End of the line

The good news is I’ve eaten on plan for 2 days. Monday afternoon the hub & I went to the gym. Yesterday morning I got up and walked. We have a date to hit the gym this afternoon, and plans to go lift tomorrow morning.

I am particularly grateful that I seem to have gotten the stress down to a manageable level since I am nearly out of pants. I have one pair of jeans that fit. My Chino’s dress pants (I have 2 pair) look okay as long as I am wearing a long sweater. I’m trying not to go off the deep end and wig out & try to starve myself. But I am feeling panicky at the realization that I am at the top of my wardrobe. That’s scary.

But we aren’t focusing on that, instead we’re focusing on the positive steps I’ve made!

"Puberty is like a roller coaster. Sometimes its so steep you can't even see the track. Unfortunately, parents are strapped in the back seat."

Having a conversation with my son is quite the adventure these days. For one, he isn’t capable of rational thought anymore, and two, he cannot articulate his needs. I was so happy when around age 3, he could finally tell me what he needed. I’m so sad that skill seems to have vanished.

Last night we had a very interesting conversation. It took somewhere around 90 minutes – largely because he kept getting frustrated and leaving. We’d attempt rational conversation again, make a bit of headway, and he’d get frustrated and go to his room. 90 minutes to get at the following: he would like to paint his bedroom a more mature color and he would like the hall bathroom to be his (currently my husband uses it).

Could he say that? Of course not. First he had to have a fit when I wouldn’t let him paint his room black with spray paint highlights. Then he decided to have a cow because of the home improvement projects that need to be done, we decided that replacing the worn out carpeting in the common areas was the highest. (My husband receives profit sharing twice a year from the reservation. We use the June check for house maintenance and to pay for pennsic.)

The boy wants top priority to be gutting the hall bathroom. The problem is that it looks okay and everything works. So its hard to justify making that the top priority. I’m not crazy about the hall bathroom either – it looks like a hotel room bathroom – beige, impersonal, and trapped in the 80s.

After much back and forth and dramatics, we finally agreed that we would paint the walls, paint the cabinet, replace the towel bars and possible counter, and add some storage to the walls so that he would have a place to put stuff. Hub has to continue to use the shower, but we agreed that he would move most of his stuff out so it would be mainly the boy’s bathroom.

At the end of it all, it was a win in that we met everyone’s needs, but lordy it wasn’t easy!