The Taming of the Shrew...

Well nothing says Christmas like a need to lock down the behavior of your erstwhile wellish behaved eldest child.  She has been showing more and more signs of spoiled rotten brat syndrome and something had to be done.  I hate as a feminist to invoke the title of a most misogynistic play by Shakespeare, with the title shrew being finally tamed by her husband in the end, but it just fits.  (I know her sister plays foil to her by NOT being subservient to her husband in the end it is still  a parody of the attitudinal climate towards women of that time and is ahead of it's day..blah, blah blah...don't worry...)

Mackenzie is now 6 and displays the typical kid tendency to be great unless she is home with me.  I get the eye rolls, the "Mo-ommm" the constant demands for servitude, this is pretty par for the course.  Lately however she has reached a new pinnacle of rude behavior with me.  She has started to want to show off for her friends..."look, I shall make my mother jump nay high...."  or showing up in front of me suddenly at Gymnastics practise saying, "Mom, DRINK!"  Like some kind of pre-adolescent football player cro-magnon in a cute blonde 6 year-old girl package.

I do not respond to these attempts at tyranny. I'm usually pretty good at ignoring this kind of behavior (or disassociating... as the case may be)  I usually respond with a whispered hiss..."So then you want me to start yelling at you in front of your friends then, is that where we're going with this??"  I can keep up a remarkable outward appearance of calm while quietly battling back with weapons of my own, mostly the threat of social embarrassment.  Then I get the subsequent eye roll and obligatory "Pahleeze......." (subtext, I soooo DO NOT  mean this...)  Fine, I will weather this pissy missy storm with you....riding the waves of your moodiness until someday you realize everything I've ever done and said has been RIGHT...probably when you have kids of your own who are making you turn yourself inside out wondering where, WHERE in your genetic code they have managed to unlock SUCH behavior.

I had reached the end however when she tried to hand me her water bottle in the parking lot after gymnastics, with a derisive, "Here..." bored sounding, looking away, like, "I can't even be bothered making eye contact with you as I'm giving you a command, peon.....

I of course, graciously decline the proffered item, indicating that she is more than capable of carrying it to the car, parked not more than 6 feet away.

"HERE!...she persists, refusing to acknowledge my previous indication that I was not willing to play her pack mule that day.

"You can carry it yourself," I say.

"Fine" she shoots back, "I'll just drop it on the ground..."

Then reality as I knew it imploded.  All I could hear was a giant buzzing noise, (which was probably all of the screaming in my head coalescing into a face twitching, ear bleeding crescendo..) and the temperature of the earth suddenly rocketed upwards, with the speed of a pre-tween eye roll.

I somehow got home, driving in a dissociative state, and when I walked through the door, Chris knew something was wrong, it might have been the speaking in tongues, I'm not really sure.....

After some messy tear stained yelling about gratitude, I decided that it was my fault, that how could someone possible possess gratitude when they have everything they need or want served up on a silver platter?

After 4 1/2 hours in her room she finally came down and tried to help herself to a platter of Christmas brownies on the counter.

"Step away from the brownies...." I spit out through clenched teeth.  I level my best John Wayne gaze at her, "lemme tell ya how it's gonna work for the next week in these parts, pilgrim"

Then I go on to explain the list of chores that she will be required to to everyday... (gasp, one...)
And the week long embargo on sweets...not even in her lunch.  Her snacks will consist of fruit, yogurt or cheese ....I know, cruel and unusual but it has to be done.

And the best... Mother is on strike, that's right, talk to my union.  They say I don't actually have to do anything for you unless it involved keeping you alive, so for the next week don't ask me to get you a cookie/download you some music/reach you a cup/.  If it ain't provided in a Japanese POW camp, you ain't gettin' it from me, got it?  Oh, except hugs, I'll still give you those, cause I love you which is why I'm doing this...

Her suitably contrite response to this was, "I'm DEFINITELY not asking for any of those!" then she stomped up the stairs, and SA-LAMMED the door to her bedroom.

Oh, I thought, I AM going to break your spirit, child.    Ah, they could have made a Christmas special out of it all, it was beautiful.

Anyway, she served her week, which was actually last week.  She got off her grounding last weekend, displaying much better behavior.  She's smart enough to know that she deserved it.

Oh, boy, I can't wait until she's 16!

God Bless us, everyone!

So last week Marcus wakes up and tells me his leg is broken.  "Yeah, right kid", I think," this is some master ploy to get something out of me right?  You think you can get workers comp in this place?  I don't think so....I'll have private investigators getting photos of you dancing down the street before you can say free money...."

What's that you say?  My point...oh yes, I did go a little off there...

So I take him down to the couch in the toyroom, thinking his leg was asleep and rushed around to get ready.  After about 20 minutes I call him to the door to put his coat on and he slides off the couch and collapses on the floor.

Oh, so he REALLY can't walk...sign me up for the parent of the year award, once again..

Long story short we get to the emergency room and we wait for 6 hours to see a doctor.  Then we wait another 3 while they test him for all kinds of nasty things that could cause spontaneous lack of leg function, and I know from my medical education (mostly Grey's Anatomy and House) that this could be any number of things: cancer, meningitis, maybe lupus?  It's always lupis isn't it?

But seriously, I had rising moments of panic sitting in the ER waiting for the test results to come back.  I had thoughts of "you are being punished for venting dramatically on that blog of yours..."

After consultation with the doctor on call, the paediatrician and the orthopedic surgeon they figured out that it was something called "toxic synosis" where the cold virus that he has had for the last week has actually attacked the synovial fluid in his knee, causing inflammation and an inabilityt to walk.  Treatment?  2 junior ibuprofen...  I gave them to him at 6 pm and he was walking (after scooting around on the floor for 2 hours) by 8pm.

I can't tell you how if feels to hear,  "Look Mommy I can walk!"

We had our own little tiny Tim there for a while.....

I got gratitude for Christmas.

Scooby and Shaggy would be proud......

It turns out I'm not as tough as I thought I was.  Every teenage girl and young woman likes to think that they are tough...we are women hear us roar and all of that.  When I was in graduate school to become a psychologist, I thought, "I'm going to be a forensic psychologist, I'm going to work in a PRISON!!  I am TOUGH!.  I took my first forensic class (an elective), read my first victim statement and I realized, whoa...not cut out for this.  Then I thought, I will work with trauma victims, I am tough, I can handle it.  Nope, sorry, that made you cry too,  do you want your money back for your degree???

So now I do research..

(disclaimer...I did clinical work for 8 years with addicted teenagers, but they were tough, so I didn't have to be.....but I digress)

Back to me not being tough....

So last night my 6 y.o. girl, Kenzie wakes me up at 2 am because the wind is blowing.  We are having a late fall windstorm and it's really noisy.  The fact that she has totally regressed and will not sleep by herself (along with her brother...) is a post for another day....

So I crawl into her bed and try to sleep.  Around 4 am, the fan in her room and the nightlight go out at the same time and we are plunged into darkness.  So far, I'm OK...the power is just out, no big deal.  Except that her nightlight comes back on and starts flickering madly and chaotically.  I think, hmmm, maybe there's some residual electricity left in the circuit and the night light is small enought to be lit by it.  Surely there is no ghostly presence trying to send me morse code messages from the great beyond...surely not, heh, heh, that would be ridiculous right??

I get up out of the bed and unplug the nightlight and notice that the lamp down the hall in the boys room is still lit.  Hmmmm, this is strange, how can there be a power outage in just one room in the house?  I touch her lamp and it comes on...ok...must just be this outlet.  No morse code from ghosts, just a faulty electrical outlet that's acting wonky in the middle of the night, nothing to worry about there...

I crawl back into bed and suddenly, the lamp that I just turned on,  goes out, plunging us into darkness again.  I can still see from the faint glow down the hall that this is only happening in this room.

I begin to take it personally.....I also begin to try to talk myself out of the bed to investigate, which sounds like this....

Me: Ok, get out of bed, just go and turn on the hall light and check to make sure the house isn't on fire.

Me. Nope, uh-uh.  There is clearly a monster under the bed just waiting to slither it's tentacles out and drag me screaming under there with him.

Me.  Stop being a baby, you are a PARENT....get up!

Me:  Did you not hear the part about the monster, my feet are BARE for God's sake, that is the universal beacon to monsters.  Bare feet....yummy!  Listen, if I had socks on, I may be able to deal  with the situation, my hands are tied here.

Me: Listen, in the unlikely event that there IS a monster, and ye DOES love bare feet and he DRAGS you under the bed, don't you realize what that would mean?

Me: I sense you're trying to trick me here, go on....

Me:  You wouldn't have to do the morning routine with the boys......

So I LEAP out of bed, across the room and run to the hallway.  The light there is working.  I hesitate, not sure what to do now.   The hall light is too bright to leave on...I know, I'll turn on the linen closet light off the hall.  OK, done, back to bed with Kenzie.

I get in, pull the covers up and , you guessed it, THE LINEN CLOSET LIGHT GOES OUT.

Ok, now I'm getting a little freaked out.  I run down the hall to our room where my husband is sleeping (with the boy who refuses to stay in his own bed....) I LEAP onto his prone body, landing on all fours like a cat who has had his rest disturbed by a rocket launch.  I hiss, WAKE UP. " The lights are doing crazy things....I'm really freaked out....  I keep the monsters to myself, even at 4 am, I know that will make me sound a little loony and he won't take me seriously.

"Where's Kenzie, is she awake too?" he asks"  

Oh.  Right.  The Child.

Well it seems as I was running for my life, I may have, umm, left her behind.   Fear not, she was covered by the blanket.  That is the universal forcefield of protection.  Just ask anyone...

Anyway, as it turns out, the wind downed a tree branch with left us with partial power in that end of the house.  The timing of the lights going off?  Well I guess that's just a coincidence, right?

So I call the power company this morning to report the problem.  As I'm getting off the phone with the agent, I say, "So is there anything we should do in the meantime, while we're waiting for the line to be fixed?"

She pauses and says, "Well, I mean, if it catches on fire, definitely call us back."

I feel safer with the monsters......