This is the way this week has looked:
9:30 up and at 'em. Get the girls dressed and fed and then work on myself.
10:30 a.m. Heading out the door and to the pool
10:40 a.m. Finally got the girls loaded and made one, maybe two, trips back into the house to get something that was forgotten.
11:00 a.m. In the pool. Fighting to keep my bathing suit up while Miss Suddenly I Have Nothing Good To Say Or Do For Anyone In My Universe four year old is pulling on the straps while bellowing at the top of her lungs "I don't like to swim! I don't feel good about this!"
11:30 a.m. Getting out of the pool and trying real hard not to push Miss Suddenly I Have Nothing Good To Say Or Do For Anyone In My Universe back into it.
11:45 a.m. Heading through the Burger (Blech) King to get Miss Okay So Now I'm Out Of The Pool And Can't Wait To Get Back In Tomorrow chicken tenders so she'll have a full stomach when she heads into round two.
12:15 p.m. Strolling inside the Fine Arts Center to wrestle with Miss Look, Mommy, I'm A Ballerina to get her ballet slippers on before her dance class starts.
1:00 p.m. Enjoying the peace and quiet of just sitting in a chair without one child that belongs to me anywhere near.
2:00 p.m. Sighing as Miss Oh, You Know, We Did The Same Thing Today As We Do Every Day exits the dance studio and is put back into my custody.
3:00 p.m. Threatening to beat Miss Scream and Bitch About Everything And Everyone In An Attempt To Wake The Sleeping Giant (aka Mak) if she wakes her sister and doesn't quit the damned squealing.
4:00-6:00 p.m. Hanging out and trying to the best of my ability to hang in there because Mak brings with her a path of destruction that would probably equal the damage of a weak hurricane wherever she roams. And Miss Let's See How Mean Mouthed And Tantrummy I Can Be Before Mommy Completely Loses It wreaks worse havoc with that tongue of hers.
6:00-8:30 p.m. Head to a local church with not only my two kids but the neighbor friend and her kids to Vacation Bible School. After being made to endure two hours of other people's kids, I begin to appreciate mine again.
9:00-11:00 p.m. Fighting and trying to reason with Miss You Can't Make Me Go To Bed/I'm Going To Lie On The Floor And Refuse To Go To Sleep.
11:00 p.m.-Sometime in the Wee Morning Hours- Thanking The Universe for giving the will power to not completely lose it for at least one more day and praising the silence of kids' voices.

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I don't know what is going on with Grace lately but she is becoming unbearable. Suddenly my good-hearted child has morphed into a vampire, sucking every ounce of restraint and grace that I have. Yes, she's doing a lot this week. But I've tried and tried to convince her that maybe it's too much and she doesn't want to give any of it up. And she keeps wanting to go to Vacation Bible School but refuses to stay there by herself, so I, the Enforcer, have to go and hang out. And because I'm not the kind of person to simply hang out, I end up herding and leading a group of pre-k and kindergarten kids for two hours because they run all over the two teachers for their class.

Grace is really something these days. It started about a month ago and has just gotten worse. She throws tantrum after tantrum. She says horribly mean things to me, which I don't get because she's not talked to that way by anyone in her life. The other night when I put her to bed, she screamed and cried so hard that she was gagging. Her favorite line at that point was that she didn't like me and wanted a new mommy. Admittedly, the first two or three times that those words came out of her mouth it felt as if I had been socked in the stomach because I am not mean to her by any means. But by the fourth utterance, I was over it.

I headed to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. I went and brushed my teeth. And when, after all of that, she was still screaming so loudly that the neighbors probably heard her, I walked into the bedroom and told her that we would go new mommy shopping first thing in the morning. I didn't throw the words at her, but rather lobbed them as I busied myself with picking up dirty clothes from the floor. And then her cries and gags turned into, "No, Mommy, No! I love you too much to give you up!" Sigh.

I think a big part of it has to do with the fact that she is very tired. She was in bed by 9:30 last night but would not give it up until almost 11:00. And she hates it that I make her come in the house when her friends are still outside playing. But she's four and needs the sleep because she is in the middle of the week from hell.

And to add to the stress, mom and I are locked in a war. She has taken to attacking everything I and Da Man do because of some stupid shit with the Hostess Factory next door. They owe her a rather large sum of money but can never seem to come up with even a part of it. She was real pissed off about it--pissed off about it to the point of confiding in me why she wasn't cordial to them anymore. And it didn't help that as they were telling her they were broke, their yard is suddenly full of gallon size pots of flowers and a new screen house that we know had a price tag of $100 attached to it.

It had gotten so bad between her and the Twinkies that the son, Suzy Q, was telling the other neighbors that they were being ran out of the neighborhood by us. C, my stepdad, took that rather offensively and went next door last night to get to the bottom of it. The getting to the bottom of it took place while I was upstairs putting the girls to bed.

I was supposed to light the tiki torch in the backyard to signal to my neighbor friend that we were out there. Imagine my surprise when I rounded the corner of the house and walked into the middle of a Twinkie convention taking place at the table. I had nothing to say to mom, nothing at all. I came in here and busied myself until Mama Mullet and King Don went home.

Mom came in the house and stood looking over my shoulder as if nothing was out of the ordinary. I asked what the big Twinkie convention was about and she told me nothing. So then we got into the issue of the van, which is why the Twinkies owe her money in the first place. She informs me that it's none of my business. Well, that pissed me off on a number of levels because, and I'll leave it at this, it is 50% my business.

I followed her upstairs and tried to have an adult conversation with her, but it didn't work. C put his two cents in and began acting as if he was going to have a heart attack. Mom sat there and said nothing to me. I pretty much ended the whole thing with a "have proof tomorrow that my name's off the fucking registration." And then I turned around again and told her that I didn't get how she harps and harps on me if I am twenty bucks into her, sometimes taking the last bit of money I have to my name to repay a debt that's a week or two old, while she allows those fucking pieces of trash next door to be into her for over half a fucking thousand bucks. "It's none of your business why I let him do what he does." And with that I left. There was only ugliness within me right then, so I chose to take the high road.

This morning our regular routine resumed, neither one of us bringing up the conversation from last night. We'll see what happens. As of now, she should be heading on her way home with Princess Ballerina. And I have some house cleaning to do.

And now tell me, how odd is it that an entire post filled with nothing but bitching and loathing had nothing to do with Da Man? *snort*