The Boiling Point

I will preface this rant by saying that it has actually been a very good summer.  The weather has not been insanely hot and we even had three straight days of rain!  We have gone on some small adventures that both the kids and I enjoyed.  We have relaxed; we have spent mornings hanging out in pajamas and just savored the not having to be anywhere right away.  Bill has not had to travel much at all this summer (other than his crazy commute each day) and is home almost every night.  It really has been good.

However, even with all the good, I am slowly reaching my summer vacation boiling point.  I can feel it bubbling under the surface about to break through in an ugly crescendo of swear words, tears and/or a primal scream.  I find myself weary of making sure the ADHD boy gets enough exercise to keep him calm when all he wants to do is play video games and/or watch cartoons.  He has been relegated to Tom and Jerry and Animaniacs for the rest of the summer because they don’t leave him quoting the episode word for word or over-stimulated. I am weary of the sloth-like teen who emerges from her teen cave at noon at the earliest and uses me as a taxi service to her various social engagements.  She can’t understand why I am not ready to pick her up as soon as she texts me and I can’t understand why she wouldn’t think to walk the half mile home instead. 

I am annoyed with giving them all one small chore for the week and still having to remind them to do it every day.  And the glasses!!!  ARGH the dirty glasses.  Our dishwasher is running twice a day because none of them can use the same glass twice.  Rinse it out, use it again, I say.  They look at me as though I have two heads.  Or when I reach into the fridge and someone has put the ice tea pitcher back in there with just enough tea to coat the bottom of it.  Mmm, refreshing.  Thank you for saving me that half-swallow of tea.

And while kid hygiene is never stellar – does it get worse than ever during the summer or what?  I didn’t realize that tooth brushing was only necessary when school is in session.  Or deodorant.  Why is telling them that they stink and to put deodorant on funny?  It’s not funny and the funk they expose me to is not funny either.  They started doing their own laundry this summer; as a result my son has been wearing the same pair of shorts for the past four days. 

ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  They are beating me down, but I am going to stop and take some deep breaths and not let them beat me. I will take comfort in my fellow moms who lock eyes with me at the grocery store as if to say “Solidarity, sister” as we ignore the whines of kids begging for various bags of high fructose junk.  I will revel in the Facebook posts of other moms who lie in bed and pretend that they can’t hear fighting from the other rooms in the morning.  I will immediately empathize with other moms when they start a sentence with “I just can’t stand….”  Doesn’t matter what it is, I am right there with you.  And when all else fails, I will remember the mom I passed in church who was close talking to her son while pointing a finger in his face and telling him he’d better shape up or he was going to lose baseball.  I wonder what that kid did bad enough to push his mom into yelling at him in church and warrant losing a whole sport. 

We are 2/3rds of the way through; I am not going to trip at the finish line.  We are going to end this summer vacation strong.  We still have homemade poptarts to make and bike rides to take that last more than 5 minutes.  There are pools to swim in, friends to have over and feeble stabs at craft projects to make. I can do this, I can do this, I can do this.  I can do this and enjoy most of it while I do it.  I can do this and enjoy them because they are just getting so big. I can do this and not inadvertently teach my children more swear words. I can do this!