For the last couple of days, my blog was down. This was because my blog, like me, is caught in transitional divorce land. You see, back when my blog was a baby, my ex was kind enough to set it up for me and make it pretty, and I have to admit I’m unsure how all of that happened. But my blog still thought it was his blog. When we got someone to transfer the host*, apparently they did not also transfer the domain name**, and then the domain name expired*** and then Go Daddy was offering to sell my domain name to just anybody.****
So the long and short of all of this, in case you have been lost in my elaborate, technical explanation, was that it was broken and my ex and I managed to fix it and I think I still have to get the domain name to stick to my person.
Anyway, this brings me around to thinking that I should write a blog post, since it has been a while! And this story naturally leads into what I’ve been mulling over in my head for a bit, namely complaining about things that drive me crazy.
I am not a patient person by nature. If you know me in the real world, you surely already know this about me. I run a bit on the anxious and hurried side. Obviously being impatient is not an ideal personality trait, and I’m trying to work on this. If you are one of those people who says something about how children are given to us to grow our patience, you are crazy, because being tired, late, and unable to get six shoes onto six feet makes me waaaaay less patient than I would even normally be.
BUT. Being a parent requires patience, even if it doesn’t always build patience. My children are better off when I can take a deep breath and patiently say, “It makes me feel frustrated that when I finally got your brother’s shoes on his feet, you took the shoes you already had on your feet off and then lost them and then stubbed your toe on the wall and are now crying and saying you don’t want to go anywhere,” rather than, “ARE YOU SERIOUS???? WHAT THE?? WHERE ARE YOUR SHOOOOOOES???” before physically hurling all of the children into the car, followed by their shoes, and then burning rubber out of the driveway.*****
So I’m trying. I have also learned that my parenting is more effective when I am calm and patient than when I am rushed and they can tell I’ve got too much skin in the game. And often, if I slow things down, I can calm the children too.
However, there are some specific things that never fail to simultaneously push all of my buttons and make me fly off the handle. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of these include my children. So, without further ado, these are ways to completely freak me out:
1) Fight and scream like it’s a huge emergency and you are about to die. Increase the volume every four seconds, and pair it with dramatic cries for help.
2) If I give someone else something, immediately demand to know what she got, how much she got, and why you don’t get any. Employ the handy question, “How come _____ always gets ______?”
3) Do your best to exploit the fact that it’s difficult for one adult to get three children out of any event.
4) Smile when I am furious.
5) Enlist the pets! They can increase the pressure by bothering me insistently while I am already being bothered by someone else. Alternatively, locate the most pathetic and/or nervous pet and torment it.
6) Get back up out of bed. Fill in the blanks: “I am _____. I really need _______.” Consider old standbys such as thirst, needing to use the bathroom, being unable to sleep, complaints about lighting, and that someone else is bothering you. Repeat; each additional occurrence is four times more frustrating.
7) When you see that I am struggling with your sibling’s public tantrum, have one too. Strategically place yourself at an inconvenient distance from your sibling.
8) When I have finished a fruitless-feeling day of housework, unloading and reloading the dishwasher at least once, washing three loads of laundry that await folding with another two loads, making and cleaning up after three meals, and trying to win the race against dog hair, and I ask you to feed the dog, complain that you always have to do everything.
9) Start every single sentence with, “Mommy?” and repeat that until I ask, “What?” even if I am the only person around and we have been talking all along. If you forget what you are trying to say midsentence, start the whole thing over, beginning with, “Hey, Mommy?”
10) Eat something ravenously in a store or at someone else’s house and praise it to the skies. Reject it immediately once it crosses the threshold into your own house.
Don’t worry: I am not going to make you read fifty ways to irritate me. I just liked how the titled sounded like that Beatles song. There surely are forty more, including at least six relating to dinnertime, but those are some of my biggest adult-tantrum triggers. What are yours?
*This is an internet term for someone who lets your blog stay at their house and eat their food.
**This means something different than the other thing.
***However, like Lazarus, it was able to be resurrected.
****Way to make me feel bad about myself, GoDaddy.
*****This is not based on any actual event, but instead is kind of a mashup of my worst self and what I sometimes imagine doing. I never burn rubber.
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