I am a cranky wench when I come off of my 24 hour shift. Well, not every single time I come off of my shift, but every time we have a busy night, which is quite often. But it was a Saturday morning and I was looking forward to crawling immediately into my bed and sleeping until Bulldog and DJ got back from her piano lesson close to lunchtime.
Until Bulldog informed me he'd made other plans. Since I've promised myself that I will only go on one neurotic rampage at a time in this blog, we will not address Bulldog's wrongdoing here. The poor man has heard enough from me on that subject, and since he occasionally reads this blog, I will not subject him to further shrewish kvetching. I managed to grab a quick cat nap before DJ and I headed out for her piano lesson.
I was rueing the fact that I had acted in the aforementioned shrewish way, so in an effort to not repeat that mistake with another family member, I attempted to make small talk with DJ. I asked a benign question about I don't even remember what, and she answered me in a snippy fashion. I continued to attempt small talk thinking perhaps I had misinterpreted her tone, when she answered in the same manner. I asked her what was wrong and she replied, after a whopping 2 minutes in my presence, "I don't know, you're just getting on my nerves."
OK-were I to have lost my temper here, I could only have pled temporary insanity due to lack of sleep, but to my credit, I didn't lose my temper. I did, however, remind her that I was giving up sleep to get her where she needed to go and the last thing in the entire world I needed was to hear that I was getting on her nerves when: a) I'm cranky as all hell and b) I'm trying to be nice as I fight my crankiness and get her to her lesson when really I'd rather be SLEEPING, AND SHE'S BEING RUDE!
We regrouped pretty quickly, no harm, no major foul, but on thinking back on this incident, I realize this altercation was a good thing. And yes, I've since gotten caught up on my sleep, so I'm not hallucinating when I say her snippiness (or mine, for that matter) is a good thing. This mother/daughter tension or occasional conflict is as it's supposed to be. When our sons were this age, they were butting heads with Bulldog, but they butt heads with me far less frequently. Bulldog and DJ rarely butt heads either.
So why is this good? Well, on retrospect, having nearly a year and a half of DJ gracing us with her presence (I say that with a smirk because sometimes I think she would have us call her "highness" if she seriously thought she could get away with it) I've come to realize the kid is relaxing into herself. She's been so busy adjusting and transitioning, and was initially so excited about the process, that she was either super cuddly, because now she was free to be that way, or just so slap happy to be able to be her true self that she was HAPPY. ALL. THE. TIME for the first few months. Not a bad thing at all, but seriously, who can be that way every waking second. And if she were, that would be a red flag anyway.
So, I've decided that this typical teenage girl snippiness that I, primarily, am subject to is so blessed typical and, dare I say, "normal" (I don't usually dig that word) for a teenage girl, that I'm going to embrace it!!! OK, that's crap. I'm not going to embrace it, but I am going to look on it benignly. Because when a teenage girl acts like a teenage girl, because she finally can, it's a good thing.
Until Bulldog informed me he'd made other plans. Since I've promised myself that I will only go on one neurotic rampage at a time in this blog, we will not address Bulldog's wrongdoing here. The poor man has heard enough from me on that subject, and since he occasionally reads this blog, I will not subject him to further shrewish kvetching. I managed to grab a quick cat nap before DJ and I headed out for her piano lesson.
I was rueing the fact that I had acted in the aforementioned shrewish way, so in an effort to not repeat that mistake with another family member, I attempted to make small talk with DJ. I asked a benign question about I don't even remember what, and she answered me in a snippy fashion. I continued to attempt small talk thinking perhaps I had misinterpreted her tone, when she answered in the same manner. I asked her what was wrong and she replied, after a whopping 2 minutes in my presence, "I don't know, you're just getting on my nerves."
OK-were I to have lost my temper here, I could only have pled temporary insanity due to lack of sleep, but to my credit, I didn't lose my temper. I did, however, remind her that I was giving up sleep to get her where she needed to go and the last thing in the entire world I needed was to hear that I was getting on her nerves when: a) I'm cranky as all hell and b) I'm trying to be nice as I fight my crankiness and get her to her lesson when really I'd rather be SLEEPING, AND SHE'S BEING RUDE!
We regrouped pretty quickly, no harm, no major foul, but on thinking back on this incident, I realize this altercation was a good thing. And yes, I've since gotten caught up on my sleep, so I'm not hallucinating when I say her snippiness (or mine, for that matter) is a good thing. This mother/daughter tension or occasional conflict is as it's supposed to be. When our sons were this age, they were butting heads with Bulldog, but they butt heads with me far less frequently. Bulldog and DJ rarely butt heads either.
So why is this good? Well, on retrospect, having nearly a year and a half of DJ gracing us with her presence (I say that with a smirk because sometimes I think she would have us call her "highness" if she seriously thought she could get away with it) I've come to realize the kid is relaxing into herself. She's been so busy adjusting and transitioning, and was initially so excited about the process, that she was either super cuddly, because now she was free to be that way, or just so slap happy to be able to be her true self that she was HAPPY. ALL. THE. TIME for the first few months. Not a bad thing at all, but seriously, who can be that way every waking second. And if she were, that would be a red flag anyway.
So, I've decided that this typical teenage girl snippiness that I, primarily, am subject to is so blessed typical and, dare I say, "normal" (I don't usually dig that word) for a teenage girl, that I'm going to embrace it!!! OK, that's crap. I'm not going to embrace it, but I am going to look on it benignly. Because when a teenage girl acts like a teenage girl, because she finally can, it's a good thing.
