Princess Tweenie, and The Bitchy Witchy Mommy

Once upon a time you would have thought it was a fairy tale. I assure you, it is closer to my daily nightmare.

Can someone please explain to me why it is so much harder to drop dirty clothes into a clothes hamper than it is to drop them on the floor next to the clothes hamper? I am asking myself this question...again...as I contemplate what cocktail I will be having this evening. It’s not 9am yet. I don’t care.

Such is the life with a “tween” daughter. It is no mystery to me why I drink. Maybe it is because from the moment my feet hit the ground in the morning, I am speaking in a tone of voice that does not evoke thoughts of calm and peacefulness. Mostly, I am yelling. It could be any number of things that has caused me angst, but generally speaking it revolves around “the dirty clothes” issue, the “clean up your room” issue, or the “I’m not your maid so take your own dishes to the kitchen” issue. There are others, but those are the ones that pop into my mind with alarming frequency.

Admittedly, I am a neat freak. I like things to have a place, and it is my fervent wish that if any particular item is removed from it’s designated spot, it is returned to said spot when it is done with its little field trip. I do not want to find said item under a piece of furniture, shoved in an inappropriate drawer, or (my personal favorite) lying in the middle of the floor as if it were the latest in teen décor. Now, before you give me the “she’s a kid, they are all that way” speech, it should be noted that I have already given up on my requests to her about making her bed. I got her a loft bed, so now I can’t even see what is in her "bedroom stratosphere", so problem solved – outta sight, outta mind. If she wants to sleep on the same sheets for a month, well, then so be it. I do routinely take her bedding down to the basement for fumigation and a brisk washing, but generally speaking, if it’s a mess “up there”, it’s not my problem. I have also let go of the fact that unless I dust her room, it will never be dusted. Sometimes her room is so dust-laden, you’d swear her roommate was Miss Haversham. There could be dust bunnies rolling around in there so large that she could easily give them cute little names, but she’d go to hell with gasoline britches on before she’d ever get rid of them. I am more about “neat” than “spotlessly sanitary.” What annoys me to the point of wanting to send her to military school is the fact that “mess” just seems to grow...everywhere and in every corner. Really, is it so difficult to throw away a piece of paper? What makes dropping it on the floor soooo much easier? Please, enlighten me because I am DYING to know. In my mind, now, in addition to the original act of dropping whatever piece of trash on the floor, you get the added benefit of listening to me scream about it, followed by actually STILL having to pick it up and throw it in the trash can...not many timesaving steps in that exercise, is there? I try to drive that home with my beloved offspring. I have now come to the conclusion that she is deaf, or at least unable to hear anything that is on the same decibel level as my voice.

The beauty of all of this screaming, yelling, drinking, and banging my head against whatever wall is handy is that someday, in the not soooo distant future, she will be an actual teenager, followed by adulthood. With those years comes dating, friends, and some semblance of a social life. That is where my fun truly begins. If she thinks I’m a loon now, wait. I will have no mercy. I will talk about every embarrassing moment of her life...loudly. I will fart and or burp unashamedly in front of her boyfriends and I will make sure the statement she hears most frequently from her friends is “Dear God, your mother really is batshit crazy, isn’t she?” She has no idea how truly creative I can be in plotting my revenge. She’ll learn though...she’ll learn. And then, she will wish she had dropped those clothes in her hamper, and not on the floor.