greetings from her royal highness

I am at Starbucks this morning. I came here to chill, read the paper and plan out my weekend. But alas, Starbucks doesn't have the local paper (who can blame them) so I will be content to blog and people-watch.

I have decided that I am a "Step-Mother" in title only. I am allowing the Pastor to handle all parenting issues with Daughter 1 and Daughter 2. This means subtle changes on my part, for example, I will no longer spend my entire dinner sitting across the table from Daughter 2 and
watch her chew with her mouth open and not use a napkin the entire meal. It also means not-so-subtle changes on my part, like keeping my mouth shut. Not always an easy thing to do.

So I've decided it's not a bad thing to be step-parent in title only. It's kind of like being a Queen in the Monarch with no actual ruling power. I'm just for show. And I am quite certain I can do absolutely nothing, and the daughters will still think and act as though I am evil. Or I can just do nice queenly things, like sure you can wear my house-shoes, eat my lovely stew, wear my Britney Spears perfume and my Lancome lip-gloss and the children will even STILL think I am the evil Step-Mum.

We had all the children this week. Daughter 2 told the Pastor she did NOT like it at out house and she wanted to go to her Mommy's house. Why????? What is so horrible at our house? Let's see. Those nice family meals, trick-or-treating at the zoo, the Halloween party we had? Was it any of those things? Noooooooooo. Because WE MAKE HER BRUSH HER HAIR. Can you believe it? Oh the horror!

She didn't make her comment in my presence, which is good because I would have helped her pack her suitcase (including the hairbrush). This kind of attitude doesn't settle well with me whether it's his kid or my kid or our kid. But I suppose if we had a child of our own he/she would have no other house to go to, no clever escape route.

Also, being a step-parent in title only means I have only one child to focus my heavy-duty parenting on.... and let's face it, that child IS a high-maintenance one.

Last night the gifted and talented one, the one who plays the cello, asked me what must have been his millionth question of the day. He wanted to know if a paralyzed person, weighing the same as a non-paralyzed person, would have superior upper body strength to the non-paralyzed person as a result of pushing around their wheelchair. Where does he come up with this stuff? Really? So my answer was "I don't know" and "perhaps we could Google it". He was slightly exasperated by my answer, but mostly he was just tired. He said "I just wish I could have answers to all my questions!" And I said "you have a LOT lot lot lot of questions!"

Off to my other royal engagements now...