It has been 31 minutes ..

.. since I picked Alex up from his sleepover and I'm ready to kill him already!

It started before he even got in the car with him opening Bradley's door and harassing Brad until I physically lifted him away and made him get in the front seat. He did manage to thank his friend's mother for having him without prompting so at least he got something right.

As soon as we were out of the friend's driveway, he started spelling all the things he could see.

"T-i-s-s-u-e-s.
W-i-n-d-s-c-r-e-e-n.
W-i-n-d-o-w.
C-o-w.
C-a-l-f.
F-e-n-c-e.
H-o-r-s-e.
T-r-e-e.
S-h-r-u-b.
C-l-o-u-d.
T-r-e-e.
T-r-e-e.
T-r-e-e.
T-r-e-e.
T-r-e-e.
T-r-e-e."

I could ignore it while there was variety but once he got to about t-r-e-e number 64, I asked him to stop and he did .. for a whole 4 seconds. Instead of screaming at him, I let it go figuring he was just hyped up from being at a friend's place.

Then he started again with a minor variance .. no spelling; just repeating everything 5 or 6 times before moving on to the next item.

We were only 4km into a 27.9km trip at this point, so I turned the radio up.

It didn't work.

He just got louder and more repetitive.

So I turned the radio up some more and started singing along, really really loudly, in the hopes that he would get the hint and shut-the-hell-up already.

That didn't work either, so now I'm sitting here with a headache from my own bad singing thanking the universe that he didn't decide to do that lovely little trick on the way home from Merredin on Tuesday.

I don't think the Main Roads Department would have liked 13.5 year-old entrails and body parts all over their nice clean road signs.