Weights

I've declared a state of marshal law in my house this morning. I am overrun by many small children that have the lovely habit of not picking up after themselves. And, when I try and enlist their assistance in cleaning up their mess I'm met with a deluge of complaints, whines, flat out refusals and ignoring. I'm frustrated and nearing a full-on burned-out emergency. The weight of everything that needs to be done is pressing down on me.

Hubby's car is officially dead. It's a huge, gigantic, enormous adjustment to now be a one car family. Indefinately. Saving up nearly four grand to fix it is going to take some time. I'm trying to take it in stride, figure out a week at a time but next week the kids have camp and its not figured out yet. He was supposed to drive them in and me pick them up which is going to be hard to do with one car if I also have to go pick him up from work. Or he'll have to get off early every day. Or we'll have to scrape the money together to rent a car for the week. Or...I'm getting a migrane just thinking about it.

I did just submit my very last assignment for my last class of my first semester in college. Yeah for that! I was sitting on it for weeks trying to get "the right time" to work on it. I realized that isn't going to happen. So, I fudged together a five paragraph essay which consisted of a lot of "according to"s and "so and so writes" but it's done and all I have to do is pass. Now, my final exam is looming and I'm freaking out because when we moved I kinda got rid of a couple of my books. I found out the exam is open book. Which is hard to do when you don't have them. ::Sigh::

The rabbits have settled in and are doing great. I put Conner's new cage together and the girls distracted me so the door now sports a 1" gap. Those little clippy things are a PITA to get on, never mind getting them off. Hopefully, sometime in the near future I'll have a white rust-free rabbit again.

The kids are driving me up the wall, over the fence and down the street. I am so tired of finding garbage just thrown wherever they happen to be. Half eaten food under the couch. Toys left out, strewn to all corners of the house. I'm tired of spills not cleaned up, the baby painting himself in someone's yogurt or applesauce they got out of the fridge behind my back and abandoned miscellaneous-baby-high places. Sticky door knobs, unidentifyable smears on the TV, windows and walls, broken crayons smashed into floors. My house is never really clean because I just move from emergency clean-up to emergency clean-up. I never get to enjoy anything being tidy for any length of time. I vaccuum three times a day. Minimum. With a shop-vac.

I'm done.

So, this morning we had a "talk" which means I yelled and hopefully, a bit got into their heads. No TV. No PC. No fun. No games. Nothing until the house is put back in order and they keep it that way. During the clean up they're going to loose toys if they start in with the complaining, refusal to help or start wandering off when I'm not paying attention. Perhaps, the idea of loosing things they want will help keep them on the straight and narrow.

Once they start up the bad habits again we go back to a day like today where it's spent cleaning, tidying and organizing. I'm not a slave and I'm not raising kids that are selfish and ungrateful. I won't pawn off my lazy son to some woman that will pick up where I left off. He's eight, I know there's a long way to go but eighteen isn't a goal, it's just a number. He won't magically start being responsible just because he's "grown up".

I heard once the best quote I've ever heard in my life though I can't site the source "My job as a mother is to work myself out of a job." And by God, I'm going to work hard to be unemployed.