I ran away.

Well, it took nagging, ordering, reminding and enduring all sorts of resentment and sulking, but the teen's room is a little bit cleaner. He's done a load of laundry at least and claims to have picked up. I can't see anything done, but I was tired and let it go.

One of the problems of being a stepmother (and forgive me if I've gone off about this before) is that I just don't have any authority, and no strong foundation of love and trust to cushion the teen and I against the normal friction of life. I have to be so cautious in how I handle and discipline him. A certain amount of resentment and anger is acceptable. We can fight every so often and not have the world cave in. But, there are very definite limits and I'm scared of crossing them. Add to that that I'm not really his mother, which he is very much aware compromises my authority, and the situation gets incredibly dicy.

In the end the atmosphere in the house was so stretched that I took the girls and left for the afternoon. We went to a fast food place and I let the toddler play while I felt sorry for myself. We came home too late to fix dinner and I didn't even try. The teen didn't ask about it. Maybe he was aware he'd pushed me a little too hard. Maybe he was just really happy to have the house and computer to himself for so long.

I'm going to hire a friend's teenage daughter to help me out with the girls so I can get busy packing and cleaning. The teen won't do it without a lot of struggle and I just don't have the energy. Hopefully I'll start making some real progress on packing up. She's a nice girl and she'll be very helpful if I can talk her into it.