Barbarians At The Gates

There's this guy in my life. Every time he sits at my table, he's not satisfied with the food I've given him. He climbs on top of the table even after I ask him to sit down. He is violent toward me and my new baby, he lets himself get overtired and refuses to sleep, and he whines like a one-year-old child. In fact, he is a one-year-old child. And he hasn't slept in a week. We finally broke down and drugged him to sleep with Benadryl. I'm going to ask the doctor if there are such things as baby tranquilizer darts when I go see him next week.

I had previously explained to my kids the origin of the word "barbarian". They got all excited and went around saying "Bar bar bar, bar bar!" to each other. Civilizing these little barbarians, though, is quite another matter from educating them. With all the turmoil from the birth of the new baby, the barbarian in them has resurfaced. Sonshine just needs some reminders to get his inner barbarian under control. With Bagel, there is no outer Roman to control his inner barbarian, so he's overrunning the gates of my sanity.

On top of all this, FH is very much disenchanted with the education our kids are getting at the People's RePublic School, and he wants to start a charter school. I'm not thrilled with the situation either, and I'd prefer a charter school setting, but it's not that simple. I have been at great pains to impress upon him the sheer quantity of paperwork and time it will take to do something like that. It's not like you just saunter on down to your local charter school office and fill out a two-page form; it took half a dozen families a few years to get TECS started. Normally I'm a rabble-rouser type and I would gladly engage in such a subversive act, even as I found it scary; but right now I'm exhausted just trying to keep Knuckles fed and keep Bagel from throwing food all over the kitchen. I am being overrun by barbarians, and I have to make that my first priority.