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January 29, 2008
Cracking
I think the stress is starting to get to me, even though I don't actually think about all we have going on right now all the time.
Listening to Bubba yowl all day and half the night is driving me insane. I know that it's no picnic for him to be locked in that bathroom, but it's better than being dead, right? Except that he's getting so annoying I'm going to choke him to get him to shut up anyway.
Sunday afternoon, both kids finally took much needed naps. In fact, they SO needed naps that we decided not to wake them up, but I think Rex finally woke Katie up around 6. Naturally, that bit us in the ass when she came out of her room at 9:45 that night with a big smile on her face. Trying to avoid a repeat, when she zonked out this afternoon, I made sure to have her up around 5. I've had to wake her plenty in the past, and she usually wakes up pretty quickly and happily. Not so much today. It took me about 15 minutes to convince her to keep her eyes open, but soon after that she started an hour long crying jag that she wasn't giving up for anything, including dinner. I actually kept myself together much better than usual (read, with Jamie), but goddamn, I really wanted to scream.
And then Jamie. Ahh, Jamie. Remember that Gary Larson cartoon with the kid trying to get into the School for the Gifted? Can you picture a kid trying to put a square peg into a round hole? Over and over, for an hour? That was my evening. Jamie and I had played Uno, and I asked her to put the cards away. I had already stacked them in two even piles, so she really just needed to slide them into the box, but for some reason she just couldn't figure out how to get them in. She just kept doing the same thing over and over. And I held my patience very well, even after she started crying. She needs to learn to figure things out, though. And she needs to learn that just because something is hard, that doesn't mean someone is going to come and do it for her. She hates to work at things that are difficult for her, but she needs to learn to do it anyway.
The final straw for the day is probably the wind. Or maybe that's what put me on edge from the beginning. It finally warmed up around here, but the wind has been crazy. Today, the house lost probably a dozen shingles and something like six panels of the fence blew down. The wind caught the door of my van and smashed it into the mirror of the van next to me so hard it flattened a piece of the trim. Trash and leaves and crap flying around, and it's impossible to keep your hair out of your face. And then there's the sound, the constant whine and the rattle of windows. Today was an extreme day, but the wind blows a lot here. It's actually on my list of things to hate about Dallas.
Posted by me at January 29, 2008 10:00 PM