Mad Housewife

Evelyn:  Everything about my day/week fits here, in the frame. Dealing with an unhappy and discouraged teenager does not compute to hugs and apologies easily. I know how hard it is to move and to start up at a new school. I did it a lot as a kid. However, the Kidlet is passive in his efforts to protest which results in an enormous amount of aggravation and argument. Ultimately I want him to be happy (myself included.) The school start has been riddled with "taking time off" during the first few weeks at a NEW job to deal with things that are not moving fluidly, plus my ongoing lack of sleep this week, (waking up at the butt-crack of dawn [5:15 a.m.] to ensure he is up for school, then going to bed by midnight-thirty at the earliest) resulted in a near head-on collision at the school, wrapped curtly with a few profane words thrown at the assistant principal and salted with tears of exasperation. Simply, my efforts over the last week to use NVC, empathy, and patience finally met with the part of me that is tired and frustrated and livid that us new folk could not get easily situated. Justin has been without a bus almost all week (he rode one home today because of an hour phone call to buck the 3- week waiting list), and I have spent a good solid working day on calls and visits to get our needs met. The front desk clerk of Guidance, despite being overwhelmed, flips from pleasant to curt, with no order or structure to her efforts to manage the cluster of parents who also needed things to work for their teens, and provided nothing but a stonewall of my efforts to HELP her. So, like a mad housewife, I went in this morning succumbing to a sneaky hate spiral; unshowered and moppy, tired and grumpy, on the verge of a meltdown—I threw the F word into the air along with my request for a bus—and left somewhat hopeful after the wide-eyed attention. Then I briskly showered, pressed, primped, ate, and ran off into an accreditation visit at the campus where ongoing smiles were in order, and finally tumbled home with flowers and wine in hand to "make up" to myself for having to juggle so much these last few months of summer. I am simply sipping wine in wait for the dust to settle....Breathe.

Monica: A new kind of dahlia is getting ready to bloom in our front garden. I'm waiting to see what stunning color will emerge tomorrow. [Evelyn just pointed out that my dahlia appears to be flipping her off. Poor thing has obviously had one hell of a week!]