Come to think of it, something else the recent work on the house is for me is an opportunity to observe how I currently respond to various stressors such as noise, random schedule changes, delays, etc.
I’d be snarkier about this, but I’ve actually learned some things about myself . . .
Even as a kid I really did try to not just dig my heels in from pure obstinance, but . . . once it was made to clear to me that I was in a no-win situation, I would always chose how I was going to lose. Always.
I still do that, in fact, but I like to think that these days I do it with more awareness, at least.
This morning I expressed the desire to have a day of “indulgence” despite the fact today was not a day for something like that. Despite that, I was asked what kind of day I’d want if it was a day for that.
After rattling off a few (ahem) variations of “spend even more time in bed,” I’d gotten as far what I’d want for breakfast . . . but then I trailed off.
“Go on!” I was encouraged. “What would you want to do after that?”
“I don’t honestly know!” I conceded with a laugh. “I’ve never gotten this far before, not even in theory!”
Some people listen to music when they’re feeling their age; lately I’ve realized that I listen to music when I’m feeling my rage.
The other day L’s Mother asked me if I was going to follow-up on something today, and I told her no, but I likely would on Wednesday.
“Why not Tuesday?” she asked.
“Because,” I answered, “I know what my Tuesday is already looking like, and I won’t be prepared until Wednesday at the earliest for the answer to be anything but “Yes sir, that’s already been taken care of; sorry for not telling you sooner.”
One of my more useful traits is also one of my most personally distressing. When other people ask things like, “Can you even imagine something like that happening?”, my answer is always “Yes . . . yes, I can.”
On Monday I said that I expected the lesson that time fussing about a problem gives no credit would be revisited again, and it turns out I was right. Oh, my son is doing pretty good today, but after a night of no sleep for me, today I find myself doing my best to put my lesson where my mouth is.
People knew I was kidding yesterday, right? L’s Mother certainly did, and that’s the important thing, but still . . . I hate it when a joke falls flat.
Ah well, hazards of humor and all that.
After telling my son at least twice today that if he has something to say to me, he needs to come tell me and not shout it from across the house, did I really just shout across the house to tell him something? Yes . . . yes, I did. Time to walk over to him and apologize for doing that to try to get back a little closer to the “do as I do” ideal. Still working on this whole “parenthood” thing.
Ah well, when he starting talking about how he could change his name to anything he wanted, I didn’t suggest “Monkey Breath” out loud, so I’ve got that going for me, at least.
The other mistake was all mine (Sorry, kiddo.), and I’m hoping by mentioning it here that I’ll actually learn from it this time. (For the record, son, I’ve tried to learn from this mistake before, even thought I had learned from it on more than one occasion, but despite the ideal of “never make the same mistake twice,” some lessons we all end up coming back to more than once.)
The mistake was deceptively simple: By trying to make things better, I ended up making them worse; more specifically, by trying to head off my son before he got himself into serious trouble with me, I ended up guaranteeing he got into serious trouble with me. The basic idea is sound, and works up to a point, but once we both pass a certain mutual frustration level, well . . . to say “it doesn’t work so well anymore” is a bit like saying a car “doesn’t work so well anymore” after its gas tank explodes.
I think I’ll spare myself the public chastisement of the details how this became abundantly clear to me, but it was . . . humbling, to say the least.
So after that realization, while I’ll still give warnings to my son to give him a chance to self-correct, beyond a certain point I’m doing my best to remember that he has been warned, and it’s actually less frustrating for all of us in the long run if I just skip the “Are you sure this is how you want to do this?” step. This is something I’ve long known . . . when calm.
Here’s hoping this time the lesson continues to stick during the times when I’m . . . less calm.
Some years ago my dad told me the story about a friend of his who asked his friend to go get a piece of wood from the woodpile so they could prop up a trailer they were working on. Despite the relative simplicity of this request, my dad’s friend waited and waited for his friend to come back with the piece of wood. Knowing that his friend was . . . prone to distraction, to put it kindly, my dad’s friend waited a long time, but eventually he went off to the woodpile himself to find out what the delay was. He found his friend at the woodpile where he was busily planning an elaborate construction project.
“What are you doing?” my dad’s friend asked him.
“I just realized I’ve got a lot of really nice wood in my woodpile this year, and it would be a shame if it got wet, so I’m building a woodshed,” he friend answered as if this was the most obvious thing in the world.
