I was watching 30 Rock and Donaghy tells Lemon that a nemesis can be anyone or anything. Donaghy says this after being confronted with the fact that his current nemesis is a teenage girl.
I took great comfort in hearing this exchange because my current nemesis is an eight year-old. Her lair is just five feet from my bedroom door.

Don’t misunderstand me, both my daughters are the immovable objects to their parents' irresistible force. But lately Julia has been a real turd. When it comes to homework, chores or decent nutrition she is a master of avoidance. The tools and tactics she employs to skip multiplication triangles and meatloaf are legion.

As I type this I'm able to force my tongue into my cheek. However, in the heat of battle I become a berserker. A recording of how I desperately try to control my kids could be used to blackmail me for a large percentage of my paycheck. These are moments when I am clearly not at my best.

In my defense, there was once a build up to the pandemonium. I would ask politely for toys to be picked up or Hello Kitty underpants (not mine) removed from the living room floor. There would be a number of escalations that would occur before the yelling and bleeding out of my eyes began. These days, the blood runs out of my eyes instantly.

I know. Despite the fact that I have been trained to behave this way doesn't excuse my behavior.  I am the adult. Julia is eight and testing boundaries and demonstrating her resolve is part of her job description. But why does she have to be so freakin' good at it?

I'm working on turning this around, but I can't shake this image of Julia in my head every time I ask if her homework is done:  




One last thing. Now that Allie and Julia read this blog you can count on a secretly recorded video to be up on YouTube any day now. When you watch it, please understand that you're not just watching an insane, oppressive ogre traumatizing his children. You're also seeing yet another defeat at the hands of my nemesis.

 

I know it's weird. I also know I really appreciate it when I'm trying to make a purchase and I come across videos like this.

Installation was fast and easy. Debbie will tell you that it took me a few hours. But she's not factoring in a lunch break, a yelling at the kids break and a trip to the hardware store. I'd say actual work time was about an hour maybe an hour and a half - tops.

Deb and Julia have already taken the Toto for a spin but as of this posting, there has been no true test of whether or not this thing will allow me to put away my plunger for good.

I'm guessing you don't need an update.

 

Last night Allie, Julia and I were reading old blog posts. Most of them involved Allie in some way.

You see, my blogging career was in full swing when Allie was a toddler. I recorded every little detail of her development. In contrast, when Julia was spouting her bon mots and doing all sorts of cute stuff my desire to blog was waning.

It's not fair.

Julia deserves to have all the embarrassing details of her life recorded with her sister's. That's why I'm going to start writing here again.

This evening, I'd like to report that Julia is a psycho.

It's Thursday so Deb is at school. Tonight she's taking her mid-term exam. This means that the girls and I usually find a place to go out for dinner. The last few Thursdays we've found some pretty interesting places to dine. Like the Mexican restaurant run by an frighteningly cheerful man who asked us several times if we were enjoying our meals. When we told him everything was delightful he clutched his heart and in a very thick Mexican accent swooned, "This is music to my ears!"

The girls liked this almost as much as the mango soda.

Tonight was a different story. Allie started whining about where I suggested we go for dinner which truly pissed me off. So I drove their spoiled butts to McDonalds just so I could cram something down their throats and take them home. My goal was to get home quickly so I can sit here and pretend they're away at boarding school while I type.

Julia refused to order. She would only whisper things to me. Maddie, the girl at the counter, waiting patiently while my daughter behaved like it was the first time I took the padlock off her bedroom door. I insisted that she tell Maddie what she wanted. Julia insisted on trying to whisper her order to me.

Julia's explanation was that she is shy. My explanation is her eight year-old brain is damaged.

Allie is upset and blames my crankiness on my diffculties at work. I place the blame squarely on their shoulders. Regardless we're all in our neutral corners while we wait for round two.

 

 

I was sitting on the sofa when Julia walked up to me and handed me a Cheerio. I popped the Cheerio in my mouth and while I chewed I said, "Thanks, Sweetie."

"I poisoned it."

 

Allie and I went for a long walk after dinner. Instead of the usual exploration of our neighborhood we made our way toward Main St. The street was blocked by squad cars. As pedestrians, we were allowed through to watch the fire department take care of a fairly nasty car fire. No ambulances (thank goodness). Just a smoldering black hunk of late-model something or other.

As soon as the car fire was behind us we talked about a book on medical mysteries that Allie is reading. She would tell me about one of the diseases in the book and I would come back with whatever gross medical problem I knew something about. The more we talked, the more Allie wanted to hear. This meant each disease had to be more gruesome than the last. After Ebola I wasn't sure where to go so I wound up describing syphilis to my ten year-old.

She asked how syphilis is spread after I began describing how the disease could lead to lesions that would sometimes cause peoples' noses to rot off. The timing of the question was coincidental in that, as of today, Allie is learning about human sexuality in health class. So when I told her that syphilis is sexually transmitted she had all the information she needed.

As I type this I'm really not sure if my subconscious response to Allie's health class was to plant the notion that the consequences of sex can sometimes lead to your nose falling off.

Subconscious or not - I'm pretty sure it was the right thing to do.

 

I was filling up the car when I noticed the van next to me had a dog sitting in the driver's seat. This dog looked like the dog I have in my head when I think about what kind of dog I'd like to have as a pet.

I barked at the dog and it came over to the passenger seat to check me out. I waved. I made faces. I marched around. The dog was more interested in whether or not its owner was coming out of the convenience store than it was in me. This made me try harder. All the way to the point where I was sitting in my car gesticulating wildly to try and make this dog love me.

I'm not sure why I hit the brake as I pulled away from the dog in the van. I'm going to say Jesus told me to stop because I hadn't removed the pump nozzle from the car. Half a second more and I would have ripped the hose from the pump and gas would have spewed everywhere. With my luck it would have ignited, blowing up everything that surrounded my car and the cool dog in the van.

Following my close call I thought about how I would have explained the lost lives and thousands of dollars in property damage I might have caused to Deb. 

You see, there was this dog. . .

 

Riding home this evening we were talking about new kids at Allie and Julia's school. One of the new kids in Julia's class is named Brook. We asked Julia if she knew what a brook might be (aside from a first grader who's new in town). We told her that a brook can also be a small stream like a creek or a tiny river.

"No. That's not what a brook is. It's one of those things," she said.

After we made a couple of weak attempts to convince her that we weren't lying she said, "A brook is what they use to make buildings."

"Um, that's a brick."

"That's what her name is - Brook."

"But you said, brick; not brook."

"I said brook, like what they use in buildings."

"A brick."

"Yeah. A brook."

This could have gone on for the entire ride home but instead Julia told us about the abalien kid at school. "He's teaching us to speak abalien," she told us.

We asked her if she meant Albanian. She said, "Yeah, abalien. He's really poor. He said that he only has a hay ball to play with."

For some reason hay ball meant I had reached some kind of tipping point and started laughing until I couldn't breathe. When this happens it's not really laughing it's just some kind of gurgling sound I make as I try to catch my breath. This time my hysterical gurgling really pissed off Julia.

"Stop laughing! It's not funny! Don't laugh at my friend!"

"I'm laughing at you, Julia"

"Stop laughing at me!"

Julia sucked all the funny out of the moment. I sat there, sullen because I'd been scolded by my six year-old. Like she knows it's not polite to laugh at little kids who only have balls of hay for toys. She doesn't know the difference between a damn brook and a brick. She's telling me I shouldn't be laughing at this poor boy's toy?

Yes. I felt guilty. That said I've stopped typing this post twice to cover my mouth so I won't laugh at thoughts of the little abalien boy unwrapping the new hay ball he got for Christmas.

This is one of the many reasons why people tell me I am a bad person.