Spoonful of Lithium

M is 12. For those of you who've never had the pleasure of the close company of a teenage girl, I have one for sale, cheap. For those of you who *have* can I just say Midol should be free and dispensed like Pez, don't you think?

Anyhoodle, like most teens of the current day, she's got two obsessions the color black and bad Emo poetry about the terrible angst that comes from having parents who just do not understand. But, like every one of these hopeless, desolate victims of injustice, she also needs cash. Cash that Mom, (cruel, horrible, NONCOMPASSIONATE Mom) refuses to provide without some sort of (DEMEANING) labor being preformed first. And that is just NOT FAIR.

So, in an effort to thwart the control of the MOM-Ster she has begun babysitting.

Now, knowing M as I do, I figured it would last about an hour before she would be calling for back up. This is because she is not so much about things like hard work and perserverance as she is about finding the easy way out. I was surprised, nay, flabbergasted to find that not only does she like babysitting (if someone was paying me $7/hr to yell 'stop eating your booogers!', eat pizza and watch t.v., I'd love it too) but that the kids like her. They beg for her, they squeal in delight at the sight of her and then, dragging her by the hand demand to know if she can "sleep ober this time? Puhwease? Mommy said Otay!" and then climb her like sticky little monkeys as their mothers escape, gratefully, blissfully unaware that the person with whom they have trusted their dear little ones is currently sporting a Sharpie tattoo of a skull head and the word DEATH TO AUTHORITY on her left calf.

The other day, as I dropped the Queen Of Bitterness off at her job for the day, I mentioned how odd I found the adoration of her Dora quoting minions she thought for a moment, clutching her copy book festooned with the Grim Reaper and then says;

"It's because I'm the freakin' Goth Mary Poppins"