Doings and Goings On

President's Day WEEK is going as vacations do.

The littles quarrel and tattle constantly but still play together all day without pause. Yesterday one of them closed the stopper on the sink and left the water running, flooding the upstairs bathroom. It ran down the vents to drown the downstairs bathroom as well. I put towels down to soak up the mess. The older kids freaked out when they went to wash hands for lunch thinking the flood might have come from a more unsavory source.

Shorty had a doctor appointment this morning which meant a lot of time in the car as we still go to the next county. Tomorrow I will drive him down to a friend's house about an hour away and then head a half hour's drive to pick up one of the kids from a friend's house before making the hour long trip back home. We don't really live in the boonies but it seems like it sometimes. Squeaker has already started rolling her eyes and snorting so we're all kept informed on how put out she is to have to be in the car again.

Lucky brought home an mp3 player belonging to her godfather's seven year old daughter. She asked me to charge it so I did, then promptly confiscated it. I had to explain to her that we don't allow young girls in our home to listen to music filled with profanity and nasty references to cheap, dirty sex. She borrowed that from a seven year old? Good grief.

Squeaker got into several little spats with one of the littles yesterday then yelled at me about how he was acting when I got on her about it. Does she really want her behavior compared with that of a three-year-old?

Today she went a little too far with snarky, rude comments about my messy room after I had spent all day yesterday and part of today on the rest of the house. Actually, way too far. So I made her a detailed list and she is taking over all my household/yard/pet chores so I can have the luxury of tidying my room to her satisfaction. She managed to get through cooking and cleaning up dinner, doing dishes, sweeping, and folding a load of laundry before admitting she was ready to pass out. That was only part of the evening chores. Tomorrow should be fun since she'll be privileged to get up early and put in a full day of it.

I've been having Lucky work a little each day on her science fair project which is due next Monday. It's been going okay but tomorrow she starts working on the report part of it. Writing is a challenge for her but she seems to have a good grasp of the experiment and the result so I'm hoping it will go easily for her.

Stickers finally gets back into her college art classes tomorrow after a long break. That will be good since I think maybe we've given her some sort of creative block. I've commissioned her to paint a new piece to go above our fireplace since she keeps mercilessly criticizing the one that is there now. Yes, she painted that one too.

The Cost of Peace

With summer vacation fully upon us, Ana has been driving Sparky and Drama Boy to the Boy's and Girl's Club about a half-hour from our house. Yesterday she drove them to the pool the next town over. Each night we discuss whether this is the best thing to do considering the cost of gas and the amount of time spent in the car. Last night we decided spending several hundred a week in gas might be too steep a price to pay.

Today we are rethinking. Any day that the boys stay at home and have to come up with their own entertainment usually results in various combinations of messes, wrestling, fighting, whining, cursing, and complaining.

This afternoon while our program social worker was here, they had a knock-down-drag-out brawl upstairs. When Ana separated them they turned their anger on her with Drama Boy wailing and crying and Sparky tearing up the upstairs and throwing the dirty clothes and hampers around the hallway.

Get a grip, fellas.

Of course, in his totally screwed-up sense of reality, Drama Boy has been having fits that we drop them at the Boy's and Girl's Club because we "want to get rid of them" while bemoaning the fact that they don't get to go often enough or stay long enough. Fortunately, he is able to keep himself busy quietly with legos, drawing, or books...at least when Sparky lets him.

The problem with Sparky is that if he has to come up with his own amusement the only thing he can think of is to tackle and annoy Drama Boy until he cries.

At the risk of telling our own kid stories ("...walked to school every day, uphill both ways..."), I can't believe that kids can't figure out things to do to entertain themselves.

But then again, we often despair of "kids these days" who ask for scissors to open their Otter Pops. C'mon kids, that's what your teeth are for!

The Good Old Summertime

Summer vacation is off to a start about like we predicted. Nobody has been consistently awful but we've had some ugly flare-ups of defiant, disrespectful behavior.

Of course, since they are on vacation, they think they should stay up as late as they want (the boys) and sleep as late as they want (the girls). I can't stay up that late anymore without dragging around all the next day and we like to enjoy even a little bit of quiet after the kids go to bed so the open-ended bedtime is not gonna happen. I'm much more of a stickler on bedtimes than Ana because I get tired and cranky. We try to stay on a bit of a schedule or else some of the kids think they are entitled to late bedtimes all of the time because they got to stay up late one night. That's where Sparky starts to have meltdowns. If he thinks he should get something than too bad for anybody who says "no" or happens to be in the vicinity. Drama Boy does pretty well entertaining himself but complains of boredom every time he is asked to do a chore or pick up after himself.

Squeaker gave the staff at the B&G's Club a rough time yesterday, mouthing off and demanding to use the phone so she could get herself picked up. She was also caught holding hands with a boy in the teen room which is strictly forbidden there (as it should be).

She is off and on moping and complaining about summer school which started today. Once she gets into it she'll be glad to be going since it gets her out of the house and they do lots of activities, cooking classes, and water days along with the math and language arts.

Yesterday when I picked the kids up from the B&G club a discovered that someone had scratched our last name into the paint on my car. I was almost beside myself with irritation and had them all climb back out so I could scold them about being inconsiderate and careless and destructive and how much it would cost to repair. As expected all of them denied it and nobody cared.

I can't belive one of them actually had the nerve because I am constantly telling them to get away from the car and don't EVER write in the dust or drag stuff along the car because it will scratch. My sad car already has Squeaker's initials carved into the paint twice along with "BB" although I'm not sure who that was. It has various other scrapes and scratches from kids slamming stuff into it or making scribbles in the dust. When we lived at the ranch and had a gravel driveway, Squeaker used to go outside and throw rocks at it when she got mad at me. It had a window broken out by two of my kids shooting rocks off a plastic spoon (the same window that had been replaced several months earlier after it was broken into).

Part of the reason we have been on a declutter and downsize kick for the past five years or so is to decrease our level of frustration when our things are carelessly or intentionally destroyed (not to mention stolen) by the kids. Even the things we continue to use and need like cars, furniture, walls, and doors show the marks of kids rages and thoughtless actions.