TWELVE DAYS OF HELL

My dear friend Chelle is blogging about each day in December. Her posts are always so positive and cheerful, but as I'm reading her "First Day of Christmas".... "Second Day of Christmas"... all I'm thinking about are my twelve days of hell going on right now.

Yep, the Man is "Going Live" on his Project -- and yes folks, those ARE capital letters. "Going Live" is serious stuff. He even gets up to get into his client worksite early during "Go Live" phases. THAT is how you know it's serious... So he's off to the client site... coming home for a day then going right back. Thus my Twelve Days of Hell.

I try to put on the Good Wife face and just suck it up. I really do. But between the spurts of sleep I get due to the Wee One deciding he HAS to sleep in our bed for a few hours each night and the constant mental battering of dealing with three boys, it's been tough. Plus, Mouth is working on his own little version of the twelve days...

Day One: Paperwork comes home from school that has to be signed by a parent, because Mouth has, surprisingly enough ::eyeroll:: gotten in trouble from his mouth at school. His little snarky self has been making fun of kids in class & in gym class & he got busted, so he now has an "infraction" of the school harassment policy. I tell him to take it to his Father (yes, again with the capitals!) so that The Man can have some fun. (I hate to have ALL the fun & not let The Man have any.... after all, I AM a giving person....) We spend the weekend making Mouth's life a living hell (say good-bye to that mp3 player for a looooong time, buddy!). [As a side note -- we tell him REPEATEDLY he needs to stop teasing people, etc..., but back in the day -- when you teased a girl, wasn't that just a way you showed her you LIKED her???]

Day Two: Mouth comes home from school after the weekend, which on Friday he offhandedly mentioned to me that he "needed to look up the nervous system on the internet" & I gave him some info after I remembered (by myself, mind you) on Sunday... and find out that he had a HUGE PACKET that was supposed to have been completed on THURSDAY night. I then get to hear how the Teacher said they didn't have to do it. I get on the phone to said Teacher who verified that indeed, Mouth was not being truthful. Spent afternoon & evening making Mouth's life a living hell (TV? What TV? You're not going to see ANY TV for a looooong time, Mister!) and lecturing him about letting down the rest of his group on this project by not doing his work. (And also pointing out that he'd be the FIRST one to jump their butts if they hadn't done their work.)

Day Three: Mouth comes home with a note from the Teacher that he had been busted using the Home Link (parent answer sheet) to do his math homework. I go looking for that new bottle of Tylenol I could SWEAR I had just purchased at Target.... Talk to The Man, who normally secretly is GLAD he isn't having to deal with all this crap first-hand, but now that he's in "Go Live" stage figures it would be a real toss-up as to who has the bigger pile of shit to deal with right now. The Man recommends I research military schools, send away for brochures & leave them lying about. Problem is that Mouth would immediately notice that the earliest grade military school I've been able to find is fifth grade, so he'd still have 1-1/2 years to put me into my grave. [Another side note -- The Man also pointed out what I had thought, too -- Isn't it ASSININE for the school to hand the kids the ANSWER SHEET to their unit homework and expect them to NOT realize what it is???] Threaten Mouth anyway with sending his little smartass self away to military school to make his life a living hell. I wonder how much time Aunt Vicki has during her school break??? Hmmmm......

Hopefully there will NOT be a Day Four. The Teacher wants me to contact the school Counselor to see if he has any ideas of what to do with the kid, because we've tried challenging him, giving him leadership, blah blah blah. I told the Teacher just to start sending him to the Office. So sometime tomorrow I get to call the school counselor. (Isn't this where Super Nanny tells the Mother that everything is all her fault?? Oh wait -- that would be the GRAMMA who says this is just cosmic retribution.....)

So Chelle, PLEASE keep blogging, because it's enjoyable to me to see that some families are actually ENJOYING this month instead of finding it to be a huge battleground - argh!