Yes, for the rest of your lives of being little kids.

I lost it on the kids today.

We were in the car on the way home from Costco, and —

I should rewind…

Saturday mornings are not much fun for me. They are so far from the Saturday mornings I had as a kid where you would wake up at 7 or so and watch four hours of cartoons and see a hundred commercials for Bubblicious and Hubba Bubba bubble gum and a couple School House Rocks, and then, after you had your fill of Bugs Bunny and Road Runner and The Smurfs and Fat Albert and Scooby and Scrappy Doo and Super Friends,  you’d go play outside until your mom told you it was time to come in.

Now Saturday mornings are the polar opposite of unwinding. For me, anyway.

I am literally rushing to get from one destination to another for a good 4 or 5 hours.

It’s more than exhausting at this point.

Now it’s just pissing me off.

So anyway, after competing in the Logistical Olympics all morning and into the afternoon, I had to run a couple errands, the last of which was going to  Costco.

I only had four of the kids with me, but they weren’t exactly on their best behavior.

And so what did I do when I was at the checkout?

I gave them money to go get some ice cream, just to get them away from me.

It was a mistake, and I knew it.

But I didn’t care.

Then on the way home  two of the kids said they didn’t want their ice cream and one spilled the whole fucking thing on the seat and then two of them started beating the crap out of each other in the way back seat.

Which brings me back to where I started.

I lost in on the kids today.

If you happened to be watching a baseball game at Gray’s Bridge around 3:00 this afternoon and you heard a woman going off about ungrateful kids and ice cream, um…

That was me.

I was so mad.

I’m feeling stressed about a bunch of stuff and I’ve basically been on my own with the kids for the past two weeks, so that doesn’t help.

And between all the baseball practices and games and swim practices and meets, my car has so much crap in it that I could barely fit any of the stuff I got from Costco in the back and while I was yelling at the kids I told them they were cleaning the whole fucking (but I didn’t actually say fucking, so at least there’s that) car out and bringing every single thing inside.

So we  got home and Number 3, 5, 6 and 7 started solemnly taking stuff from the car inside.

And the driveway is kind of far from the door we use to go in the house and it was pretty hot out and Number 6 made it about two trips before he was “so hot he was going to die” and that “this wasn’t fair” which pushed me a little farther over the edge and I told him he better get used to it and he said,  YOU MEAN FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES OF BEING LITTLE KIDS WE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO HELP DO STUFF???

Oh my God. What had I done?

I had created monsters.

Yes, I told him,  For the rest of your lives of being little kids you are going to help do stuff.

I knew it was my fault.

I had stopped requiring the kids to pitch in.

Part of the problem is that I have felt sorry for them with the craziness of our schedule, so I let a lot of the stuff I had been asking them to do slide.

I was going to wait to start reining things in until school was over.

But it became very clear this afternoon that things need to change.

Today.