Do you Ever Just Want to Cry?

Sometimes, I do.  Like now.  I am not particularly upset about anything, but I think I am emotionally over-rort.

Winter seems to have settled in here.  The days (and nights) are really cold and it has been raining for most of this month as well.  Cold rain.

Maybe if I walked in it, it would wash away all my wearies, but I doubt it.  I think that I would just end up cold and wet as well as all else.

Today I had a couple of friends over, with the younger members of their respective broods.  It was a nice day in many ways, but it was also very tough.  At the end of the day, I was totally exhausted.  My house looks like a bomb has hit it (even after we cleaned up), the best I could do in the backyard was drag stuff that shouldn’t get wet under cover, the cubby house door has been kicked in and broken (by the one child that is, you know, that child), and somehow I need to keep functioning to not only clean up, but prepare dinner and do the night rituals solo mio as tonight is my husband’s squash night.

You know, sometimes it is too much.  I am tired and cranky now.  I don’t want to deal with tired, cranky kids suffering from cabin fever from the rain.  I don’t want to do it on my own, either.  I hate squash night.

And I hate being a slave to the school bell.  One of my friends that came by today used to be a regular squash night catch up.  The kids would play until the end of the day, we’d toss them all in a bath together and plonk them in pjs.  Then it was simply home to dinner and bed (or wave bye-bye, dinner and bed).  Now we have to call it quits too early for that, so that we can do school pick-ups.

I guess I am also annoyed at my eldest son (HJ6)’s school.  He is a sensitive soul and also suffers a lot of anxiety.  Transition to school has not been smooth.  By the end of the first term we were starting to make some progress.  This term has been a mess.  The poor lad is working so hard on his “sight words”, but his teacher won’t test him, despite testing others.  You see, they have to ask (yeah, nag) to be tested.  My timid, introverted, anxious, sensitive child can’t do that.  He asks sometimes, but that takes everything he has got, and so far it has come to nothing.  Also, there have been a lot of times lately when they haven’t had a class teacher and has been dispersed amongst other classes.  I am not happy about this, not as a regular thing.  It is a whole other post.  But I was really annoyed when I picked him up today to find out that he had spent the entire day in another room.  In another grade.  Not really doing any work.  Again.  He could have been home playing with us.

You see, I like the idea of homeschooling.  I haven’t been able to do it this year for two significant reasons:

1. My younger kids are too demanding and I wouldn’t be able to give it the attention required
2. My health

So I feel like I have failed my son by sending him to school, especially given his anxieties etc.  This makes me even more angry when the school/system fails me.

What I want to know is if this is a bad-luck aberration or if this is the way things are run at this school.  And what I don’t understand, is why am I the only parent concerned by all this.

I don’t need this concern.  Not today.  Not on a day when discovering that the capsicum I had bought for dinner tonight has been eaten spirals me into defeat and tears.

Today I need gentle treatment.  I needed HJ6 to come home with a Violet Word list and a smile.  I need happy kids that will fall into bed early.

I need space and energy to have a good cry.