she’s beside herself (maya guest post)

My mom’s OCD has been in full force lately, and I’m definitely seeing the brunt of it.

In Princeton, New Jersey a few weekends ago….I think my mom is hoping that surrounding me with smart people will make me “strive harder” and “be motivated.” Buzzwords.

For example, just this past week alone my mom went ballistic and accused me of:

• Dropping cereal all over the kitchen when I was pouring it into my bowl.
• Dropping cereal on the dining table and on the floor under my chair because I wasn’t focused while eating.
• Eating cereal with too much sugar (obviously my dad took me to the grocery store).
• Eating three bowls of the offensively sugary cereal in a span of ten minutes.
• Leaving the cereal box on the dining table. Along with my bowl. And a splash of milk for good measure.

At the RISD Museum in Rhode Island…where my mom forced a little bit of culture on me at 10 AM. On a Sunday.

My mom’s theory is that I’m either misbehaving because I’m high on sugar (27 grams of sugar at breakfast will do that to you) or because I’m getting older and testing those boundaries again.

The correct answer is: none of the above.

In Providence…it was FREEZING cold and I didn’t bring a jacket. Like I was supposed to. 😦

The truth is that I do (or don’t do) things because I’m straight up lazy in most aspects, with the exception of striving to find ways to get my dad to let me do things my mom won’t approve of.

In any case, this latest escapade provided my mom with some much needed motivation to invent “new consequences” for my cereal (and other) offenses.

And these consequences go way beyond taking away TV time or library visits.

The State House is very pretty. And very large. I know this because my mom made me run around it several times after my dad and I demolished a very large piece of chocolate cake.

No, she’s become far more creative than that!

My mom’s latest punishment is having me write essays about why I did “X” and why I won’t do “X” again, and what the consequences will be if I do.

So far I’ve had to write two essays. One about how I won’t ever be rude to a family member on FaceTime again, and I’m forgetting what the other one was at the moment, but it likely had to do with me forgetting to do something.

The train ride was great because I didn’t get motion sickness! I wish there was a train that goes from NYC to LA because we’ll be making that trip pretty soon. I know this because my mom is already collecting barf bags.

Suffice to say that I hate writing essays.  

One essay that I wouldn’t mind writing, however, is “How Ultimately She’s Just Hurting Herself Because It’s Her Hard Earned Money That’ll Be Paying My Therapist.”

One day.