Derailed?

So today I’ve decided that I am not sidetracked, I am derailed. Why? Well because the Little Lady is going to be doing all the chores around here for the next month. Why? Because when she got her glasses last March she got two pairs. One pair has gone completely missing in its case. She has searched her room top to bottom and side to side. I even had her check between the matress and box spring. GONE.

The pair that she wears every day, broken. The frames are broken on one side where the screw goes into the arm but not in a way where you can just screw them back in. Where they are soldered together is where it’s broken. They can’t fix them at the Vision Center and have to order new frames. 107.00 bucks down the drain that I don’t have. They love me though and they ordered them anyway and I told them I’d be in next week to pay them since it is going to take 7 to 10 days for them to be delivered.

This is where my anger comes in to play. She had two sets, one she put away somewhere that we have no idea about, but we are sure it’s somewhere in her room. Why am I so angry you ask? Because I told her to give them to me to put away and she refused. Why did she refuse? Because she’s a kid who thinks she’s responsible. Why am I angry at myself? Because I should have just taken the damn things from her and put them with all the other important stuff. I didn’t. Bad Mommy!

So Honey and I decided that she is going to do chores (since she hasn’t been doing any at all) in order to pay for replacing the glasses. The way we worked it is that if she is getting paid 5 dollars an hour it would take 24 hours of work to pay off the glasses. There are stipulations involved as well. 1) Since she has not been helping without being forced into it in some way the first two hours of each week will be free. IE: they don’t add into her working off the glasses fund. 2) If it takes her more than one month to complete the 24 hours of work to pay off the glasses, we charge interest. IE: add more hours onto her working schedule.

Harsh? Probably. I’m fed up. I get tired of repeatedly telling her to do something and she doesn’t do it at all or she finds some way of wiggling her way out of it. She’s currently got 3 or 4 projects due at school right now and has several months to complete 2 of them. Those 2 are due in April and May and she has started on one but not even made a dent in the other. Why? Because her partners are unavailable and because she has partners to do the project with she can’t just go on her own and make the plans for her community service or complete the rollercoaster project.

Fine, dandy. Just wonderful. I tried to get her and her friend who spent two nights here a couple of weekends ago to CALL regarding the community service thing. They didn’t. They couldn’t due to the hours, then they had forgotten and when they called the person they needed to speak with wasn’t there, etc, etc, excuses excuses.

So I’m angry and I’m fed up. And I’m completely derailed. I think I’m even going to include doing our laundry in her list of chores of bathroom, kitchen, living room duties. Sometimes it sucks being mom, but I’m trying.