Dear Roger: And So The Crazy Begins

The kids are off school for the next couple of weeks. Oh God. I know this is supposed to be a time filled with joy and celebration, but picture this if you will...4 kids,(though my eldest disappears with his buddies to work on their "Band" for hours), stuck in the house due to rain, cold or lack of willingness to wrangle all of them on the busy Portland sidewalks it the combination of the aforementioned. It should also be mentioned that my shoulder has decided to go out again. I had it rebuilt about 5 years ago and apparently that is the extent of the warranty on the rebuild. It has slipped out of socket on me several times over the past few days, leaving me feeling like cursing, crying and barfing while I try to slip it back into place, or a combination of all three, so trying to deal with recalcitrant kids who often reenact battle scenes from Fight Club in public,is not within my capability at the moment. The ex has been working long hours at his new meat selling job and while that is a blessing meaning that he is gone away from us for vast stretches of time, its also a bit of a pain for trying to get out and get anything done.
I know the inevitable will happen and I will have to brave the maddening crowds with them sometime in order to keep them from getting cabin fever and doing horrible things to each other more than they have already done. We are hardly into the first full day and already I have two boys with painted fingernails and one who woke up with a drawn on mustache and unibrow. Daughter has spent most of the day racing around the house in her panties with a blanket tied to her wrists and ankles proclaiming herself to be a,'Sugarglider".
She made her brothers dress up as a raccoon and a dog, and directed them in a play that involved the,'Raccoon" knocking over a trash can and the,'Dog" chasing it, and that was all well and good until Spencer, our real dog, got freaked out and decided to get involved in the chasing and offered to bite the,'Raccoon" on the butt.Spencer went to puppy time-out and the play was revised.
The eldest came home long enough to eat 6 slightly burned waffles coated in half a bottle of syrup, shower, drop off his dirty clothes, collect his guitar, argue with me and leave again. I cant say I blame him, I kind of wish I could trade places with him. Especially after daughter comes up to me and said,"Remember that chili ed made me eat yesterday?" yeah...I did after she giggled and walked away. Girls are every bit as gross as boys. As I write this, she is out burping her brothers in a root beer burp contest.She tells me that she wants to spend the next couple of weeks,'Being feral." I asked her, "What if we have company?" She scoffed at me, "Nobody ever comes over to our house. Im not worried. We dont have any family around and the boys are always trying to make me smell their arm pits, so I think I should try to go stinky as payback." Seriously...can I trade places with the older one?