almost thirteen year olds.......

ok, so i had a momentary freudian slip this afternoon....as i was transitioning from work to picking up the youngest to prepping dinner to exercising........i ran upstairs to quick change into yesterday's workout garb....one more use before washing........and i found myself sitting on the bed...starting to put on my pajamas.......rather than the shorts and top........wow.......is that telling or what.....my subconscious knew that my brain needed to rest, despite my desire for the rest of the body to tone up a tad........and so i defied my better judgement and cycled for the next hour while the supper heated slowly in the oven......at some point the youngest asked about riding her bike....and/or calling lenatheneighborgirl/or going up to help grandma......and as i was working out....i told her to please water the flower beds before she did anything else.....fast forward to my going outside to check in the garage to see if the middle child was home from the library....and noticing that the flower beds showed only the faintest signs of random squirts of water.......none of the youngest's signature hosethebedtiltheplantsdroopwhilstistandstilllikebuddha.........nope.....she gets little notice, watering our yard......better use of her time to water grandma's flowers.....as she will get the full notice of the neighbor girl if and when she gets home.......and then she can just drop the hose where it lays....and head off to play......leaving the hose on and the job undone.......so..........the meanmenopausalmamma stormed back into the house to confront the slacking adolescent.....who seemed completely surprised that a few drips here and there would not suffice to keep our plants alive through the continuing heatwave.......and then the urge to mouth off got the best of her......'and they are not my plants, anyway'.......omg....this is the child who insists in volunteering at the humane society on saturdays.......to help those poor animals that belong to no one.......and yet watering plants in her own yard is a tremendous imposition/injustice/inhumanerequest.......at one point if i had a stone i'd have thrown it.....directly and utterly on target......which brings me to the book i am savoring of late......anne lamott....plan b.......she has a child of similar age.....and when she asked a jesuit friend about wwjd.....he replied....in bibical times, they used to stone a few thirteen year olds with some regularlity, which helped keep the others quiet and at home..the mothers were usually in the front row of stone throwers, and had to be restrained......later it occured to anne lamott that mary must have suffered great worry when jesus couldn;t be found for three days...only to be found in the temple....mouthing off about doing his father's work......and not to worry because he really wasn't their son......and what was mary doing while everybody searched for jesus......she was piling up the rocks.......gentle readers......i found this piece curiously comforting.......as if my urge to up and slap this backtalking wretch has ancient roots......and that i am certainly not alone in my exasperation over the child not yet grown up and no longer a child.......to date i have done little more than to swat her bottom when she walked deliberately in front of an oncoming car.......i have shown great restraint....just like mary showed restraint all those years ago......the wristbands should really have said....wsmhd.....what should mary have done.....a nice little iconoclastic pile of rocks on the bracelet could have spoken volumes........sounds like a nice little menopausalmothersof13yearoldssupportgroupfundraisingproject to me.........