Do For Yourself.

Oldest One left the house this morning in what can only be described as “pissy mood”. He snarked the whole way to school, bitched at his brother, was rude all over the place and, in short, made everyone ELSE a little bit crabby.

I am sure he felt justified in his behaviours but, dear god, I am starting to fear puberty.

By the time I had returned from walking them to school, I was feeling pretty snitty myself.

That’s one of the hardest parts of parenting, for me. I have to remind myself over and over that I do not need to absorb the kids’ moods and, similarly, that I cannot snark back at them when they are snarking. (At least, not until they’re much older.)

I’ve managed to detach myself from any codependent behaviours with ADULTS in the past few years but, man, put me in the room with some kids and I’m convinced that I’m scarring them for life by not tiptoeing around their anger. Yeeesh.

It’s hard. Very hard.

On my way to pick Maymo up from school, I spontaneously decided to stop at Fabricland where I used some of my spending money to purchase a membership card so I can get some of the discounts on fabric and buttons and all the other crap one suddenly needs when one decides to “make stuffs”.

The simple act of buying that card perked me up a whole helluva lot. Doing something for myself makes it much easier for me to detach my mood from everyone else’s – particularly something that’s mostly frivolous.

This afternoon I’m going to paint my toenails, too. Purple.

I might even wax my eyebrows.

Tomorrow is the first day of March Break – 10 whole days of uninterrupted KID KID KID around the house. If I had $1000 I could have sent them all to camp for the week but, uh, yeah. Not quite in the budget.

Hell, if I had that kind of money I’d just force Coffee to take the week off, too.

Or I’d buy myself a full week at a “therapy spa” where someone would do my toenails, wax my eyebrows, massage my sore shoulders AND break that codependence thing. All at once.