It's hard to understand how the human race has survived. I mean, it's hard to imagine Primitive Caveman--who hasn't read any books on listening to teenagers, being supportive, and unconditional loving--not ending his bloodline the first time his 12-year-old mouthed off at him.
Children spend the first two years being completely dependant on you, and the next 20 years expecting you to wait on them. Whilst you're busy trying to ensure they get a good education and have lots of opportunities, they're busy screaming because the shirt they put in the laundry basket 20 minutes ago still isn't clean.
The only consolation is that everyone else has to deal with the same nonsense at some point, even the smug person with plenty of advice will at some point be curled up in the fetal position, crying in frustration and exhaustion.
The only advice I can offer is to remember it's temporary, that children change moods more often than underwear, and that your job is to keep them safe, not make them happy. To paraphrase Nigel Latta, the hardest thing is to make sure their problems remain their problems. You're too busy working, cooking, cleaning and occasionally sleeping to try and fix all of their issues, especially as they've created most of them themselves. And besides, even if you could fix them, your children wouldn't learn very much from them.
So yes, it's very hard when your baby is sitting outside your bedroom door at 10 at night screaming and crying because she's been playing games on her phone for two hours and suddenly realised she needs something in the morning and wants to make it your problem, but remember that if you fix it, you're just ensuring she'll be back next week with the same issue. Make sure her problem stays her problem, and she'll still be back next week but you'll have gotten a little more sleep.
P.S. This was actually supposed to be a rant about me having to go to the supermarket at 10pm last night because one of the kids took the last roll of toilet paper and not only failed to tell anyone, but actually put the empty plastic bag back in the cupboard, so we thought there was more. I'm not sure how I got on this other issue.
The cat is going to die.
That's not a threat; the cat is fantastic, a siamese mix with a wonderful temperament whose only vice is that she can't resist a lap. No, she's going to die because she's old and her kidneys are shutting down. The vet gave her 3 months to live, and that was 9 months ago.
So every day is a gift, although of course we all take her for granted (and complain when she sheds on us). But what bothers me most isn't that she's going to die, it's that I have no idea what to do when she goes.
I've never had to bury a pet, other than fish. I've known people who cremated their pets, but I find that a little bizarre. We're in a rental house, so it seems slightly awkward to leave the cat in someone else's backyard. How deep to dig? I'm not even sure I have a shovel. Or a box. What about a plaque?
You'd think, knowing the cat is going to die, I'd be prepared for it, but in the end I'm sure I'll ignore the problem and improvise at the time.
The cat probably deserves better.
I'm so sorry but your mom has pushed me to the limit and I am now forced to do things to hurt you and your siblings. Please understand it's all her fault.As you can imagine, if we had seen that at the time we would have never let the kids see their dad again! However, as we found out about that only after we learned about the school, we realised he just meant he was going to stop paying for everything. He also notified their guitar teacher that he was going to stop their lessons, and has refused invoices for the kids' sports activities. In other words, in his mind the kids are no longer his responsibility, and their mom should pay for all of this.
The movers were supposed to arrive at 730, but they didn't show up until 915. Thank goodness! We were up at 6am, scrambling around trying to finish packing. The rumpus room, cleaned two days ago for the photographer, was again a rat's nest. The office wasn't finished, the pantry was untouched, and while I had boxed the "non-essential" kitchen items, there was still a heck of a lot of "essential" items.
Fortunately we only had one child underfoot--one was at school camp and the other spent the previous night with a friend who lived near the school, so we didn't have to drive an hour and a half to take her to school that morning. (We'd already done it twice.) The third child has a "sensitive disposition" which is PC for "worry wart." He worries about everything, and so trying to deal with moving to a new house (that he hadn't even seen!) in a new neighborhood and a new school was a bit much, and he spent a good deal of the morning hiding in his closet.
Taking advantage of the movers' delay--and no longer worrying about whether or not something should be packed or discarded--we made good progress, and things were starting to look up when the movers arrived. (I say 'arrived' but they actually got lost, and I had to go find them and lead them back.) We gave them a quick tour and the boss said we'd need a second truck.
This was after we'd just spent two months thinning it down!! But of course he was right; we actually filled both trucks and had quite a few things left over (including the kayaks, the entertainment centre and a desk). Imagine if we hadn't gotten rid of so much stuff. :-(
The movers were great, even though the second truck--and two extra men--meant we spent almost twice as much as we had hoped. However, it needed to be done, and nobody else would have been cheaper, so we were happy to have had it finished in one day. And what a day--after getting only 4 hours sleep the night before, we finished unpacking the trucks at 530pm, then I had to set up three beds! We had Domino's pizza for dinner (they are only 2 minutes away!) and got to bed around midnight.
I had also been responsible for moving the cat. I put her in the cat carrier, but she was meaning so much that I let her out, hoping she would lie down in her bed. Instead she climbed in my lap, while I was driving, and refused to budge! Thank goodness we didn't have an accident, but being with the cat set off an asthma attack, rendering me almost useless.
So now we're just going through the mundane task of unpacking and putting our lives back together. Both kids are happy with the house--the third one gets back from camp tomorrow--which is the most important thing.
Tuesday is moving day. This has been a death march for nearly two months, since we first decided to move into town. Of course, we could have just packed everything (or hired someone to pack everything) and avoided all the stress and conflict, but that's not my way. So instead we jumped in--first in waders, then in scuba gear--through 15 years of history, squirreled away in small baskets, hidden in the attic or the back of the closet. Of course, as a guy, my preferred method of organising is to take everything out, sort it in little piles and then pack it. As you can imagine, this makes a hell of a mess, but it is effective.
We sold a lot of stuff on the local equivalent of eBay, which was further complicated because much of it belonged to the children, who didn't understand why they couldn't keep a shirt that was three sizes too small, or a toy they hadn't played with in 6 years. This meant a lot of subterfuge to keep things out of sight (and therefore out of mind) although occasionally we were caught out. One time we sold a small fridge and we had the kids when we went to deliver it. They demanded we keep it so they could put it in their dad's garage when he turned into a band room. (I should note, their dad has been making promises like that for 14 years and has never kept one, but God bless them for being so optimistic.)
Anyway, fast forward two months and we've sold a lot, thrown a lot away, filled a double garage with boxes (not including any furniture) and the house was still littered with piles of stuff! That wouldn't have been a problem--the plan was to move out before putting the house on the market--except that while we were looking for a place, we realised that photos of empty houses looked awful! So last week we met a realtor who absolutely agreed we should take photos before we removed the furniture, and scheduled a photographer for today.
My girlfriend's job was to clean the entire house, whereas my job was to sort out a single room. She finished in four hours; it took me five. To be fair, that was the room that had become the primary staging area, and you could not walk through it for all the stuff.
Of course, this was not packing, this was just clearing up for the photos, and while I was shovelling things in the garage, my girlfriend was throwing things back in the closets, cupboards and drawers that I'd already emptied! At the end of the day, I felt like we'd taken a giant step backwards.
Then after dinner we took another step backwards, as one of the kids is going to school camp tomorrow and not only had she not prepared, but she put out much of what she needed to be packed! As a result, we had to go through the garage and open several boxes to find everything.
Of course some of the boxes had to be shifted, and a couple ended up outside the garage. I should have put them back straight away, but I had a hundred other things to do and so I left them out for about an hour. Needless to say, after the driest January on record, with no rain at all in the last three weeks, it chose that hour to rain and the boxes were ruined. (Thankfully it was all camping gear and so was not affected by the rain. Can you imagine if it had been a box of family photos?!)
So Sunday and half of Monday are exclusively devoted to finishing packing, and Monday afternoon we'll get the keys to the house and move a carload of breakable items. Tuesday the movers arrive at 730am, and I hope they bring a very big truck! It's going to be full-on until we unpack and settle in on Wednesday, and then I can start job hunting again because I need something less stressful in my life. :-)
