Can I Throw a Towel Now?

Old Grizzly Mama has just had it. I'm over the edge and off my rocker after a day like today. The little one was pretending she doesn't know about place values and then adding the tens up before adding the ones up - even after I told her just a nanosecond before that we must not do that. She doesn't see a problem with it - it works for her. I tried to explain that we have to do it that way for a reason - a very good reason. I explained patiently that - oh Gawd! You know why! I don't have to explain it all to you, but I did to her. Then she went and started adding up the tens first.

Meanwhile the older girl is drooling and doing crazy things with her multiplying of decimals. It makes no sense what she is doing - none at all - yet she continues to do it. Well, she's not really drooling but I checked just in case because it was unbelievably asinine what she was doing. Crazy, I tell ya. Then on one of the questions for her unit assessment on Early America, a simple question, something that's been iterated over and over again since Kindergarten for God's sake, "Why did towns spring up around rivers?" Millions of reasons, really doublegood reasons, happening for millenia, it's just BASIC, can be applied to any civilization really. She responded, "It's easy to get water." Excuse me?? Not good enough - points off. I've had it.

Troll is home. It's his day off, plus he's off anyway because he had the pins in his bones removed on Friday. Before I rip the hair out of my head, I call Troll into the galley (that's what I call the kitchen, because it's not really a kitchen in the proper sense, it's more like a galley) and hiss and sputter while showing him what they've done. I threaten to get a full time job and put those girls in school where, obviously, an expert will be able to help them.

He needs to sit down with those kids and figure out what in the hell is wrong with them because I am not capable of dealing with this without acting like some kind of spittle-flecked banshee. He agrees to do it. I set up several equations and what do you think they did? Well! They did every equation perfectly, in good time, and happy as little larks. Gone was the drool. Gone was the rebellion at having to add ones before tens. Gone was the paucity of words when desribing the usefulness of rivers. I was feeling better after Troll very wisely located a stash of chilled Hershey Bars.

My kids mess with me. It's not very nice. I am just so glad that they don't do it very often...