Some Swearing in this one.

Sun shiney days are upon us. As soon as it finally stopped raining and got hot here in Vancouver, my daughter Lula says, ‘I wish it were winter.’ Now let me tell you, from a raised right here in Vancouver gal, this is like blasphemy.  We WORSHIP the sun here; if any smidgen of sunlight gets through our thick dense wet dark clouds people RUN out in their bathing suits. Seriously. I’ve seen it with my own two eyes.  And you can guess what she wishes for in the coldest days of winter. Yep.  Parenting is the practice of letting annoying things wash over you.  Of not biting the hook.  Of letting it go.  Of picking your battles.  All this good bad ugly annoying gross disgusting embarrassing horrifying humanness in little cute packages.  Cuteness is totally evolutionary. For SURE.  She has this way, I tell you, of pushing my buttons like no other person on the planet.  My children really do know me the best out of anyone I know.  Better than my husband, better than my best friends, better than my sister, better than my parents, yes better than my own mother.  Only our children watch every facial twitch and every body movement of ours and know what it means and then use their intimate knowledge of us to GET WHAT THEY WANT.  Only our children can do this to us, they are born masters.  And so they are our teachers, our little ones.  They teach us about ourselves.  What we really find annoying, for instance.  Or gross.  Or what makes us angry in an instant.  It can just be a comment.  Or a tone of voice.  Or a touchy topic.  It’s very interesting to me, watching myself.  Watching myself react.

Side bar: neighbourhood noises are coming into my back door that I have open to let the cooling summer evening air in and I just heard an old Chinese lady haranguing her brother/husband/son in that way.  That quintessential WAY.  There’s a lesson in tonality right there.  How to perfect the  BERATING NAG… go listen to old Chinese ladies tear a strip off someone they love.

Anyhoo. back to my topic.  So lately, what’s been getting my knickers in a knot is this DEMANDING WHINE, or WHINEY DEMANDing way Lula has been known to speak at times. Instant bristling.  The subtext is usually along the vein of ENTITLEMENT. ie. YOU OWE ME, or THAT’S NOT FAIR or That’s NOT good enough, it needs to be better NOW, or MAMA,YOU MY BITCH.  God it gets me.   I’ve talked to her about it a billion times.  Yes i point it out, and yes it usually settles down after I go over the major points, something along the lines of: ‘I’m actually NOT your bitch, i don’t care if other parents like to be the bitches but I happen to prefer some mutual respect and YOU GOT TWO ARMS and two LEGS YOU CAN GO GET IT YOURSELF and what in the HELL happened to your MANNERS.  But boy oh boy does it flare up when she’s been around her seven year old friends after a big ol’ birthday cake sugar pinata explosion of parental servitude.  Holy shit. Shit motherfucker.