>Same Old Turmoil
>Since I’ve started writing THE COLUMN, I’ve gotten a few e-mails and comments with friendly reminders not to let it “go to my head” and not to forget “the little people.”
The little people? Hello! I’m living with two teenagers. I am the little people!
Last night, I was told off for drinking the last few sips of a Gatorade left in the refrigerator. Apparently, it was my 15-year-old’s Gatorade. Apparently, I saw her drinking it yesterday morning and how dare I think it was okay to finish it off eight hours later. Apparently, she’s going to retaliate by eating all of the baby’s food. Okay then.
This morning, there was much eye rolling over the fact that I only do laundry once a week.
“Did you even take my clothes out of the hamper when you did laundry last week?” 15 asked irritatedly. “Because I now have nothing to wear. And you’re doing laundry again when?”
Did I mention I have a new screenplay called Stepdaughter Dearest in the works? Heh.
I am spending my summer not receiving flowers and book deal offers from admirers, but changing poopy diapers, reading really awful children’s books aloud over and over again, and cleaning up after several unnamed family members who are apparently unable to do it themselves.
I’ve managed to secure the two hours that Baby naps each day as my writing time, but it hasn’t come easy. Interruptions are commonplace and beyond that, it’s tough to force myself to write at a certain time each day.
What I’m saying is, nothing’s changed, people. It’s still the same old turmoil in the same old suburbs. No need to worry about me.
>When my babies napped, it was time for me to take a nap of my own. I can’t believe you can write during that time….LOL
>The teenage years are trying to say the least…for the parents. Wait, the early twenties are no walk in the park either. We have two boys in their 20’s who have embraced the new “move out of my parents house? what are you nuts” attitude that seems to be sweeping our country’s youth. We are secretly plotting to sell the house, move under the cloak of darkness, and let the new owners deal with our sons…no forwarding address provided. All to say..feel your pain.
>Assvice ahead! Watch out!Maybe you could suggest that the girls do their own laundry…My husband had to do his own laundry from the time he was 13, and let me tell you, that is a handy skill for him to have!(and you won’t get blamed for things washed improperly either!)
>I hear you about the naps – it’s SO difficult to jam my creative brain waves into a two hour time period. Sometimes it comes, no problem, and other times I’m ripping my hair out – especially with graphics. At least my clients are cool.
>Ah, the teenager’s fondness if italics. I used them profusely at that age. Occasionally I apologize to my mom for being a teenager.
>Os how did you hold your tongue about the laundry comments?!? Good grief – I might have had a few italics for her myself! Yes cramming creativity into naptime is not easy.Glad to hear you are still you.
>She’s going to eat all the baby’s food….ahahaha….that made me laugh!
>seriously, smack 15 with a reality dose and tell her you are on strike and are not doing her laundry. or better yet, next time present her with an itemized bill she has to pay! or wait! make her buy her own food and and do her own laundry and pay a small bit of rent for one week! then she’ll change her tune. (Sorry, I have been on my own since I was 15 so I have no pity.):P
>Ah…teenagers. I would respond by teaching 15 how to do laundry. In our house, the complainer gets to step up to the plate. I will teach all, but be a SLAVE to none!Good luck!
>You do your 15 year old step daughters laundry! My 13 and 11 year olds want to come live with you! They do their own laundry. They haul the baskets down to the basement, run the loads, haul it back up to their room. If they fold it, which is not often, then their clothes are not wrinkled. Each child starts doing their own laundry at 11. At 13 they are responsible for planning and cooking one meal per week….for the entire family…including veggies. If I play my cards right I really will be able to sit on my ass and eat bon-bons all day! Plus, aren’t chores character building??
>Ungrateful little cretins, aren’t they?I’m with the others who said it’s time for 15 to be doing her own laundry. With any luck, she’ll be leaving home in the next 3 – 5 years, and you want her prepared for independent living. Teens always want to be treated like adults, but they have a pretty skewed view of adulthood… “Oh, you only want the PERKS of adulthood and none of the BORING stuff? HA. Me too, honey, but somehow it doesn’t work that way…”(In fact, we are so grown-up that we don’t even tell our teen that not smacking her upside the head when she starts with the eye-rolling is one of those TRULY TEDIOUS things REAL adults have to do.)
>I swan…firefox rocks!I guess that Mack truck will just have to stay idling for another day…I’m quite sure my family will write you a formal letter of appreciation (should they ever discover how close they were to losing me!). *grin*Oh, a hint for the creativity process. I don’t know how keen you are to carrying a microrecorder around with you, but as ideas come to you during the day, if you just taped them, then you could use that as a rough outline when you do have time to write. Just a thought…:)
>I am lucky that my brain does not ooze out of my ears every day … I do NOT see how you can deal with 15 and 13. I am NOT looking forward to those years.And I agree … go on a laundry strike with 15’s laundry. And do all of 13’s and have it nicely folded and ready to go. It will GRATE on 15’s last nerve, sure to elicit comments like “you love 13 more than me”. The turmoil continues… I wasn’t worried that it would go away!
>Thank God for those naps! Mine quit those cold turkey and everything got harder. Pray that she keeps napping until she’s 15.Speaking of 15…there never too young to learn how to do laundry. 😉
>Whenever it gets bad…I always mumber to myself…Today is the day…We give Babies awayWith a half a pund of tea…If you know some ladiesThat would like some babies…Send them over to me…and by the end I am calm…But have a demonic look to my eye…
>These days, I’m the only one in my house taking a nap. On Friday, I fell asleep in my six-yesar-old’s bed and woke up an hour later with NO IDEA where I was. Or where my children were.I am tired because I do all my writing at night, after the children have gone to bed and I’ve done the laundry and the dishes and maybe even my husband. The writing life, it is so glamorous.Or not.
>By the time I was 15, my Mom had made it abundantly clear that if I wanted clean clothes to wear, I needed to wash them myself.Perhaps its time for 15 to learn how to operate a washing machine?
>I think what you need is called CAMP.. there are several varieties, like boot camp!What a friend of mine did when the kids got to be teenagers was assign every one a day they could do their OWN laundry. If you missed your day you could negotiate with someone in the household for an article washed on their day but that was it! Make up day was Sunday, nothing better than spending their weekend doing their own dirty chores 🙂
>I could make her do her own laundry, but then I’d have to deal with the eye rolls even more. Doing laundry for everyone (and just about everything else, actually) is my way of keeping the peace.Trust me when I say that it’s a much thinner tightrope when you’re a stepmom- even if the stepkids are living with you seven days a week.
>My three daughters LOVE to play dress-up. Of course, it’s with the clothes they wear everyday. Believe me, as soon as one of them is tall enough to reach the controls on the washing machine and dryer – they will be doing. their. own. laundry. Ever thought about that?
>As long as a teenager resides with us, we will remain humbled. hugs, C
>In that case, L., you could teach your steps the joys of handwashing and/or show them the way to wash a mini-load in the washer. That way they can take care of any special items in between your weekly washings, and they can control the availability of their clothes. They can also opt to leave their clothes for your regular wash day, of course. Maybe this wouldn’t get too many eye rolls?
>I hear you about the teenager… and you’re right, you could do the laundry or not. That isn’t really the point. No matter what you have them do or what you do for them, you are going to have attitude of some sort. It is a rite of passage for the kid and the parent. The trick is knowing when to keep your head down, when to stick to your guns, when to compromise and like you are sooooo good at, when to take the turmoil and turn it into a good story! I just told my 14 year old last week after he inadvertantly stabbed me with a butter knife (no blood drawn) that this story wasn’t going away for a very long time!
>Wow I love your blog. It’s so entertaining. First time here I will be back for sure. Love the feeling of the sitcom.
>Yeah, I use to nap during my kids naps too. i can’t believe you find the energy to WRITE. GAWD. And I would take those little girls of yours by the hand and lead them to the washer and do a little quick laundry 101 with their smart asses! 🙂
>Before reading your blog, I never considered what life was like as a stepmom. It’s always enlightening to read your snippets. My daugther never ever napped. You’re lucky you get some time to yourself during the day. I’m forced to write at this godforsaken hour. And also, who the heck would write such unsupportive things to you? It’s fantastic that you’ve stepped up to the local scene! For a joke, you should write them back and tell them all future correspondence must go through your AGENT.
>you need a Britney Spears approved “manny”…
>DUH, you can’t drink something that you saw someone else drink, beacuse obviously it’s theirs. Actually, I kind of relate. I remember bringing home a Subway sandwich to take on a field trip the next day, and my dad ate it. I was furious. But I guess that’s a bit worse than finishing off a Gatorade.
>Stepdaughter dearest, see your stepmom’s hands? THEY ARE FULL! See that boxy contraption in the laundry room? The one hooked to the water supply? See that detergent? You use this much detergent, turn that knob, and voila; your clothing will be clean!Seriously, I trained College Boy to do his laundry when he was a young teen, but he would allow his clothes to pile up for weeks (yes, he’s a clothes hound, and it doesn’t help that he works at Crapercrombie & Wretch.) Anyway, he finally got the picture and does his own laundry. I told him that after a certain age, mom’s just shouldn’t touch their kids’ undies. 😉
>..and sorry, I didn’t read all of your comments until after I posted. I, too, am a step-mom, but the girls are now 33 and 29, and sometimes there are still issues! It really is a fine line you learn to walk to keep things peaceful. I never wanted hubby’s kids to go back home to their mom yapping at how “mean” I was, etc. Still, I wouldn’t let get away with anything I wouldn’t let my own kid do. It’s tough, though. I wish you all the best!
>I am SO dreading these years to come. I’d consider having them do their own and telling them that if there’s something they’re scared they will ruin, to just leave it off to the side. Although, if they’re like my girls, they’ll ask if they are going to get paid to clean their own clothes. 😉 I also want to know your secret for doing wash once a week – my husband would have a shit fit if he came home to laundry piled in the laundry room. His mom raised him as a neat freak.
>Well, if I had as many kids as you do, Lisa, I’d be doing laundry a whole lot more than once a week!We have a very small laundry “closet” off the kitchen, far away from any actual dirty clothes, so it’s inconvenient to do laundry in small batches. Instead, we all have our own hampers and clothes are brought down once a week and laundered. I make sure everyone has lots of clean underwear and socks so that their won’t be an issue in between loads. But if you could see my 15-year-old’s room right now, you would understand why she’s out of clean stuff. Everything’s on her floor. I do have a rule that if it needs to be washed, it needs to be put in the hamper-not on the floor, so I suppose she’s learning an altogether different lesson this week.
>Yeah, my 16-year-old stepdaughter has to do her own laundry now…but that comes with its own issues, believe me. Like the laundry room becoming her own personal over-sized permanent hamper, and all of us having to work around it. SIGH!
>How did u end up raising teenagers? I dont know any woman who would do that!
>Ha! Well, since I was a teenage stepdaughter, I figured I was pretty qualified to be a stepmother to teenage girls!
>I can’t even imagine the extra pressures of being a step-parent!And you know,inside they’ve gotta be incredibly thankful that you’re as involved in their lives as you are… I get the impression they don’t see their bio-Mom all that often… You RULE, Lindsay!
>Oh. I’m just jealous that you have TWO WHOLE HOURS a day to write. I covet. I’m lucky to squeeze in 15 minutes here, 10 minutes there. It’s amazing I have any coherent, thought out, non-disjointed stories to tell. Oh God. Do I? Are they all chopped up and piecemealed together? I think I need a nap now.Congrats on your success as a writer. Much more to you in the future!
>I am relatively new to your blog. However, I don’t mind if you get rich and famous. I hope your column turns into a book deal, the book deal turns into a movie deal, etc. I can then live vicariously through you. I have two daughters 15 and 2. I get all kinds of attitude from both girls. Yet, I still do the laundry.
>She’s fiftenn and you do HER laundry? Introduce her to the washer and the dryer. Tell her you only wash once a week and she should feel free to do hers own on any of the other 6.
>I have daily chores for my 11 and 13 stepdaughters..their laundry (on the weekend) included. Everything else is little things like swiffer the floor, take out the trash and recyling, wipe out the bathroom sink. Now that they are at their mothers for a month this summer, I am amazed by how much just those few little things help me out. Lighten your load!
>Noooo Wiiiiire Hannngerrrrssss! We wash and dry. Zed and Elle fold their own clothes. Slaves I tell you! Children are our slaves! Mwaaahhh ha ha!
>My girl’s are almost 15 & 13, they do their laundry and been doing it for the past year or two.I am now starting to make wash the bath towels, they use them right?Still my youngest daughter complains “I have nothing to wear”Hmm..could be because you haven’t done your laundry in over 2 weeks!! 😀
>hey, my mom started somehow mysteriously ruining my clothes in the laundry when I was 12 until I started doing my own. I think by 15 she could manage her own laundry. Just a thought, since *apparently* you’re so incompetent and all… ;^)