Random Reflections

I'm sorry its been such a long time between posts. Life is busy, busy, busy . I have mentioned before that this summer has been rough for us, and the past week has been another not-so-great one. The weekend was bad. I am ashamed to admit, I broke a T.V. and on purpose. Not just any television, but the one Albert had JUST hung the week before, and was so proud of. I lost my temper and smashed it with a baby gate. Nice, huh? Really, I'm not proud of it. I smashed the television in response to my husband throwing a book which hit some dishes and broke them. Extra nice. We both are very aware that we MUST find better outlets to alleviate stress, and handle our anger and frustrations. We both know handling things this way is unacceptable. Like I said, the summer has been very hard. Albert working two jobs has been very hard. We are working on it and fighting hard to keep our marriage. We love each other a lot. Love isn't really the issue here. Drowning in a sea of overwhelming stress is. Truthfully, I think we might both be going through a bout of depression. This happens frequently to me after the birth of each of our children, it's just seeming to kick in a bit later than usual this time. Right now, today, things are much better. We've apologized to each other, to our children who of course suffer the most in situations like these. We've prayed about it and are really, really trying. And hoping. We kept our children home from school Tuesday and talked to them about the weekend and about the changes we wanted to make in our family (except for Manny who refused to stay home with us, recoiling in horror at the prospect of "double homework the next day." I WISH I was half as disciplined as he is). We talked about respecting each other (parents and siblings) about anger control, harsh words, harsh actions and unconditional love. They seemed to listen and seemed to understand. Until about two minutes later when two of them broke out in a backseat brawl in the middle section of the big van. Obviously we still have some work to do.

Tonight, I took three of our children to Walmart to grocery shop. The three I brought with me were Jackson, Brice and Alexandria. On the way out of the driveway, I backed over a tricycle. See, that's the type of stress I don't handle well. Brice had brought his harmonica with him and persisted in playing it in the van. I probably asked him to stop at least two dozen times. When we arrived at the store, he behaved in the old-fashioned Brice way. He crashed into someone's cart, threw random things in the cart, and made his little sister cry. He made believe he had a cell phone and talked loudly on it throughout the aisles, and kept telling me that the phone was for me as he stepped on my toes and thrust his "phone", which was really a wadded up Pepperoni Combo's wrapper, up to my ear. When I told him that I couldn't talk right then, he exclaimed loudly that I HAD to talk, because it was GOD on the phone. "Talk to God! Talk to God!" he kept shouting. At the check out, he disappeared and was located in the video game room. On the way home, when Alexandria wanted to pray out loud for a safe drive (something I do often) Brice kept blowing on the harmonica each time she began to pray. As she prayed out loud, her conversation with God was punctuated with the sound effects of Brice's blues playing.

At home while I made dinner, several of the little ones came running in to let me know that an old man was at the end of our drive way digging through our trash. I checked out the situation and indeed, they were correct. I quickly explained to our concerned children that this was technically okay and not against the rules but that just the same, I wanted them all to stay in the house with me until the man was gone. A few moments later, I couldn't find Alexandria. I looked downstairs and upstairs. I called her name over and over and bolted out the door to see if she was outside. I have to say, I thought the worst. I found her though, laying between the couch and the ottoman, she just apparently hadn't felt like answering when I called. Yet again...things I don't handle well.

Tomorrow, two of the boys have football games. One plays in Dupo at two o'clock and the other plays in Waterloo at three o'clock. Dupo and Waterloo are a ways away from each other. Hmmmm, wonder how that's going to work out? It's ten at night, and I'm not really sure yet. Guess I'll worry about it tomorrow. Going to bed for now, and going to pray for a good weekend. For us, and for our kids.