Represent

So this weekend, Husbandrinka takes off for fucking PARIS with a parting, “I wish I could stay here with you” to me, and I’m like, “Look, not like I’m not tons of fun or anything, but I doubt that Lawrence Olivier could have pulled off that line,” and once he leaves the kids and I realize that this is what our TO DO list looks like:

The kids and I have an organizational meeting and decide that they will clean their rooms while I clean the rest of the apartment.  Because they belong to a much better union than I do.

So my 10 year old daughter goes and CSI‘s her room and it looks great and my seven year old son decides to conserve his energy for a cleaning burst that he’s sure is imminent by sitting down with a Batman coloring book. As I’m cleaning the apartment and experiencing the accompanying euphoria, I occassionally peek into his room and see that no, so far he’s been totally spared any OCD cleaning tendencies. And while he’s colored the most amazing picture of Robin ever, I really need him to get the fucking blankets off the floor and just make the bed.

I am cleaning the bathroom when he comes in to tell me that coloring has completely exhausted him and he would prefer to play the Wii while I cleaned his room, because, as he eloquently puts it, “you’re the adult and it’s sort of your job.” Although I appreciate his honesty, I point out to him that I’m very busy myself and he delivers the quintessential line, “you’re not doing anything, mom” which would play a lot better if I hadn’t actually been scrubbing the toilet at that very moment.

I explain patiently that he will not do any electronics until he at the very least makes his bed and he says “no electronics? You mean I can’t even turn the light on?!” and I say, “you know what I mean, no Wii, no computer, no DS,” and in a move that would shame Dustin Hoffman, he starts crying immediately, as though I told him that he will be sold into child slavery (I have no idea if the market for that actually exists, by the way, but Buyer Beware, if you get my drift. Biggest scam ever.) So the crying and the gnashing of teeth is going on and I’m so not falling for it, the bed is getting made.

Suddenly, my daughter appears at the bathroom door and now the three of us are in the tiny bathroom, with Nicki’s litterbox to keep us company. And my daughter says, “Mommy, you’re making him upset.” So I say, “This is between him and me,” and she says, “My brother is upset. I have a right to be here as his representative.”

What representative? Are we at the Hague?

Well, apparently we are, because the next thing I hear is that while other children are enjoying a weekend of debauchery, they are faced with hardcore scullery.  Those may not be the exact words that they use, but the message is loud and clear.

Oh, but at least I’m in the bathroom with my children.  Not some place stupid, like Paris.