Embrace the suckiness

part of the art of mothering is being an annoying pain in the butt. I've gotten to the point where I actually enjoy that part of the job, much to the womanchild's chagrin. As I'm learning to "mother" myself some, I've found that my daughter and I share a certain irritation at one of my habits. I'm always looking for learning opportunities and use my own analogous learning style to communicate them.

This is so annoying to C. that she will turn to me and sigh, "Is this another life metaphor?" When she's on the receiving end, I just chuckle wickedly. When I'm the one learning the lesson, my response is usually, "Oh no, I'm doing it again." It actually takes some doing to be a pain in your own butt.

However, in a computer card game of Hearts, I've found my latest metaphor. There are times when your hand is going so badly, the best thing you can do is just make it worse and try to grab every heart and the queen of spades. Instead of trying to dodge the points, you just take them. The key thing is knowing when you can take every card. If you take them all, what would normally mount up the points against you turns into zero points for you and a lot for all of your competition. You miss and you're further behind than ever.

In life, there are times you just have to do the same thing. Look at everything that's going wrong and own it. Oh, it's not easy. I wonder just how pathetic can one life get. I moan, bitch, weep and wail. I have to develop a big, multi-faceted plan that addresses everything that I want to change. After that point, I can say, "Damn, woman, you are one heck of a broad to take this on, but you're doing it." After seeing the whole ugly picture, I can then focus on one thing at a time and address it as needed. There are times when I can't take every hit that comes my way, and I dodge it to take on what I can. If I don't know about the problems though, if I don't accept that there's work to be done, regardless of how hard or how much it will be, I just get further and further behind.

I have to embrace the horror of it all and hold that hand close to my heart, knowing that if I do, I will eventually come out ahead. That's when the music changes from moaning and bitching to jumping and jiving. Either way, I get to wail.

life lessons, metaphors, responsibility, mothering