The Soap Method

I had this vivid dream about buying some vehicle headlight bulbs and someone who shall not be named almost broke them and I picked them up. I remember in the dream looking at the bulb as it enlarged and I smoothed out a small crack with my thumb. It exploded in my hand and some sort of lava/plasma dripped and burned all over it and the only thing that would cure it was my running to the sink to use my very own soap. I had scars, but the plasma evaporated and I didn't even have the pain of burns.

The dream came from the fact that I washed Eraser Eater's mouth out with soap yesterday. I had had it. I swear. The whining was unbelievable. The boys would not stop arguing and fighting. Nothing was working. So I told them the next time I heard a whine or a vile word from their mouths I was going to wash them out----"and believe me, my soap doesn't taste good!" I warned them fair and square. I was almost jumpy, my ears were so thrashed with whining and antagonizing. It gets bad when you almost wish to say, "Don't call me 'mom' anymore!" because the sound of the word in a whining tone is much worse than using some assumed name instead. At least the association would not be there. Whining to me is like how coinage and cheese mingling together sounds. Ugh. I can't believe I just wrote that.

The boys were calm finally once I had my rant with them and the Oldest sat down to study math and Eraser Eater sat down to read. The girl grabbed one of Eraser Eater's books that was on the coffee table (that had nothing to do with school) and he freaked. He lifted his voice to all the whining gods within range to hear his supplication. My body tweaked in response and I calmly took his hand and led him to the bathroom. He at once knew his doom. I won't go into details, but I made him sit there for three minutes with a bar of my soap in his mouth. Afterwards, I told him to rinse and brush his teeth to take care of it. You would have thought the world ended. I tell you what though, he did not whine once the rest of the day!

Whenever I would detect a bit of whining, he would say, "But I wasn't whining, I was just explaining something....let me say it a bit better this time...." Ah, yes, that's the ticket (as Jennifer would say).

The second Dear Sir got home he got a full report. He almost spilled it out to his teacher in AWANA last night but then he said, "It is embarrassing for me, and besides, I wouldn't want to get Mom in trouble."

Everyone is so calm and full of brotherly love here lately. I don't get it.