Harrumph

I’ve been feeling intermittently grouchy for three days now, and it’s really starting to irk me. (Ba-dump bump.) What do you do when you get like this? Edible treats are no good, as I feel even worse after indulging that way. I’m exercising, so that’s not the problem. Honestly, the idea of going for yet another walk right now is sparking a sort of “No-no-no” chant in the back of my head. If I were four years old, I’d be doing that constant whine sound that they do, just filling the air around me with an audible sense of my discontent. Nnnnnnn-nnnnnnng!

And because I’m in such fine fettle, I can let myself admit to levels of overt crankiness in public today. I came >THISCLOSE< to scolding the people behind the desk at the gym for putting up signs around the weights that read, "Please wipe the headrests after u finish using the machines." I mean, really. Two extra letters would have taken so much effort as to be deemed expendable? I seethe. And then in the locker room, I overheard a woman saying, “Yeah, Kayleigh and Josh and Jamie all said they were feeling sick this morning, but I made them all get up and go to school anyway.” I’m very much afraid that I couldn’t restrain myself from loudly saying, “Gee, thanks!” right as she walked through the door. I don’t know that she knew I was responding to her words, but even if she did, I can’t feel all that contrite. Seriously, if you’re sending off three potentially sick kids to class to sniffle all over the rest of our kids, ostensibly so you can go to the gym and work out, I can’t feel too bothered to care about schooling my reaction.

On the other hand, I did regret snapping at Eric first thing this morning. When his alarm went off and woke me up, instead of simply asking him whether he was planning to get up and run, my mouth fired off, “Well, what happened to running today?!” I immediately apologized, but I know how the first exchange of the day sets the tone, so I still wince about that. Sorry again, dear.

Even things I might ordinarily find cute are driving me nuts. Gabe has moved into a realm where’s he’s attempting to play director to the world around him. He started by scripting our discussions (“Mommy, I made a picture! Now, you say, ‘That’s very nice, Gabe.’ Don’t say, ‘Cool!’”), and now he’s giving stage directions as well. “Hold your hands up like this and say, ‘Wait, I don’t understand.’ No, not like that! Put your fingers like this!” Yesterday, he got quite angry with me for saying that I was tired, for some reason. I’m done with being micromanaged, and I don’t know how much longer I can deal with it in a sane, patient way.

And Sam…oh, he’s a sweetheart, but I’m very much afraid that I’m going to have to strangle his neighborhood playmates. They left him sobbing in our yard a few days ago, but I wasn’t sure from his explanation how much of it had been his fault. (“They all get to be the boss in their yards, but they won’t let me be the boss in my yard!”) Then this weekend, he came home red-faced and sniffling again because apparently they were all up in one of their treehouses and refused to let Sam up because he wasn’t on “the list.” Now, he’s a very forgiving kid, and he doesn’t hold grudges, and I adore that about him, but I know what it is to be the butt of group teasing. I have vivid memories of my friends mocking me, laughing at me, somehow thinking that I wasn’t even smart enough to be aware that their snickers and snide remarks were directed at me. The thought that the experiences Sam is having now could form his own bitter childhood stories in the future makes me want to go all Mama Bear on some young beasts.

So the instigator comes to our door yesterday, of course, to see if Sam can come out. Sam, who doesn’t have a revenge-seeking bone in his body, was all set to go, but my current general level of grumpiness had me squaring off with this eight-year-old. “I’ll send him out when he’s finished his homework, but understand this,” I said. “This Lord of the Flies crap doesn’t fly with me. If there’s any teasing – of Sam, of anybody else – I’m going to be finding moms and settling it my way.” He got wide-eyed and said, “Yes, ma’am.” I can be scary when I need to be. (Indeed, I had to get scary again an hour later, when they all came streaming into our yard, laughing and playing some sort of game that involved yelling, “He’s gay!” “No, you’re gay!” )

I dunno. The world seems to be conspiring to keep me in this state of perpetual irritation. I see no way out of it, and that added sense of the foregone is just making it all seem so much grayer and more pitiful. Again, I say, nnnnnnnnng….