Mean mommy

"Mom, me and Zeke are switching rooms."

I had just walked home from being out for a couple of hours to meet a friend for a drink. The margaritas were making my brain slightly fuzzy.

"What? What are you talking about?"

"Zeke is going to take my room and I'm going to take Zeke's room."

"Wait ... what? Why?"

Zeke saw me and yelled down from upstairs, "hey Mom! Do you have an allen wrench? I need it to take Josie's bed apart."

"What? I don't know. Maybe. I don't know where it would be."

"OK, I'll call dad."

Minutes later: "Dad's got one! I'm going to bike over there."

It was 9:30 at night.

"What? No! It's 9:30 at night, you don't have a light on your bike, and I don't want you riding up Josephine and York streets in the dark."

"But I need it to take Josie's bed apart!"

Josie has an IKEA bunk bed that I can take apart and put back together easily. I am the queen of assembling IKEA furniture - I find it very zen and satisfying. But the bed takes awhile, and if you're 12 years old and impatient and don't know what you're doing and don't have the directions (they were thrown away years ago), you'll make a big fat mess and end up crying. Crying 12-year-olds are annoying as fuck.

"It's 9:30 at night!! You're not taking Josie's bed apart! It's complicated and it takes a long time to do it right, and you'll mess it up and then I'll have to fix it, and I don't feel like it fixing it. I'm tired. It's bedtime. You have camp tomorrow. You need to get ready for bed."

"But we want to switch rooms," they whined.

"I don't care. You're not doing it tonight. You can do it tomorrow. And I'm not helping."

This went back and forth for a while, ending with Zeke saying, "god, mom, why are you so mean???"

I'm mean. I'm so, so mean.

I'm mean when I make them clean their messes up before I turn on the WiFi.

I'm mean when I make them go to bed before midnight.

I'm mean when I don't let them eat upstairs because it's gross and eventually I end up rummaging through the kitchen going, "where the hell are all my bowls???"

I'm mean when I'm on a video conference for work and Zeke starts bellowing at me about something and I'm like, "I'M WORKING!! BE QUIET! I'LL HELP YOU WHEN I'M DONE!!"

 I'm mean when I get irritated that it takes me half an hour to get them out of bed to go to camp.

Thank the little baby Jesus for camp.

Colorado is actually doing pretty well with COVID. Our numbers are declining. Our governor is making data-driven decisions and slowly opening things up while still maintaining certain restrictions and precautions. The one thing I vehemently disagreed with him on was his approach to summer camp.

My kids were registered for two weeks of overnight camp, which they love because it's fun, and while I love because they're gone and I can get some peace and quiet. The gov had delayed making an announcement until late May, but the word was positive. And my assumption was that as between overnight camps and day camps. day camps have exponentially more opportunities for transmission, whereas with overnight camp, you check in, you get your health screening, and then you're captive for 14 days.

But then the overnight camps closed and the day camps opened, so day camp it was.

It's hard for them. Nothing is back to normal - the neighborhood pool is closed, the rec center a few blocks away is closed, most of their friends aren't allowed to play with anyone else. They're restless and antsy and bored.

But it's hard for me too. Zeke has been living here full time, but Josie had continued to go back and forth between my house and her dad's house. And then about a month ago, she started staying at my house longer and longer.

"Don't you want to go see daddy?" I keep asking.

She shrugs and says, "sure, but not tonight."

I think a big part of it is that they like being together. They will fight and bicker, but they really do love each other and take care of each other.

But I need a break, so I told them that I need every other weekend to myself. Two days out of every fourteen. Zeke suggested that I got plenty of alone time when they're at camp - i.e., WHEN I'M WORKING. I expressed outrage at that suggestion. They were thinking I was mean but they were smart enough not to say it. So I'm getting my weekend in three days.

Last night their dad brought over the allen wrench and they got to work. Zeke tried to take Josie's bed apart and got a little turned around about exactly which pieces needed to come apart in order to move the bed, and which could stay intact, So of course I helped. We took the bed apart and moved it and put it back together. We figured out how to move Josie's enormous dresser (but not before they accused me of being mean when they insisted on trying to do it in a way that was never going to work and I said, "it's not going to work that way").

Zeke said, "isn't this fun, mom? We're bonding!"

I went back to my room and got into bed. The kids were excited about their new rooms.

Ten minutes later Josie poked her head around the door. "Can I sleep with you?"

She crawled in, threw an arm around me, and went to sleep.