I Should Not Be Saying Any of This

This is so not nice of me. This is so crossing-the-line of me. Because it's one thing to blog about your nutso kids when they're 3- or 4- or 5- or...10-years-old, but to blog about them when they're 13-years-old is unforgivable. Truly.

Ha! LIKE I CARE.

Here's a list of things currently twisting me into a knot about my teenage girls:

• Although they have their own phones, they seem to prefer mine. They use their uncanny ability to hone in on my device, snatch it without my knowing, and then use it to take about 40,000 pictures of themselves doing that duck-lip thing that girls do now when taking their pictures. When I asked Vida to explain the phenomenon she said: "It's so we don't look dumb." Got that, everyone? They make duck lips so they don't look dumb.

• They leave their stuff everywhere. I long to tell my mother this, but she would just laugh hysterically and point at me and say something about karma and I would totally deserve it.

• When not engaged in feats of athleticism, they just...loll. They drape themselves over the furniture and twirl their hair and stare into the distance. If I had to imagine what song was playing in their head while this Roman-esque relaxing occurs, it would be that One Direction ditty that's supposed to make me feel tender, but which instead CRACKS ME UP (I don't know what it's called; it's the slow, rhyme-y, extra-corny-with-a-side-of-chees-y one).

• The fact that they can drape themselves in this way, that they are long and lanky and drape-able in this way, also drives me crazy. Or maybe I'm just jealous. Because I was, contrapuntally (what. why are you looking at me like that? is that not a word?), short and squat.

• When one of them is exercising her right as a 13-year-old female to briefly transform into a lunatic, the other one turns into the best kid ever, thus forcing me to become a suburban female version of that Two-Face character from Batman: one side of me responding pleasantly to the Good One, and the other side of me responding like a kraken to the Bad One. And then sometimes I get confused and yell at the wrong one. I think they think this is funny; I think they plan it this way.

Huh. I just read this back, and they don't sound so bad. Must be me...