Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Grumpy, Grumpy, Grumpy

If you are looking for cheerful, happy fun, you have come to the wrong place. I'd advise running far away. Really! Get going. If however, you wish to read about depressed people or even grumpy ones, well.... I guess I can't stop you.

I'm having a bad day! Not just a little bit of a bad day, but a HUGELY horrible day. It didn't help that I only got 6 hours of sleep last night. That's enough to put me in a bad mood right there. I need, no NEED 8 hours, minimum. But that was not to be. My mood improved even more when I woke up at 4:30 a.m. Why? I wasn't even having a bad dream or a nightmare. I just woke right up, straight out of REM sleep. Now if you know anything about sleep stages, you would know that it's pretty hard to just wake up and wide awake at that from a dreaming state. Even from a nightmare, most people are still a little foggy. But I was wide awake. I did finally go back to sleep, but there was no more REM sleep for me. So now do I not only have a sleep deficit, but I'm running a REM deficit too. The only consultation is that when I do finally go to sleep tonight, I should go pretty quickly into REM sleep. How about some nice, pleasant dreams, like a vacation in Hawaii? With my luck, I'll be in Antarctica.

Then the kids took for..ev..er to get ready this morning. That always puts me in a fine mood! I love rushing around and zooming to school and hoping there is hardly any traffic. Wait! I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. There is always traffic! Everywhere!

When I get to work, I have got to have some chocolate. Thank goodness my friend Teresa had some dark chocolate malt balls. My favorite!! That definitely helped to improve my mood. No sarcasm now. However, this is Tuesday and our youngest and the busiest children come today. They keep us on our toes. If I wasn't exhausted before, I am definitely now.

But wait! The best is yet to come. Ian is having another hard day. In fact so bad, that instead of the office nurse calling, I got a call from his teacher. He had disappeared for 1/2 an hour and no-one could find him. His teacher even sent her teacher-aide looking for him, but no success. Then he's finally in the class and he has a panic attack. A bad one! The teacher had never seen him scream or act like this. So off to the office he went and she called me, just as I'm doing circle time in my class. But, that's okay, another teacher took over for me.

I got my husband to go down to the school and get Ian calmed down. He was able to convince Ian to go back to class. Yea! However, the teacher said this is getting worse and worse and that this can't keep going on. He's not learning anything because he's constantly in the bathroom, office or at home. I started to cry in my class. Not a good thing. I'm supposed to be calm, but I wasn't too successful today. I try so hard to keep personal things out of the classroom, but things were beyond my control today.

Today was my day to help in the classroom and by the time I got there, Ian was having a much better day. So off I went to my girl scout troop. I lead 8 juniors who have been with me for about 5 years now. We worked on our camera badge. I love photography and really enjoyed sharing with them. We all took lots of pictures and I felt much better. Then I got to talk to not one, but two of Ian's doctors while I was trying to lead the meeting. Thank goodness for co-leaders. We tried brain storming, but will these ideas work? Who knows. Nothing seems to be working lately.

We finally get home and Kristin needs to go to soccer. Can she find her shin guards? Can any of us find them? No, of course not, and do you know why? Because she doesn't put anything away! Her shoes were by the front door, her socks were by the back door and where were her shin guards? Outside, on the table where they had been rained on! I told her that if she could not respect her things and take care of them, they would become mine. If she did not put things away in their proper place and keep things picked up, she was going to lose her allowance. (Money really motivates them at this age.) Then I told her to go and immediately work on her homework and when she was done she was to go upstairs and start picking up. Off went both kids as quickly as possible.

When mom is grumpy, DON'T mess with her!

They are now working very hard on their homework, Tim is in the kitchen cooking dinner and I feel better for having vented on my blog. If you stayed this long, congratulations and thanks for listening. If you didn't well... I certainly don't blame you. I'd like to leave too.

I'm off to have some wine. Good night!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dang, what a rough day. And I understand about not getting enough REM, so I bought their latest album, the IRS years. Ha ha I am so funny. Good album though. I hope today is better. And I hope you got more sleep because I do know how you are when you don't get enough...you're downright scary. :)

Chaotic Mom said...

What special needs does your son have? I have three boys, two deaf with cochlear implants. The oldest one is doing great, but the youngest has "additional struggles". I don't sleep well and am grumpy on a regular basis. Working on that, though...

I like your openess and honest.

BlondeBrony said...

I am sooooo sorry. Boy I hate when days get off to the wrong start. Everything else sort of spirals after that.

Let's try to brainstorm ways to help Ian. What are you doing now when the anxiety hits? What does he do to help himself calm down?

Where is his desk in the classroom?

If he's going to the bathroom, is he seeking solitude?

Thanks for sharing. You can email me the answers if you'd like and we can go from there.