"I'm going to live somewhere else"

We made it almost two years before giving her McDonald's. We made it five years before our first visit to the ER. We made it eight and a half years before she packed a bag and left the house for greener pastures.

That's right. Ethel decided today that we are mean, and she was going to live somewhere else. In a defiant act of unholy tantrum independence, Ethel got a duffel bag from under my bed, packed a few things in it, and triumphantly made a teary-eyed exit through the patio door. No good byes, no note on her pillow, no sorrowful look back with sad background music - she just left.

There was no looking back, and no cute puppy

 She went to the front yard. She went to the side of the house. She went from the front yard to the back yard, and back to the front. Daddy found her and tried to get her to take One Eyed Pete, her BFF cat. She said she would not take him because he would die. She didn't know how she'd get food for him. Despite the last minute nature of her decision, she had put some thought into it.

What horrible thing would drive an eight year old to decide to go where the grass is greener, you ask? Being told to change her clothes. Yes. In order to go see a play, in a theater, she was asked to put on an outfit that was color coordinated, if not a real ensemble. {insert shock and horror here}

You told your daughter to do WHAT?

Yes, we are mean parents that do not want our children to wear pink shirts and orange shorts with green socks and blue/green Crocs in front of the general public. Truly, our eye for fashion is skewed, don't you think?

We are obviously monsters. Unfit parents.

Initially very excited to see our friends' daughter in the play, once she discovered that her brother wasn't going and she would have to change her clothes, the deal was off. She.wasn't.going.

These are the times that drive a mom to drink heavily really question her parenting. And drink heavily. And yell. A lot.

Rest assured, Ethel returned home in less than 20 minutes. She figured out, faster than a college graduate, that life just ain't that easy. Honestly, I don't know why she came back in the house. She was probably hungry. Who knows.

She finally agreed to unpack her bag and write a letter of apology to the star of the play. She agreed to move home. She agreed to a few conditions, including apologizing to Mommy and putting away the things she unpacked. More conditions will follow, but we all need a bit of a cooling off period.

After some time beating myself up over everything from bad dinners to not teaching my daughter better fashion choices, I am now enjoying a beer blogging in peace and quiet. Daddy realized that we would all be on the news before long if everyone didn't make themselves scarce, so he took the kids to the library.

We almost had a mutiny on our hands when I suggested books that each of the kids should look for. Don't panic, crisis averted. They, quite wisely, conceded.

You thought I was kidding, didn't you.