Frustration

My #wordoftheweek has to be Frustration.  I’ve loved my half term –coming as it did on the back end of a busy Bank Holiday where I had had a procedure on my Achilles tendon under great hilarity and a local anesthetic <footloose>, watched Little Man with pride in his Modern dance exam, heard in great detail how Eldest Son and his rowing team had got through to the Semi Finals at the National Schools Rowing Regatta in Nottingham, and dispatched Middle Son off to another sleepover where he had a great time at the Cotswold Country Park.  And that was just the beginning of Half Term.

But I feel an overriding sense of frustration.  My foot is not healing in the miraculous time frame that I had set it, conscious perhaps that we have a big family driving holiday booked in the summer to Italy, where we will be touring lots of cities and doing a lot of sightseeing – and I don’t want to be the one that slows things down.  I feel frustration that I can’t , for the moment, walk the dog every day for an hour through the surrounding muddy hills – not realizing perhaps that I need it as much as he, if only for the sacred space to think.

I feel frustrated that every time I ask the Teen or Tween to walk the aforesaid dog, the initial reply is why they can’t, and this then results in an argument, and then they do.  Indeed, it is frustrating that any request is met with ‘In a minute’, and yet I am expected to drop everything to ferry them off to whatever they have arranged.

I get frustrated at random things – people making thoughtless comments on social media, people rearranging my time without my knowledge, bad service in a restaurant, empty jam jars put back in the fridge, and running out of loo roll as you are sitting on the toilet.

And it came to a head last night when I realised that we had no gravy granules for a run of the mill easy to cook dinner of bangers and mash.  I asked Eldest Son, who was watching the telly, to walk down to the local shop and fetch some for me.  He looked up and said that he was happy not to have gravy.  I took a deep breath – how about the rest of the family, maybe they would like gravy?  He shrugged.  He realised that he had gone too far as steam poured from my ears, and I switched the oven off.  He asked what I was doing.  I said that I was happy not to have dinner.  He smiled, realizing the irony behind the situation, and went off to get the gravy granules.

I love my kids, but sometimes they frustrate me.  But today, they have made a monumental effort to help out.  Middle Son has stripped his bed, Little Man has tidied his room and Eldest Son has walked the dog.

We are in a happy  place.

For now…

I would love to hear your comments!