A Summer Prayer

Today is our 

last day of school.

 Aww Yisssss.

I, using the stellar parenting instincts with which I have been blessed,

 have been waiting for this day for quite a while now. I have been short-timing it

 since the last day of Spring Break.

 Truth be told, HARDCORE short-timing it.

 As in the "project? what project? pffft. project.", "I know we don't have a dog. Tell your teacher I ate your freakin' homework" and the "will you pass with at least a D+ if you ignore this assignment?" kind of short-timing.

Just knowing that I can erase all 5 of the school related alarms on my phone is in and of itself almost enough to make me run around the building yelling "Praise the Lord and pass the tax rebates!!" 

And I'm not even wearing a bra so that tells you something. 

Not only that,

But-

after the final hell of this morning, 

I may even make it into the second week of Summer vacation before I start to wonder when I can send the kids back to school. In a regular year I'm usually ready to fob them off on the Public School System again by the first Thursday or when I catch up on sleep, whichever comes first.

 Remember that whole 

Gold Star Parent 

thing I've got going on here? 

Yup. More proof that I've earned every single one. 

Between the weeping 15-year-old with a nasty cold in the bedroom, having all of my kids (along with the 3 add-ons we've had hanging around for the last 2 weeks) fighting over the XBOX and everything else imaginable for 3 hours and my grumpy 14 year-old losing the last tablespoon of motivation he had left to even make it to the bus, the only coping skill I had left to me this morning was just to pray my way through. 

I said so many prayers for help this morning that I was down to praying to the lost civilization of the Ziox by the time the last few straggled off. 

Now that I am down to just Moaning Myrtle, and she seems to be keeping to herself for the time being, I can't seem to stop myself from offering up a different kind of prayer. 

This one of those

-To The Universe in General-

kind since I have run through just about everybody else.

To Whom it may Concern,

PLEASE:

 please please pretty please

let at least a week go by before someone complains about having NOTHING to eat in this CRAPPY house.

give me the strength to not bitch-slap the first kid to complain about being bored.

give the boys the wherewithal to gratefully acknowledge their luck in actually playing the XBOX rather than engaging in a fistfight over the best way to kill the Hanchi Wanchi 5th Level Dragon guy.

let my 11-year-old behave like the sweet child she used to be rather than the hormonal teenager she is about to become.

make all of the children enjoy the company of one another when playing Black Ops rather than ending in a fight over who was supposed to get (or not get) on the bus and got them all killed.

when the inevitable happens and someone is called a butthole(or some such),  XBOX controllers are thrown and things get ugly, keep the blood-letting to a minimum. 

allow the XBOX controllers to remain intact and fully functional-because those things aren't cheap.

if blood-letting becomes unavoidable, let it be at a non-Emergency Room visit level.

give me the strength to not shake the teeth out of the next kid to complain about there being NOOOO-TH-INGGGG to eat in this STUPID DUMB house.

remind me that I was only going to throw things away, not burn the house down when the kids still refuse to clean their rooms. 

keep me from stress-drinking my weight in Pepsi before the start of July, at least.

give me more than one day in between incidences with one of the girls making the other one cry. or scream. or both.

let my sulky 12-year old behave like the slightly less-sulky version of himself we didn't know we missed until now.

when the last kid complains about boredom and/or having to do chores a week from now, give me the strength to use only minor curse words when I finally lose my shit.

and finally

let the nest in the closet where I will be driven to spend the better part of the summer be more comfortable than the one I built last year.

Amen.