Since I seem to be writing primarily for Randal these days, I might as well address this to him.

Hey, Randal. Know how I twittered about the annoying girl across the street and you said, "You can here her from your house?" Well, the answer to that is "sometimes," but yesterday it was because she was in MY yard, poisoning my children with her bad habits and attitudes, and driving me to insanity with her whiny, self-absorbed patter and selfish behavior.

First, let me describe her vocal patterns. She has two: complaining, or baby-talk. She's 11 years old, so the baby-talk thing makes me want to bash her head in with either my potato masher (inside) or my gardening trowel (outside.) But I don't hear the baby talk thing often because she's ALWAYS COMPLAINING. And when she's complaining in her whiny, nasal voice, she ends every few words in UH. As in, "Meghan-UH, I wanted to use the scooter-UH." I have actually heard her use/create the word, "Ewwww-uh!" when she was drawing with wet sidewalk chalk on my driveway.

This situation is my own fault, by the way. It was my pathetic soft heart getting in the way of my cold, hard reason again. I felt bad for her dad, because he's a single guy whose wife left him for another woman and who has nothing but bad luck with... anything. Cars. Jobs. His lawnmower. You name it. I have become de facto after school care for her while he "works from home," even though it was never discussed and I never agreed to it. It just sort of... happened. (Side note: when my husband isn't traveling, he also works from home. Somehow her shrill harangues shouldn't bother him? Again, my fault. I shepherd and correct and otherwise keep order.)

I also fed her. Another mistake. What began as an act of hospitality has become expected by Queen Nuisance. I often hear her whisper in my daughters' ears, "Go ask your mom if you have ice cream (or some other treat)." I used to feed her dinner as well, but I had to draw the line somewhere. Especially because she eats exactly and only these things: chicken nuggets, mashed potatoes, french fries, grilled cheese, raw baby carrots, bananas. Oh, and peanut butter and jelly. If you try to give her anything else, she complains. "It's slimy-UH." "It feels weird-UH." "Can't I just have a cupcake-UH?"

I have many more complaints and stories about Queen Nuisance, which I often thought of capturing in a blog called, "(Girl's Name) Go Home!" -- a phrase I use on a daily basis. Instead, I will leave you with a story that came from the back seat on the way to see "Alice in Wonderland" last night. ÜberGirls were in the backs seat doing... something, I forget, when their dad and I said, "Could you please stop that? It's annoying." ÜberYounger piped up, "We're annoying you on purpose; Queen Nuisance does it all the time. She says it's fun."

My husband replied that the consequences for that are NOT fun, and I replied, my eyes slitted and my lips pursed, that Queen Nuisance wouldn't do that if she was MY kid.

"Would you whip her?" asked Elder, who, like her sister, has never been hit by her parents in her life, but who has been reading Laura Ingalls Wilder.

"No," said Younger. "She'd throw her out the window!"

Yep.