I don’t have any work to do today. I mean, I’ve got two jobs that are on hold, or i’m awaiting a response to the last message, etc. So I really have nothing to do. I’ve moved the sofa. I’ve got a wing chair in the middle of the kitchen now. I’ve measured something. I’ve danced. I took a bath. I’m clean and I watched a zombie show. I am keeping the chickens locked up today because there is a fox, and he has been fed twice in the past two days and hella, stop.
This:
Last night I got a text message from a mom whose kid is/was a friend of my teenager. sometime in august some shit went down and she just heard about it now and was texting me to essentially find out about it, complain and judge me and my job as a parent.
let me be clear: my kid was part of something mean and unkind to her kid. my kid was mean and unkind.
full stop.
but I don’t really take kindly to the notion that I then get a lecture on parenting from another parent. As if my 14 year old kid is not responsible for his decisions. Because I was upset at the text series, I looked again through his phone, talked with him about the incident yet again and when I told him that the boy’s feelings had been significantly hurt, he had remorse, again, as he should have.
AND YET, it is still not my responsibility to control his first actions. I’ve given him a model, and earlier on, explicit directions on how to treat people. And he made a mistake.
I do feel sorry for it, and sorry for her kid, because it sucks to be in high school sometimes. it really does. and he got hit with flung shit (not literally).
But the patronizing, and the moralizing, and the judgement that I got? I fling that shit back and out. No.
BUT because I avoid conflict, even within myself, the anger splurted out at my kids last night.
(yelling)
“SHUT UP. I LOVE YOU BUT PLEASE SHUT UP.”
lots of fun at bedtime. guilt. anger. guilt. anger.
so I leave you with this:
a new pink sofa. free, by the side of the road, with a twin. small enough to haul around the house on a freelancing kind of day.
