I Brought My In-Laws Joy

Please before you get all mushy gushy and say awehhhh, trust me, this morning I would've rather not have brought so much happiness and glee to my in-laws life.

Every week we try to Skype with my in-laws and my father.  It's a way of keeping the kids involved with the grandparents and keeping everybody invovled with each others lives.  We do this either on Saturday or Sunday, depending on the sport season we are in.  Rright now we're finishing up the Cricket and Little Athletics season which means we are gone all day Saturday so we try Skype on Sundays.  In a few weeks we will be moving onto AFL, which is on Sunday so we will be moving the Skype time to Saturday mornings.

It poured all day yesterday so Saturday sport was cancelled.  Ted got the word about Little A's being shut down the night before but Cricket held out as long as they could. Yesterday was the beginning of the playoffs so I suppose I understand them trying to see if the boys could play but really, it rained through the night so unless we were creating cricket water polo...the game wasn't happening.

I do my best to stay in bed on the weekends till at least 8 am.  This is because for years I was not allowed to sleep past five or 5:30  so this is my little petty ME moment. I say petty because it usually means I' m racing around trying to get stuff done before we leave for cricket so its more of a hassle for me. But when I'm lying there in bed all I can think about are  those bleary eyed early mornings and my rear end stays firmly planted. 

Look, my kids are old enough to figure out where the TV is and they know where the fridge lives.  The pantry usually still in the same spot in the kitchen so they can find food and entertainment.  I look at it as teaching them independance.  So, actually this is an example of me being a good parent.  Yes, yes of course, that was my plan the entire time.

Yesterday I was doing still dozing...I mean teaching my children an important life lesson...at 8am and waiting for news about the game.  The game was supposed to start at 9:00 so Teddy was up and about.  I know that must seem suprising that he is so willing to be up and going early in the morning but trust me, its all self-serving. The reason he has no trouble with weekend rise and shinning is that Evil Troll Mom...ie...ME...has banned all Xbox usage during the week. It's even worse for Teddy now that the girls have discovered Skylanders and now they want equal Xbox time.  He has to get up pretty early to get his HALO time in before the Xbox gets defiled by Spyro and Tree Rex.  To save time and listening to me scream, he gets dressed in the cricket whites right away so he doesn't risk losing to a female assault on his prime viewing position on the couch.

Amazing...he can work out the logistics of all of this subterfuge first thing in the morning but he can't understand that I know he's the one that hides empty Diet Coke cans in his bathroom. Genius that one.....

 So there he his, all decked out in Cricket regalia when I come to tell him that cricket was canceled.  I tell him to go change his clothes and we go on with the day.

24 hours later brings us to today.  This morning we get up and begin Skyping Ted's folks.  I end up leaving the computer because I noticed that every time I'm around the dumb thing it stops working. It's a bit ego deflating and difficult to continue claiming to be a geek when my mere aura makes the computer stops working.  No matter, I use this time to start sorting and put away laundry.  I head into Teddy's room and low and behold, I step on a clean cricket uniform that is scrunched up and piled on the floor.

I'm sure that most kind and caring mothers would make some sort of tsk tsk sound, pick up the uniform and hang it back up.  Sadly for my son, I am neither of those things.  I turn and bellow, "JESUS CHRIST! Are you kidding me?!" And I begin what we can refer to as the yelling time.

I yell at him as he gets up from the computer table and walks into his room.  I continue to yell at him as he bends over to pick up the clothes and tries to find a hanger to put it on. I storm out his room, still yelling and head back to the laundry basket on the living room couch. I turn around to find that he has followed me and is muttering some nonsense about not having a hanger. 

All this does is make me angrier because of course he has a hanger. He has the same damn bloody hanger the uniform was on when he got dressed the day before.  As I start to remind him of this I look up at him and there he is.... standing there listening to my rant with a smile on his face and twirling the hanger around his hand like a misshaped hula hoop.

I admit, I lose my mind a bit here. Words were said. Not all of them positive. Well, most of them were in fact, the opposite of positive..Alright, perhaps it was inappropriate of me to threaten to shove his head through a hanger so he could wear it like a necklace. In hindsight....maybe I didn't need to promise to make him wash, dry and put away everyone's laundry on the street. Also I now regret screaming, "Good! I hope it hurts!" when he caught his finger on the hanger and he yelled that it hurt. 

What I don't regret yelling however is, "Don't you bleed on my floor!" Or at least I didn't until I was invited back to the computer by my husband so we could continue our conversation with my in-laws. See they were still on the computer and listening to my torment.

And they were.loving.every.bloody.minute.of.it.

They were having a great time listening to me rant and rave. Bringing back memories of their days in the trenches. They must be happy memories now because it took them long enough to stop laughing. I sat back down and offered an act of contrition for swearing where they could hear.  

Grrr.....I'm going to get that kid. He made me swear in front of my in-laws, damn it.

Mom promised me that I would survive this.  After all, she did. I turn and stare at her son, my husband as he is amusing himself by jacking with the Skype picture so that we look weird to them and I think to myself......I don't know....there is some powerful genetic pull of dumb-assery here.

I don't say that of course. I just smile and nod. Smile and nod...rinse, lather, repeat...

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