Here we go again!

The BBQ Pit
1

** House Issues**
It’s amazing how y’all can manage to use the computer, while the vacuum cleaner sits and gathers dust.

It is easy for you to pick on me for not folding clothes. But you can sit in front of a tv and you will not fold them either. When was the last time you started a load of laundry again?

The next person who chooses to empty the ice cube trays, and not refill it, nor put it back in the fridge, is going to be beaten with it.

You’re the one who wants to cook more meals at home, but it has been awhile since you went grocery shopping. Now we have gone grocery shopping, but nobody wants to cook. Surprise, no one took anything out to thaw. Guess who ordered pizza for supper tonight?

** Work sucks!**

I do not understand how, when both of your children drive, still do not go to the grocery store to pick up stuff to pack a lunch. I can walk to kmart after work to go get catfood, or walk up to the grocery store on my day off to go get something to take for my lunch, and i do not even drive.

You are the one who told me to help those ladies get dressed, and that is fine.
I said, “I have got to go, she is on the toilet, and she is dressed, someone else will have to finish her.”
“She cannot be left alone.”
Really!?!? You were going to tell me this when?
But why are you so surprised when I got out late, when you add people to my get-up list like that? Y’all think I like leaving late like that?

  • Sibling Rivalry*
    I do not know why you two have not killed each other yet.
    I cannot understand why you insist on sitting on top of one another, when the heat index is 110 degrees!
    Give her the phone already, the world is not going to end if she uses the phone for 20 minutes!

For the love of god, turn down the music before I have you fitted for a fucking hearing aid!My accursed door is closed, there are pounds of clothes hanging on the damned door rack, to try and muffle the skullsplitting noise, but it seems to be fucking 90 decibels in here,and my stereois not on, I have to work tonight, cuntfunnel dingleberry!

If one more person complains about not getting the right clothes, i am going to stick a name tag on every item of clothing in this house, How can i know whose it is when i have never seen either one of you wear it?!

2

::slips in, gives anya marie a nice Midori and pineapple, sneaks out::

3

Mom?

(circa 1981)

4

They’re old enough to use the phone and even drive, but they can’t do laundry, cook, or be left alone??

My older child is 12. She can (and often does) make simple meals, do her own laundry, get herself ready for school and out the door, and be left alone in the house for a few hours. Her 8 year old sister can get her own snacks, fold laundry, and put her own clothing away.

And their dad knows enough not to criticize my parenting or housekeeping.

5

My kids, ages 17, 14, and 11, wash all their own clothes. Whether or not they fold them and put them away is up to them–if they want to live out of laundry baskets and walk around town in Perma-Wrinkled shirts, that’s their privilege. If they don’t have something clean to wear, then we have the conversation that goes:

Kid: “I don’t have any clean socks.”
Me: “And this is my problem, how?”
Kid: [goes back into room to look under bed for dirty socks to wear]

They all know where the vacuum cleaner, the broom, the dust mop, and the cleaning supplies are kept, and they know how to use them, and if something about the house strikes them as not being clean enough, they are perfectly welcome to utilize any equipment, supplies, etc. they may desire to rectify the situation.

The one who is old enough to drive understands that the privilege of sharing the car keys also involves not bringing the car home with the gas gauge on “Empty”, and occasionally shoveling out her collection of McDonalds packaging.

They all know how to operate the following appliances:

  1. The refrigerator.
  2. The chest freezer down in the basement.
  3. The can opener.
  4. The microwave.
  5. The electric frying pan.

Kid: “Would you make pancakes for breakfast?”
Me: “Why?”
Kid: [goes out to the kitchen and makes pancakes]

I haven’t lost a kid due to starvation yet, nor have any of their schools called to say that my child has arrived at school looking like a refugee, did I mean to send her out of the house looking like that?

6

Clarification: my sisters do not drive yet, they can cook, i do not know how well they do laundry.
That bit was for my coworker, about her children.

I do not trust my sisters to be alone in the house, it seems to me, that they hate each other and not a week goes by without the two of them screaming at eachother over something .

Zette, it looks delicious. :smiley:
Duck Duck Goose, that was hilarious, thanks
!

7

particlewill said it best. My brother and I grew out of it so will your kids. Hang in there.

8

I admit I was rather useless around the house as a kid, especially not being tidy.

Once I bought my own house, though, I kept it spotless.

Ah, the joys of growing up!

9

gee, thanks, people. my wife and i are expecting a baby boy (due 9/17, but any second really). i was calm and ready, till i read this. now i’m freakin’ out! you all mean to tell me kids are a bunch of extra work? shit! i still haven’t got the wife to do MY laundry or cook yet…

10

gato: it depends on the kid. I got one who considered it a form of torture to do anything we ask him to (we called him the Drama King), although he has gotten better since he turned, oh, 8.

My 4-year-old daughter, now, demands that she dress herself in the morning, and she’s been choosing her clothes since she was capable of forming a thought. Her clothes were in the second drawer from the top, and I remember holding her up in the morning so she can pick what she will wear. Now, we have lower drawers.

It seems like her 2-year-old brother may follow suit, but it may take time. It just seems girls are quicker on the uptake than boys, at least in my family.

But, physically, the kids’ first couple of years are hardest on the parent, what with the kid waking up at night, and all those diaper changes. After that, the strain is mostly mental. :slight_smile: