Attitude is the hallmark of the teenager. I get that, I really do. As someone who used to stomp around in Doc Martens in a surly manner, smoke cigarettes far before she was legally able to, and practically practice her scowl in the mirror, I get the attitude. It’s also not lost on me that I am being punished, punished for my previous life as a rotten teenager by having to deal with the crabbiest of them all – the J-Man.

I don’t know whether this kid is having hormone surges, whether he’s become schizophrenic, or whether he’s possessed by a creature named Zuul, but I’m pretty much ready to pick him up by the scruff of his neck and toss him into the driveway with nothing more than a couple pairs of shorts and a toothbrush (not that he would use it without complaint).

Apparently it’s cooler to let your teeth rot out of your face than to brush twice a day.

This grosses me out more than I can say.

So, attitude. There has been so much eye-rolling that I am quite sure his eyes are in no way attached to the sockets. He cannot possibly have any muscle or nerve fiber in there, so free-moving are his eyeballs. And while I have somewhat gleefully imagined that one eye would actually roll right out onto the floor during one of his dramatic displays, it hasn’t happened yet.

It will, though. Oh, it will. And I will be there to catch it and grin my mofo ass off.

There is also an inordinate amount of sighing, so much that I fear he has become either a wheezing asthmatic or a closet smoker. “J-Man, log off of the computer.” Heavy sigh. “Take a shower.” Sigh. “It’s time for dinner.” Sigh, exuding all the pain of the ages.

With all this sighing and moaning going on, you’d think I was running a nursing home.

All of this is annoying, to be sure, but it pales in comparison to the Gods and the Mahms (Here in the Midwest we don’t say “Mom”, it’s “Mahm”).

“GOD, MAHM, I’m logging OFF, OK?”

“GOD, I took a shower YESTERDAY.”

“MAHM, I was JOKING.”

“GOD, Gramma, I only spent ten dollars on XBox points. Just take it out of my bank account.”

“MAHM, stop talking about school!!!”

It’s the GODs and the MAHMs that are killing me slowly, one snarky little razor at a time.

I do see small windows of hope. Sometimes he comes and sits with his head on my shoulder and talks in a normal tone of voice, and sometimes over breakfast while we are reading the paper he asks intelligent questions and doesn’t act like I’m a complete moron. Sometimes he hugs me for no reason at all, and sometimes I catch a glimpse of truly stunning character.

Sometimes, though, he is a stinky little crabmaster.

I hired a math tutor over the summer. I did this both because I am mathematically retarded and because, well, he wouldn’t bitch and moan so much if it was someone else.

I lucked out and had a friend recommend a remarkably empathetic dude who is into both video games and Star Wars and pretty much won the J-Man over like *that*.

Still, when Dude is gone and it’s just the J-Man doing homework, you would think he was undergoing Chinese water torture with the moaning and the groaning and the sighing and the GODs and the bitching and the occasional “This is stupid!”s and the general raincloud flying over the basement table.

It makes me insane.

I know he’s thirteen, which is a miserable age, and it’s not like I expect him to be Mary Freakin’ Poppins, but a little bit of levity in this house would be BEAUTIFUL right about now.

Attitude, begone!

In other news, we had to evict the tenant from our old house for non-payment of rent – two months and some change non-payment. My mother, who did not do a background check and who did not let it bother her that this woman had neither a checking nor savings account, let her slide for a while because her union was on strike, and was entirely too nice.

As a result, she never paid us a dime, and also refused to sign a paper saying that she owed us money, and also didn’t leave her forwarding address. So there goes THAT money.

That wasn’t the worst of it, though. We walked into the place after she’d moved to find that the light beige carpets were covered in mud spots, and that she had tiled the bathroom and the back hallway with some cheap, crappy, chipped tile, forcing us to do the job over. She also put up some ugly wallpaper in the bathroom and painted (badly) some dark stripes on the walls that took about three coats of white paint to cover, so we are talking days and days of work to fix all of this bullshit. My mom and I spent the weekend there, and there’s still a long way to go.

I guess we definitely learned our lesson as far as doing a background check and a credit check and specifying in the lease that no shitty home “improvements” should be made, but my mother is stressed out beyond all reason and I just wish this wouldn’t have happened.

Remember the Kid From Down The Street? The bane of my previous existence? He still lives there, and was overjoyed to see the J-Man when we came out this weekend.

I won’t lie, that little fucker must have gained fifty pounds. I’ll bet he weighs a good one eighty, and he is SHORT. He’s only eleven, and it’s just a dirty shame.

I would also like to report that he still smells like dirty socks.

The unfortunate thing about this is that now the J-Man is RE-obsessed with hanging out with this kid (I wish to GOD I knew why), and cannot understand why he can’t spend the night at our house.

People, it just isn’t going to happen. My stepdad is fully aware that he once broke our WALL, for the love of Jesus, and he would no more have him in our house than invite the local biker gang over for high tea.

My stepdad’s memory is long, and it bears grudges.

I can’t say I’d be thrilled to have him either. I still can’t get the funk of forty thousand years out of my nose.

Anyway, to get back to the attitude, we’re all absolute fascists for failing to let his beloved friend (you know, the one that he’s made no effort to contact in over a year) come on over.

And I’m a particular bitch for letting this all happen, because as his mother I should rule the roost.

Yeah, that’s certainly the case.

In still other news, today I am going back to my roots, at least what I *think* are my roots, with a dark blond conditioning hair dye. Gotta take a break from the bleach. I’ll let you know how it works out, as I know you all must be terribly excited…

Happy Tuesday.

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