A cleaning dervish

Wracked by hayfever, I unleashed a torrent of housework on our wee abode today. Sadly, it doesn't look that much different. It seems so unfair.


Some truths I learned about parenthood this weekend:
- Even the smartest teenagers can be astoundingly dumb.
- It's hard not to take their cluelessness personally. In a span of three weeks, we'll have seen A for a total of 15 minutes (the amount of time it took to pick him up at his friend's house -- where he'd spent the entire weekend -- and take him back to M's). Ouch.
- Anything but equal custody leaves the 'other' parent as a bit-player. T knows he's active in the boys' parenting, but being a peripheral figure in daily life makes him really sad.
- I feel like an outsider, still. That makes me really sad.


I'm not naive enough to expect the boys to want to hang with us all the time (although E is amazingly willing to do the most boring stuff with us). 
But is it naive to think it common courtesy to spend a little part of your weekend with the folks, if only because they're daggy enough to  want to spend time with you? Is this situation exacerbated by the fact we're dealing with two boys?