Not real happy with my kids right now. >:[

My son has always had a deluded idea of what doing a good job means...especially when it comes to cleaning. He does what most would consider a half-assed job for EVERYthing. I know it seems contradictory or hypocrytical to say that this is something that has been a major issue/pain for years when you consider what he's had to live with...but it is true. And lately he's been so argumentative. He gets frustrated with us, feeling like we are nagging and nothing is ever good enough for us, but I get so tired of his telling us what a wonderful job he did only to go and check and barely be able to see evidence of his having been there at all. It doesn't help that someone turned a switch on him at 12, and he's become argumentative and obnoxious all at once. We can be looking at the same white surface at the same time, and he's insisting that it's black...getting madder by the minute that no one sees his logic. GRRRR....

Tonite, he insisted on making supper, making what he wanted and doing it his own way. It became a tug-of-war that no one won because his way did not work, but because it was supper for everyone, we all paid the consequences. And don't even ask about the (lack of) clean-up! I just want to bang my head against the wall...wait, maybe it's HIS head I want to bang against the wall...! (His 13th birthday is coming up, and that is a special milestone in our family. I've been trying to figure out what kind of celebration/ceremony we will have for him. Maybe I won't have to worry about it, cause I'm not sure he's going to live long enough!)

Topping the evening off, my lovely daughter decided it was a good night to cop an attitude with anything I asked her to do. She tried to justify it by saying she had homework to do. This was, of course, very close to bedtime....after she had spent an hour on the computer and said not a single word about her homework then.

Deep breath...breathe in....breathe out...breathe in...breathe out. We CAN do this...we WILL do this....