The Ref, She Is Fried. Done. Baked.

A friend wrote on her Facebook page yesterday that she would love for summer vacation to last longer, if only her children would stop their incessant bickering. I am here to tell you that I am right with her.  I think that my children are really going to drive me to drink (further into drink?) by the time school starts.  I cannot possibly face another single solitary moment of refereeing!  These three monsters have raised inter-sibling arguing to an art form--it seems to be an activity that they not only enjoy, but actively seek out--and I have officially HAD IT.

Anyone who has spent a lot of time around very small children is familiar with the concept of the evening "witching hour," when the peak (nadir?) of daily crankiness is reached and caregivers find themselves eating dinner standing up while jiggling a screaming baby.   This concept applies to my house in the evening as well, even though my children are long past the baby stage.  By the time Himself gets home, the kids have all been banished to quarters (upstairs, downstairs, or sideways--I don't care, as long as I can't hear them squabbling!), I am beyond frazzled, and The Hound is sensibly nowhere to be seen, probably in a corner somewhere with her paws tightly over her ears.

You know those movies from the 1950s, where the husband comes home from work and is met with a clean house, a martini, the newspaper, his slippers, a wife with a perfect ribbon in her hair, and dinner on the table??  I have a theory that the only reason that ever happened (if it actually did...) was that the wives were able to send the kids outside to play unsupervised all day back then and therefore actually had some peace and quiet once in a while.  That not being the case where I live in this day and age (where kids must be underfoot and within sight at all times by law), I am not quite living up to the '50s housewife evening ideal.  To put it mildly.

The good news is that the kids' teacher assignments for next year arrived in today's mail.  For the first time in several years, everyone is happy with who they got.  The kids are actually excited about the fact that school starts in a couple of weeks.

But not nearly as excited as I am.