Thirty-Six

Yesterday was my thirty-sixth birthday. England had a huge celebration in honor of it. They even wore freaky hats that pay homage to uteri to commemorate the occasion.

I hope William and Kate don't make the connection that Hitler was married on the 29th of April (1945) - the day before he and his new bride promptly killed themselves.

But seriously, the birthday was a good day (except one bad hour, that I'll grudgingly mention in a sec). My students were pretty good, considering it is the end of the school year and a Friday!

My Advanced class ordered pizza. Well, actually I ordered pizza. I got maybe $7 out of the students and I covered the rest, but it's all good. It was also payday!

I invited a student of mine from last year to have pizza during lunch with me, as it was also his birthday yesterday. Even though I didn't have him as a student this year, I've seen a lot of him and when I got back from materntiy leave he said how much he missed me (and not because he hated the sub, because he wasn't in any of my classes this year. Therefore, I know he was genuine when he said he missed me).

Therefore, my lunch with him was very enjoyable. We watched goofy YouTubes including this one and this one.

Students like him are reminders why I do what I do. It's just hard to see that when there are so many other negative issues shadowing the positives. I will return to teaching in a few years. It's just time for a break and to enjoy Alexander's infancy.

I'll skip over the bad hour for a moment and mention that Chris surprised me by being home early. We had a sitter for the other two kids and planned to take the baby out with us. He wanted to take me to a fun 80s concert at the zoo (Dramarama was one of the bands performing), but they were very strict with the "Over 21" thing, so they wouldn't even let a 4-month old in. Oh well. We went to Montis La Casa Vieja nearby and then walked Mill Avenue. We then discovered how old and tired we were and came home by 10:30pm.

Now for the bad hour. (Taking a deep breath). I read an article this week in Good Housekeeping about "losing it" and getting angry with our kids. Apparently, I should have read it twice and taken the advice.

Christian's compulsions and obsessions got to me horribly yesterday. I went to the sitter's to pick up the kids and I hung around there for awhile talking and just goofing around. When I got there, I put my keys and phone on her counter (as an ADHD person myself, I have to make sure I have my own "system" and "ritual" to make sure I don't cause myself to go crazy by losing and misplacing stuff).

Well, when it came time to go, I go to the counter and my phone was open (clearly tampered with) and the keys were nowhere to be found. One of Nikki's kids said she saw Christian with my keys. After 7 years of this, I think my patience was long in the past. I asked him where my keys were, he said he didn't know.

I go outside to the car to find the trunk open, car doors open, the glove box open, a little tool packet from the glove box open, and toys from inside Nikki's house in the car. Christian was trying to blame Nikki's 3 year old, but the 3 year old merely followed Christian's influence. He was the one who took the keys and proceeded to act like our car was a giant theme park.

Well, since I couldn't leave without keys and my car was blocking Nikki's, my stress level went from 0 to 60. I kept asking Christian where my keys were and he was more stressed in his answers that he didn't know. He also kept trying to blame the 3 year old.

I really got upset. He knows he's not supposed to mess with my stuff, and he knows he's forbidden to mess with the car. Yet, there we were.

Long story short, the keys ultimately were found by Christian, but by then I was so spun up I honestly didn't know how to come back down. In fact, when we got home and discovered Chris was home early to surprise me, I was so angry from what happened that I had to go in the bedroom and have a time out and reflect on how crappy of a mom I was as I heard Christian's crying in his room telling his dad about the whole thing: "I even found the keys and mom was still so mad!!!"

Yes, Christian has his issues. But I clearly failed in dealing with them properly.