Mother's Day Bust

If you believe Hallmark, Mother's Day is a day to celebrate those wonderful creatures that gave you life.......if you pay attention to reality, even just a little bit, you notice that Mother's Day is actually a day to push said creatures to the very end of their wit's, only to do a sudden 180 when threatened with your life......at least, if you live in my house. Over here at Brookview Terrace, there is no "mom, you're the greatest" or "mom, if it weren't for you, I would be lost" instead it's "well, tough noodles because......" or "but that's not fair" or better yet "but I want that......" am I just raising a really selfish child? or is it just the age of 'almost' 8? Once upon a time, my step-mum, who is brilliant, told me that it's either the odd years or the even years that are always hard......never both. Up until now, her theory has tested right, but since 7 has been mildly challenging and 8 appears to be horrendous, that jig might be up.

Yesterday began innocently enough with a sweet little peck on the cheek and an "I love you" while I was still lying in bed. However, my angel disappeared and a character straight out of Stephen King showed up when we started to talk about the birthday party that is coming up. "What do you mean I can't invite my entire class to Chuck E Cheese? It's only $18 a kid!!!" Hm, I'm no math whiz, but quickly tabulating, I'd say that comes to roughly 'no freakin' way'......for several reasons. One, I don't want to be responsible for 18 screaming children in a public place.....security measures or not. Second, we're going away for a week over Labor Day and I'd like to have some cash-ola to go on vacation. Third, I don't care for the dancing characters at Chuck E Cheese and would rather gouge my own eyeballs out with dull pencils than sit through 2 hours of listening to them. Gr......

The day only got better from there.......4 hours at the out-laws house......a walk around the neighborhood where the kid complained loudly and constantly that she was dying because she was so thirsty and my dance with a butchered cow. What? you ask.....A butchered cow? We're not quite vegetarian, but we're not sold on the idea of meat and potatoes 5 nights a week either, so it's a rare occasion that we actually try to eat a steak in this house; apparently for good reason. However, Dan decided that yesterday would be a great day to have steak and charged me with marinating it. So, I dumped in some olive oil with garlic and spices and all was good. Until I decided to pick up the container and shake it up a bit so the oil was evenly distributed. Yeah, how about checking that lid before you shake it like ya love it? That's right folks, the lid came off an I had three pieces of steak flying around - thank God it only landed on the stove and not the floor. But still.....on Mother's Day, do you really want to deal with raw meat???

Toward the evening hours, I managed to escape to the yard to clip some forsythia.....which gave me some happiness for a little bit. Then the kid and a bunch of her neighborhood friends decided to go 'trash picking' and drag home a bunch of stuff to build a fort out back. We're not talking little stuff either. We've got a 3' artificial Christmas tree, a waffle maker and a toaster oven, a plastic filing cabinet, a coat rack and a landscape picture framed in one of those great 80's gold frames. Fantastic.