Buying happiness

I never thought i would buy my kid the overly expensive, name brand things.

My mom didn't. She couldn't afford to. And although we can technically afford to, philosophically I am not on board with designer kids stuff for many reasons. Mostly, you don't need a bunch of name brand, expensive things to be liked. I used to judge parents in malls buying their kids such things.

That was until I got a kid, and I wanted that kid to be liked, and all my attempts at buying less expensive "cool" shoes have back fired. Proving that a 34-year-old has no real sense of what is cool to 11-year-olds.

So behold Rose in shoes more expensive than any I owned until I was 27. Will they automatically make her popular? Nope. Did they make her so happy that she's been up since seven today wearing them around the house? Yep.

So that is probably worth the cost, my loss of personal conviction, and the people who were walking by the shoe store judging me.

Organized Chaos?

I have had a pretty big struggle the past few weeks. Note I didn't say Rose had a struggle. I said me.

My struggles have been in realizing how much Rose has been lying and defying us. That alone doesn't bug me. Kids will push boundaries. I want her to. It's her response to being caught that kills me. Kills me.

She will admit to whatever it is sometimes but then argue about why she was  right to break whatever rule has been offended. It feels like there's no getting through to her. More over, my worry amps up thinking about the dangers she'll encounter as she gets older.

I want her to be able admit to those mistakes to us. I want her to know that if she ends up in trouble as a teen, we can help. And  I want to be able to help without me shaking in anger after listening to Rose explain why she decided staying out until 2 a.m. was ok. Or whatever.

Last night, I was awake almost all night mulling this over. I was also mulling over my smashed-up Mustang, our kitchen currently being repaired and painted, and surprisingly those worries pushed all thoughts of work out of my mind. Woot.

Here's my poor first ever brand new, my dream car after rear ending a Dodge Durango.

Around four a.m. this morning I reset my alarm as I decided to skip boot camp at 5 a.m. I did just finish a half marathon Saturday and felt a little entitled. My muscles are still a bit sore, and after no more than 2 hours of solid sleep enduring another hour of vigorous exercise hardly seemed wise.

This morning, Rose was defiant, bordering on emotional abusive, as always lately. I weathered the storm pretty well. Then I dropped her off, I noticed the brake light in my sister's truck was blinking. It's a 26-year-old truck she can't use right dow due to herniated discs in her neck. So I have no confidence the light is just an old truck bein quirky or if it's real. I'm lucky she can lend it to me while my car is repaired. But I'm not willing to risk my life getting to work in it.

Rather than hitting the free way, I decided to come home because my sis wasn't answering her phone and couldn't confirm that my commute to the office wouldn't end in a fiery crash. I had to take care of insurance paperwork anyway, and I took a personal day. After dealing with my insurance stuff, I began to think about Rose again.

That's when I realized half of the lies she was trying to cover up revolved around the total and utter mess her room was in. It's easy to hide things in a room that's a pig sty. I decided to spend about two hours of my personal day deep cleaning her room. I figured the act might make her happy because she might be overwhelmed by the chaos. Or, she might be angry about how much stuff I purged. I was willing to take the risk

When she walked in and saw the work I'd done she was thrilled. Yay. She's hugged me, twice. As I figured, most of the stuff I threw she didn't even remember shoving into drawers. I left a pile of stuff on her table for her to organize. I explained how I'd emptied and sorted her bins--assigning clear tasks for each.

I wonder if maybe part of Rose's sass the past week was resulting from the utter chaos her room was in. I know I feel off kilter when my car, office, or bedroom is messy but I am a little "type a" that way. Then I realize maybe part of my heightened frustration toward Rose's behaviors lately revolve around the chaos in my own life (the kitchen in disrepair, the intense training, the broken car). Who knows.

Here are some after pics of Rose's room. Yes, it's still pink.

(Wish I had realized the chaos of my life and her room would lend themselves to a blog post so I'd thought to take a pre pic.)