release had been successfully delivered.
I approached the board while all six children silently held their breath. With great ceremony, I moved three yellow sticky notes into the Done column.
“Exactly fifty points,” I announced. “Here’s the password.”
A collective sigh of relief filled the air. Fingers immediately began tapping against screens.
But it was too early to celebrate.
It was lunchtime.
There would be no chips, crackers, or soda from the supplies Yelena had brought with them. I declared those items “prohibited performance-enhancing substances” that reduced workplace productivity.
A simple chicken noodle soup steamed on the table beside a pot of Hercules oatmeal.
At home, the adults usually had to beg these children to eat even one spoonful of soup. Now, exhausted by physical labor and a strict deadline, they devoured everything in three minutes.
“Katya, can I have another serving?” Artyom asked, licking his wooden spoon. “We need carbohydrates. The next sprint includes a timed veranda cleanup. We’re going to need the energy.”
I smiled silently and poured another ladleful into his bowl.
The system was working.
At exactly six o’clock that evening, brakes screeched outside the fence.
Yelena’s crossover stopped beside the gate. My sister-in-law stepped out with a triumphant smile, carrying greasy brown paper bags from a chain burger restaurant.
Her face revealed a passionate desire to photograph the destruction, my tears, and my ruined property so she could immediately send Lyosha a victorious report.
She took three steps into the yard and froze.
Her jaw slowly dropped until it nearly touched the collar of her blouse.
The grass along the edges of the paths had been neatly trimmed with garden shears. The strawberry beds gleamed with cleanliness, and the soil shone as if someone had polished it by hand.
There was not a single candy wrapper or broken branch in sight.
A monotonous murmur came from the veranda.
Yelena climbed the wooden steps on tiptoe, trying not to let her heels make any noise, and looked inside.
The six children were sitting in a tight circle on plastic chairs around the whiteboard. I stood beside them, thoughtfully turning a red marker in my hands.
“All right, team. Let’s review the sprint,” I said quietly. “What problems occurred during the veranda release?”
“Vasya missed the branch-collection deadline,” twelve-year-old Artyom reported sternly, folding his arms across his chest. “His velocity dropped because of a June bug. But Senya saved the iteration. He passed the English vocabulary test without a single mistake.”
“Yes, we do!” Arseny declared proudly, lifting his chin and displaying his clean palms. “Katya, check please!”
Standing in the doorway, Yelena nervously rustled the paper bags.
“Children… I brought you some nuggets and French fries…”
Artyom turned toward his mother and gave her the exhausted look of a senior developer whose foolish intern had just crashed the server right before the weekend.
“Mom, don’t interrupt. We’re having our daily meeting,” he sighed, wearily rubbing the bridge of his nose. “And put those trans fats away. Fast food contains simple carbohydrates. They critically reduce concentration before the final project delivery. We’re about to deliver a clean veranda to Katya and receive one hour of YouTube access. Don’t ruin our performance metrics.”
“What have you… What have you done to my children?” Yelena gasped, clutching the cooling nuggets to her chest.
But the children immediately came to my defense. Arseny tugged on his mother’s sleeve.
“Mom, Katya is awesome! She didn’t yell at us, and now we have a project!”
My sister-in-law hurriedly herded the noisy crowd into her battered crossover.
As the car pulled away from the gate, I heard Artyom complaining from the back seat.
“Mom, your car is complete chaos. It’s an unoptimized backlog. We urgently need a household Kanban board, or we’re going to drown in this mess.”
Yelena understood one simple thing: she would never bring the children here again.
The risk of permanently losing her parental authority was far too great.
At around nine in the evening, the gate creaked open.
Alexey entered the property. My husband had clearly prepared himself for an argument. His lips were already pursed, and he was ready to listen to my complaints about the hardships of being a woman.
Instead of destruction, however, he saw a perfectly trimmed lawn and spotless garden beds.
I was sitting in a wicker chair on the veranda, drinking warm linden tea. My closed laptop lay beside me.
Alexey stopped and looked around in confusion.
“Where… where is everyone?” he managed to ask. “Lena called me. She was screaming that you were abusing the kids and torturing them with some kind of terminology…”
“Everyone has gone home, Lyosha.”
I took a small sip. The porcelain cup quietly clinked against its saucer.
“The sprint is closed. The release was successful. The project has been delivered to the client.”
“Well… there you go!” He smiled and shoved his hands into his pockets. “And you were making such a fuss. I told you they were normal children. They played on the grass, and that was it. It wasn’t difficult for you.”
“Not at all.”
I raised my eyes to him and smiled sweetly.
“By the way, Lyosha, if your sister ever wants to bring her team here again, I don’t mind. My agency charges ten thousand rubles per hour for off-site children’s IT team-building sessions. They spent eight hours with me today. That comes to eighty thousand rubles. Ask Lena whether she’ll transfer the money to my bank card, or whether you’ll pay it on her behalf.”
Alexey froze.
His mouth slowly opened, but no sound came out. He shifted his gaze from my calm face to the clean yard and then to the whiteboard covered in sticky notes.
The gears in his head began turning with a painful creak as he calculated the value of my “easy little job on the compooter.”
Without saying a word, he walked into the house, took a cleaning cloth from the shelf, and began diligently wiping the dust from the cabinet.
Sometimes, to make your husband respect your work, you don’t need to cry or shout.
You simply need to send him an invoice.