Outnumbered Two to One

It’s exhausting being Switzerland, truly. My girls are always going at each other. Teeth bared, hands gesturing, voices at their very highest screeching register.

I can’t take it.

Maybe my younger daughter did initiate the aggression with her very birth, but you’d think after a decade my oldest (the dreaded teen) would have forgiven her.

No. Such. Luck.

This evening we were watching a DVRed episode of last week’s Top Model. The teen and me, squeezing in some mutual veg time before bed time. Halfway through the episode my tween, aka little sister, walks in, looks at the television and says “Are these new people?”

A simple question. She wanted to know if this was a new season of our guiltiest reality TV pleasure. A “yes” or “no” answer would have sufficed.

Not good enough for my scene teen drama queen. She proceeded to roll her eyes as far back as they go, hands waving and head bobbing, as she spit out in her most sarcastic tone, “I don’t know, sis, have you EVER seen them before. You’re looking right at them. Do you think maybe it’s a new season, huh?”

Ugh. Really?

And the tween, sensitive little darling that she is, proceeds to shriek/wail about how her sister ALWAYS treats her bad and how mean she ALWAYS is and how UNFAIR life is and how she’s JUST asking a question.

So of course, I go from veg to violent in no seconds flat. Scold the teen for baring her bitchiness badge and tell the tween she is welcomed to join us for the last half hour of mindless programming. My oldest is gritting her teeth, flaring her nostrils, feeling slighted that I took sides.

The tween then crawls in to bed between me and her older sister.

Bad idea.

It was the straw. The last one. The one that put the camel in traction, if you know what I mean?

The teen storms off squealing like a wounded animal, slams the door and abandons TV watching all together as a sign of protest. Way to show us.

Her response…she is going to get a job right now. Maybe in a sweat shop. So she can earn money to help us fund an addition. Don’t know what the going rate is for child labor. So she can finally have her own room. By the time she saves up little sis will be in college. Because she is sick of her sister and sick of all of us and she just wants to be left alone. ALONE. Can you hear the violin concerto?

Sigh.

Double sigh.

Is it just me, or is it that treacherous time of the month approaching again?

If I could bottle her melodrama and sell it…well, actually, I don’t think anyone would buy it.

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