Discord.

I’ve gone on and on and on about how great vacation was, how lovely the girls are, how much fun we had.

Well.

Let’s just say it’s time for a change in that tone.

The drive home was HELL!!  Those girls!  They are bad, bad, bad.

My facebook post at 10;30 a.m., which was, by the way, 40 minutes into our drive home:

We’ve been on the road for less than an hour & I’ve already pulled out half my hair. Not sure when my teenagers turned into toddlers.

And I tagged their sorry butts.

Either they were very hyper together, horsing around and wrestling (in our tiny hybrid’s backseat), or they were fighting, complete with throwing of projectiles and punches (under the guise of a “punchbuggy” response).

In the home stretch, Lemon had a meltdown of 3 or 4 year old proportions.  I was seething with anger.  David kept trying to soothe me with pats on the leg and rubs of my shoulders, but it didn’t work.  I ended up just blaring the music and refusing to talk to her.  Which she met with, “oh, so you’re giving me the silent treatment???!!  That’s mature.”

And, no, I didn’t slap her.

Not even once.

A miracle considering some of the things she was doing.  Like ripping paper over and over and over, just to get to me.  When I told her to stop, she responded with a very snarky and challenging “Why?”

She never acts like that.  NEVER.

Today, she’s taking her punishment rather well, which is that she is responsible for cleaning out the car and unpacking much of the vacation stuff.

Next time, if we go that far south again (before yesterday’s drive it was unanimous that the drive was worth it, and that we would be returning), we are (a) going with a bigger car (we all were talking about our “next car” as if the trade-in to a cross-over SUV were already in the works, yesterday’s marathon (15 hour) drive has me contemplating a trip to the dealer today); and (b) we have to break up the drive home.  We did the drive there in 2 days, but decided it made more sense to just barrel through on the way home so we’d have today to prep for the week in front of us.  But it was a mistake.  I don’t think a bigger car would solve all aspects of it; I think we need to spread it out over 2 days.