Alligator Love

[Zues126]

The weekend: Wonderful weekend. Continuing to read the story that my kids are enjoying, they are hanging on every word. A good walk on Saturday. We watched a fun movie. Played some chess. Just relaxed. Sunday I took them to a festival that was in town and we had a good time. I've never ridden an elephant before! Then, Sunday night things started to go a bit wrong.

The fumble: My d4 made a mess out of her school clothes so I started the wash...then the power went out. I found a flash light, got some back up clothes, read to them by flash light, and put them to bed. Monday morning I had a hard time getting going and was running slow. My son's school starts way earlier than it used to, and we have to get across town a bit. Then right as we were running late D8 overflowed the toilet so I had to take care of that. Then I couldn't find my car keys. Then we hit some unexpected traffic. Finally, as I look at what D4 is wearing (the clothes we found in the dark) I see her shorts are WAY too big, like falling off, 4 inches too big. I looked in my front seat as if I expected a safety pin to appear...and then I saw my key chain! I consolidated some keys and took one ring off the key chain, pried it open with a key, folded the extra inches from D4's shorts and used the key chain as a clip to tighten them up. It worked! Hit the road, got them there almost exactly on time.

But not quite. I got the text from STBX about how she got a call from the office wondering what happened. I gave her the short version and explained we'd had a few bumps but I thought we'd made the bell. I was really mad at myself because it was my first Monday morning handoff, and I blew it. I felt worse than being late to a job interview. I was REALLY upset with myself.

The aftermath: I heard through the kids that STBX didn't approve. She didn't think D4 should've been dropped off with shorts too big (D4 told me they stayed up just fine though). She didn't think the book I was reading them was age appropriate (they love it though). And so on. And she continues to give me 30 second mini-lectures when I pick up the kids about how to parent them, although she's clearly making an effort to only say what she feels is critical and let me 'learn from my own mistakes' as she says sometimes.

My thoughts: I have learned a few things from all of this. One is that I have no room for anyone in my life that wants to be critical of me. I mean, I can handle feedback, obviously I make mistakes. So if the tone is "Hey, you're awesome, but this part here isn't working", etc, that's fine. But when someone adapts the premise that I'm just a bumbling fool good for nothing that messes up everything I do and is a necessary evil to be dealt with...well, I'm 100% out. That person is a cancer and needs to be out of my life.

Work was brutally tough Monday morning. So was getting the kids to school while also packing up a weekend's worth of stuff and fighting the power outage and bathroom. Meanwhile I'm in a sales role that would crush most people's soul it's so brutal, I have been having a horrible month and CONTINUE to grind it out, and you know what, despite all of that, despite feeling like crap I kept going, and guess what, closed 2 deals yesterday and a big account today, and will be getting a paycheck this Friday that is gargantuan. I picked the kids back up and had a great night with them. My point of this is that I am EXTREMELY capable, very good at what I do, and my kids are lighting up when I'm around. So anyone that wants to take shots at me or roll their eyes can take their shot, as they say where I come from the betting window is open, they can bet what they want if they think they can do better. STBX obviously bet against me in the sense that she thought I was a problem that needed to be removed from her life. People that bet against me don't win. She wins the loss of an amazing guy. Totally fine. I know what I'm going to do in my life. And I know what I'll bring to anyone that wants to be on my team. But I also know what I expect others to bring, and appreciation instead of criticism is the price of admission.

I also am very appreciative. I realized in the midst of all of the issues Monday that 1 1/2 years ago I wouldn't have had those issues because I wasn't that involved, I wasn't bringing the kids to school, or fighting through these challenges. So I'm appreciative that my relationship with them is so much better that I get to have a bad morning with them...