Thursday, January 26, 2006

Finding acceptance through exhaustion

I wasn't in a great mood tonight . . . and the thing was, it just came over me very suddenly.

But looking back over it now, I can see where parts of it came together, building and then arriving all at once.

The kids and I were home. I was trying to figure out what to do about dinner. (By tonight, my creativity was pretty well shot.) I didn't have any meat thawed; the kids didn't like my quiche from Monday--which was really good but the kids aren't ready for that; I'd also whipped up some creative potatoes AND utilized some of the cooked turkey for yesterday's meal; basically, I had nothing.

Usually that means one of two things (for the kids, I mean)--heat up some frozen chicken nuggets or cook a frozen pizza. And choosing the pizza option ACTUALLY means both, since Sarah refuses to eat pizza . . . and I wasn't ready to fight about separate meals tonight. And that is NOT something we do in this house. But, I am tired.

Anyway, these options are running in my head, and I chose pizza (and nuggets).

The kids ate okay. Sarah did her usual dinner thing, in which she eats one bite, then waves her arms all over the place, then mugs for her reflection in the mirror, then waves her arms around a bit more, then thinks about eating another bite . . . but chooses to begin telling me a story instead and then I get frustrated and reminder her to eat--probably more forcefully than I should.

And then Lynda got home. And while it is completely not her fault, the fact that she is STILL coming home late and she had nothing but bad news to report about her project and blah, blah, blah, I just got angry and tired about her entire situation and how it has affected all of us. So that made things seem worse.

However, things improved eventually. Lynda took the kids upstairs and got them in their pajamas, teeth brushed, etc. I sat down to watch Good Eats. After that was over (the episode was about sugar/caramel), I decided to play "Tickle Monster" with the kids.

This game involves a whole lot of running, screaming, tickling, tackling, whatever. As long as it doesn't also involve running into each other (which DID happen tonight, Grace going one way around a corner while Sarah went the other way) or bumping into sharp edges, then all is good. You can see a bit of the madness here.

1 comment:

Sven Golly said...

A great game - one of homo sapiens' original, primal games, I contend - and almost identical to one we played hundreds of times in our house, which we called "chase" (how creative!) and some out-of-state friends of ours called "guacamole" (showing more imagination). We have always been careful to choose houses that are designed to facilitate games of chase, as you apparently have.