This Would Explain a Lot

To say it's been tough lately dealing with all the teens in the household is a major understatement. Well, for me, anyway. Ralph's able to roll with the punches a lot better than I can.

I found an article linked to MSN today called, "How to Survive Your Teens." One point I found particularly interesting was the following:

"[Teens'] brains almost regress for a while as they make sense of their new thought processes. Don't assume they know better - in some cases, they really can blame their brain."

That would explain a lot of the behavior I've seen exhibited recently in our home. The whining, the crying, the screaming, the swearing, the crazy attention-seeking antics. And that's just me. (Oh, I kid. Kind of.)

I don't think I'll share this bit of info with said teens, though. I don't want to give them another excuse to add to their arsenal.

Mealworms and Big, Fat Seagulls - Wherein I prove once again that I should not be trusted around children.

(image source)

Yesterday afternoon started off on a bad note as soon as the boys walked through the door. I made the mistake of asking how school was, expecting a positive answer and probing when I didn't get one. I might as well have said, "Hey, how did your non-anesthetized facial reconstructive surgery go? Just okay? Well, it's a learning experience right? Can't you take something positive from it?" Yeah.

To add insult to injury, I was irritated that my youngest stepson (12 going on 20) was not exactly enthusiastic about sitting down with me to be forced to write out part of his science report. There was yelling (on my part) and insults (on his part, but some on mine, too) and fierce resistance on both sides. Luckily there was an actual adult in the room to calm us both down.

And even after the science project was decided upon (finding out what type of food mealworms prefer) I was irritated by the fact that I was going to have to go buy the disgusting creatures and still drag the poor, hapless boy kicking and screaming through the rest of the steps of the project. Never mind that he loved the idea of working with critters, as he has a passion for living all creatures and is actually excited about science. Nope. I was only concerned about the hell I was sure I was going to endure throughout.

Uh, if you're looking to restore your faith in humanity, it's probably best that you avert your eyes if I come into your line of vision.

However, you may still want to visit our house, as there are some really cool boys there who are pretty darn excited about life. Excitement not even dampened by the fact that they live with a witch.

Ralph came to me a little while ago and said, "Paul just called, all excited. He said, 'Dad! The dogs are all barking because there is a giant seagull in our yard!'"

Seriously, how cool is that when your kid is so excited about something that they want to call you at work just to share it with you?

Faith in humanity: restored.

Wherein I Fail Again

Once again I've patted myself on the back when I should have been kicking myself in the butt. I'll get to that in a minute.

I was doing some science projects with the boys, making oobleck and gack. These are icky, squishy, gooey substances that are right up their alley.

Oobleck is just cornstarch and water; it is pretty surreal. When you pick it up or hit it quickly, it reacts like a solid, but when you let go, it reacts like a liquid. It actually defies Newton's third law of gravity, therefore being labeled as a "non-Newtonian fluid."

photo credit

We also made gack, which is glue, water, food coloring, and Borax. Mixing these makes a consistency between Silly Putty and Jello. (I was too messy to take pictures, but it looks really cool.)

The boys loved this messy science. Ralph however did not. He came into the kitchen and proclaimed that the stuff was getting all over the place. I told him that if he didn't get so close to the experiments maybe next time he wouldn't get it all over his pants.

Science is messy. So is life. Deal with it.

Anyway, back to the reason of my post. I've been trying to come up with cool activities for the boys (especially for the two younger ones) for the summer since

a) they are grounded for a month from their skateboards due to an unmentionable crime that was committed,

b) we can't afford summer camp, and

c) because they both proclaim that school is boring and they hate it. I want to show them that learning is fun.


So.... after the success of the icky, squishy science experiments, I started coming up with all sorts of activities that combined the curriculum they will study next year with kinesthetic activities that would keep them entertained. I had visions of them building their own pyramids in the back yard, making salt/flour relief maps of the different regions of the world, constructing ramps to test the forces of motion. Oh, yeah, we were going to have fun!

Since I hadn't gotten any materials for any of these activities yet, yesterday I simply left them with a large bucket with a bottle of dishwashing soap, a bottle of corn syrup, and some coat hangers, instructing them to create gigantic bubbles in the back yard with whatever materials they could find. I'd seen it work on We Are THAT Family; I figured the boys would have a great time.

Somewhere in there I forgot Kristen has young kids; tweens and teens are kind of over bubbles.

I bounded in the door after work to see what a great day they'd had, waiting for them to tell me that they had made a bubble almost as big as a house and that I have the coolest ideas ever. Instead, I found two boys (Aaron, being seventeen, had not even participated) with ho-hum looks on their faces telling me that their day had been a total bore. What?? Didn't you create giant bubbles?

"Yeah, but they kept breaking."

Did you try any different materials to see if that would help?

"No, we just used the coathangers." ('Cause, you know, actually coming up with another idea would take too much energy.)

I tried a different tactic. I sat them down and asked what kind of activities they would like to do this summer.

"Skateboarding."

"What else?"

"More skateboarding." (Did I mention they are grounded from skateboarding?)

Sigh.

Now they've decided that anything I come up with is going to be boring. I'm trying not to take it too personally, as teenagers are supposed to think adults are boring and have stupid ideas. I'd really prefer they don't play video games all day, but since I work full time, I can't be there to ensure their misery with one of my "fun" ideas.

I can already tell some of you are saying to your screen, "Geez, lady, have you ever heard of a community center? Or how about letting the kids outside once in a while?" Since the unmentionable crime (see above) was committed when the boys were "out and about" at a park, I am a little leery of having them roam unattended. And since I'm gone most of the day, they choose to simply stay in their pajamas all day and eat nothing but cereal and watch TV. (Hey, it's better than getting arrested.) It's just hard when I'm trying to do the right thing and everyone around me is basically telling me, "Yeah, your ideas suck." I love my family.

Maybe I'll just tell them that the next time anyone uses the word 'boring' around me they have to go scrub the toilet.

Or pick up dog poop.

Or give me a foot massage. That'll teach 'em.

I Have So Much To Learn

So I made the mistake of telling my pre-/teen stepsons that they could pick the paint color for their bedroom. Yeah, ha ha. Stop laughing.

First, they wanted red, green, blue, and purple, one color on each wall.



Umm... how 'bout no, Scott. (Guess that movie!)

Then they pleaded for just green and purple. (Florescent lime green and bright purple, mind you. Apparently, they're skater colors.)

I called Ralph on the phone and he thankfully nixed that right away. (He also reminded me that he wouldn't have consulted them on the colors, but rather just gone and done it. Now he tells me.)

I tried to steer them towards an acceptable blue or something like that. Instead, they decided on this:

It's called North Sea, but it looks like dark asphalt to me. I got a quart of it and took it home and painted some on the wall. It looks just as hideous as you might imagine, although all the other (male) members of the family thought it looked fine.

I tried to compromise. Could we do Raiders' colors? Black on the bottom half of the room, gray on the top? Kind of like the colors of their site background behind the logo?


"No, 'cause you'd want to use a light gray."

Well, yeah....

"We would do it if we could have the black on the bottom and the gray we picked on top."

Black and dark, institutional, soul-sucking gray. Sounds lovely.

Ralph sensed that I wasn't exactly in love with the color. (Huh, wonder how, since it's not like I complained the entire time I was painting the sample or anything.) He finally convinced the boys to go with Dodger Blue.



Ralph's even going to stencil the LA on the wall for them in white.

While it's still not the color I personally would pick, I can live with it. And I know the boys will like it, which is what's important.

Next time, though, I'm just going to buy the paint myself and not consult anybody. Especially thirteen year old skate rats.

Week in Review ~ TGIF!

This week has been so hectic and crazy. I've been alternately exhausted and stressed to the point of screaming. I had a bunch of manuscripts due at work that were nothing but problems these last few months. My boss seemed not to care when I mentioned these problems periodically, and didn't do anything about them until the due date reared its ugly head. Then she got into panic mode and decided "solve" the problem by asking me every hour or so how they were coming along.

I love the way they run this place.

On the home front, Tweeny decided, once again, that all adults are stupid and therefore should be periodically chastised and yelled at, especially when they are doing something completely asinine such as trying to help with homework. For teenagers' sake, I'm glad that humans aren't a species that eat their young. (Though how some parents refrain, I can chalk up only to superhuman strength and will power beyond comprehension.)

That said, Ralph very kindly talked me down from the emotional keening harpy I had whipped myself into, and I'm feeling much more even-keeled today. He also took over the homework duties yesterday while I pulled the covers over my head and didn't come out until the alarm went off this morning. Have I mentioned how thankful I am for this man?

Speaking of giving thanks, I'll leave you with a bit of Thanksgiving insanity. Here's Sarah Palin's most recent interview, which happened to take place at a turkey farm. (She had been pardoning turkeys.) The backdrop of the interview was a man pushing a live turkey into a meat grinder. When asked later about how she felt about the interview and what was happening in the background, she simply said, "No worries." Thanks, Renée, (who is a vegetarian, BTW) for sending me the carnage!




Want something a bit less, um, savage? Head over to Cake Wrecks to see their lovely array of turkey cakes, such as this lovely creation:


Don't worry people, it's just a brownie with frosting! Whew!

"bad week" image location here

Tween Angst

A man at my company used to teach middle-school English. When Ralph remarked that he had one of his own progeny in seventh grade, the man replied, "They're barely human at that age!" I thought that was a little harsh, until I found out that it's really kind of true.

Last night was Open House at the middle school, basically a non-structured Back-To-School Night. First Tweeny didn't even want to go with us, then he pretended not to know us as we walked into the school. He sulked while we listened to the principal in the opening assembly, and practically had a coronary when I went to introduce myself to his first-period teacher. "Dad! She's making friends with my teachers!!!" Oh. the. horror. After that, I simply told him to write down his classroom numbers so he wouldn't have to show us where they were, and released him into the night.

When we caught up with him on the basketball courts, I told him that one of his teachers hadn't been there, and asked what subject it was. No, actually I asked what class it was, to which he simply replied, "Five." I told him I knew the room number, but what class? "Five." I finally wised up and asked what subject, but he was already walking away from me as fast as he could so I didn't hear what he said. After asking him to repeat it, he turned around and said very slowly, "Laaaan-guaaaage Aaarrtts." You know, because all adults are idiots and we therefore need to be spoken to like two-year-olds.

This is the song that was going through my head at this point:




I'm sure my mother is grinning right now and thinking, "Payback's a bitch, ain't it?" (Okay, she doesn't really speak that way, but I'm sure she's thinking something along those lines.)

I have to say, it was not the best night of my life. But after Ralph calmed me down a bit, we went for ice cream and then came home and relaxed together as a family. Tweeny even managed to thank me for the ice cream, and didn't even hassle me when I asked to look at his agenda (something every teacher said we needed to do).

I reminded myself that when he's not busy being a ornery little thing, he's really an amazing kid who's kind and thoughtful, a great big brother and someone always eager to help those in need.

Even if he is barely human.