this week

Well, it's been a helluva week.
It started out not-so-good, and stayed that way for most of it. Emotionally, that is.
Hormones on tilt for a while, Maddie bugging Trev and Trev retaliating with shouts and pushes and bonks and hits, sliding off the road while driving a couple of times (in four-wheel drive), arriving upon a car accident just a couple of minutes after it happened (SUV upside down on the interstate, two other cars facing the wrong way - same day as sliding off the road twice - which made me bawl and bawl because the upside down one was four feet away from me and everyone was walking around and apparently no one was hurt, and there were no children in the accident, but mine asked me why I was crying and all I could say was "I'm just so thankful....") a visit at a friend's house a few minutes later (where we were headed) which bothered me, I felt like we were a nuisance, my children love animals and play rowdily with our dog, and wanted to be fully engaged with these dogs, too, but these dogs of course were not used to that, and I felt like we were causing problems, and then of course when my son would shout for whatever reason I was overly worried about it because of the recent interactions with Madd at home and the pms and the stress of the other goings on....
Blech. That gets us through Monday.

Tuesday was more of the same - at one point when I was vacuuming up birdseed that had been dumped all over the livingroom and carried into the kitchen (Remember how I said on OLM that I came upstairs to chaos after cleaning the downstairs on Tuesday?)- three times Madd came to me crying because Trev had hurt her, and the third time I just told Trev "Go to your room" (which is never done in our home) because I had no skills and was still on tilt and needed a couple of minutes to get this damned bird seed cleaned up and if she came to me crying again in the next two minutes I was going to scream, and when I got it vacuumed up and went and talked to Trev he cried and said "I'm such a bully," and "I'm never coming out of this room, am I?" and "I'll miss playing with you guys."
sigh.
And then the kicker - "Mom, couldn't you just speak to me quietly and give me some gentle information?"
Gentle information indeed.
Which led our conversation to my not having very good skills and his "wanting to be loving on the inside but being angry on the outside." his words - but ones I understand fully and completely.

I think after that (Tuesday) things started to turn around - but it was a slow transition.

Wednesday was our recoup day. It was the day that Trev just read all day.
Which I want to get into but I think I want to save that for another post because it's such a big thing, and I don't really want to taint it with all of this other yuck....

The rest of the week I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned - a house in chaos and piles of laundry and pms do not mix well - and I've got calendars due in a few days, and that takes a lot of time, and coming out of that fog to a messy house is also a recipe for disaster....

So. I cleaned.
And am well rid of the yuck (emotional as well as mini-messes) - our home once again feels clean and peaceful and right -
and I am so, so thankful.