Cocky

Okay, so I admit it. I felt pretty darned good as we went to bed that first Monday back from Christmas break.

We’d gotten a lot done. I’d freaking rocked the domestic goddess thing.

When I got home from work that evening, Olivia and I pounded out her homework in record time. We went to my mom’s house to visit for a bit, went back home where I heated up dinner for both girls and myself. Tom’s on his own for meals, he tends to work right through the regular dinner hour so…he’s a grown up, he can figure it out.

After dinner, I packed lunches and then took Olivia up so she could take a bath. She was only vaguely stinky but I know that a vague funk can turn into a vicious funk very quickly.

I helped her wash her hair and then, by 8:30, we were downstairs where I washed the dinner dishes, got Olivia her evening serving of pie and ice cream and by 9:10, we were heading back upstairs to bed.

And, get this, I’d accomplished all of the above with minimal bitchiness. Go me!!

So it only makes sense that the very next day, a FREAKING Tuesday, was a disaster.

I got home after at 5:20 after having to stop at Walmart for cereal, batteries, Tums, bagels, a rotisserie chicken, oatmeal cream pies and Suzie-Qs. Yes, that was the list. Ugh!

Olivia and I sat down to do homework.

I lost my shit pretty much right off the bat, which made her put up a block that kept her from writing $1.35 on problem number 3.

I stopped her from erasing something because the erasing, the constant erasing, the never-ending erasing drives me insane.

But the derailed her almost completely.

We sat there for a half hour trying to complete five math problems that were something along the lines of: “Write the number in standard form: 9 hundreds, 3 tens and 7 ones.”

Which I read aloud to Olivia and then say, “Write 937.”

That was the first one. It was fine.

The second one was similar…and yet harder.

The third one asked her to write a number sentence and then said something like, “Miguel had $.85. He earned $1.35. How much money did he have?”

All she had to write was, “$.85 + $1.35 = $2.20.”

Easy, right?

No.

Because I’m a terrible person who stopped her from erasing the $ before the 1. We sat there for fifteen minutes with her just looking at me.

By the end I just wanted to cry. I wanted to cry for me and I wanted to cry for her.

I hate that this is so hard for her. I hate that I sometimes make it harder still.

Before bed that night, I told her I was sorry for being so cranky.

She said, “Well, at least you’re only cranky when you’re talking to me.”

…

My heart broke into a thousand pieces.

My sweet, beautiful, funny, smart girl thinks, feels, and believes I’m only cranky when I’m talking to her.

That says a lot, doesn’t it?

It means I have to work hard, in the long term, to STOP being such a bitch to this child. She deserves so much better. She deserves a loving, patient, kind parent who doesn’t take her idiosyncrasies personally and works out ways to help her around the blocks her brain puts up when things don’t go exactly as planned.

So yeah…that happened.