HOE 301 AKA Parenting a Six Year Old

For those of you who do not remember HOE class stands for Hell on Earth.
Man, some days are ended with me thinking I am so over being a parent. Right now the days have been beginning that way. I can not believe I have 18 more years of this. By them time i have breakfast on I am ready to beat both kids and run back to my room and bury my head under the pillow. How am I supposed to get them to stop fighting? How am I supposed to get Connor to put more effort into school, be respectful, not argue, listen and do what he is asked. I have been in strict parent mode for about three weeks now and it is wearing on me. Every day I get asked "Mom, why are you so mean?" I always have the same answer, it is "It is not my job to be nice to you Connor. It is my job to raise you to be a good person, so sometimes you do not like what I do, and sometimes I will need to be mean." Geez, easy enough to understand. I wish I could see the end of the attitude somewhere in sight. I mean the kid has gone to bed early every night for about 2 weeks. Is it working? What else would? He is pretty much down to bare minimum now, how much more can get taken away, the privileges are running out. In order for me to recoup from this grueling time in my parental history I am going to need way more than an afternoon off. I think I am ready for about 2 weeks in a hotel room, completely alone. I could read books, magazines, watch movies, eat sitting down, take a bath, and NEVER have to wipe any ones butt but my own (that is kind of my fault though because I did not want to clean shit out of underwear, so I just kept wiping Connor and now he thinks he can not do it, he will not even poop at school if I am not there he thinks his butt will itch).I am hoping that my old theory of positive and negative phases of childhood last for six weeks. So we only have at the most three more weeks of it and then because he is so crappy right now, he will move into a happy cooperative child! I can do anything for three weeks, but the weeks being days is another story. We get old so fast before we even feel it.