Shamed
Zoë and her "I live for this camp"'s director's daughter have become fast friends over the years. Typically, she goes over to their house, or they go to the mall, or they hang out on the campus of the camp. Today, P came over here.
This does not happen often, that friends come over to our house. A couple times a month. And lately, Zoës room has been such a disaster, I laid down the law that no friends could come over until her room was less of a health and safety risk. We'd help her get it under control if she wanted, but it had to be gotten under control. Several times plans were made for friends to come over, which had to be cancelled or revised to not involve being in the house because her room remained an issue. It's been a thing. Mike's mom cleaned as stress relief, I have high anxiety at the best of times, and Zoë is completely zen about life and everything and man, why are parents so uptight?! I have yelled. More than once. It has not been my finest parenting moment. Mike is pretty much at the stage of "would someone do something to make this madness end?" and Zoë's just, man, why is mom cray-cray?
But this week, she pulled it together in ways I did not expect her to be able to. Wednesday night, when I told her she should just cancel or change her plans with P because no way was she going to be able to live up to her end of the bargain ... in a loud and angry mom-has-lost-it voice, she listened, and went up to her room to work on her summer reading. I mean, she was productive in her spiteful "I'll show you, I'll get it done but I'm not doing it right now!" which is just really awesome. I was so proud. I couldn't tell her I was proud (it seems wrong to be proud over spiteful behavior, maybe). But I told Mike, and he high-fived her later for dealing with her anger/frustration/confusion productively. And then she cleaned Thursday, and Friday. Productively. Mike kept checking on her and heading back to me all "have you seen? Did you see?" It was cool. And I was angry, visibly so, because I wanted to just be able to be proud of how well she was doing, instead of frustrated that she was waiting until the last minute and playing chicken with the deadline to try and get anything done. She and I are so completely different.
Friday, she had a inkling that maybe she wasn't going to be completely finished by the deadline and looked at Mike for where things stood. I'd abdicated a voice in whether she was close enough because it had been a challenging work day and I was going to have to work from evening til after midnight, and didn't feel like I could step outside myself enough to be entirely fair to her. Mike kind of waffled and then said she'd need to finish in the morning. Which she did. With almost no prompting. Seriously proud.
The kids played with Lemmy and then hung out in her (clean!) room, walked down to the drug store and wandered around main street. Then went to see the Harry Styles movie at the movie theater. Then came home and hung out in her room some more.
Mike and I are contemplating becoming Those Parents and having a standing "we clean on Sundays" rule to try and keep her room just a bit more manageable. We're normally really ad-hoc about cleaning. It's tough when work schedules aren't always the same, and there are sports and other stuff, and excuses. But we need to do something different because what we've been doing isn't working for any of us.
Anyway. The camp director's the one who dropped his daughter off, and he and Mike chatted for quite a while. Mike's teaching him how to do repairs on the electric guitars and basses. And the guy asked if there was anything they could do about patch cords. They're expensive and being able to repair them would help a bunch. Mike's done some research and has some ideas for affordable ways to do this, so they're going to get together again soon to test out the ideas.
Which means Zoë and P will get to hang out again soon which they're all for. And it sounds like Mike's going to be running an on-going "here's how you take care of your electronics" tutorial for the staff of Zoë's most favoritest camp in the entire world.
But I was shamed, because the director noticed my harp. Dusty. Out of tune. Missing a string. He was entirely nice about it, but I felt like a completely neglectful instrument owner. I've been ignoring it because I don't know how to change harp strings. But I decided I'm going to figure it out. I plan to get a set of strings this week and then figure out how to restring a harp.
This does not happen often, that friends come over to our house. A couple times a month. And lately, Zoës room has been such a disaster, I laid down the law that no friends could come over until her room was less of a health and safety risk. We'd help her get it under control if she wanted, but it had to be gotten under control. Several times plans were made for friends to come over, which had to be cancelled or revised to not involve being in the house because her room remained an issue. It's been a thing. Mike's mom cleaned as stress relief, I have high anxiety at the best of times, and Zoë is completely zen about life and everything and man, why are parents so uptight?! I have yelled. More than once. It has not been my finest parenting moment. Mike is pretty much at the stage of "would someone do something to make this madness end?" and Zoë's just, man, why is mom cray-cray?
But this week, she pulled it together in ways I did not expect her to be able to. Wednesday night, when I told her she should just cancel or change her plans with P because no way was she going to be able to live up to her end of the bargain ... in a loud and angry mom-has-lost-it voice, she listened, and went up to her room to work on her summer reading. I mean, she was productive in her spiteful "I'll show you, I'll get it done but I'm not doing it right now!" which is just really awesome. I was so proud. I couldn't tell her I was proud (it seems wrong to be proud over spiteful behavior, maybe). But I told Mike, and he high-fived her later for dealing with her anger/frustration/confusion productively. And then she cleaned Thursday, and Friday. Productively. Mike kept checking on her and heading back to me all "have you seen? Did you see?" It was cool. And I was angry, visibly so, because I wanted to just be able to be proud of how well she was doing, instead of frustrated that she was waiting until the last minute and playing chicken with the deadline to try and get anything done. She and I are so completely different.
Friday, she had a inkling that maybe she wasn't going to be completely finished by the deadline and looked at Mike for where things stood. I'd abdicated a voice in whether she was close enough because it had been a challenging work day and I was going to have to work from evening til after midnight, and didn't feel like I could step outside myself enough to be entirely fair to her. Mike kind of waffled and then said she'd need to finish in the morning. Which she did. With almost no prompting. Seriously proud.
The kids played with Lemmy and then hung out in her (clean!) room, walked down to the drug store and wandered around main street. Then went to see the Harry Styles movie at the movie theater. Then came home and hung out in her room some more.
Mike and I are contemplating becoming Those Parents and having a standing "we clean on Sundays" rule to try and keep her room just a bit more manageable. We're normally really ad-hoc about cleaning. It's tough when work schedules aren't always the same, and there are sports and other stuff, and excuses. But we need to do something different because what we've been doing isn't working for any of us.
Anyway. The camp director's the one who dropped his daughter off, and he and Mike chatted for quite a while. Mike's teaching him how to do repairs on the electric guitars and basses. And the guy asked if there was anything they could do about patch cords. They're expensive and being able to repair them would help a bunch. Mike's done some research and has some ideas for affordable ways to do this, so they're going to get together again soon to test out the ideas.
Which means Zoë and P will get to hang out again soon which they're all for. And it sounds like Mike's going to be running an on-going "here's how you take care of your electronics" tutorial for the staff of Zoë's most favoritest camp in the entire world.
But I was shamed, because the director noticed my harp. Dusty. Out of tune. Missing a string. He was entirely nice about it, but I felt like a completely neglectful instrument owner. I've been ignoring it because I don't know how to change harp strings. But I decided I'm going to figure it out. I plan to get a set of strings this week and then figure out how to restring a harp.