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Thursday, November 10

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Tales from the Steppes


2005-11-11

2:30 p.m.
Friday, November 11

My daughter is cranking Christmas music and I refuse REFUSE to listen to it!! It is not even Thanksgiving yet!! Downright unamerican. My children are all home for the afternoon and I am struggling to not kill them. They are supposed to be cleaning but instead they are arguing and whining. Every few minutes another child will yell "Mommy" in a particularly annoying tone and I will ignore them, as I do not answer people that yell for my attention. If there is bloodshed, I will go up there but the blood had better be real or someone is in BIG TROUBLE. I do go up every 15 minutes to gently remind them that they had better get their collective butts in gear and clean their rooms but I refuse to stand over them and direct their efforts.

Oh, I suppose this sounds all mean and everything. I did start off with the "Brady Bunch" approach of explaining that tomorrow is their father's birthday and we are having people over so I am desperately trying to clean the house and I really, really need their help. And if my children were the Brady Bunch, they would be attempting to help me out. But I think we have already established that this is not the case at all. While the youngest may have curls, he neither lisps oh so attractively or is a "team player." And I do think the EM is in a "Marcia Marcia Marcia" stage except she is Jan, not Marcia.

I have tried being nice, I have tried simple bribery, but we are just left with noise and coercion. I guess if I were a more subtle person I could come up with a better solution. But I am tired and I just want them to clean their rooms, dammit. And then the bathrooms, please. This is one of those times that I wish I was a scary parent that they want to keep happy. Unfortunately, they do not ever seem to care much about my displeasure. I am suprememly ineffective.

I don't suppose it really helps that I am ambivalent about this dinner thing. Tomorrow is not really a day I am looking forward to though as it also the SU's birthday, I feel obliged to make some sort of effort. Even though tomorrow is really the anniversary, today has felt more like the day because last year it was on a Friday.

But now, my 15 minutes are up and I must go tell the EM to stop reading whatever book she has fallen into and remind the MM and YM that they have not worked long enough to warrant taking a break. And then I will make yet another plea for their cooporation followed with a threat about what will happen when they don't help out.

Past Few Tales


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Thursday, October 26

Friday, October 20

Thursday, October 19

Wednesday, October 18


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