You guys…..I’m back! I’m sure you were all missing me immensely and wondering where I was. I really have no good excuse as to where I was, but one thing you can count on is… that I 100% lost my shit while I was gone.

Alright, so let’s set the mood shall we. Two Sundays ago, I was thriving. I was having a very productive morning. I was doing laundry, meal prepping for the week. The husband was out golfing and the kids were actually playing really well together. Mind you, I was even able to get the kids to help put all their fucked up dirty laundry, the right way out – with little to no whining. It was a Christmas miracle, in February. The house is clean and I’m jamming to Whitney. I’m in a stellar mood!

It should be noted that every Sunday we have “Sunday Dinner” at my in-laws house. So while I finish doing what I have to do, the kids are off playing in one of their rooms, I need to let them know that we have to start getting ready to leave. I check Caden’s room. Nope, no kids here. I then walk down the hall to Riley’s room. As soon as I crack the door open I can see the amount of clutter, trash, disarray – a straight up fucking disaster! Apparently they did not get the memo that Sundays aren’t just for Sunday Dinner, but also cleaning….which is what they were helping me do less than an hour before!!!!

The shear panic that came across Riley’s face when she saw me appear in the doorway. I’m sure it had something to do with the fact that my eyes rolled in the back of my head, my head spun all the way around, and the devil came out of me. “Are you freakin’ kidding me?!” I lost my goddamn mind. I threw out all the – “you’re not going on vacation (months from now),” “I’m throwing everything away,” “You’re losing all your privileges,” “Why can’t you just take care of your shit?!”

Honestly, I’m sure I said more, but so much time has passed that I can’t remember what other good one-liners I had. Naturally she started to pout. So then I get upset that she’s pouting. The AUDACITY! You don’t get to pout because you’re Forky (Toy Story 4 – “I’m trash”). You only have yourself to blame. Dear god I just became my parents.

So fast forward to the car ride to Sunday Dinner. I see her sulking in the back. And as I said before, I always like to discuss why I lose my shit so they can better grasp my rationale, or not – which seems to be the pattern. I then explain that Mommy and Daddy work hard so that we can have nice things. They don’t appreciate, yada yada yada. I then tell her that we will be cleaning her room when we get home that night and that she lost the privileges of anything fun in her room. Just clothes and her bed. She agrees and we go about the rest of the drive and dinner.

We get home from dinner and she gets a bath, seemingly thinking we are going to ignore the elephant that is her room. WRONG-O! She gets out of the bath and is greeted by me, in her room. With a trash bag! I told her, WE are cleaning this mess, and I’m throwing things away that she will not be happy about, but those are the consequences of her choices. I’m finding all sorts in shit in this little hoarders room. Dirty clothes stuffed under her bed (because her hamper is you know, 2 steps from her bed), toys from the basement (she already lost out of her room), scented French-whore lotion (that I have no idea where it came from), hair tie galore, (no wonder we can never find one in the morning before school), little pieces of papers (garbage), the list really goes on. Also, for the life of me I cannot fathom why it is so FUCKING hard to take the tags off your clothes and walk them to the trash can. There are plenty trash cans scattered around the house. Just pick one, for the love of God!

The way she treats her room, like a trash can, sends me. I start going off on a tangent, and saying if it’s ok for her to treat her room like a trash can then I’m going to as well. When I’m cooking and I trim raw chicken fat…straight to Riley’s room. The dogs come in from outside, oh look one has a dingle-berry…Riley’s Room. She of course objects. This took about 1.5 hours to complete. I leave her room and bring the completely filled trash bag out to the garage, only to see my husband, sitting outside by the fire pit smoking a cigar. Not a care in the world. It was in the moment that I decided, when I die, I want to come back as a Dad. 

There you go, my meltdown for the week. Ugh, still makes my blood boil typing it all out. So far the room is staying fairly clean, she really doesn’t have much in it for it to get messy. But every now and then she sneaks something in there that she lost her privilege of. The next step – if she doesn’t take care of her clothes, she’s going to lose them too. How inconvenient to have to ask Mommy and Daddy for clothes. The ball is in your court, little girl!