Anxiety, Anger and Irony.

My life. Geeze. Yesterday I was so close to the edge.

Open the scene with the search for the boy's missing pool towel. The one with the currently popular licensed character that had him sobbing for 20 minutes when I discovered it missing on Friday. No towel in the lost and found. Nothing at all. Managed to keep the boy from hysterical crying but just barely.

Drive to work. Get a long rambling, hinting and downright weird phone call from favored tech at the ops center. Ostensibly to find out how I'm doing but more a vent of his anxieties. He hints about being careful and things falling through the cracks and his "guilty knowledge". I am left confused and anxious.

Head down to the lobby shop for chocolate to sooth me. Get in the elevator with competent manager's assistant who asks how I am. OK, I say. And then promptly gets in my face to ask "really?".

Pass the remaining day in strange speculation with webguy, attempts not to surf too much because of favored techs cryptic warnings and boredom, because if I can't surf what the heck am I supposed to do between tasks.

Leave a morsel late because favored tech is having similar bizarre phone call with webguy and I want his impressions. Leave when it becomes clear this will be a long call.

Collect child. Try the last lost and found. No towel. Happily the boy is only mildly hysterical. Head to former co-workers to pickup veggies. Have a lovely conspiracy theory discussion with her (yikes).

Go home and start the boy's summer work book. Husband volunteers to get dinner take out and I agree. The work book has 4 exercises for the day. We finish 2 and have dinner. We start the third and the hysterics commence.

The exercise is to unscramble one word in each of 10 sentences. The boy doesn't want to read the sentences. We struggle to get the first one. Then he argues over the second when I insist that zipper does indeed have 2 "p"s in it. Resolving it peacefully requires a dictionary. We get number 4 my way (reading the sentence) with eyerolls and sighs and skip 5 because it is too hard for him. The hysteria is building. We head to number 6. He argues that the word old is oil. He argues that the sentence "My old shoes do not fit my feet" does not make sense (see previous supposition regarding oil). He will not be swayed. He argues until he starts screaming. Finally I send him to his room.

After 5 minutes I discover he has chosen the hallway instead of the room and I correct his notion of doing what he's told. I leave him in for 5 minutes during which he sings and plays. While I fret and fume. I release him and tell him he can finish the workbook but I won't help because he doesn't believe me anyway. Tag DH is it. After less than 5 minutes the boy gets frustrated in some fashion and whacks his head on the chair. I come in to try to comfort him and he screams no at me. So I left. I went outside, looked at the flowers, counted fireflies. Then I came back in. Just as DH was sending him to his room to calm down.

The boy is screaming "I want my mommy" but when I go to him he screams no, cringes or runs from me. But still he screams "I want my mommy". When I try to speak he puts his fingers in his ears and say "it almost sounds like someone is talking to me". So I leave and do other things. Finally DH says the boy wants me. My gut reaction is that I sure as hell don't want him.

Finally I go up, he comes down and we finish the few remaining items on the work book. Elapsed time for this little activity 2 hours and 45 minutes. When he finishes he looks up and says "it's probably bedtime, isn't it". And in fact it is.

Today I was cleaning out the old inbox at work and discovered the company newsletter from last month. It featured a wonderful glowing article about the bossman. Love the irony.

Tomorrow I go and get irradiated.