Parent of The Year Award

Last Saturday was a bit of a trying day for me and the OG. By about mid-afternoon, there had been lot of ignoring of my words, a lot of overreactions, and more than a few thinly veiled (or completely naked) threats.

So, when you take all that into consideration, the tale I tell of my ensuing horrible mood will hopefully be more easily forgotten.

You've "seen red" with your kids before, haven't you? Please tell me that you have.

OK, internets, this is what happened.

We have this sixty-year-old house, with sixty-year-old beautiful, extremely heavy wood windows. Sadly, many are just holding on to functionality, and I've certainly sunk a significant amount of money into fixing them. There's one, though, that can't be fixed, and just will not stay up any longer. To remedy this, we paid a contractor guy to drill some holes into the window frame and cut a couple of dowels to shove into the holes to hold up the window, when we want it up.

(Yes, I TOLD you that we don't know how to do any fix-it-yourself projects.)

Anyway, this window, without any hinges and pulleys to hold it up, is extremely heavy. It could break a kid's arm or hurt an animal if it fell on them, and it falls fast. it was a nice day, and said window was up. I was in the kitchen, cleaning up some glasses and dishes and such. From around the corner, I hear a strange pounding sound. When I turn the corner, dishes in hand, I see OG, hanging from the top of the open window. A good ways off the floor; I guess she stood on her little chair to get up there. She was standing on the windowsill, maybe, and literally jumping onto and pounding the top of the windowsill to try to get the window closed.

To complete the picture, there were also a kitten and a puppy right under her feet. In that nanosecond, I became completely unable to employ the nice phraseology that the psychologist is teaching us to use. Literally all that was in my head were the thoughts dead kid dead dog fractured wrist dead cat broken window glass everywhere fuck fuck fuck.

So, this was our interaction:

Me: "OG, GET DOWN!"

OG: "I want the window down!" (pound, pound, pound)

Me: "OG! GET! DOWN! That window is held up by DOWELS! It will not hold you! GET DOWN NOW!"

OG: (still hanging on the window) "But I'm cold and I want the window down!" (pound, pound, pound)

Me: (walking forwards) "GET. DOWN. NOOOOWW!''

She stares at me with a blank stare.

And then, folks, I did it. I stuck my hand into my glass of water, and flicked water on her face. (It wasn't a lot, and most of it went on the wall behind her.)

She looked at me sort of stunned, and then got the hell down.

She sat on the couch, and she said, "Why did you flick water on my face?" By this point, I'm so stunned by my own actions that I'm kind of amused. So, I replied with this gem, "Because I can't slap you!!" (Thankfully, a twitch of a smile crossed her face.)

Me: (calmer) "OG, when I say get down, I mean GET DOWN NOW, and don't keep hanging there!"

OG: "But...I didn't know what 'dowels' were."

Me: "What?"

OG: "Dowels. You said it was held up with dowels, and I didn't know what they were."

Me: "UM, THAT IS NOT ACTUALLY THE POINT."

And, thus, I win Parent of the Year. And, we've all learned a valuable lesson. OG only listens when Mom goes