Kids. Yup.

Sigh.  The Evil Genius is grudge cleaning his room because I made him do his chores.  He gets to sleep late, and usually by the time I get him up I've already done laundry, dishes, and several other chores.  All I ask of him is to clean ONE cat box, take out HIS trash, empty the compost bucket, and feed the outdoor cats.  Shouldn't take more than five minutes.  Every day I have to ask him of he did his chores, ALL his chores, and every day there's something he didn't do and hes says "Oops." and then I have to TELL him to do the chore he "forgot" NOW, please.

Then he's hungry or thirsty or exhausted from his stretch in the salt mines and needs to rest or some other excuse.  He puts more energy into NOT doing his chores than he does into doing them.

So today I got a little mad.  I woke him up at the ungodly hour of 10:00 (the morning one, no less - horrible!).  I woke him up again at 10:15.  Then at 10:20.  Then at 10:30. He finally got up a little after 11:00.  Thirty minutes later he still hadn't done a single chore - in that time I emptied three trash/recycling cans, put new bags in, hauled the full bags out, and got another load of laundry started.

He did one chore in a half-assed manner then flopped on the lounge as if he had Mono and I just made him run a marathon.

Did you do your chores?  All of them?

Oops.  Can I have some chips, first?

No.  Finish your chores, then you can eat.  And not chips.  You can't have chips for breakfast.  I think it's a rule.

Then he leaned on the door as if he'd never eaten and was faint with hunger and spent twenty minutes staring at me.

Then he started doing his chores, but with a huge chip on his shoulder.

By the way, I am NOT in a good mood today.  I am hauling around my own basket of stones, juggling flaming chainsaws, trying to get from one breath to another, and I don't need my almost-teenager kid to be heaping more crap in the middle of the room for me to shovel.

So I snapped at him.  Told him I'm tired of every day being a struggle to do his damned chores, et cetera, and extra tired of being met with attitude and sass every time I ask him to do something.  So he finished his chores and slumped off to his room, and now he's grudge cleaning it because it's a horrid mess and has been for years (Not hyperbole - literally has been years since I last got it clean and we could see the floor.  I am not proud of this, it is simply truth.)  He is taking toys that he loves and throwing them away, saying he can't see the point in keeping them, has no place to put them, they'll just keep making his room messy and he'll get in trouble, and on and on and on.

I'm letting him.  Some things I am pulling from the trash heap because I know he will regret tossing them - the dinosaur we assembled together, the white tiger his father bought him when they went to the circus, his 3DS.  A couple of things I have given to his sister because she plays with them and loves them.

The trash has already been picked up today so he has a week to decide he didn't really want to throw something away.  I may even let him reclaim these things that he really loves but put in the rubbish out of sulky spite.

I'm such a great Mom.

If he's like this now, I dread the barreling-down-on-us teen years.  It's not too late to take up drinking, is it?