I'll get you my pretty...and your little dog, too!

Sometimes I hate my children. Is that bad to say? Cause if I'm the only one feeling it - then I guess I need to know that.

I can hear them now - sitting at the kitchen table, all still in their underwear at 10:30 on a Saturday morning. Scarfing up the hash browns and sausage I've made them, after I cleaned up the kitchen mess they made me. Both sinks full to the brim with dirty dishes. Not a clean spoon or fork in the house. And I kept coming across plastic spoons. And I didn't know why. Until I did. There haven't been clean utensils for days. I've been washing one each time I need one. But what did they do? They used a disposable one. To avoid washing one. This makes me angry.

So when I called them in to eat their breakfast that I fixed - it drove me a little bonkers that one of them (ok, Thing 1, if you must know) opened the dishwasher that was running.

"No sir!" I yelled.
"I didn't know it was going," Thing 1 yelled back.
"Bullshit!" I shouted. "That thing is as loud as all get out!" (I don't know where 'all get out' came from. But it is a really loud dishwasher. I had to get an even louder doorbell to hear it over the monster.)

After that, Thing 1 went straight to the pantry where I keep the plastic spoons and started to pull one out.

"Oh no you don't," I said.

"What am I supposed to do?" he whined.

"Well, I don't know. I see three spoons and a fork in the sink. You could WASH ONE!"

"Nevermind," he said. And sat back down.

And I felt like a witch.

But you know what I did? I washed him a fork. He dried it off more thoroughly after I handed it to him, which pissed me off further. He might have said, "Thank you." But probably not.

At which point I issued an edict to all three members of TheWreckingCrew sitting at my kitchen table.

"You are not to use the plastic spoons. Understand?"

"Yes ma'am," from all three.

"If there are no clean utensils, that means you haven't been doing your chores, number one. And number two, what should you do?"

"Wash one," from all three.

And then Yellow Dog scratches to be let in and I open the back door and catch a glimpse of my broom laying in the yard - straw strewn about, handle chewed. I wheel around to face them.

"And whoever finishes eating first better go pick up my broom and put it up where it belongs. And I guess you're all going to split the cost of a new one out of your report card money since you left it out where the dog could get it!"

And I can't take it any more so I go to my bedroom and shut the door.

And as I write this, I do not miss the irony of me bitching about my broom being left out.