First Day of Fall

 Ahh Fall. We think of autumn leaves, starting to get a touch colder, Johnnie's birthday, pumpkin carvings and his favorite season Halloween! Alas no-go on that last part since LA County has basically outlawed Halloween. sigh. No trick or treating for Johnnie this year I guess. But at least we can probably still carve out a pumpkin, just like we did last year. This morning I was feeling a wave of anxiety actually and I wasn't really sure where it was coming from. I'm hoping it's simply because it's back to home-schooling-Johnnie mode for me, and he has a FULL day today too, even after his last class. He's got swimming class and then that computer class from LAUSD at 3 PM. It's such a full day that I'm just going to put up pictures from the day. 

Here is Johnnie starting his schedule of classes at 9 AM. The thing about the classes this morning is that I had a real problem with it. I had a real problem... with ME. Maybe it was that bout of anxiety first thing but I sure didn't seem like I had a lot of patience all day today and especially this morning. And I was losing it just watching Johnnie. Every time he got distracted and either fell off his seat or dropped his markers or did anything other than simply staring at the screen I felt myself get tense. Imagine that. I GOT TENSE! Man, am I anxious or what?! Worse was that I took it out on Johnnie. I gave him angry looks every single time he did something and now that I think about it, nothing he did was really out of the ordinary. At least nothing he wouldn't do if he were already in class in person. What the heck crawled up MY ASS?! And why did I take it out on Johnnie? I lost my patience so bad that even when we were doing his homework just the 2 of us, I yelled at him for playing too much. Of COURSE he ended up crying.  Because I bullied him that's why. I am so ashamed for me. Fortunately for me, the sight of Johnnie crying just snaps me out of that asshole funk I was in and I became his comforting dad again. I didn't recover fully either. I know this because during his last class I was still annoyed when I saw him get distracted. And it was all about him not listening well. And I got on him for that. Perhaps a little too much. So this time, the lessons were for me.

Next up in the afternoon was swimming class. and there he did well I thought.

In the meantime I was "working from home" in the pool :)

The good thing was that despite my control issues today, Johnnie still simply wanted to hang out with me and told me so. He just felt sad when I was mad at him.  I did ask him to forgive me at the end of the day and he and i were back to our goofy selves. I NEVER want to take that away from him. And it is ME that I still need to work on MY patience.