Rage and Empathy and Lap Tortoises

This blog might tend to run negative because more often than not it is feelings of impotent rage that inspire me to actually sit down and type.

(Digression....it occured to me that "impotent rage" is a redundant expression -- rage, more often than not, is an expression of impotence or powerlessness -- that is the difference between "rage" and "wrath" ....you don't hear about the "rage of God" so much)

Anyways, before I write about what caused my current feelings of rage (recollected in tranquility now), let me describe some positive things about Princess that happened yesterday, April 22.

• She got a phone call from a friend she met yesterday at the boy scout fair (specifically, the reptile booth, where she and little sister spent much time with the lizards and snakes). The friend was a tomboyish girl her age whose dad was friends with the reptile booth. They seemed to really hit it off, and exchanged numbers (in my case, my cell phone number). So she called. Yay. Normal girl socializing. Although, (and this is something I've noticed before), Princess's attention wanes swiftly in phone conversations. Rather than gab for hours (do girls do this anymore, or is everything text and facebook?), Princess talks for a couple minutes, than abruptly stops and hangs up, or hands phone to Little Sister.
• She has adopted our awakened-from-hibernation desert tortoise George, and spent hours (?) with George curled up (well, I suppose not too literally curled) on her lap, not something one usually sees with a tortoise. George didn't seem to mind.
• While watching one of our favorites shows, "Amazing Race," she remarked how frustrated this person was in trying to complete one of the tasks. "nice empathy" praised my wife, making sure to note it.
• She apparrently was nice when mom took her with when she was helping a friend make costumes for a church/youth production of Rogers/Hammerstein "Cinderella."

But then, these also happened....

• Princess showed up with cookie mix; I scrambled to help her mix it up with butter and egg; she abandoned me in mid-mix, only to show up when I was placing cookies on the sheet; she made tiny little cookies, then went to eat the remaining dough herself. Cue scenes of her being chased by me around the house while clutching bowl of cookie dough. Rage!

• I was trying to get the girls in the car for what has become our weekly visit to see Birthmom in jail, and told Little Sister that she could toss the scooter in the car (thought it would be nice to have during the mandatory one-hour wait). Princess then takes her bicycle (the nice one we bought, the one that has flat tires and is missing a bolt) in the car, I tell her to take it out, she absolutely refuses, standoff! Rage!  I enlist wife for reinforcements; she notices the missing bolt and tells Princess she can't ride the bike, and besides, where's the helmet....I retreat inside, only to look out and see Princess running outside with her mean impudent expression. She hits Wife where it hurts -- pulling up some flowers, including reseeded poppies wife had found while weeding......banished to the bathtub (being careful to clear bathroom of breakables first)....I need to email birthmom and explain why we didn't make the visit

The Dalai Lama speaks....

So his holiness the DaLai Lama is speaking today at SDSU, and I am catching the video feed.

Trying to remember some of the main points.....

He believes all people, beginning as children, have seed of compassion within them....this seed may or may not be overwhelmed by environment as part of growing up. Humans are inherently compassionate...?

(he's never met Princess)

Snark aside, this verbalizes the challenge as to nurturing the seed of compassion in Princess (and me, and the rest of the family), which means I need to find her seed of compassion and empathy.....too often all I see and hear are selfishness and "go away daddy"

As for nurturing the seed, he talks about the importance of the love a child gets from his/her mother as key for future mental well being (very gender specific here).  Later in QA session talks improtance of providing "affection" to our children."

The key to mental well being is having a "calm" mind.

His voice is making me very drowsy......



greatest influence (after Buddha)...Mahatma Ghandi, whom he never met -- except once, in a dream

"so much depends on your own self confidence, your own optimism"

its my catch-22 -- yes, I could be more confident in myself if only I was more confident in myself

update:  here is a video excerpt of the conference....

here is a link to the whole speech  (click the play video)

post spring break pre therapy session roundup

Okay, school is finally back in session (yay!); also, we are picking up Princess in a few minutes to go to the third session with our new therapist. This one will involve, apparently, video recording. Not sure how to anticipate this.

But first, a few quick things to write down before time recedes further.

Over the course of two weeks spring break, the behavior patterns of Princess and Little Sister remained firm, at least in regards with me. By which I mean, Princess spent much of the time avoiding me, staying in her room, on the computer, watching tv....or playing with her sister. Often when I entered the room, the words commonly expressed were variations of "go away dad."

Little Sister, on the other hand, when she wasn't playing with Princess, would often want to spend time with me, reading, snuggling, playing "school." More than Princess at her age.

Anyways, one of the things Princess when she was alone in her room was to go out of her room, into the garage, and rummage around (as described earlier)....Last night when I went to do laundry, I found the detergent, and softener, the Clorox 2 stainremover, the bleach, the Shout -- all gone. All containers empty and poured out.

Why does she do this? How common is such behavior?

Also, she had a little tantrum, wanting to take all the bag of apples and put them in our blue ceramic bowl, which is cracked, and which was a wedding gift. Wrestling with her over the bowl without trying to break it further. We gave her one apple; she responded by giving a rather spectacular demonstration of what happens when you throw an red delicious apple as hard as you can on a bamboo floor (sorry, no video). Apple explosion.

OTOH, she was funny and goofy and endearing at her weekly visit with her birth mom at the local jail ..... She had just seen Star Wars or something, and kept saying "May the force be with you" and doing big Darth Vader breaths. Little Sister of course picked up on this.

epic fail

So Princess was playing at a friend's house today, and the friend's brother introduced her to the "epic fail" genre of Youtube videos (well, introduce might be too strong a word; she probably saw them before).....She was watching them on the computer here while I was trying to cook supper. It is a source of genuine laughter and glee on her part, something I hear seldom enough so as to be happy to hear it at all. Laughter mixed with astonishment and wonder at the scenes of people jumping off a roof, attempting to flip in midair and land in a garbage container, and missing it. Or crashing off an ATV. Or falling off a running machine (you know, with the conveyor belt). Or a person filling his mouth with an alcoholic drink, and lighting it in fire, only to set his shirt, hair, and chair on fire as well. I tried, lamely I fear, to inteject some commentary on how stupid this or that thing was, and of course you would not try such a thing yourself. Don't know if such commentary is effective. On the other hand, some of it really was funny, and it is always nice to share something funny with my girl.

too much crap

My blog has been in the death spiral of previous blogs and writing projects.....procrastination leads to guilt leads to pressure as more and more crap pours down my way, leading to more procrastination and pressure and guilt, till finally an explosion here of....you get the idea

I really should be writing things down on a more daily basis, as a lot has happened between now and my last post, and I can't really do everything justice be rushing back and covering them Memento style, or weeks/days after the fact.

So, that would include the princess's report card, our discovery of a new therapist, visit one to the therapist (for parents), visit two (for the princess), as well as the princess's visits to her birthmom who, after some months of disappearance, is now in jail, again. As well as various other little incidents and stories and conflicts, such as the time the princess and I in a rare warm and positive moment danced the Tango together (sorta), only to accidently kick little sister's cd player onto the floor. Fortunately, it still works.

Maybe I would have time to write about those in more detail in the future, when they are even further in the past. Maybe not. Just now if feels like a big pile of crap I am buried in, to be dug out of and flung aside.

And this doesn't include all the other piles of crap I am buried under at the moment....the trying to find a job pile, the trying to get the house in order pile, the trying not to let life run away from me pile.....

But onto today, more craptacular than usual.

I don't think I lost my temper with princess today. Other people did though.

It started out with a trip the the dentist. Princess was a princess. And the dentist was kind enough to make go against their general policy and accept our state insurance plan (princess and her sister have it because of their former foster child status). And while four cavities and one missing cap sound bad (aargh), at least princess beats sister, who had the same number of cavities, and an infection that required extraction.

We came back before ten, and my lovely wife (LW) was in a lovely mood because of the hour of relative peace and quiet. This eventually wore away and broke down however, until she was at wit's end, like yesterday, due to Princess's penchant for getting into boxes of things that, unlike many of our possessions, were actually put away and organized and (seemingly) safe. Things like family pictures and school artwork and scrapbooks grandparents and teachers had made for them, among other things, that were suddenly found floating around the house in a very disorganized fashion.

This really hurts LW -- she has a passion for keeping things (sometimes to my frustration), and she has, or had, a system of keeping things organized and safe. But not from Princess. Princess seems to make a special point of going after things, and not even using or seeming to appreciate them, but just going after boxes, picking one thing out, and tossing the rest on the floor.

It is hard. "She is cruel," my LW says, and goes on in despairing way on how Princess has made her life miserable.

Later my Boy Scout Son (BSS), who usually takes things in a very smooth stride, gets his limit. Princess is in the kitchen, making cupcakes (she found a box and wanted to make them, and I let her, after steering her away from her first choice, popcorn, because we had no frying oil and loose kernels cannot be popped in the microwave, or so I told her)....Then, for some reason, she wanted to dice an onion, to top the caserrole I had made for everyone. Find, fine, fine...I'm cooking, she's dicing, little sis is watching Netflix, BSS is in his room. I tell him dinner is ready, he comes out to grab some grub, and...princess loses it. Screams. Screams some more. Tells him he can't have any dinner (WTF?)  Grabs a rubbermaid plastic pitcher/container, throws it on marble floor, breaking it.

Brother than picks up and carries Princess to her room. Later, he and Princess have verbal confrontation.....he tells her in not-loud but angry tone of voice that she shouldn't exist, that she should leave, that she should die. It takes me back.....makes me feel sad and defeated.

Then the door knocks. Its our neighbor Joe, who moved a couple years ago and from almost the beginning decided he didn't like us. He says he can hear screaming, and people throwing things, and that this really needs to stop.

Its midnight.....must go to bed  (did I mention my laptop is at the shop getting disinfected from its 300 viruses it apparently has, and I'll get it back when we can scrape together the money to fix it?)

Thanks, Joe.  

Funny thing is, though, Princess calms down shortly after that, gets back to work on her cupcakes. Later, when little sister is crying, she tells her very seriously to be quiet, or joe will come back.  Princess will not respond to my entreaties to quiet down, but she will respond to Joe.