Dear Roger:Who Is The Boss?

It has been a very hectic couple of weeks for me around here. With trying to get the website up, trying to keep the book sales up and promote my 3rd book,(not really doing very good at that one), keeping my kids entertained and the house clean, dealing with my dog, getting ready to move to a bigger apartment where Stevie and I will finally have our own bathroom, deal with a 16 year old son that seems to have suddenly decided that he is in control of things, and still work a job, pay all the bills and find some time to maybe keep my sanity and occasionally write, the stress has been about to eat me alive.
I have had a couple of days where I had brief overload meltdowns and had to retreat to behind my closed doors and windows and try to hide from everyone and everything, but its been difficult at time to do that when I know I need to keep pushing forward to promote and sell my books.
My son and I have had some pretty epic battles. He has taken the basic tools I gave him in computers and he has run with it. I am the one who taught him his basic skills such as navigating the internet and using some common programs, but as he was supposed to do, he has gone well beyond my abilities now and he is knowledgeable in things like writing code and basic programming, so I had hired him to set up my website for me.
What my son does not seem to understand, is that when you are hired for a job, you are supposed to do what the employer hires you to do, not what YOU want to do. I had to deal with him over-riding my decisions about what text, pictures and formatting to use, he was snarky, condescending, rude, and he made threats to take down my entire website on a regular basis when I didn't do what he wanted.He was acting like a complete and total jerk, and when I went in and changed some things I didn't like, and even put up a page I had asked him to put up, he came in yelled at me like he was the character,"Nick Burns- Your companies Computer Guy" which is what we all call him around here now, and he went in and changed things, including the size of one of the icons because he said that the way I had it set up looked,"Stupid"  and he also said that I had screwed up the entire site.
He stomped off out the door and didn't work on the site for over a day even though he knew I needed to get it online for a big advertising campaign I am doing for my books that ties in with my Facebook page. I couldn't figure out how to go back in and put things back to the way I had set them up, so I just left them and started teaching myself how to set up my own page. I fully intend to be prepared that if he pulls that crap again, I will know how to fix stuff myself, but what was great was when he came home, there was a little comment he needed to see, a little comment that was a game changer in a lot of ways.
My son has very few men he looks up to or even respects because they always seem to be fuck-ups, liars, or they just fail him or worse, like his step father, abuse him, so he keeps most of them at a distance and just takes a page from a playbook or two and holds a few guys to be,"Not class A-jackasses."
Well, one of those guys he takes a page from had contributed an icon for a page and I had put the icon on the page of the website exactly as I had received it, because honestly I had no idea how to change the size, but when Chance came in and accused me of screwing things up, he had gone in and manipulated the icon and changed the shape and set it the way HE thought it should look. The comment was nothing harsh, just that the image was ,"skewed slightly" but it was the equivalent of smacking my growling puppy on the end of the nose with a rolled up newspaper.
I got an apology last night. He apologized for being an ass to me all week long and he admitted he might not always be right. The look on his face was priceless and I wish I could have captured it, but he needed to be called to heel and reminded that he is not always right, that he is a 16 year old who has been hired and paid very well to follow instructions to do what I want done, not what he thinks should be done. He muttered and mumbled and grumbled for awhile and then went and licked his wounds by playing his guitar for a few hours, but the bright side is, my website is up and running fine, he is being less of a jerk for now and I had the best,"TOLD YA SO" moment of MONTHS last night, so now maybe he will listen to me a little better.
Stevie made it back from camp and she seemed to have had a great time other than she got a huge bruise on her thigh from falling on some balance beam. She has been enjoying having her hair French braided by our friend Jen, and running around with her. Jen has been great for the kids and remarkably tolerant of my personality quirks and inability to deal with people on an extended basis without getting her feelings hurt too badly. I am trying to be a better friend, but honestly, I really suck at it and there is a real reason I dont have lots of close friends, but my kids have enjoyed socializing and Stevie has enjoyed me having a friend that actually knows how to do hair and all kinds of girly stuff, so hopefully my stress will ease a little in the next weeks after I complete my first big sale to the local coffee shop, and I will feel more like hanging out again.