I had been working on the diss for an hour every morning. This still happens, but only about twice a week. I’ve shifted my work to the evening, which works, but my brain is sometimes a little mushy after a full day at work.

The main reason for the lack of morning work? My children. They’re killing me. For the first month of school, Geeky Boy hopped out of bed at 6, took a shower and got himself ready. But about a month in, the newness had worn off and he was staying up too late, not hearing his alarm go off. This wouldn’t be too much of a problem if when I went to wake him up at 6, when I got up, he actually got up. Most of the time he goes back to sleep. And so I have to march upstairs at least once and sometimes two or three times to rouse him. These interruptions are not conducive to focused work, as one might imagine.

I have to admit that I’m a bit angry about this. I remember when I was in middle school. I woke myself up with an alarm clock. My mother used to check to make sure I was awake, which after a while, pissed me off because I could take care of myself, dammit. Part of me thinks that Geeky Boy should be the same way. But here’s the sucky thing. I’ve thought, well, I’ll just wake him once, and if he goes back to sleep, that’s his problem. But it’s not his problem, entirely. It will be looked at as my problem, too. If he’s late to school, the onus is on the parent to provide an excuse. How bad does it look to say, “My son was late because he wouldn’t wake up”? People will be thinking, “Lady, why didn’t you wake him up?” Sigh. This is the trap of parenting. You try to give your kids some independence and rather than doing things for them all the time, you give them greater and greater responsibility, but then you’re up against the parents who do do stuff for their kids and there’s just no comparison. Up until this year, there were always kids whose parents “helped” with their kid’s homework. Kids who did their own homework just couldn’t compete.

I’m also angry, of course, because this is eating into my (very limited) work time. I estimate that I’ve got about 2 weeks of work left before finishing this chapter. Every morning I don’t work adds a day, perhaps, to my time. Gah. It occurs to me that maybe I should just tell Geeky Boy that. It’s obvious he doesn’t understand how his behavior affects those around him. I wouldn’t mind waking him up if I didn’t have something to do. It might bother me a bit, but it wouldn’t make me angry. Helping your kid grow up is hard.