2010 May

Today did not go that well.

Nothing especially bad happened. It was more a case of a lot of little things adding up to a stressful day: I got a call at 9 AM from an electrician we’ve been waiting on to replace our old, original electrical panel with something more appropriate to the 21st century, letting me know he’d be by TODAY and oh, by the way, our electricity would be off for about 4 hours while he was here. I’m not sure how I had no idea he was coming this week, but there you go. So the littlest kids and I cleared out for the afternoon. I decided this would be as good a time as any to shop for coasters and throw pillows. At TJ Maxx, the over-stimulation capital of the local strip-mall.

Then I got home to find that the electricity was still off, five hours after the job had begun. And I had agreed to babysit my niece and nephew tonight, which normally would be no big deal at all, but since we are having our roof replaced with something more appropriate to the 21st century, and said roofers have been at it for a week with no end in sight and in the meantime there are tarps and scaffolding and discarded shingles and all kinds of other hazards everywhere, the kids couldn’t play outside. And they wanted to. They wanted to badly. In fact, they kept up a steady stream of “Can’t we go outside why not we just want to play with the water guns we won’t get in the way we won’t step on nails we won’t get hit by falling shingles we’ll be really careful can’t we can’t we why not why not why not” for ohhhh, about two straight hours. Also, the workers had to leave the back door open to run an extension cord in from a generator, so we had to keep Moxie in her crate for hours so she wouldn’t run away. Guess who didn’t like that, and let us know…LOUDLY?

By the time bathtime rolled around I was not in the mood for hijinks, but really, what was I expecting? Hijinks are a normal part of the bath routine around here and tonight was no exception. But I just couldn’t handle it, the splashing and the squealing and the shrieking and later, the wadded up towels on the floor and the puddles just waiting for somebody to slip in them. I raised my voice. And I said not nice things. And I sighed and huffed…just a little. I did manage to pull myself together and end the evening on a good note. But for about ten minutes there, I was Cranky, Yelly Mom.

Now that the kids are all in bed, asleep or at least quiet, it’s easy for me to look back in retrospect and see where things fell apart. Like all moms, I have certain triggers, and many of them were tickled today:

I do not like to have my personal space invaded. Invited guests are one thing. I love nothing more than to have a houseful of guests. But when I have people occupying my home for hours who aren’t my friends or family but whom I feel I have to be polite and accommodating to, I start to get itchy. I can’t just ignore them like I probably should, because the hostess in me wants to be polite. But I’m not enjoying them, and pretty soon I start to resent their presence. Especially when said occupation lasts eight hours instead of four.
I don’t like shopping! Sometimes it can be kind of fun, like when I’m gift shopping at Christmas, or when I’m alone trying on fabulous clothes, or when I go antiquing (which is more like treasure hunting than shopping) or when I have a very specific, exciting purchase to make. But shopping just for the sake of shopping gets old fast. And shopping with kids? Gah. Quadruply not fun.
When I have a certain idea for how a day is going to go and then end up with a vastly different version of that day, I get anxious. I pride myself on being flexible, and I am–when a nap is blown or I have to shove aside work for the afternoon to take a child to the doctor. But when an entire day of writing and housework and hanging out at home flies out the window, I have a hard time adjusting. I find that I start madly trying to cram the things I wanted to accomplish into chunks of time too small or inconvenient to accommodate the tasks. Which would explain why I decided to try to sort, fold, and pack away all the cold-weather clothing in the semi-dark with workers pounding on the roof directly above my head instead of, you know, just waiting for a better day to do it.

Sometimes, when I’ve had a really bad mothering day, I find that examining which triggers may have contributed to it makes me feel better. For one thing, it helps me realize just how challenging a time I’ve had, and allows me to give myself a break. And it also helps me realize what I could do differently next time. Had it not been for going through this exercise in the past, for example, I might not have realized how necessary it was for the kids and I to steer clear of the house for as long as possible while the electricians were there. Because while shopping wasn’t exactly fun, for me, it beat the alternative of sitting around waiting for the power to come back on while roofers thumped above and the puppy whined in her crate.

What are your Cranky Mom triggers? Have you learned to identify and avoid some of them?

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