Life and Death Reasons to Fist Fight OR Why My Kids Woke Me Up Early Today

**Due to over-the-shoulder-editing by one of my kids, I will refer to them in NO
PARTICULAR ORDER as Kid A, Kid 2, PITA, Brat and HeyYou. That way no one
will be able to identify which one irritated the crap out of me most today and Kid
A will get over his complex of having people know stuff about him.***

So I went to bed around 3am after staying up late with my hubby watching a really
lame movie (View From the Top with Gwyneth Paltrow, Christina Applegate,
Candace Bergin, Mark Ruffalo and a cross-eyed Mike Myer.) I got up around 9 to go
to the bathroom and was overjoyed to find the whole house still asleep. Happy, happy,
joy, joy! in the immortal words of Ren and Stimpy. For a brief second, Responsible Me
thought, "Hmmmm. Now would be a good time to get up and hit the vegetable market
with no one to whine "buy me some cookies while you're out" or "can I come????" or
"It's myyyyyyyyyy turn! You alwayyyyyyyyyyyss take PITA with you!" ResponsibleMe
also thought, "you can beat the scorching humid heat, too, if you go now." But then
SelfishNeverPassUpTwoMoreMinutesOfSnoozeTimeMe said, "EFFF THAT! Get your
arse back in bed!" And I did.

An hour and a half later, I heard a body slam against my bedroom door and PITA comes
flying in with a stuffed Clifford the Big Red Dog toy in hand and Kid A hot on his heels,
shrieking. PITA took a running leap across the footboard and bounced off my left ankle,
causing me to sit up in bed and yell, "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING????!!!" Hubby
faked like he didn't hear anything and rolled over because...well, that's what husbands do,
isn't it?

Kid A started screaming, "HE TOOK MY CLIFFORD! It's MINE, I tell you. Baba bought it
for ME! And he TOOK IT right outta my hands!" PITA countered with, "THAT'S A LIE! I
had it first and HEEEE is not sharing with me!" After a few more exchanges like these and
decorated with various insults and bad words, I finally yelled, "GET OUTTA HERE YOU
FIGHTING FREAKS! One more fight over that stupid toy and I'll rip the stuffing out of it
and throw the shell away after burning it!" This, of course, was followed by screams and
wails of "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Exit fighting boys.

Twenty minutes later, I heard another body slam against the door which then slammed
against the wall. Only this time PITA was chasing KidA and both were shouting insults
and bad words at one another and threatening to kill the other. HeyYou came in just as
I closed my eyes and asked for strength. KidA and PITA ran back out to finish brutalizing
one another in a different room. HeyYou climbed up between Hubby and me and I
smacked him on the back of the neck and said, "Look, if you're gonna tease your brother
go get the ass-kickin' you deserve and stay outta my bed!" He cried. It was then I realized
that I truly AM blind as a dingbat without my glasses. Poor HeyYou! He didn't do anything
to deserve that. So I let him cuddle with me and I apologized for smackin' him and then
excused myself to go beat the hell outta his brothers. I took the Clifford toy away from
whichever of the two had it (remember, I couldn't see still, no glasses) and hid it far away
from both of them. (Only HeyYou saw where it went and was sworn to secrecy!)

Then I realized no more sleep for me and both Brat and Kid 2 were on the couch watching
cartoons and waiting for breakfast. So, I got up, made breakfast, returned the toy 9mm
plastic gun with suction cup arrow-type bullets to HeyYou (he'd had that taken away from
him because he kept shooting the tv screen with it, as well as, PITA used the same gun to
shoot KidA in the face when KidA refused to give him a quarter they were fighting over.)
I am in search of vitamins that bring on maturity in teenagers. If anyone has any idea if
Flintstones makes a chewable vitamin that makes teens act their age and wards off tantrums
the likes of which would make 2-year olds shudder, PLEASE e-mail me fast! or leave me
the info in the comments block! Thanks!

All Hail the Blind Ding-bats, Part II

Remember a few months back, when I shared how both Ismail and
Hamo had to be fitted for glasses? Ismail chose lovely small rectangular
pale blue frames and Hamo got some nice black sort of roundish-but-
kind-of-catlike spectacles. Hamo sort of looks like Harry Potter only
much more handsome (no, really! I'd mean that even if I wasn't his
mother.) Well, our inability to see is apparently an ongoing saga.

Hamo has a bad habit of removing his glasses and leaving them all
over the house. Granted he is MUCH better about wearing them most
of the time, unlike Ismail who just hates his glasses. Hamo takes them
off to wash his face and leaves them in the bathroom. Or he'll take them
off to keep them from breaking when he wrestles around with Aiman and
forget them on the study table in the boys' bedroom. Well, I don't know
where he forgot them today, but Miss Randa MUST have found them.
She decided that he should have sunglasses. So she went and dug around
in my cupboard where I hide things from her (obviously the hiding place
will change soon) and colored the lenses in with a PERMANENT BLACK
MARKER!!!! Thank God Ismail found them just after it happened and
brought them to me. I dumped vinegar on both sides of the glass and
rubbed like crazy with a damp t-shirt. YAY. Got it off before it stained
completely...it seems to be a little darker now.
SHEW. That was close.

Thus ends another typical rainy day in the House on Looney Bird Lane.

All Hail the Blind Ding-Bats!

I took Hamo and Ismail to the eye doctor last Saturday night. (YES! Saturday night. Egypt is THE epitome of a nocturnal society.) I've been putting off this particular errand for quite a while. But then Hamo poked Ismail in the eyeball two weeks ago and I had to take him in to make sure it was still functional and all. (They were wrestling.) The doctor told me to bring him back in a week for a regular vision test.
Sooooo, I did and brought Hamo with us as I've procrastinated long enough getting
his eyesight tested, too. Ismail is far-sighted...and
I-----N-----C-----R-----E-----D-----I-----B-----L------Y SLOW
at reading the friggin' eye chart. Hamo was convulsing next to me and whispering
in a NOT-SO quiet voice, "What's wrong with him? He's taking forever and the doctor is going to say there's not enough time for MY exam!" FINALLY, after 20 minutes of
pulling the up, down, left, right answers out of him, it was Hamo's turn. Took him 4
minutes to read the chart....9 for the complete exam.

Now a bit of historical baggage to pull out of my graveyard of a closet, I NEVER
understood how my mother managed to let me walk around squinting and bumping into walls until the age of 9 before getting me into an eye exam only to be fitted with
big thick bifocals. I thought until the age of 40 that my mom must have just overlooked me as a clutzy kid or was too busy with the 3 siblings behind me to notice I was blind
as a dingbat. Fast forward to last week's eye exams of my sons.

The doctor looks at me and asks, "How long exactly has Hamo complained of
headaches?" To which I sheepishly replied, "Off and on for about 3 years or so."
(The hairy eyeball is not so cool when on the receiving end.)
Then I got indignant and yelled, "HEY! Don't judge me! I have 5 kids, a husband and
a priority list that does not get rearranged daily but hourly............His eye exam has been Overtaken By Events on several occasions and then he just stopped complaining! The squeaky wheel gets the oil, Man! And frankly, he just stopped
squeaking! BESIDES...it's a family tradition!"
Ismail just laughed while I pulled Hamo out from under the chair he was hiding under in humiliation, grabbed the boys' prescriptions and left. When we got home, I sat down and wrote my mom a long overdue letter of apology. She only let me bang around until I was nine. I left Hamo to do the same until he was 13. I win the MOTY award.

By the way, they are both cute as anything with their new glasses on!