I've been assessing my life to see whether it's time to adjust my focus find and meet new challenges, climb
other mountains, search for the "real" me, have a middle-aged crises or two. And, after careful consideration, I've decided to put all my efforts into making life miserable for my children. Or, at least, that's what
they say I'm doing. How, you may ask, do I accomplish this? It's easy I expect them to earn their way in this world! What a unique concept! And it's strictly mine all mine because, as my children tell me, no
one else in the entire world is required to change their sheets. Just them, the poor misunderstood, brow-beaten little slave-laborers who live under my roof.
According to my off-spring, evil stepmothers have
nothing on me. I horse-whip and terrorize them with Ta Da! household chores. Oh the perfidy!
Consider these examples of the horror my children must bear in order to qualify for their bread and water:
Me (to my son): Make your bed.
Him: Make my bed? Nobody else has to make his bed.
Me: Consider yourself a trendsetter. Make your bed.
He grumbles, then tries to slip out the front door
about a minute later. When jerked back in, he swears he made his bed. Well, kind of. He pulled up the comforter, but didn't put his pillows on the bed and it's lumpy. A further investigation reveals he also made a
couple of throw pillows, his wadded-up sheet, a damp towel, an old stuffed animal, two books and a plastic Batman figure up in his bed.
He does it again, this time moaning that he lives in a gulag in Siberia
(minus the cold weather) and is going to be scarred for life due to his brush with orderliness.
Tough, I tell him. Go whine to your friends. Mama's got a life and it's not going to be spent making a bed for an
able-bodied nearly-12-year-old who's taller than she is. And the same goes for the girl child.
Conversation with second child:
Me: Do you have any dirty clothes in your room or bathroom that need to be
washed?
Her: Not that I am aware of. (Notice the careful phrasing. It means that, "If I were unconscious, I would not know the floor of my room is covered with dirty clothes and wet towels.")
Me: Then go upstairs and look.
With massive eye-rolling and a sigh that could be heard in Dallas, she huffs upstairs and, five minutes later, deposits three laundry loads of dirty stuff in the laundry room.
Me: Oh my goodness! Isn't it amazing how dirty clothes spawn when you turn your back? Must be an evil alien plot.
Her: You think you're funny, but you're not.
Wrong thing to say. I sing three
choruses of, "Sixteen tons and whaddya get? Another day older and a-deeper in debt
" Tennessee Ernie Ford would have been proud of me. My children reigning king and queen of dirty laundry and parental decorum don't
think it's cute, funny or entertaining.
Which. of course, means I will definitely do it again.
