12/20/99 Panic....DON'T PANIC!

While my Dad, Kim(step-mother) and Matt(10 year-old adopted brother) were visiting, I allowed myself to relax just a little... I let the house deteriorate; opting for a little family time. Monica was still a "non-participant" in the weekend...I guess her back still hurt. She managed to cheer up a little, and carried on conversations from her spot on the sofa.

You don't have to invite the kids to fun, they are hard wired for it, and spent the entire weekend screaming and chasing each other and playing games on the computer. stopping only occasionally to eat,sleep or fight, but mostly they got along pretty well.

Panic

Immediately after my house guests left on Sunday afternoon, Monica's mood went south. Suddenly everything was hopeless and helpless to her. After ten years of marriage, I can predict the trajectory of Monica's moods with amazing accuracy. Kinda like a physicist plotting the path of a martian lander.
This one wasn't good.

"Pain multiplied by time (three weeks in this case) plus a messy house times grumpy kids cubed"
A pretty ugly equation.

An can you believe it? it gets uglier. I took the kids to the store with me, and all they did was fight and cry and whine....well, I finally reached my boiling point and blew-up. I didn't scream at them (I guess I did yell) or spank them, I just took them out of the shopping cart and took them home. I mainly stomped around giving them the silent treatment...really childish of me. I got home and fummed for about 45 agonizing minutes. The kids were pretty dumbfounded...both parents in a bad mood at the same time.....you could have heard a pin drop. Later Me and the kids went back to the store, found our abandoned shopping cart still in the produce aisle where we left it... I apologized for being grumpy...they apologized for not behaving, we bought lots of junk food and everybody felt better. Everyone that is except for Monica.

Monica's mood had degraded while the kids and I shopped. So I shuffled the kids to bed and proceeded to clean the house like a mad-man. Finally at 2am I informed Monica I was going to bed. She mentioned the stacks of folded laundry in the living room and a hankerin' she had developed for late-night fast food. I managed to avoid making an offer to remedy either problem and put myself to bed

okay panic.