The Keys to the Kingdom

I went upstairs today to work on laundry. As usual, the kids' rooms were a disaster as was their toyroom. Usually I explode, screaming at the top of my lungs about how dirty it is. As you can imagine, they just look at me as if I were a really big and fascinating insect speaking high German. And they ignore me. But today, I didn't get mad because it finally dawned on me, I held the keys to the kingdom.

My kids are spoiled. They have their own toy room with a t.v. with Directv and tivo. They also have a game cube and they each have their own pc's. They love their stuff. So I took it away. I didn't say a word, just unplugged everything and took the power cords with me. It didn't take ten minutes and they decided it was time to get busy. It has taken me how long to figure this out? I think one problem with parenting is that we want our kids to want to keep things tidy, to want to do stuff because it is how civilized humans operate. But children aren't humans, not really. They don't care if their rooms are dirty or not. But I know I want them to, perhaps I think I havfe failed in my job if I haven't made them care enough. Of course, when I was their age, I didn't caere if my room was clean or not and my mom didn't have nearly the gadgets to hold over my head. Anyway, they have already earned some of their stuff back.

It is way cold here. At least for us. The sun is shining, but the temps are in the 40's. OUr mountains got snow. The main road from the freeway to the mountains runs past my house and it is hopping. The folks from L.A. are eager to see the snow. My kids want no part of it. We've taken them to the snow a couple of times and they weren't enchanted, too cold for them. They aer such delicate flowers.

For you writers, I've recntly updated Villa in Tuscany and Ainsley Park.