Save me from this *&^% day

[SweetSilver]

AAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The fighting, the whining just WILL NOT QUIT!  Every single thing this morning every #$%^&* thing.  I have so little patience left, nothing I say is helpful in the least.  I am grumpy pissed off and really really &^%$# tired of this *&^%$ today.

Oh.... grant me the serenity........

Thanks for listening.

And it continues.......

Please understand why I posted this here.

[SweetSilver]

BTW, it's not the unschooling.  I don't want to give that impression.  Just we had a hard weekend and even after a good night's sleep it continues into the morning.

*Sigh!*

I post in this forum a lot, and have heard from the regulars a lot and I think that on a Monday morning with no school to relieve the pressure, that these folks have some understanding others might not.

[moominmamma]

Those are the kinds of days where I would just make an executive decision: Everybody out of the house! We have to do something!

We would pack ourselves into the van, stop by the store to pick up some fruit and cheese, and go for a drive, eat our "picnic" at a park or sitting in the van near a railway yard or construction site. Or I'd just make everybody walk somewhere from our house. We live in the forest, which is lovely a lot of the time, but not late fall or early spring. I remember one March filling a thermos with hot chocolate and making the kids traipse up through dirty wet snow to sit on the lid of our water reservoir and drink their d*mned beverage. They were so stunned by my sudden authoritarian "This is horrible here today. We're going to sit on the water box. I don't know why. Let's just go!" approach that it never occurred to them to complain or question. We sat there. Drank our hot chocolate. Breathed. The mood changed. The spell of awfulness was broken.

Good luck!

Miranda

[cheery]

Hope things are looking up Sweet Silver .... how about throwing a stone into the Chehalis River?

[SweetSilver]

Thanks for your well-wishes.  

The mood broke a little when we sat down to second breakfast.  I started making a list of things we could do to distract from the "boredom" (only nominal the problem with dd1; the real reason was something simmering much deeper) and the whiny mood from dd2 who fussed about everything this morning.  I mean everything.  The competitiveness is reaching a crescendo in the last couple of days, in part due to the warm weather and increased activity.

I'm a fair bit more authoritarian on a regular basis for it to be a surprise.  Something that needs fixing, for sure.

So I sat down with them and made a list of chores I needed to do (minimal, just for the sake of the mood) and what they needed to do (namely baths and chick-duty) and then listed the activities we could do (baking cupcakes, bike riding, baseball, hula hoops, "predator and prey", jump rope).  It seemed to help a little, and the suggestion to get out of the house sounds fabulous after we finish the baths.  We haven't had good enough weather to make a trip to the little community park the next town over.  They have a walking/bike trail, very small, and they haven't been there since they figured out how to ride with the pedals on their bikes.   They've been bugging me about when they could go there, when the weather would be good enough.  Thanks for the mental nudge!

So, the pressure has eased a little.  I think we are just wiped out.  But no matter the reason, it is so difficult to wake up and have nothing but fighting and competitiveness and whining and crying about every little thing.  My patience just snapped.  I just could not think of any single thing that would actually help at all between those two.  Waiting it out helped.  Now I feel for my mother who just couldn't ease the tension between us girls, something I was really upset at her over for decades.  Now I have some sympathy for the situation.

[SweetSilver]

Originally Posted by cheery 

Hope things are looking up Sweet Silver .... how about throwing a stone into the Chehalis River?

Or a thousand!  If I could get a few minutes to do something like that to ease my frustration I would do it in a heart beat!  Well, I have such a crappy arm that at least I'd get frustrated about something I could practice fixing, something that was changeable inside myself instead of all this craziness coming from outside me.  I can deal with frustration with myself.  

[JuniperBCN]

Hugs....  You are describing my last week and it is so draining!  Secretly I've been indulging in a fantasy about dropping my kids off at the school gates

And perhaps this is terrible, but it makes me feel so, I don't know, relieved I guess, that other unschooly families have some days that aren't perpetually filled with endless joy, bliss and magic.  I read way too many blogs...

That being said, I'm a big fan of walking a few doors down to sit on a log/rock/side of the road to drink something sweet and warm/cold (depending on the season) while eating cookies.  At least the yelling/whining is diffused by outside and usually we all click into something better, at least for a little while.  If necessary, I'll frame in the context of "I'm getting super grumpy and I need some deep breaths of fresh air to clear my head."  In fact, I've done this almost every day this week, once with umbrellas (it was a novelty, don't think it would work often with my kids)

[SweetSilver]

It seems the theme is get out of the house with some nice drinks and food!  The mood has continued to improve, though it's been touch and go.  I've kept more available than usual (screw the housework) and we are sticking to our list of activities we can choose from.  So far we've done "predator and prey" (kind of a backwards tag), cupcake baking (part of the "lesson" was cleaning up) and now we are back outside.  DD1 even enjoyed feeling so grown up and she washed a stack of baking dishes!  I hauled out the chalk and the hula hoops and after this I am going to plant myself outside with a tall glass of... water.  (I forgot to make ice!  Need to start remembering that.)  I'm hoping that this mood is beginning to wear off.  I'll know for sure tomorrow morning.  We are all crabs in the morning, unfortunately, and my patience is at it's thinnest.  If I can only get through to coffee time before the crabbing starts!  No, I think today is not typical.  Something caused this colossal crabbiness today.  Now the weather is gorgeous, or at least warm, I hope things will be better.

I don't have time for blogs.  And, I could write a blog that makes my day sound like the unschooling Martha Stewart. It's nice to do that in retrospect to conquer that unschooling guilt, but I don't need that every day.  It is wonderful to have input from others, but in small amounts now and then.  

[Cassidy68]

Originally Posted by JuniperBCN 

Hugs....  You are describing my last week and it is so draining!  Secretly I've been indulging in a fantasy about dropping my kids off at the school gates

And perhaps this is terrible, but it makes me feel so, I don't know, relieved I guess, that other unschooly families have some days that aren't perpetually filled with endless joy, bliss and magic.  I read way too many blogs...

This made me smile. FWIW, we have a few cracks in the perpetual joy, bliss and magic around here too! I second the out of the house and snack suggestions...

[SweetSilver]

Originally Posted by JuniperBCN 

And perhaps this is terrible, but it makes me feel so, I don't know, relieved I guess, that other unschooly families have some days that aren't perpetually filled with endless joy, bliss and magic.  I read way too many blogs...

I often feel relieved to hear that someone else is made miserable by the same things that affect me.  I definitely feel less alone and screwed up.  So, please, make my misery useful.  At least someone is feeling better because my morning was crap!  

[SweetSilver]

Aaaah.... a quiet (though painfully early) start to the day.  

Thanks for all your support.