More Drama

Well you all seemed to like yesterday's post pretty well. Five comments! I didn't even know I had five readers. Thanks for the feedback.

The Dark Lord made it home in one piece and had such a great time that I suggested maybe he invite the crew over next week to celebrate his birthday. He seemed pretty pleased with that idea so I guess I did something right.

Now on to the next drama. I was very, very bad today. MonkeyBoy pushed me to my absolute limit and my behavior was ... not good. There were various causes: bar mitzvah thank yous, housework, and tae kwon do class but at his age these don't seem to be too onerous especially since he's been spending half of every day up at the high school attending an animation camp, having a blast, and making friends.

When he was working towards his bar mitzvah, I was really impressed with his sudden maturity and work ethic. I thought I was seeing a whole new kid. But now that it's over he's sliding back into his old habits. I can't get him to lift a finger around the house and he still hasn't made much of a dent in his thank yous which, as far as I'm concerned, are in no way optional.

Additionally, last I heard he was going to bail on tae kwon do. This summer his regular teacher was transferred to another site and now he's working with someone new. He doesn't like her but the only reasons I'm getting are that she asked him to re-tie his belt and told him to wash his feet. This boy wears his Crocs all summer --have you seen boy feet recently extracted from Crocs? Yuck. I'm not sure how she went about making the request but I have no doubt it was justified given that they work out barefoot. Interestingly, The Dark Lord is also in this class as a beginner and he thinks the teacher is just swell. I can't figure out what's going on here and why, after a year of work, MonkeyBoy is ready to bail.

I keep trying to talk to him about sticking it out and trying to learn what there is to be learned but it's not even up for discussion at the moment. I can't seem to reach him right now and get him to take responsibility for much of anything and it's wildly frustrating.

On a more positive note--I took all that negative energy from this morning's interactions with MonkeyBoy and channeled it into The Most Dreaded Task of All. I cleaned The Princess' room. No small thing given that she is a champion hoarder. It's far from spotless but you can walk across the room now. She decided at some point to tie endless yard of novelty yarn to almost everything in the room making a sort of sparkly but chaotic giant spider's web. That was some work to untangle but once the stray yarn was removed it wasn't too hard to get in and clean. I hate housework more than most people but I have to admit that was very satisfying.

Next up: a post that doesn't include kvetching about my kids and doubting my parenting skills. I promise pretty pictures of my current work-in-progress which is turning out to be quite lovely.