I’ve been in a bit of a funk the last couple days. Not sure why. I guess I’ve acclimated to my new success and just in a bit of a down moon. Last week I was fairly manic and full of ideas, now it’s like a grey cloud has settled over and all my ideas are shit.
The kids have been singing We Don’t Talk About Bruno from Encanto. LMM sure does know his songwriting, doesn’t he? They were dancing around the kitchen last night after dinner, it was super cute. But when it was time to put the girls to bed last night, Elder wanted to stay up and write the lyrics out for some of her friends. I swear I had to argue with her for five minutes before I finally got her off the computer and to her room. She was trying to negotiate with me, that she would do what I asked if I printed her the lyrics. I refused to agree. I told her that she had had all day to do that, but that she had had other priorities and now it was quiet time and she needed to go do her room.
I haven’t seen Encanto yet, so I spent some time pulling up sheet music and looking over it. I printed her up a copy of the lyrics and went to check on her twenty minutes later to tuck her in and turn off her light. She had her notebook out and was handwriting the lyrics. She had written out two whole pages of lyrics, and I was pretty impressed, it seemed like she had gotten 75% of the way through it and had gotten it completely right.
It must have been after nine. I tucked Elder in, then went to my bedroom to talk to Missus and I turned around and Elder was standing in my doorway. She had something to say, but I was livid that she had gotten out of bed, and grabbed her by the arm to put her back in bed.
I woke up this morning — Younger slept in her bed, thank gawd — and Elder was already up on her computer writing out lyrics longform again. Since she was up, I told her, she needed to get ready so that I could take her in when I left with her sister. I was tired of having to take Younger, come back to the house and wait ten minutes, leave with Elder, come back and get on with my day.
She kept arguing with me that she needed to get this done. I started helping her and she started criticizing what I was doing, or how I was doing it. I was DONE. I told her to get ready and that we were done. It went downhill from there. Each time I asked her to do something she responded with complaint, or negotiation, or anything other than compliance. I started to lose my shit. It devolved into a full-on argument with me threatening to beat her ass if she didn’t follow directions and get ready to go.
Then Missus got involved.
I had already printed out several copies of the lyrics for her and put it in her school bag, but I wasn’t about to tell her that I had done it until she had done what I asked. It didn’t go well. Missus had bought her some new winter socks, and while she was putting them on she started complaining that they were too itchy.
I swore, got any more complaints?
Things had calmed down by the time I dropped her off, save a short crying spell when I told her she needed to learn to follow my fucking directions. Yay me, dropping f-bombs at my kid again.
I got home, meditated, did a couple of sets with the weights, and here I am. Time to pull myself together and focus. I just don’t know what I’m doing.