Argh.

About 3 minutes after arriving at the lake on Monday, a certain friend of mine announced to the entire world that she was "not a patient mama today!" And despite her announcement, she totally was, but sometimes you just have to let everybody know how things stand.

Well, you know what? I am not a patient mama today. I'm not. I have screamed at the children several times for being, variously: rude, whiny, obnoxious, holier-than-thou, tiresome... you know, all the things I have been accused of being my whole life.

So far today I have had to put up with

• being woken up by Dorian screaming about all the miseries of life.
• finding out that during his sleepover, Sebastian and a girl friend of his were kissing in bed. (But it's okay because they are "in love").
• listening to complaints about what kind of sandwiches I had to offer for lunch and how Sebastian would not suffer the indignity of eating a peanut butter and jam sandwich.
• taking the kids to the pool for an hour (even though I was already pissed about their behavior) because we had made plans to meet someone else there.
• allowing the kids to have ice cream mainly because they had been promised it as part of the whole pool excursion, only to have them end the experience by screaming at each other about whether or not a tagger should continue to tag after tagging someone.
• listening to Dorian shriek about how he needed to hold a CD case that he had just handed to me of his own volition.

I almost left them on the side of the road. It was only my slight fear of police intervention and my greater fear of the vicious gossip mills in this town that prevented me. And to think that when someone asked me if I was looking forward to the start of school I said "no".