Today marks the 700th post in a row since I started this bit of blather and it will be a fairly short one as I’m about to argue with one of my daughters and won’t have time to do a retrospective.

She Who Must Be Obeyed is sick which leaves me in charge of cooking and cleaning in addition to my usual duties of issuing instructions, being ignored, enforcing instructions, becoming bad guy, etc.

I managed to get our youngest sent to bed although there is no actual evidence she brushed her teeth.

Our oldest is studying for a high school entrance exam this coming Friday and believes that exempts her from doing the handful of dishes from tonight’s supper. I will soon prove how mistaken she is, especially when she takes a break to check texts and Twitter on her tablet.

A few steps will then ensue:
–I will attempt Daddy Logic first by saying “Since you’re not doing anything, go wash dishes”.
–She will ignore me.
–I will raise my voice slightly.
–She will ignore me.
–I will raise my voice slightly more.
–She will, at this point, remove one earphone–the one farthest away from me–and say “What?” in a way that indicates how annoying I’m being.
–I will repeat my request.
–She will snap that it’s impossible because she’s busy.
–I will tell her not to talk to me like that.
–She will snap that she doesn’t understand what “that” means.
–I will promise to turn off the Wi-Fi hub and cut her off from the net if she doesn’t go do the dishes “right now”.
–She will react with a huff.
–I will tell her not to huff at me.
–She will deny that she huffed at me.
–I will repeat my promise to unplug the W–Fi hub if she doesn’t go do the dishes.
–She will pretend she doesn’t care about using the net and return to checking texts because “teen logic”.
–I will unplug the Wi-Fi hub.
–She will panic and go do dishes.

She will, however, neither dry anything nor put anything away.