Not so good day

Yesterday was pretty well down the crapper. I went in to work for the Xmas party (yes, it's after Xmas), and what I thought would be an hour or two of basic administrative work, and wound up being stuck in the middle of a firing and new hire of a supervisor and having to mediate and almost translate between my boss, her boss and two other managers (the big bosses in my company have a very bad habit of ambushing managers with disciplinary stuff, usually just as the GM is walking out of the office, and usually, inappropriately, in front of others.)

And my stomach still feels like I've been eating rocks, so I was pretty wiped when I got home. O's sleep has gotten even more ridiculous, he was awake when I got up for work at 10:30am, not having slept all night, and was awake still when I got home at 6pm, and basically had to be ordered to go to sleep at 4:30am. He's messed around so much with his circadian rhythm and body schedule that he no longer recognizes when he's tired, hungry, etc. He's just basically cranky and needy all the time, sigh.

And then, somehow, O managed to re-injure his arm, that's still sore from football 4 months ago, while getting off the couch, and was even bitchier before bed. Sigh.

I just don't know how to get this schedule thing back on track. I'm sooo not a schedule person, and it feels weird and wrong for me to impose my own needs on O's body and self, but this sleeping for 15 hours every, oh, 48 hours or so (in completely random intervals), eating almost constantly, not going outside, and being too cranky/sore/sick/whatever to do any actual housework or pursue any interest, well, it's really unhealthy for him and it's pissing me off beyond belief. I've tried setting goals with him, not setting goals for him, backing off and letting him figure this stuff out for himself, nothing is working in any way that makes our lives livable together. My work schedule is so random too, that we just can't seem to get into a sync with each other. Short of quitting my job, working only Friday and Saturday night as a waitress or bartender, I can't see how this will really work out for us, short-term. I'm soooo sick of either nagging, or of doing everything myself (it took a lot of self-control for me not to blow up on O when he pulled out every single one of his video game cases, again, looking for a game he didn't put back into it's case, again, and left them all spread out on the living room floor, again, not ten minutes after I had picked them up and put them away, for the 6th time that day alone.)

I really don't want to be the nagging mom, but I also can't live my life following O around and picking up after him, when I'm not cooking a meal every 2 hours, doing the dishes so I can make yet another meal, doing his laundry again because he left all his clean clothes on the floor where the cats rolled around in them or peed on them, again.

I guess what I really want is a life of my own back. Geez, teenagers are more work than toddlers (almost, at least he's not nursing anymore, it was so much fun when he'd nurse standing up, and lean over and try to reach the remote, without letting go of my boob! I sooooo don't miss that-you know you're child is ready to wean when he's going through the tv listings while nursing, lol!)

Ok, vent over, now back to your regularily scheduled productivity:

Today's plan is, hopefully, to get down to the Forks, the trip we skipped on Monday because O didn't wake up until 4:30 and was cranky and sleepy until midnight. O wants to check out Muddy Waters Smokehouse for some meat, meat and more meat, and, just to switch things up, some smoked meat. It's pretty pricey for a restaurant where I can't, or won't, eat most of what's on the menu (no sugar, no dairy, no fried foods, whole grains, vegetables, not exactly choices well-represented on this menu), so maybe I'll try to talk him into going to the Village or the Market.

I'm hoping to establish a habit of not turning on the tv or video games until the evening, and spending some quiet time, reading, or talking, or doing something productive. Not that I'm averse to passive entertainment (ah tv: teacher, mother, secret lover!), but all play and no work makes Johnny a very dull, cranky boy indeed. We'll see how my incursions against Big Screen work in my home in the next few weeks.

Then again, it's cold and there's probably something good on tv...

;)