Clearly, it's not about my anniversary.

Tonight is my fifteenth wedding anniversary. Hubby and I were supposed to go out to dinner and a movie or something. Dawn was supposed to come sit at the house with everyone else so that we had an 18 year old present. Danae is truly okay to babysit both babies, but she's only 16. I don't really trust Dawn to do it, but to leave the babies with Danae, we have to have someone over 18.

She was supposed to be at the house with ONLY the girls. No Dumbass Boyfriend. At the last minute, he HAD to come with her. Because he's out on felony bond right now, we will not allow him to be at the house with any of our kids unsupervised. I don't think he'd do anything to hurt the kids, but I don't trust him. At all. Bina knows this, but insisted that he HAD to come with her because he had nowhere else to go. (He's 21. If he needs a keeper that badly... Nevermind. I don't have the energy to get up on my soapbox.)

So we canceled. And she got all upset wondering why.

All we wanted was a quiet dinner alone. But we didn't get it. What we got was a semi-annoying dinner with Danae and Leigh and the babies. Leigh doesn't know when to quit. Ever. So we end up yelling at her.

Often. Frequently. Hourly.

For example...

"Leigh, get your face away from the baby."

Evil giggling.

"Oh. My. God. Leigh! Get your nose OUT of the baby's mouth! That's just fucking disgusting!"

"Now, Leigh. Leigh. Leigh! Leeeeee-eeeeigh. LEIGH! NOW!"

"Dammit, Leigh. NOW! Should I call MaryJo?"

Now I get a dirty look designed to quell a mob boss. But at least her nose is out of the baby's mouth. (A note on Leigh's nose: She breathes like Darth Vador because she has really bad allergies and asthma, does not clean her room EVER, rarely takes her asthma meds, and smokes as much as she can whenever our backs are turned. She picks her nose. Until it bleeds. So it’s scabby and boogery, and noisy. Does this help the "why is that so incredibly wrong and disgusting?" question you were pondering? Thought so.)

MaryJo is the probation officer. I had high hopes for her, but she's just as pussed out as the rest of anyone having to do with juvenile court.

Anyway, that's a real conversation that occurred after dinner, during which we corrected her -- and I kid you not-- at least 100 times.

There are weeks that go by when I haven't said a single nice thing to her or about her. And I'm embarrassed to take her anywhere because she's so horribly behaved and so gross that I don't want to be seen with her. How horrible is that? I'm supposed to be her mom, and while I love her, I feel /think all of the following, sometimes all at once:

1. I don't like her. I don’t like people who do shit to annoy people on purpose, and she constantly does that.

2. She drives me completely bat-shit crazy… on purpose. (See #1)

3. She smells like an old locker room most of the time. No deodorant refuses to wash the fishy parts, and has the worst foot odor known to man.

4. She has gone from a size 10 to a size 20 this school year.

5. She believes really tight or really baggy t-shirts are dress clothes. But only if they haven’t been washed. She doesn’t do her laundry. (See #4)

6. She cut all her hair off using an eyebrow razor. She looks like a boy with that genetic giant boob disease.

7. I gauge the time I leave work by how long I'll have to put up with her before she gets tired of driving us nuts and puts herself to bed. Sometimes I invent errands to avoid spending time with her. But then, when no one else is around, she’s okay.

I know I should be more sympathetic toward her. She has an alphabet soup of diagnoses and issues, but dammit, she's been with us since 2001. At almost 16, you'd have thought she'd have figured out SOMETHING by now.

Granted, she no longer bites, pulls hair or goes into hours-long rages where she has to be held down. She still puts holes in the wall, but at least she hangs posters over them now. Maybe I’m being too hard on her? Or maybe I’m just tired and numb to the drama.

Regardless, my fifteenth anniversary was not spent in the solitary company of my sexy bald husband holding hands and enjoying refreshing adult beverages. It was spent wondering why Dawn has to take every chance to force the Dumbass Boyfriend down our throats, and why Leigh would want the baby to suck on her nose.