things that are frustrating as hell
Posted: October 1, 2008 Filed under: Uncategorized 6 Comments »- teenagers. just in general.
- when you desperately want to make your children happy but there’s very little you can do to make the world work out the right way for them other than stand at the side and hope.
- when your child claims to want something very much but still fails to do things in a timely manner.
- that teenagers don’t think like adults even though they are larger than some
- that, when one thinks about it, one was not so timely or adult in one’s thinking when one was a teenager.
- the mind-boggling amounts of money charged by the college boards for ridiculous standardized testing. and the fact that one must pay for these things (including their ridiculous extra twenty bucks for late registration) if one wants one’s kid to have opportunities even when one is completely morally opposed to standardized tests and feels like screaming every time the subject is broached.
- waiting. just in general.
- the financial crisis and its infringement on one’s personal financial life (ie, selling one’s house, affording college, day care, etc, etc, etc)
- people who think sarah palin is qualified to step foot outside alaska
- dryer lint
- parents who don’t pay their children’s overdue book fines
- meetings after work when you are completely done with the day and braindead
- oversleeping – aren’t babies supposed to take the place of alarm clocks?
Babies only function as alarm clocks on days when you can sleep in.
I’m with ya’ on the Palin thing! oh…and the baby/alarm clock thing too…Coop just screwed me the other morning by sleeping in (which he NEVER does…but of course I had an important early meeting at work that day!)
One thing I miss in Turkey, land of no dryers, is dryer lint. I think it’s cool. It’s soft and it smells good and comes off in sheets that you can pretend are magic fabric.
Weirdly enough, a lot of other foreigners over there miss it too. It’s been a topic of discussion more than once on the teachers’ forums. And I wasn’t always the one to bring it up.
Teenager brains are baffling. Remember when we were teenagers and we always thought, “I’ll never be like my parents. I’ll be so cool with my kids and I’ll always remember what this is like so I’ll be able to understand my kids and we’ll just get along great.” Hah. A teenager brain is the most unpleasant mix of adultish higher reasoning and childlike thinking and impulses. A teenager can use big words and weighty ideals to justify anything to him/herself. A teenager thinks his/her parents are THE DUMBEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD WHO CAN’T UNDERSTAND EVEN THE SIMPLEST THINGS. A teenager has found that perfect, most uncomfortable place of being unique (as in, I’m the only person in the world who feels this way), famous (as in, everyone in the world is looking at me and noticing every embarrassing detail and snickering about it at all times), grown-up (as in, I’m almost 18– they can’t tell me what to do), and utterly lacking in accountability or responsibility (as in, I didn’t send in my SAT registration because I’m ME and that’s a good enough reason, and anyway, it’ll somehow take care of itself as if by magic, the way food appears on the table when they force me to join them to eat it, or the way clean laundry appears, or the way cash appears in my pocket… And so on).
Remember all that stuff we thought was a good idea when we were teenagers?
How fucking weird is it to be the grown-up?
Just wanted to let you know I’m still out here, enjoying your writing and rooting for your awesome little family.
And about Palin? Word. I hear you, sister.
Sarah’s description of teenagers is so, so, so right. They are so annoying unless you are one.
The baby alarm clock? Al his life he woke up at 6am. This worked for us, worked really well.
This september he started waking at 7am.
This has seriously rattled our entire early morning routine (especially considering I have to leave at 7.30 each day)
I was an odd teenager.