Tantrums, Tears, and Tiredness
I’m sitting in the dark of the junk room, listening to a James Taylor album. I’ve tried to write this post about six times so far. Each time I write half a sentence, somebody wanders in to interrupt me about sometime tremendously important.
A few moments ago Miss 11 appeared with her last chocolate cornflake cake – offering it to me. A minute later she re-appeared with a top-secret diary with a lock on the pages. The key no longer worked, so she wanted to know if I might be able to break into it for her. After thirty seconds with a wrench, the lock was bent in half, and she got her book back.
“You need to buy me a new lock now”.
Tonight has been… forgettable. After arriving home from work and not being almost run over by a friend (another story for another time), I was informed that dinner was keeping warm in the oven on account of my other half measuring an entire dance class for show costumes (again, another story for another time). I plated dinner up for everybody, and then while asking after everybody’s day, made the mistake of offering to help Miss 13 tidy her bedroom up.
Instant explosion.
While washing up, she carried on a back and forth “conversation” with me via half-way up the stairs. I talked calmly about helping her with her bedroom while washing the dinner things up, and she screamed back at me that she hated our family, that we weren’t her real parents, and that she was going to run away.
All because I offered to help her tidy her room.
She stormed from the house in a tornado of ranting just as I finished washing up, which triggered our eldest to lock herself in her room, and call my other half – who then of course called me while I marched across the green outside our house in the dark in pursuit of Miss 13. By now it was all my fault. We’ll forget that my other half threatened Miss 13 with no TV for several weeks a few days ago in a screaming match for the ages.
Half an hour later my other half arrived home, and discovered two tidy childrens bedrooms, the washing machine on, the tumble dryer on, all the washing put away, and the kitchen cleaned up. Miss 13 came and issued a forced apology (I’m still wondering what she was threatened with) while I made a coffee.
I’m now hiding in the junk room, drawing a line under everything that’s happened so far tonight. I do this a lot – take all the crap, and keep plodding forwards. It’s all I know how to do. Well… that and program computers in several languages.
p.s. I tried to find a suitable image for this post, and went looking for anything to do with “anger”. What can I say – it made me laugh.