STRESS MANAGEMENT

Just about every magazine I pick up these days has an article about stress or stress management. Although most of the articles do address the problems of stress, I'm not sure those people who write the articles have teenage children.
Stress took on a whole new meaning when both my children reached "teen years."
For instance, stress to me means coming home on Monday (the worst day of the work week for me) pulling the car into the garage, shutting off the motor and resting, wanting to take a deep breath before the evening starts. However, before I can unbuckle my seat belt, two of my children are at either door of my car. One wants to know what's for supper, while the other one wants a ride for he and one of his friends to a movie.
Pardon me, I tell them, I don't know "what's for supper" and no movie tonight-it's a school night.
Neither of them is happy with the answer they got, so they decide to fight with each other.
I change my clothes, throw a load in the washer, and head to the kitchen. Before I can start dinner I have to wash dishes because everyone had a snack when they came home. With dishes done and dinner on the table, I asked my son to take the clothes out of the washer, put them in the dryer and start another load.
We all sit down, eat dinner, the kids are still fighting about important world affairs like who did the dishes last night.
After dinner, while they are yelling and clearing the table, I wanted to wash one more load of clothes.
I opened the lid of the washer, the one my son loaded, to find it loaded with five pairs of his socks!
Now that's what I call stress.