**I must note that in researching and writing this piece, I found a newspaper article from a reputable source that suggested that video games are a good way for children to explore the world around them. Ummmmmm....I have a good suggestion for a way children can explore the world around them. How about going outside and (dramatic pause) exploring. Weird huh?**

I apologize for the lack of post last week, but I ran into a snag while trying to publish my rantings. The irony is that the reason for the snag was the exact offense that I was railing against. I completed the typing and cursory editing of my textual tantrum and when I tried to post it for the consumption of the entire world wide web, my computer had a electronic brain fart and began vomiting error messages about “invisible” somethings and “unable to display” thats. The culprit was clear, my minions' glassy-eyed and insatiable addiction to an evil and seductive medium.....

As a homeschooling family of the modern age, we inevitably spend a great deal of our time huddled around computerized curriculum. Before committing to a life of perpetual parenting insanity, I precluded starvation through employment at a news desk AND doing desktop publishing, so I am no slouch when it comes to navigating my electronics, BUT I have been thwarted from innumerable tasks by bizarre alterations that my preschooler has proudly inflicted on my computer. Last week he changed my instant messaging program from Italian (which I read) to Korean (which I don't). It took two hours of random guesswork to locate the correct toolbar and revert the settings to a legible language. I do apologize profusely to those that received video calls of my pajama-clad and cursing visage, and if you used to be my friend and notice that you are no longer, please don't take it personally.

I am not one to subscribe to conspiracy theories. I do not believe that any one politican is the Anti-Christ (I have adopted a more two-party and three-branch composite theory, but....), I do not believe that food coloring is a mind control agent or that public schools are trying to brainwash our children, at least not all at once. I do however believe that Voldemort, Satan, Maleficent, Doctor Octopus, The Galactic Alliance, Daleks, Death Eaters, and The Legion of Doom have teamed up to puree the gray matter of our young and remove their ability to resist the siren calls of (duh, duh, duh) VIDEO GAMES.

Indeed, my superpowers of bladder control have become superhuman because I know that the moment my heinie leaves the chair, which perches in front of my computer desk, another tiny minion bottom will be there to make sure it is good and warm. I always emerge from any task to see a child with their little button nose nearly pressed to the screen in the avid and frantic attempt to sneak to the next level before mom can finish peeing. (My daughter wants it noted that she doesn't do any of these sneaky video game techniques, which is miraculous since her Spa Day makeover website was the one that imbibed my hard drive with parasites LAST time we had to reformat. It was kind of a sick game actually that had me reacting with a combination of humor and horror. In this “game” there is an animated face and a very obvious unibrow that required plucking or pimples that required exfoliating. I really couldn't make this stuff up.)

The sad thing is that literally every moment that I am not glued to the chair or hovering like a vulture over their shoulders, my minions are playing video games. Note that I said games in the plural sense, it doesn't seem to matter what game it is as long as they have a vague sense that they are controlling something and there is a goal at the end. Oh, and it has to be completely void of social value. I have already tried introducing educational games to hopefully satisfy this arbitrary need to play superfluous electronics. But alas, unless it is completely mind melting, the appeal is limited or non-existent.

 

As I complained about before, I recently dragged my six maniacal minions on a trip to California. In an attempt to maximize our time and resources, we downloaded maps, apps., and GPS directions on our fruit-related telephone. Each day we inexplicably only made it two hours or so before the phone sighed in exhaustion and collapsed into a black-screened coma. We were beginning to wonder if there were flaws with the battery when I started observing the quiet absence of my six-year-old minion during the lag time between activities. Employing my inner bloodhound, I sniffed him out in his little Fortress of Solitude hidden behind the veil of tablecloths in the dining room. He might as well have had a hot plate and a coffee maker, because he had squirreled away snacks and there he sat unblinkingly playing any random free application that he could sneak in before anybody noticed his absence. This truly has me gasping in horror. We had PACKED this excursion with roller coasters, ghost towns, museums, surfing, fuzzy woodland creatures singing Zippety Doo Dah; what possible NEED was there to fill the vacant seconds with superfluous time-wasters? I mean, there wasn't that much time to waste. The only answer I could pluck from the chaos was plain old fashioned addiction. The heroine that they lace those fruit-labeled consoles with is inescapable.

What is worse than the constant barrage of IQ-sucking time-wasters is the vile phrase, “What else am I going to do? I am bored.” I tell my children constantly that, “Only boring people are bored.” I am horrified to say that by this criteria, I have spawned six of the most bland people in existence. What else are they going to do? Read, draw, sing, play an instrument, go outside, socialize with friends, build something, invent something, color a picture, play with play dough, knit, sew, crochet, sing, listen to music, bake, plot world domination....or heaven forbid we actually dig the floor out from the carpet of toys and debris that give our entire home a protective coating.

I would like to conclude with some finality in purpose or some resolution for change, but frankly I am nearly reaching the point of complete resignation. I have embraced my position in this world as the weird Amish lady at the end of the street who sits on her porch and slurps lemonade intermittently while spinning yarn on my spinning wheel. (Truly my favorite summer afternoon relaxation activity) Apparently my minions are in denial of their inevitable eccentric status. Either way, I am afraid that mind-melting video games are here to stay, I just hope that I am not the unwitting observer of a gruesome scene alla Indiana Jones where I watch my six little investments of love and time, melt into a puddle of liquid stupidity.

Negotiating with My Terrorists
MoM warning: rants recorded while under the influence of medication may result in nonsensical tyrades that only make the author giggle and are generally packed full of grammatical and spelling atrocities. If this post is not entertaining, call a prescribing physician, or check in next week when MoM is sober.

I am debating a name change for this collection of published rantings. I chose the title of my blog with great care and heed to the fact that when properly abbreviated, Mistress of Mayhem spelled MoM. (A fact that I am sure is not lost on my brilliant and growing readership.) I have decided however, that a change to be the Mistress of Mayhem and her Maniacal Mercenaries would be a more accurate reflection of my daily struggles since the word “minion” implies a certain degree of obedience and cooperation toward a common goal, and my offspring in no way exude that commonality in purpose.

I will preface this prolonged parental whine with the confession that I am a diagnosed sufferer of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Many people believe that this affliction has to do with humorous situations involving alphabetizing and light switches, but it is truly the nagging discomfort of realizing that my world is absolute chaos and I am helpless to abate the confusion.

This being said, I have voluntarily accepted about three weeks of situationally-inherent chaos. I am not one of those people who inflicts their mental disorders on the people around them. My expectations are modest and require only the most minimal of participation from my family. I merely expect to be able to conceive, plan, and execute my vision with the utmost organization and minimum of forgetfulness. These perfectly executed plans generally involve several alphabetized, laminated, and color-coded lists that sit smilingly atop neatly stacked piles. See...completely modest, if you stay the HECK out of my WAY! The past three weeks I have subjected myself to packing six kids for a major vacation, only to be topped with major surgery.

I often read my friends' social statuses about being sick or injured and the sudden outpouring of assistance from their charitable offspring that brings a tear to a grateful mother's eye. As I sit here this unearthly hour of the morn, I realize that the concept of charity is completely lost on my band of cutthroats. Wrestling my children into doing altruistic housework is like hustling at a poker table in Vegas. My eldest minion is the mob-boss of disciplinary hustling. Our conversations of late have progressed like this:

Eldest minion:I will see your selflessly doing dishes and raise you an hour of video games.

Me (moaning incoherently through pain and pain killers): Haaaalf hour and wiiiiiipe the counters.

Eldest Minion (menacingly handling a lead pipe): Listen to me, old lady. The video games are not up for negotiation, the question is whether or not I pretend to do the dishes as a show of good faith. (Cracking his knuckles and practicing his Pacino impression.)

Okay, so maybe some of this is fictionalized or an exaggeration of the pain meds, but still. The result of my weak powers of negotiation or my negligible skill at Jedi mind tricks, has resulted in a much celebrated four days of mind-melting video games, peppered with inane and non-socially redemptive television programming. The whole week of gluttony has been nutritionally void except for the random traces of calcium in the milk that made the cheese on their pizza or that washed down their cookies. The house is still erect, so I am going to count this as one in my win column.

I am finding that this same mercenary sensibility has resulted in the odd infestation of Migrating
Minutia. In an attempt to pre-empt the complete psychological meltdown that my husband knew was evident post-surgery, he purchased a gigantic push broom. His brainstorm was that he would push the chaos into one concentrated pile of insanity in the middle of the room and the minions/mercenaries would then pluck the salvageable items from the pile and the rest would be round filed, a phrase I have found to mean heedlessly thrown in the general area of the trash can with some acceptable spillage. What has resulted is that salvageable items migrate an approximate two feet away from the original pile and mysteriously hide. As work on the pile continues, the concentrated clutter is subject to the scientific process of diffusion and migrates to new locations, still not the correct ones might I note, throughout the house. The process begins anew, like some sort of hoarding circle of life without the inspiring Elton John crooning. I am trying to adopt the “out of sight out of mind” philosophy, but being that I am bed-ridden, it is completely IN SIGHT and therefore the peanut butter and jelly sandwich grinning stickily from inside the school desk is nagging at me.

Sponges

I apologize to the faithful readers of my superfluous rants (apparently I have some because my statistics say that some of you have checked in for my installment. THANK YOU!). I have been delayed in posting my weekly outburst. I arrived on my own doorstep at about 7 this brisk morning after a 22-hour scenic tour of each bathroom along the corridor of the interstate highway. This week's rantings will be short, due to the brain fog from driving-in-the-car-with-six-minions lag (akin to jet lag with much more symptomatic swearing).

Have you ever heard the phrase about children being sponges and absorbing information whether or not we want them to? I have decided that the absorption rate is disproportionately quick when the behavior or information is of a negative nature. This week, my children have discovered a few behaviors that I will probably spend the next month wringing from their little minds and others that have been absorbed and are being used for evil purposes. Perhaps these are the circumstances that my husband refers to that require, "Brain Bleach."

My youngest minion is nearing his 18-month benchmark. Due to the overwhelming voluntary assistance in communicating, his speech is limited to a primitive language of clicks and grunts. As if the clicks and grunts were not difficult enough to interpret, he has found the art of glass-breakingly-shrill screeching as an effective form of communication. He sponged this delightful behavior by watching another toddler and observing the favorable results. So, my nearly full day of vehicular travel was peppered with ear-splitting serenades. I am going to have to wring the dreadful behavior out of the spongy mind of my minion before I have to build him a sound-proof room.

In an attempt to circumvent the squealing, I told him that he would receive immediate assistance if he simply made the request, “Help me.” I have made this plea before and it fell on deaf toddler ears, but apparently the absorption was merely delayed. The part that I ceased to mention to him was the “help me” didn't need to be repeated innumerable times in succession and ad nauseum. In addition, he has chosen another choice phrase to absorb from one of is new friends, “I'm stuck!” Anytime he is restrained from full range of motion, he again repeats ad nauseum, “I tuck, I tuck!” He has combined this with the high-decibel and high-pitched skills described in the previous paragraph. I finally resigned myself to a lack of audible entertainment on our trek and listened to “Elp me! Elp me! Elp me! I tuck, I tuck, I tuck, I tuck!” Being screamed like a barn owl. On my to do list for this week is to wring this headache-inducing behavior from his spongy little gray matter.

We have also collectively adopted several British adages from watching Harry Potter continuously on our vehicular entertainment system. Being rather innately comical by nature, my minions have become followers of Ronald Weasley complete with colorful words and phrases. These exchanges between myself and my children progress somewhat like this: (this is a true story, all characters are not fictional and have been quoted for maximum application of humor. All of this of course uttered in polite company for the ultimate in embarrassment.)

4-year-old minion to toddler: What the bloody hell is that? (Complete with inflection and consonant dropping)

Me: 4-year-old minion, that is not polite to say.

4-year-old-minion: Mom, I shouldn't say, 'What the bloody hell is that?'

Me: No, dear!

4-year-old minion to toddler: Hey, did you know that you shouldn't say, 'What the bloo.....'. Hey Mom, I stopped myself and didn't say, 'What the bloody hell is that?'

Me with a heaving sigh: Good job, 4-year-old minion.

4-year-old-minion to toddler: Because saying, 'What the bloody hell is that' is naughty.

We have had similar exchanges about not calling your brother a “git,” not teasing a sibling about the desire to “snog” someone or something, not sticking things in nostrils to retrieve “bogeys,” most especially the nasal cavities of other individuals. If they want to lobotomize themselves while we drive, I guess I am remiss to stop them. The list of sponged menacing British colloquialisms continues to expand.

 

I am amazed at the sudden absorption of information that has been lovingly crammed into their little craniums for weeks and miraculously surfaces at inopportune times. My 4-year-old minion has been learning to subtract with limited success and profuse distractability until he has the desire to complain about the disproportionate number of amusement park attractions that he has ridden in comparison to his older siblings. (With arms folded, lower lip protruding, and brows knit together in disgust) “Moooooom, Grumpy Minion has ridden 15 roller coasters today and I have only ridden on 11. That means that he has ridden 4 more times than I have and that isn't fair.” My eyelids flew open at the correct application of a concept that I figured was lost to this child. I was convinced that he was going to be a successful millionaire who still didn't know how many children remained on a school bus when three walked away. He couldn't have absorbed this special skill when discussing apples or schoolbooks in his textbook, he had to use it as empirical evidence to support a temper tantrum?

During our vacation, we had the opportunity of meeting a friend's delightful daughter. She was sweet, kind, brilliant, fun, and beautiful. What did my little spongy minions absorb from their interactions? The correct and most painful application of “the noogy”...oh, and how to escape a headlock. I am hoping to wring the noogies out of their porous recollections so we can go back to sporting fashionable hairstyles.

Lastly, my youngest minion has absorbed the desire of using the toilet. This information would normally bring celebration, but he chose to absorb this useful skill DURING our ride home from our vacation. The drive that started at 9:30 a.m., Sunday progressed at an excruciating pace to be finally concluded at 7 a.m. the following day. I have decided that perhaps my writing career has gone astray and I should invest time in writing a lucrative restroom guide, having visited every single facility for research on what should have been a 14-hour journey.