Drama

Wednesday:

Maybe it's because it is the end of the school year (two and a half weeks to go) or the heat or I don't know, but everyone seems on edge and cranky at the moment. My daughter's group of friends are fighting all the time and she is often in tears about it, sometimes in the middle of the night. The mother of one of my son's friends texted me this afternoon about her son being excluded from that group and I had to try to sort that out with my distraught eight year old who was already upset because...

I made my own contribution to the drama today. My children usually walk home by themselves (together) but  I generally pick them up if it is raining hard. Today I didn't have the car and there was a big thunderstorm an hour before the end of school - the sky went really dark really quickly. It was still pouring rain when they got out of school and I was pretty sure they only had one umbrella between them. So I walked up to the school with a couple of extras. The pavement was running with water and I got pretty wet even with an umbrella. I got up near the school and I could see the two of them starting to cross the oval (a bad idea in the rain). I was separated from them by the fence but I called and waved and walked parallel to them towards home. They didn't see me, and after a while turned back towards the school. I assumed they decided against more wet long grass and that they would come along the path where I was. I headed towards the school again. And around the school. And couldn't find them. And got wetter. I couldn't work out how they could have got past me unless they went some very long weird way home. I stomped home crankily. To find them there and waiting, banging on the door, having got a lift with a (trusted) friend.

From their point of view they had done nothing wrong at all. But I was wet and cross and so frustrated because I had seen them and called and waved and they had turned back and made me chase them and I had that walk for nothing. If I was the kind of person who swears, I would have been swearing. I think I went so far as to grump "Why the hell did you..." etc. Like it was all their fault. Then I went and lay on my bed and felt like crying; angry and frustrated and guilty.

My son came for cuddles to be reassured but my daughter just ignored me until I started acting normally. A good move.

My only excuse is being worried about my mother. She saw her oncologist yesterday but warned me in advance she would need to sleep the rest of the day when she got home and wouldn't call me until today. This morning I tried to call her a few times but she didn't answer the phone even though there is one right beside her bed. Was she too sick to even answer the phone? Not likely she would be out somewhere, she could hardly get out of bed two days ago. She finally called me back, it turns out she was out, getting the fluid drained from her abdomen. Six and a half litres of fluid! No wonder she looked pregnant and was so uncomfortable. They have to analyse it, don't know if it was caused by her medication or the cancer itself. Now she's just got the discomfort of her internal organs moving back into their correct positions after being forced out of place by the fluid.

Everything just feels stressful and horrible today.