Bad Attitude

My calendar is now decorated with a bunch of small post it notes.

September 11 -- Review hearing for Niece.
The 12th -- Mental status exam for Niece
13th - school pictures, woo hoo!
16th - swimming registration at Burke. She'll *love* that.
18th - open house at her school - client visit, but who cares about that compared to open house?
29th - no school - teacher planning day. My sister's birthday party, which she mightily wants us to attend. I said yes initially but now I wish I hadn't. I don't want to go. Especially after seeing what munchkin is like after seeing her mommy.

Being a parent again has fully taken over my life. I'm cool with it, except on days like today.

Munchkin was fine this morning until it was time to get ready to leave. And we were running late too. Admittedly, my fault. We ended up being together in a stress pressure-cooker where Munchkin was unwilling to put her shoes on and I was unwilling to bend one more inch, until it was apparent that we needed that inch if we were ever going to get out the door. I clocked in with five minutes to spare.

Since we had our second naughtygram last night, there were no extras last night because of that. We had Taco Bell for dinner, which we could ill afford, but I did it anyway. Another way of saying that is that I acted like a petulant child, stomping my foot in the face of someone saying, "Hey. You can't afford that. I don't care what time it is or how tired you are, go home and fix dinner."

Things just haven't gone my way today and my character defects are saying to me that the world revolves around me and how dare the world not do that today? I'm unhappy with myself that I yelled at Munchkin today. I'm unhappy that she has to go to these stupid visits, which greatly disturb her and ruin half of her week. She knew this morning without me telling her that she had a visit today. Once I figured that out, that explained a lot to me about why she was so surly this morning. Even her teacher notices the mood swings after visits with her mom.

She cried bitterly this morning and said that she wants to live with her Mommy. It shouldn't make me feel bad, but I can't help but feel a little hurt that I'm doing all this work and I'm the one taking care of her, and she wants to live with Mommy. I know that sounds ridiculous, but that's just how I feel. I keep it to myself completely and I just hold her and tell her that I'm sorry she's going through all this and that I know it feels bad. I could talk about this with my sponsor, but I know what she'd say -- those feelings are natural and they just are what they are…feelings. It's ok to have feelings and I needn't be ashamed of them.

But I wish they'd go away. I'm sick of feeling this way. I just want to go home and sleep them away.