Where did the weekend go?

It's been a long weekend and a very difficult week. There were problems on the home front and problems on the work front. My son seems to be having some issues with everything, school, home, friends. Some of these issues concern me. My sons priorities are with his friends and there seems to be no motivation to succeed in school as illustrated by 3 detentions last week and 2 letters to me regarding Kris's transgressions which are so far, his inability to make it to class on time and his inability to remember his ID badge. This year, he has been late to first period 4 times. This year, he has forgotten his ID badge 7 times and lost it 3 times. At home, I never see him study. I do see him downstairs watching TV or playing Rock Band on the XBOX. His grades at the Semester weren't horrible, 4 B's and 2 C's which was up from 1 A, 1B, 1 C, 2 D's and an F at the midterm. Due to my need to work a second job, I transferred the responsibilities of the house to Kris and Cassie ie in the form of cleaning it and taking care of the laundry. For one year, my house has been a perpetual disaster. My children complain that all they do is clean but when I look around the house, I wonder what in the world they cleaned. They certainly don't dust and if they do, things like dusting under knick knacks is a foreign concept. They simply run the dust rag along the edge of the shelf. Using Windex? Forget it. What fingerprints!? They don't see any fingerprints. The windows, bathroom mirror, TV's and glass on the china cabinet has never been touched by them. Vacuuming? forget it. They don't move anything out of the way or pick anything up and if it's an area that needs an attachment to get to it, they don't bother. They laundry is piled in my room. It gets washed when I wash it. As far as putting it away, forget it. The clean laundry sits in the laundry baskets and washed again and rewashed so they don't have to put it away. I've been missing my socks for months because my kids hate doing them so much, my son hid them in the back of his closet. A few weeks ago, I spent 3 hours in Emily's room playing a game of "Find Emily's clothes." They were hidden all over the house, under her bed, shoved in my drawers, shoved in my closet, shoved in Kris's drawer, shoved in Kris's closet, sitting in a laundry basket in the utility room, shoved in her night table.. Emily had not one sock in her drawer, not one pair of underwear, and her closet was nothing but empty hangers. After I replenished her closet and put all her clothes away, I showed Kris where I wanted things: what I wanted hung up, what I wanted folded and in a drawer, where her socks went etc. So, the following week Kris said, I put Em's stuff away, can I go out? Without checking, (dummy me) I said yes and went into Em's room only to find he shoved everything in the same drawer and I do mean shoved there. Another hour spent putting her things away grumbling to myself. My own room is a disaster to behold but as I'm wasting time redoing things the kids supposedly did, I haven't been able to dig myself out. My frustration level is rising and I'm finding that I am less and less tolerant of his behavior, Em's behavior and Cassie's constant whining that she wants to go to the mall and spend imaginary money and can't because I'm a slave driver. I am more and more resentful that I am working two jobs to make my ends meet. One of the side effects of cancer and treatment is BILLS!! LOTS AND LOTS OF BILLS!! BIG BILLS that I'm still figuring out how to pay despite the fact that I have insurance. No insurance covers everything and I don't complain about it. I look at my medical insurance as just important as my auto insurance, home insurance and other bills and I am 100% opposed to the government taking it over, capping salaries, firing administrators in these uncertain economic times and forcing all of us to have a medicaid card which is so inefficient, beaurocratic and expensive. (I used medicaid for a year. It took the government 2 years to pay my bills and I was sent to collection waiting. Please, oppose any governmental interference and work with the private sector to fix this. The government caused most issues with the high cost of medicine in the first place. Choices are important to a Sarcoma patient. HMO's suck. HMO's are a government created plan. Too much paperwork. Too much fighting. I digress.) It was still hard to receive my tax bill which was 1600 and then a 1K bill from the hospital on the same day. So, I sell cheap socks at Wal-Mart on the weekends to help even things out. If I didn't, I'd be in more trouble and I've explained this to these children time and time and time again. I used to clean the whole house on one Saturday minus the kids rooms. The laundry was done and put away. My room wasn't such a pig pen. One of me did this. Two of my children can't get one room clean in 2 days. There are always excuses and their main one is to blame their little sister. So, Kris had the flu last Thursday. All of my kids had the flu last week, Tuesday was Em's turn, Wednesday was Cassie's turn and Thursday was Kris's turn. It took Kris a little longer to recover than the other two due to his diet of soda and pizza puffs and he lounged around playing PS2 and watching "Supernatural" Season 2. I gave him a pass but he wanted to go to his friend's band practice on Sunday at 1:30. My response was in order to leave the house, he had to finish his responsibilities FIRST. If they weren't done, he wasn't to leave the house. I wanted his room cleaned with floor washed, bathroom done, dust and vacuum the family room and wash the floor and put away the laundry he had piled up on the counter top in the laundry room plus the other laundry baskets folded and put away and sweep up the cat litter that was spilled. I worked two 8 hour days. On Sunday, I went grocery shopping. Yesterday, there was a huge run on 20 lb bottle water, 13 lb cat litter, 20 lbs of dog food bags and one guy bought 100lbs worth of weights I had to lift to scan. My back was killing me. My arms were killing me. Then, I went to the grocery store and bought $150 worth of groceries which I bagged myself and put into the car. I got home and.......nothing was done. The laundry was still piled. The kitchen was still a mess. The dishwasher was emptied but the sink was full of dishes. The bathroom was still a mess. My room still had 3 piles of dirty laundry that the kids didn't touch. The LR had not been vacuumed, dusted, or Windexed. The Dining room table had a new pile of papers. And someone spilled some bamboo skewers onto the floor in the kitchen and left them there. To make matters worse for my children, the laundry in the utility room and the spilled cat litter was still there and my son was not. He left at 11. It was 7 pm and he was still gone. I ......BLEW.........UP! I was stifling back tears of frustration and anger and utter disappointment that after talking to my kids AGAIN this week about how important it is that they pitch in and why, they blew me off. As I promised Kris, I grounded him for 2 weeks. Cassie would have gotten a lighter sentence if she had just been quiet but she had to talk back and sass me while insisting that Emily trashed the whole house after she cleaned it. Since the kitchen table still had crumbs from the Chinese food I ordered on Saturday, I knew she was plain lying about wiping anything down and that ticked me off more. After I blew up, my son went downstairs and as usual, did nothing and Cassie went to go whine to her friends about what an ogre I am. Em went to bed. The house is still a mess. I'm still ticked off and every ache in my back and arms is just fuel for my ire at this moment. Thank you for reading me complain. Now, as I am about to tackle my AT&T inbox which is chock full of work for me, I am trying to gather my composure while thanking the Lord I still have a job and have been struggling to keep in in the midst of dealing with cancer and my kids.