Nobody Lives Here.

Nobody lives here.

No one else.

Just me, and NotMe.

And NotMe is pissing me off.

When I woke up this morning, NotMe had drunk all the apple juice, and left the barest smidgen of it in the bottom of the carton. NotMe does this all the time, and I'm getting tired of it. I don't think it's too much to ask that when I go to get sippy cups of juice for Eva and the dayhome kids in the morning, that NotMe either leave an appreciable amount of juice, or grab a new carton out of the pantry and put it in the fridge. It's not as though we don't stock 400 litres of the stuff. It would just be nice to reach into the fridge and have one available so I don't have to serve warm juice. That's all.

NotMe toasts bagels in the morning and butters them and leaves them on the counter before she goes to school, wasting not only a bagel, but butter, and my last ounce of patience. After a hearty breakfast of warm apple juice, I am not super jazzed by the idea of eating NotMe's cold, rubbery bagel, just so it doesn't have to be tossed in the trash. I usually stick it in a baggie and leave it out so that NotMe can eat it in lieu of dinner, but NotMe typically throws it away and I forget about it anyway. NotMe is costing me a fortune in baked goods. Just saying.

NotMe's favorite prank is to crank the heat up from 19 to 35. No joke. The tab on the thermostat actually gets pushed all the way to the digits 3 & 5. NotMe did this once in the dead of winter when we left the house to go to a friend's for the evening, and when we got back, the condensation from the melting snow had frozen the screen door shut. I didn't see it happen, but apparently, while I was getting Squid out of his car seat, NotMe accidentally shoved his hand through the screen on the door trying to force it open. NotMe is making my paint melt. No biggie.

NotMe eats cereal out of mixing bowls, and leaves an inch of milk in the bottom of them to go rotten over the course of the day so they smell when I go to load them in the dishwasher. Come to think of it, NotMe doesn't pull his own weight with the dishwasher loading, either. NotMe accidentally punched an elbow sized hole in the wall while having an innocent conversation with his sister. That was 2 years after NotMe made her fall of the bed and she needed her nose put back together with surgical glue. NotMe lost her iPod Touch, left the tv on downstairs AGAIN, and used all my black mascara. NotMe just spilled my pop.

Last night, NotMe took it to a whole new level.

We live in a world where cards are king. I use a debit card to grocery shop and buy gas, and I use a Starbuck's card for my coffee. When my best friend's kids sell chocolate for fundraisers, I email them the money. And I pay all my bills online. I hate going to the bank machine 400 times a day. So every week, I figure out how much cash I need, and grab it from the bank. Jason gets $20 in case he has to pay cash for parking, and I set aside whatever I need for the kids.

And every single week, NotMe screws me. NotMe grabs my wallet (which is apparently public property) out of my purse, takes all the cash, and spends it on Slurpees, Tim Horton's, and texas donuts. And when I go in there to grab the $3.50 I need for pizza day at school, it's missing. This invariably happens at midnight... so that I am left driving to 7-11 in my pyjamas... so that I can take $20 out of a bank machine... so that I can then use it to buy gum... so that I can give a child $2.80 in cash for his new science journal.

It happened last night with my last toonie. I needed it for Liz's bus fare so so she could go to the tour of her new high school in the morning. As much as I wanted to make her walk, I knew it wasn't her fault. NotMe was behind it.

I lost it.

I was in amazing form. I started out speaking calmly, until I found out that it wasn't Squid, Liz, Isaiah, or Jason who had taken the cash from my purse, but that irritating little thorn in my side, NotMe.

Come on! Really? Enough already! Is NotMe trying to KILL me??? I do more extra legwork because of NotMe's laziness! I had just gotten back from the store, JASON had just gotten back from the store, and now NotMe had spent my last damn toonie and I had to go OUT again?

I raged. I cried. I yelled and I screamed. And NotMe (brave bugger that he is) stood there and took all the blame. I threatened to cancel Liz's sailing trip, and NotMe didn't waver. I promised Isaiah would never see the (street) light of day again, but NotMe held true in her steadfastness, and refused to let the other kids take the blame. I resorted to guilt tripping and bemoaning my fate, and NotMe stood there, firm in his resolve, and would not go down without a fight.

I gave in.

I pulled apart my couch and the ashtray in my van, and managed to find enough assorted nickles, dimes, and pennies for Liz to put together the required bus fare. I grabbed a Smirnoff Ice out of the fridge (huh- NotMe's been drinking them again), and sat down on the couch. I flipped on the TV, started watching a PVR of Judge Judy (I have to watch them quickly or NotMe deletes them in to make room for 723,654 recordings of 'The Office'), and quietly gave myself up to fate.

NotMe had me. There was nothing I could do to change her. Maybe the best thing was simply to roll over and surrender to the chaos. But someday, it was going to get to me. Eventually, NotMe was going to drive me out of the last shredded remains of my sanity. And when that happened, and the nice doctors sent mommy to a quiet place where she could rest and relax and get in some serious crayon time, who would run the house and take care of the kids and buy the groceries and rake up the pinecones and sort the toys and remember to take out the recycling?

That's right.

Not me.