Adventures in Parenting

I'd like to move on from the lemon yellow, but we need to keep the red windows. I like the idea of blue or green as a main color but I don't want to much American Flag vibes or Christmas Tree vibes.

This week a story broke about a rescue north of us, a no-kill rescue that local Animal Control had been sending dogs to. There are hundreds of dogs that they claim they adopted out but can’t say to whom. They were just executing dogs. Hundreds of them.

Which I already knew. He’s 17. I’m 50. And tbh when I was 21 I was a homebody and I wanted to take a pot of tea to my stoop and write letters.

But I would like a parenting gold star because I didn’t say “you dumb fuck. We could have been camping and surfing in Santa Barbara all week but you made such a show of not coming out of your tent for two days straight and asking if we could go home yet that we decided to go home. I would have loved to stay. I would love to spend the winter skiing every weekend but you refuse to go. I would love to have friends over but you make such a scene about the intrusion that I feel like I can’t.”

I don’t blame him for any of it (okay, i do a little) but I definitely find it rich when he says my life is boring.

I was just like "sorry, but I've been wearing louder outfits and every damn time women stop me in the street to say I look good so you can expect a lot more loud fits from me."

And someone was like "you do have amazing earrings. I was kind of jealous of the ones you were wearing last week"

Those were the earrings I worried were too much.

But a friend in my moms+substance abuse group is dealing with a kid who is spiraling on meth and not sure what to do.

My kid refuses to go to the dentist. He threw a fit over his last appointment because he doesn't like the clinic near us (it needs a refresh; there's another clinic in the same network that's like 20 min away vs 5 minutes, the farther clinic just got a big redesign and it is definitely more attractive). He flatly refused to go.

I sat with it a while, talked to him about it, convinced him that dental care is important, made a new appointment. For noon today.

They confirmed on Friday, I reminded him. He said "okay."

I reminded him again yesterday and suddenly he's concerned that this is his first day at his new job (would have been good info to have Friday; we've been trying to get him to tell us what his schedule is for ages) and he doesn't want to go. Tells me he doesn't need to go to the dentist because he already had braces.

I can let this go. I'm doing my level best to let this go. I hate it, it's ridiculous, but I can't battle with him on this.

Actually, though, I do. This weekend I was walking with N and a woman passing us said "I love your outfit!"