If You Don't Have Anything Nice To Say...

I know it has been a long time since I posted anything here. As I've said before, that is due in part to the difficulty of finding the time to write anything of substance. As my officemate recently pointed out, I write painfully slow, I plod. And although my writing here may not reflect my best writing, I do try to take the time necessary to live up to the standards of writing I've been taught (and I teach my own students).But, there's more to it than that, of course. It's also been a rough couple of months with the kids. They are both at a "phase" of attitude, defiance, and general naughtiness that can make a sane man chew his own foot off. And it's more than simply wanting to advertise all the wonderful times and keep quiet all the awful ones. (Although, admittedly, there is a process–however subconscious–of nostalgizing our family history. Yes, I Palin-ed nostalgia.) The fun times are the ones I want to relive and remember; they are the ones I assume others are more interested in reading about. Needless to say, they've not been much fun or given me many reasons to sit down and write lately.It's weird how frustrating they can be. They are 6-1/2 and 4-1/2 for pete's sake. How can life be so difficult that they can get that angry, resort to name-calling and kicking, or resist parental requests that persistently? Their instinct isn't to listen to Mama and Papa or be nice or move through the day without saying no to everything that's asked of them. On many occasions it's the exact opposite of that.It's not all bad. I like to tell myself that part of what has made them so awful lately is that they are smart enough to know what's really naughty, what bugs the shit out of me, and they are observant of the world around them that they emulate–particularly the bad things. It's usually pretty funny when Lola starts railing against her brother using the language she's heard us bark: "Are you kidding me?" or "you're being ridiculous!"I wouldn't say that they've turned some sort of behavioral corner, but they do seem a bit more bearable these days. It's probably because the holidays and all of their time off is over; we are back into a routine and have days too busy to get into too much trouble.We'll see.