Wow. The week before school starts is always a little nerve-wracking for me and the kids but this year it was just insane. As I mentioned, Jackson is now living with us full-time, a decision that was made seven days (yes, days) before he started seventh grade. Now, were it up to me, I would say some rather unkind and harsh things to his mother both making this decision and choosing to make it so close to the start of school.
Austin and I also bought a minivan this last week. That involved about three days of test driving, negotiating, and researching cars. I hate car shopping with a passion but I'm also really good at it. Austin and I have completely opposite and complimentary styles of shopping - I'm all about numbers, practicality, and usefulness. He's much more interested in the "emotional" side of the transaction - how things feel, or look, or how we relate to the vehicles. It's an odd and maybe unusual combination but it tends to work well for us in making decisions.
So, with all of that going on, the HoH and D/s stuff kind of took a nosedive. I threw a fit Friday evening when things were all discombobulated and Austin just didn't know what to do with me. I refused to listen to him, or take a break, or be nice to him, or even try to breathe for a minute before getting on with the evening. The kids have a habit of all converging on our house asking questions, demanding food, and generally disrupting any sense of peace and tranquility I've managed to create during the time they were gone. It happens every other week so I really should be used to it but it still manages to rile me up just about every time.
Add in dealing with an ex-husband who has been uncharacteristically temperamental and demanding lately, my feelings about Austin's ex-wife and her choices that deeply affect our family, and my general level of anxiety and I become more than a handful.
Austin has backed off of trying to run things just because I can get so hard to handle and it's very difficult to maintain any kind of enforceable dynamic without the time and privacy to enforce it. It's not a choice he was actually eager to make but when the opportunity to carry through with a consequence for being rude to him did not become available over the course of five days, it just sort of lost its steam. He resigned himself to talking more and figuring out how to keep things from going to crisis to crisis, which has been mostly how we've been operating lately.
