>Looooserrrrrrrr

Teenagers don’t necessarily know what they want to do with their lives; they just know they want to be nothing like you.

My girls have both a working mother and a stay-at-home stepmother. I think it’s safe to say they would like for family to be more important to their mom. On the other hand, the general consensus between them is that I lead the most useless, mundane life in existence. That leads to situations like Sunday night, when our entire family watched the Oscars together. At one point, a commercial stated that one lucky viewer would win the dress Heidi Klum had worn on the red carpet.

“Wow, that would be fantastic!” I said. “Did you see her dress? It was amazing!”

“Yeah, but where would you wear it?” my 17-year-old sneered.

At that moment, I felt like Cinderella, pre-fairy godmother. I got a pretty good idea of what my stepdaughter thought of me, and it wasn’t pretty. Where would I wear it? Playgroup? Target? Date night at Chili’s?

It doesn’t help to remind them that I work from home, and that I’m earning a decent income as a freelance writer in addition to taking care of everyone else. All they see is the endless diaper changing, the vacuuming and the cooking and the perpetual laundry. To them, I’m a glorified maid and nanny, one who pokes around on her computer way too much.

The girls have a solution to stay-at-home vs. working dilemma, of course. I mean, they’re teenagers. They have a solution to everything. They will simply have fabulous careers and no children at all. Their rationale is that they’re getting the baby experience now with their younger brother and sister. There’s no need to repeat that when they’re adults.

I think I can say with 95% certainty that I’ll have the last laugh as far as this story is concerned. I just wish it didn’t have to take so long to get to the laughing part.

This post originally appeared on Parents.com.