Mother's Day, Keepin' it Real

My mother's day got off to a real interesting start. 

Without going into a lot of detail, I was at the end of my rope by 9 am.  The reason that I was at the end of my rope is twofold and really nobody's fault but my own:

1) I have gotten really bad about going downstairs because the boys spend so much time there.  The combination of dog, testosterone, and dust has become too much for me and I am going to have to seriously "hit it" on my next "high energy day".  I pray it hits on a weekend because I only have a couple of vacation days left before July.

2) I have gotten slack in making the boys eat at the kitchen table.  Please remember that these are children number 3 and 4, plus the fact that I spend most of my time these days wandering from room to room looking for stuff I can't find....Plus I was really tired the night before from blowing stuff to Kingdom Come all that day.  More on that later.

My solution for not finding stuff upstairs is yelling downstairs and asking the boys where the lost stuff is, due to reason number 1 stated above.

So, it's Mother's Day, I am trying to fix a brunch so I can feed everybody before we embark on our afternoon plans, and I can't find any plates.  No clean plates, no dirty plates.  Now, I distinctly remember having used plates the night before to fix some kind of frozen food that neither of my grandmother's would have even considered "real food", but boys of the new millenium are thrilled to eat.

Naturally, I look around upstairs, and find no plates.  So I yell down to the Grand Finale telling them to bring me the dirty dishes.  They yell back that there aren't any dirty dishes down there.  Right. 

So I yell louder, (Did I mention what a beautiful day it was?  ALL of our windows were open), asking where the plates are at.  They yell back that they "don't know".  Right.

Everybody knows that you only get 3 strikes, and the Grand Finale is no different.  We all knew it was time for them to get real, but did they move before the third strike?  No. They did not.

Which is why I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to any neighbors who heard some woman yelling (as if they wouldn't know it was me) that WHILE WE MAY ACTUALLY OCCASIONALLY "LOSE" A PAIR OF FINGER NAIL CLIPPERS, BOYS, OR A SCREW DRIVER, IT SIMPLY IS NOT POSSIBLE FOR US TO "LOSE" THE PLATES WE EAT OFF OF!!!"  And then, just to seal the deal, because I was already wanting to just go back to bed, I threw in the old stand-by threat that always, ALWAYS works, because I could hear that the video game was still going and I knew in my heart that neither one of them had moved a muscle, "IF I DON'T HAVE ALL THE DIRTY DISHES UP HERE IN 2 MINUTES, I'M COMING DOWN THERE!!!"

This is the threat they hate more than anything.  It never ends quickly or well when I go downstairs.  Muaaahahahahahahahaha.

Immediate sounds of plates and silverware being gathered up.  It sounded like they had even put the dirty dishes in the sink.  This fact, sadly, and I probably shouldn't even admit this, made me proud.  I know it's not much but it is progress.

At least I didn't have to actually go down there.  That would have meant throwing the fit where you ask them if they were born in a barn and then I would have had to spend the entire day making them sweep and dust.
I thought it went much better this way.  It was Mother's day, after all.......

Hope you had a good one, and if not good, at least memorable.