Spawn, Brother of the Terror

… Right now I am only thankful of one thing, and that is the fact that the Spawn is very rarely around when I’m watching the Terror. You see, the Spawn is the older brother of my adorable little Terror that I must watch everyday…

"You're a *giggle* butt hole..."

And he is at that age where he thinks talking about butts makes him adult.

It's hard to believe my Hedgehog is the uncle to these two...

See, when the two of them are together he takes the chaos that I barely have control over and stretches it to a  breaking point, snatching it out of my hands and turning the entire house into a disaster area. No, I am not exaggerating either. The Spawn antagonizes her on purpose, knocking over the few toys she’s allowed to play with and telling her, and I quote, “You have a hairy butt.” Not only that, but he also starts doing bad things on purpose in an effort to make her act out even more, like jumping across the couches and screaming at the top of his lungs and running up and down the hall…

And I sit there, terrified, because I’m not sure where my boundaries are with this kid. The Terror I know all too well, I’ve learned when and where I’m allowed to act like her babysitter, and that’s pretty much all the time. It took the Hedgehog reassuring me though that I’m allowed to punish her when she’s being bad, otherwise I would just sit there in a panic.

I panic way too easy...

Yet her brother is older and whenever he’s around it’s almost always with his dad in the house, though his dad is always in the shower. The Spawn knows this. He knows I’m terrified of overstepping my bounds. He can smell my fear… he knows his dad won’t hear him being bad… He knows that because he’s older I can’t just stick him in time out or send him to his room, and that’s something that he takes advantage of. He stands up to me when I tell him to stop, laughing at me and making fun of me and getting the Terror to do so as well, because he knows that there’s no real stopping him, that the only person capable of really punishing him is no where nearby… And the Spawn proceeds to be as bad as he can in as short of an amount of time he can.

So he starts talking about butt holes, and getting his sister to talk about them, and when I tell him to stop he just laughs at me with this… this look on his face that I can't describe and can't be captured with badly drawn Paint drawings… Then he dumps his sister’s tiny little pets onto the floor and jumps onto the couch, screaming and encouraging her to jump with him, when I yell at her to stop he starts yelling at her too, then giggles madly when she stares to cry and whine and I glare at him. After that he starts running up and down the hall way, yelling, until she goes, too. All the while the Terror smiles and giggles like the most adorable child ever, calling after him happily, “Brother! Brother!” She's all too eager to follow the Spawn's ever move, openly defying me when I try to make them stop.

"Brooootheeeer..."

 Once the Spawn has started, he can’t be stopped. He’ll just grin and giggle in this tittering voice and insult me, the Terror cheerfully repeating whatever he says. The louder I get, the more he laughs and insults, and the more the Terror gets out of my control…

He even got her to stop eating to do all this...

 He tried something new, this time, though. When he heard his dad get out of the shower he raced to the end of the hallway and crowed triumphantly, “Daaad! Kit’s being mean to me!”

My heart fluttered wildly with fear, but I grinned, knowing he had messed up. While I still look like a teenager, I’m an adult, charged with controlling the Terror from descending  into chaos, and his dad knew that. So all I had to do was call down the hallway, “Yeah, if being mean means telling him to stop using bad language around his sister and to not jump on the couch!”

... What? I wasn't lying.

 … I won the battle against the Spawn today, he was grounded… but I know I haven’t won the war... Mostly 'cause the Terror was an even worse Terror after the Spawn left with his dad...

... Victory comes at a heavy price.

Tacos

Most couples argue a lot, whether because someone did something stupid (like insult them without realizing it), or because they simply don't agree on how they should spend money (Do we really need food this week when there's this new game...?), the point is that couples argue. Me and my Hedgehog... not so much.

It's not that we're better than other people or anything, though, I mean, c'mon. Have you seen my Hedgehog? He's perfect. He doesn't have too much of a temper, though he does tend to throw things after he drops them, and he's jut the most adorkable nerd who ever geek'd. Sure when he does get angry he gets all tense and glare-y and looks like he might explode, but for the most part he's so full of humor and childishness that it kind of defuses the situation.

Not that I don't get angry, though, because trust me, I do. I'm overly sensitive when it comes to insults, you don't get made fun of relentlessly all through middle school and high school like I did without automatically assuming that everyone secretly hates you, and also because of that and a couple other incidents I pretty much clam up or get really bitter and sarcastic when I'm angry...

Also, sometimes, I get vindictive...

Real incident!

So yeah, I clam up and ignore him and go out of my way to spite him when I'm mad at him, and then he gets mad at me for being mean and vindictive and not telling him what's wrong with me, and eventually I get so mad I can't not talk anymore and end up yelling. Then he yells and I yell, and this happens:

And then I start to cry because I'm one of those people who cry when I'm mad, and I feel awful, and stupid, because I'm crying, and I realize I've been being an idiot and all that anger gets internalized and I end up hating myself.

Plus I look just awful crying...

Yet we have a sure fire way to diffuse anger quickly before he starts throwing things or I start crying like an idiot.

This is a taco.

See, one time me and the Hedgehog were arguing. He had said something that I had taken the wrong way, and I was punishing him for it: he'd mentioned that the dishes still weren't done... Oh yeah, I was having noooone of that...

In anger I stormed into the kitchen and started washing dishes, snapping at him as I did so. I was indignant, I was full of rage... I was feeling like he thought I was a useless waste of space, so I was gonna wash those dishes and he was gonna feel awful about it. No one was going to think Kit was a burden! So help me, by all the gods, I was gonna wash those dishes and he was gonna appreciate me for it! So there I was up to my elbows in soap and water, and he was continuing to make sarcastic remarks that I was taking the wrong way, that was making me even more angry by the minute... Finally the eejit seemed to understand the only way to make me realize that he was only joking was to say something so ridiculous that there was no way I could ever take it the wrong way.

His words hit me like a slap to the face, for a second, just a second, I stood there in shock, surprised... and then I spoke the first words that came to mind...

And that was the end of the argument, for the next five minutes we kept yelling, but it was with huge grins on our faces.

Hedgehog: Stupid taco!
Me: I have to clean up the tomatoes it leaves in the kitchen, you know! You brought it home, you should clean up after it!
Hedgehog: Hey! I've picked up its lettuce, too.
Me: Oh yeah? Well I've had to wipe up sour cream!

... I wonder what the neighbors thought...

But what made it even better was that the next day, when I was hanging out with my little sister, Hunny (Who's not really my sister and who's family only semi-took me in). While sitting in the car things got kind of silent a bit awkward, so she suggested we talk about something... When I asked what we should talk about, in a moment of confusion and desperation, she suggested talk about tacos.

And I laughed so hard I cried.

Sleep, and the Terror

Innit she cute?

There are a lot of rules that the Terror's mom has given me for when I watch her spawn, a lot of rules that has given me the great misfortune of yelling "NO" at a small child all day long. Now, the Terror can be quite the little... terror, but she actually can be a sweet kid at times. I know, I know, I complain a lot about her, and she drives me nuts, but believe it or not I actually do like the little brat. She can be positively adorable at times, which is why I normally spend my days feeling like the worst person ever because I have to tell her "no" so much; and all because of a few rules her mom has that have basically limited the kid to the couch. I'm just lucky she actually likes cartoons.

One rule is that under no circumstances is she allowed to make a mess or get herself dirty. This sucks for both me and the kit because she happens to be a little artist at heart and I'm an artist myself, which is actually why she liked me in the first place and I got saddled with this job. So every time she wants to draw or paint or pull out her art supplies, I have been charged by her mom to put an end to it; and no, I'm not misinterpreting a rule. The first week me and the Terror incurred the wraith of her mom when she came home to find us drawing with crayons, and since then it's been banned because the Terror "won't pick them up later."

So it's not hard to imagine why it is the Terror also isn't allowed to play with her toys. According to her mom it's too much hard work yelling at her to pick them up, so she's not allowed to play with them in the first place. As you can imagine I spend an awful lot of time feeling sorry for the little Terror, that is, until she decides to be annoying or throw a tantrum and then I'm just kinda pissed off and upset. And why wouldn't I be? She asks relentless questions over and over again about the same thing, is always making demands for things like candy, which she's not allowed, snack food, which she's not allowed, soda, which she's not allowed, more food, when she just got done eating and didn't even finish, or for me to hand her blankets that are right next to her, or get her more drink when she still has a full cup...

It's pretty easy to see that she's just attention starved and cooped up,  but thanks to her dad she's not even allowed to go on walks anymore like we did the first couple of weeks. Mostly because we can't leave the dog and we can't take the dog with us because , well...

Colt is too big to take on walks and is prone to breaking out and running away, and Noodles has no collar, so the Terror just ends up dragging him all over creation and just about choking him to death, and that's when she's not taking off on sprints for no reason. So the obvious solution would be to just let her play in the yard. After all, Noodles doesn't run off and he goes out all the time for bathroom breaks, so...

... Yeah, she'll dash off into the road...


Still, there is one rule her mom has given me that I routinely break, one rule so ridiculous and without thought that I can't help but ignore it, and that is the rule that I must wake the Terror at 8'o clock. You see, not only does the Terror throw a horrible tantrum the likes of which have never been seen before when someone tries to wake her up, but as it is, when I allow her to sleep until she wakes up (normally around 11), she can barely stay awake until 9'o clock. The Terror is still a little kid, she can't stay up that late, she shouldn't be woken up that early, she needs her sleep.

... and she's so cute...

So I break the rules and let her sleep. It gives me a couple hours to eat breakfast, feed the dogs, and wake myself up full before I have to deal with her, too. It's better in the long run because she can stay up until her mom gets home and I don't have to give her another reason to dislike me.

Questions

Inexplicably, every day I watch her, me and the Terror have the same conversation… and for the life of me I know not what horrors I committed in my past life to condemn me to such a fate...
 

Terror: Can I check the mail?
Me: No.

Terror: Why?
Me: The mail runs at 4.

Terror: Oh… What time is it?
Me: It’s not even 11 yet.

Terror: What time is it?
Me: It’s almost 11.

Terror: Oh… When does the mail run?
Me: 4.

Terror: What time is it?
Me: Almost 11.

Terror: What time does the mail run?
Me: … 4...


Don’t ask me why we have this conversation everyday, I think I've already established that the Terror's grasp on language isn't exactly the best; trust me, if it wasn't for that confused and curious look on her face, I'd think she was doing with just to mess with me, or, you know, that she does it in a weird effort to convince me I’m stuck in a horrifying reenactment of Groundhog Day… By the way, this isn’t the only time we have this conversation either, or it wouldn't annoy me the way that it does, we have this conversation at least once an hour, sometimes twice… Sometimes even more if she's not interested in something else. Every. Single. Day. Of course, when it comes time for her to go check the mail, we have this conversation:

Terror: Can I go check the mail?
Me: Yeah, it’s 4 now.
Terror: K!
Me: Wait! You’re still not wearing pants, go put on some pants.

And why is she not wearing pants at 4 in the afternoon? Because every time I tell her to put pants on she either straight up refuses me or she stares at me with that blank and sort of vaguely confused look she gets on her face when she has no idea what's going on; also, sometimes she just doesn’t have pants because the laundry hasn’t been washed in forever and a day. In the end, I have to yell at her a couple of times before anything gets done.

Me: Hey! I said you can’t go out unless you’re wearing pants!

Me: Don’t look at me like that, go put pants on.

Me: Go put pants on, now.

And after she finally puts pants on… we have the same conversation, but with shoes…


… Sometimes… there isn’t mail… and we have this conversation…

Terror: Can I go check the mail?
Me: You already checked the mail.

Terror: There wasn’t any mail.
Me: I know, sometimes there isn’t any mail.

Terror: But you said the mail came.
Me: Yeah, the mail-man came by, but there wasn’t any mail.

Terror: Can I go check the mail?
Me: *silently wondering what I did to deserve this...


… Lather, rinse, repeat…

Oh, and this is a conversation that gets repeated throughout the night, as often as she wishes, until I go home… And one time… I lost my temper with her over it… and this is what happened.

Terror: Can I go check the mail?
Me: It’s 8’o clock.

Terror: Can I go check the mail?
Me: No, it's dark outside.

Terror: Can I go check the mail?
Me: No, you're not wearing pants or shoes.

Terror: Can I go check the-
Me: No.



And that went on for about two minutes, me inserting a no quickly every time she opened her mouth… Eventually, this happened:

So I just left her until she felt civil enough to come out, by the way, this is what happened the same day she assaulted me with questions about her coloring book… So when I got home… I ended up yelling at my Hedgehog.

 … Yeah, and then he got angry, too… Anger, it spreads, really fast…

I'mma Pop A Cap in Dat Biiatch

WHAT!? You ain't never seen a gangsta-Roma before?!

 Hedgehog doesn’t believe I’ll do it, he says I don’t have the skills, but I’ll do it, I swear…

This is a face that doesn't believe in my skillz.

He’s just not aware that I’ll kick that lady’s ass if she gets him in trouble again, I’ll do it, I swear!

... I will...

 Yeah, on top of everything else that happened last night, I found out from my Hedgehog that the new assistant manager managed to lose $100 so he was short on the register when he was closing tonight. He got in so much trouble for it that he almost got fired, despite the fact that for almost two months he was one of only two people working there and is still basically the only one who closes the store…

And the manager doesn’t trust him that much? Really? After working there for nearly a year? I mean, really?! This lady flips out on him over the tiniest little things and acts like it's his fault! A customer attacks him in the store (verbally) and when the Hedgehog (who has a bad temper) manages to keep calm she yells at him over it. The manager seriously treats him bad, but I’ve heard about how when a woman at the store messes up she doesn’t say a thing about it. Double standards work both ways people! Women can be just as sexist towards men!

Watch me!

Grr… I’mma really pop a cap in dat bitch… in... in... in both the bitches!

Pout...

No, seriously. I’mma do it!

... Still doesn't think I haz the skillz...

Anyway, yeah, I’m just upset… Regardless of whether or not I can physically do something like that, I’m just not capable of it. I may’ve grown up in places where that kind of thing was pretty common, hell, I currently live in one of those places, but I’m not gonna stick my neck out and get it cut short over two crappy biznitches cause they be screwing with my Hedgehog…

On second thought, that sounds like a good reason to do it…

... See if I don't...

The Awesome Apartment of Hedgehog and Kit!

Me and the Hedgehog live in a hospital!

Most awesome building ever.

No, seriously, we do. See, our apartment building used to be an old hospital, it was converted a long time ago to house people. Of course, if you look close enough, through the dingy gray carpet floors and the fake wood panel walls, you can still see the shapes of the old hospital rooms… It’s not so bad really, despite the fact my friend the Blonde One said it looks like something out of a Saw movie (then again, we don't often consider the Blonde one to be much of an authority on things other than web design...). I mean, it’s not like me and the Hedgehog are the ones living in the apartment that used to be the morgue. That was his aunt before she moved out!

Our apartment is a studio, which means that aside from the bathroom there’s no real escape from each other. So you can imagine that when we’re mad there’s no real place to go in order to cool down… which is why as of late we’ve been hanging out in the bathroom.

No, seriously.

It’s brightly lit in there, unlike the main room, and since it used to be a hospital bathroom it’s fairly large, large enough to set up a chair and a desk for the computer. We keep the window cracked and dangle the wi-fi adaptor we got from a cell-phone company out of it, so we get a full signal… Yeah, feel free to think of us as crazy. I certainly do.

"Hey, can you pass the toothpaste?"

Another interesting fact about the bathroom is that when the Hedgehog is in here late at night he claims to hear a woman talking to him. He always yells to see if it was me, but normally I’m either curled up asleep or I’m reading a book, so obviously it wasn’t me… There’s also a tile missing right in front of the bathroom door. I kinda freak myself out when the Hedgehog is gone for his military stuff by imagining scary things in there… Those nights I don’t sleep and leave the lights on all night, and even then I only sleep when the sun is up and the kitchen light is on.

We have a kitchen with the tiniest sink imaginable, which makes three dishes look like we haven’t washed them in a week. Also  in the kitchen we have this super moldy tile that’s quite terrifying. I never look up…

Only it's more colors than this.

It’s scary up there.

Oh, and above our bed there’s a square cut out of the tile. It was there when we moved in, the Hedgehog’s little sister made a really funny statement about how a hand would come down out of the hole at night and we would have to feed it…

I hunger for tacos!

Yeah, it freaked me out the first week we lived here. Now, not so much, but only because we like to imagine that Ceiling Cat lives up there.

Recently we got some glow-in-the dark stars and stuck them all over the ceiling, so now when the lights are out it’s all glowy and I imagine Ceiling Cat is peeping down at us from outer space.

Ceiling Cat loves you!

It makes me sleep like a baby…

No, really. This was the argument.

Our neighbors are kind of crazy… The first night after we moved in I heard the neighbors arguing… it was weird…

Those guys, the guys to the left of the apartment, used to argue constantly until the baby was born… at least,  I hope the baby was born…  I saw her in the hallway one day and she was pregnant, and a couple months later we’ve heard a baby crying in that apartment…

They aren’t the only  neighbors who fight,  though.  In fact, just last might, right after I got home from watching the Terror, the guys to our right and across the hall started screaming horribly. Then I heard glass shattering. When I went out later, the hallway was a mess…

There was a crib in front of a door and a bag of garbage had been emptied in the hall, and some clothing, men, women’s and children’s, was all mixed up with broken egg shells and a shattered fish bowl with the fish bowl stuff all strewn everywhere… shattered glass and bottles and rocks… A real mess…

Oh, hey! They’re arguing again! You know what this means? I'll have to talk to the police later.
Edit: And I did!

Oh, and a few months back we heard similar arguing and the sound of shattered glass and one of the window pane’s  for the stairwell was missing at there was blood splattered on the window and floor…

And the kids in this building love to bug us…

I swear they stand around waiting for the door to open...

They also like to call the Hedgehog my husband when talking about him.

This is a thought which terrifies me...

Oh! And sometimes at 2 am they like the play basketball!

Yeah, we see you out there, kids...

And I’ve seen two people get arrested here! The first guy waved a gun at the police! Yeah… home sweet home…

Morning After Edit: So, yeah. We ended up laying awake until 3am while they yelled and carried on in the hallway, by the way, this was after I'd already had to talk to the police because of the trouble they were causing. Eventually the landlord showed up, screamed at everyone, and made them clean up their mess; but until that happened, Hedgehog sat up playing DS and making “banjo noises”.

Why is he so cute and childish?