Frogs

Mark Twain once said something along the lines of that if you eat a frog in the morning nothing worse will happen to you all day long.
He didn't say what to do if you and the Totalitarian Fundamentalist Dictator For Life (mom) can't agree on what the frog is. Or if she keeps conveniently forgetting that Mark Twain said 'frog' singular. Or even that you're supposed to decide what your own stinking frog is.
The Teacher believes two things about frogs. If one is good, five is better; and if she doesn't think your frog is froggy enough, she'll choose more for you. And when you don't want to do them- and you won't- then you're in TROUBLE. (We're not to capital letters yet, but at this rate, we will be.) And then when you snap and get in her face about how frogs are called frogs because they're something you don't want to do, and that changes from person to person, and how just because she doesn't mind doing something doesn't make it pleasant or easy for me- she gets this surprised, innocent, I'm-just-being-reasonable expression on her face. And then I get to feel guilty and second guess myself while I scrub toilets over whether or not I'm blowing this out of proportion and if I'm defaulting to touchy teenager mode again.
And meanwhile, the frog I don't want to eat stays uneaten and I keep putting it off because all these other frogs keep getting shoved down my throat. I wish I had siblings. Then there would be other people for her to boss around, and not just me.
(I'm not actually scrubbing toilets. That's the whole reason I wrote this post. I will be, probably, because the Totalitarian Fundamentalist Dictator For Life is better at nagging than I am at ignoring her. Plus, it would stink to be grounded during vacation. But I don't have to be happy about it. So there.)
Go eat a frog. It's like nicknames; if you let someone choose it for you, it'll never go away.