The other day, I was walking around with Paula Abdul’s song “Opposites Attract” in my head. Why? Because there is some sick, twisted part of my brain that is apparently into self-torture.

But in fact, dealing with opposites is part of my daily routine. My nine year old daughter and six year old son could not be more different.

Other than the fact that they were both preemies, there are little similarities between the two of them. I can probably name them on one hand. They both like roller coasters, movies, Tootsie Pops, reading books, and long walks on the beach. That’s about it.

My daughter rises early, likes to help me clean, and hates to be tickled . My son has to be physically removed from his bed, makes big messes, and begs us to tickle him until he’s ready to pee his pants.

She likes sparkles, he likes trucks. She like horses, he likes trucks. She likes shopping, he likes trucks. Okay, okay, he likes trains too.

My daughter is predictable, while he is a wild-card. She is well-behaved, and we call him Jim Carrey Junior. She is polite, and he once told a woman with big lips that she looked like a fish.

Tonight at dinner, they showed us yet another difference between them. Because when I grabbed some quick extras to go with our cheeseburgers, my son saw me and said, “Yum! A veggie tray!”

And my daughter said, “Yum! Sun chips!”

She totally takes after her Mother.

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Ten years ago, when I was pregnant with our first child, my husband and I hired a private dog trainer. Our puppy, Blue, was six months old and our veterinarian recommended someone who would work with her one on one.

We were too dumb to realize what he really meant, which was that Blue would never be accepted in a class. Not that she couldn’t play nice, but he was quite aware that we wouldn’t be able to get her to stop playing period. We probably should have got the hint when he prescribed her tranquilizers.

Labrador retrievers are, by nature, as hyper as Looney Tunes’ Road Runner. On speed. This puppy of ours bounced off the walls. She was particularly crazy in the evening when my husband and I got home from work. Which is, of course, when the $55.00 an hour trainer would swing by.

The first night the trainer was here, she explained that Blue wasn’t peppy because we had been gone all day, but because dogs naturally get a little wacky at twilight. Apparently wolves are most active at that time of day, and because our puppy was a distant relative, we could blame them. Stupid wolves. I wondered if I could also blame Blue’s family tree for the holes in all of our underwear and my ficus tree that was chewed to a stump.

Wolf or no wolf, the trainer lasted about a month before she quit. That’s how bad our dog was. Someone making $55.00 an hour, threw up her hands, walked out the door, and told us our dog was untrainable.

Blue is ten and she’s finally calming down. But now, there’s a new wolf in town.

Our six year old son is also affected by twilight. Every night after dinner, he becomes a little bit nutty. He jumps off the furniture and runs through the house laughing and screaming. He drives his sister crazy. He drives us crazy. He is an unstoppable goof. We call him Wolf-Boy.

So help me, if he starts chewing on our underwear I’m throwing up my hands and declaring him untrainable.

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I saw my son standing behind his sister, sticking his tongue out at her.

I pulled him into another room and said, “Don’t stick your tongue out at people. It’s not okay to do that, because it’s really not nice.”

He quickly replied, “But, it is okay, because she didn’t see me do it.”

Which means it’s okay that I took $20 from my husband’s wallet when he went to bed early. Right?

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Not long ago, I mentioned to my kids that I was finished picking up their stuff. I told them that they are responsible for putting their things back where they belong. Let’s see how that’s working for me. Shall we?

Here’s a beachball, in my kitchen.

Here’s a random flip-flop, nowhere near it’s mate. Instead it’s tossed next to the sub-woofer in the living room. Let me clarify. That would be the chipped and dented sub-woofer that took a beating from the ride-on toy phase.

This is my dining room, which contains one pair of dirty socks…

…not one, but TWO soccer balls…

…and an empty cardboard box, which was not allowed to be recycled because my daughter wanted, needed, had to have it, to use as a kennel for her zillion stuffed dogs.

Can you believe how well they listen? Oh wait, they don’t.

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