Death By Children's All Inclusive Back to School Sale and End of Summer Halo 3 Body Count

I'm bleary eyed and woggly because it's the last week before school and my kids are attempting to induce sleep deprivation psychosis because, apparently, there's some kind of unspoken contest to see who's groggiest on the first day of school.

The young hommes d'G has been on a three day killing spree on Halo 3, Army of 2, and Call of Duty and is going to walk away from summer with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and a pack of Lucky's rolled up in his shirt sleeve.

The girl child remains obsessed with her monosyllabic post-midnight-calling flop-haired paramour to the exclusion of everything else including sunlight and food. She has to annotate Into the Wild, the hippy bush death manifesto, by Tuesday and I'm relentless and cruel in my efforts to keep her focussed.

The niece is about to finally abandon us for Portland, Hippy Mecca, the Haight Ashbury of the 21st century, leaving me defenseless and alone before the drooling horde of drowsy, unwashed, wrinkled, laze narcotized, couch dwelling summertards my children have become.

I have had to go downstairs every night and threaten my hideous spawn with torture and maiming to get them into bed using what I believe is the sane argument of pointing to the clock where it is plainly after 2 am, well past the allowable period of microwaving popcorn, playing Halo, and watching the "Mysterious Ticking Noise"YouTube video three hundred and seventy four times without headphones.

It would be one thing if I came downstairs to find them studying Latin or using a ouija board or engaging the ring valve on the flux capacitor or something useful, something that shows their mind is vibrant and spinning in its gambols but no, I come down and they are pasted into the back of the couch, eyes wide and glazed, face bathed in a gray light from the computer, from the TV, from the video game, mouth partially open, like grandma after three days at the slots.

And I'm not much better. I usually reserve the summer for drooling and watching tv and then maybe drooling but I put a bid on a fun job and I won so I've been working all the time and not paying attention unless I smell fire or hear sirens. I walked into the living room today and realized the boy child hadn't bathed in . . . well, I actually can't remember which is bad since he will only take a bath after I'm literally holding his Xbox out the window so I should recall his last ablution. I did notice the dog stopped sleeping with him.

What I'm saying is I can't wait for school to start so I can have my routine back, so I can have a house where the walls don't ring from ordinance and if the phone rings at midnight it means somebody got hit by a truck and breakfast is at 6:30, not 2 o'clock in the afternoon. I want my life back. I want peace and quiet. I want normal again. Thank God for school.

Please save me: my children are trying to kill me.