The banging on my office door rattled me, axing my train of thought. “What the fuck did you do to my room?” Screamed Max, my 20-year-old son, from the doorway.

“I was looking for forks,” I said acidly, annoyed by his tone.  “I tossed your dirty clothes on top of your hamper.  And I thought it might be a nice surprise if I found your wallet under that mess since you’d had such a bad day.”

His alarm hadn’t gone off-allegedly , but I’ll bet he forgot to set it. At 6:30, he was dead to the world, yet he was supposed to be at work at 6 AM.

“And what did you take?” He bellowed.

I stared at him for a millisecond, not sure how to answer. “Oh, you mean, the bongs that are now buried in the trash outside under five pounds of cat shit?” I said, not taking my eyes off my computer because I so wanted this conversation to end.

“They’re bowls, at least get your fucking — and you had no FUCKING RIGHT!” he hollered, slamming a ball of knotted fist into the wall. My favorite photo of our German Shepherd, Bear, tumbled off my roll-top desk. Luckily, it didn’t break, landing on the soft, black carpet.

“It’s not even illegal to have those, and you’re going to PAY ME if you broke them!”

“I will not,” I said calmly, so hoping he would go away and scream at someone else about what a bitch I am.

“You had no right! It’s my business what I do in there.”

“Not as long as we pay the mortgage, it’s not.”

“Why the fuck were you in my room anyway?”

“I told you. I was looking for FORKS, and since your paycheck didn’t come in the mail AGAIN, I was hoping, maybe, I’d find your wallet on the floor underneath all your clothes, and -”

“Yeah, right, really convenient.”

I just sighed. He lost his wallet (with $70 in it) last week after a concert, came home stoned out of his NUT. How stupid of me trying to be nice…

Let him DROWN in his own mistakes, the credo  of tough love, but it’s a bumpier road for the Moms than anyone realizes – especially when they’re-

“If you don’t pay me, I’ll just start stealing your SHIT!”

“Go right ahead,” I yelled. “And I’ll file charges against you, and with your record, God knows how much time you’ll get in County THIS TIME!”

Max served five days in jail a couple of years ago when his ex-girlfriend, Sienna, shoplifted some clothes from Walmart and hopped in his car, which made him an accessory.

“This is fucking bullshit, and WHAT THE FUCK?! It was only a misdemeanor anyway!”

I shrugged and kept typing. I know, right? What’s wrong with me? Dear LORD, after 27 hours of labor and 20 years of this intermittent hell, can you make him go away? I’m on deadline, and what else can I say? Ashe*, his father, died when he was 38 because of an addiction to BACON (and cigarettes) for chrissakes AFTER kicking his addiction to cocaine, a habit he developed while smoking WEED…hence, my futile efforts to quash Max’s habit.

Though he might never graduate from Ganja, the anguish is unbearable when I ignore a bag of pot on his window sill or rolling papers on his desk. And yeah, he should be washing his OWN damned jeans. But I get tired of him waking me up stampeding all over the house at 5 AM trying to find clean clothes.

Besides, good mothers do nothing, right? It’s a phase and all that. Not like their kids end up doing a nickel in the state pen for dealing crystal meth or commit suicide after gunning down their classmates, RIGHT?

“You will pay ME! I swear to fucking Christ!” He hollered, slamming the door, which emitted a really loud SMACK, resulting in a new crack in the door right by the door knob.

“When pigs fly,” I muttered just as the hailstorm of banging and stomping commenced about the house.  He was so loud that I could hear him over Nana’s** monitor in the back of the house. And she keeps her door closed all day long when it’s cold, and it’s only 29 degrees today.

And for chrissakes, it’s not like I really had to look.

All of his BOWLS were in plain sight on his bed, another under his desk, and another on the floor by the bed. And I found SIX goddamned forks, so it’s not like I wasn’t justified in going in there. I’m tired of washing more dishes than necessary because HE doesn’t bring his plates, etc., downstairs for DAYS at a time. And you’d think he was a HOARDER by the way his room looks, but NO, he’s just too damned lazy to throw away his trash and clean his room!

Which brings me to the circular ASPECT of this problem. If he brought his dishes downstairs every day, I wouldn’t NEED to rifle through his room in the FIRST PLACE.  And the last time I found pot in his jeans pocket while doing laundry, I left his stash untouched. The guilt kept me awake FOR hours THAT NIGHT. But, yeah, I’m the bad guy here.

A lot of parents would’ve kicked him out permanently or shoved his ass in rehab or something – though I know that’s a waste of money. But, I can’t just do nothing…

I kept trying to work on one of my freelance projects when I got a text from my husband, Charlie, that said:

If I dig them out of the trash, can I give them back to him with the understanding that he CANNOT have that shit in our house again?

A ruse of diplomacy, bravo, Charlie.

Yes, I texted back. Feel free to crawl through the cat shit.

A few minutes later, Charlie, came upstairs. I heard the garage door opening just as Charlie walked into his office, adjacent to mine.

“Did you find his pretty little potty toys?”

Charlie laughed. “Yes, we did. He went to Aaron’s house, by the way. He’s staying the night.”

Moments after tossing his paraphernalia in the rubbish, I regretted it. He’d just buy new ones, which meant he’d have less money for a new car and less to give us for the repairs to his first car that we had to sell when he lost his job at Sears – right after his stint in the pokey. But there’s no place for regrets when your life is all about potty toys and cat shit…:)

And that’s all I have to say about that because tonight, my life is more than a box of chocolate…it’s too frequently a box of shit…did I use the word SHIT enough in this communique? To-wit, I reply: SHIT NO…

Perhaps, if things don’t get better, I might have to turn Nana out to the nearest street corner, so I can afford to buy a better life. I’m sure there’s a market SOMEWHERE for cranky, 90+ year-old women with bad skin who hate sex, right?

Okay, so that’s my bad joke of the century…

Over and out from 420 CENTRAL…otherwise known as the hall of GERIATRIC MADNESS and then some…

TenaciousBITCH and her band of truth-kicking bandits, or something like that…

*Ashe, my 2nd husband was mentioned previously in Post #75 – http://tenaciousbitch.com/2012/09/07/post-75-about-ashes-logic/

** For a rather amusing story about Nana, check out: http://tenaciousbitch.com/2012/06/28/post-66-baloney-porn-or-is-it-bologna-porn/ ….