Today was going relatively well, but after putting Alex to bed tonight, I got so grouchy. This thing used to happen once in a while, but when it happens, it really gets to me.

Zoe can be stubborn but for the most part, if you tell her to knock it off, she will. Alex however, takes it very personally and seriously, and he doesn't really calm down when he gets worked up. In fact, he can be pretty inconsolable at times. But this is the deal. I put Alex down in bed and he says, "like this." And kicks his blanket. I don't know what he's talking about, so I ask him. He'll just repeat, "like this." I try different things with his blanket, and none of it works. He just keeps repeating it. I ask him to show me. He doesn't. I ask him to use different words. He repeats the same words. I tell him I don't know what he wants, and kiss him goodnight, and he'll start crying as if I told him I was leaving him to wolves. So I try to figure it out again, and ask him, guess, and explain to him that I don't understand. But he giggles, repeats, and refuses to back down or compromise to that singular task that he has committed to in his mind, unless I do it for him. Now, I'm probably being a bit impatient, and he's probably being stubborn, but my god it drives me crazy. I know if I just leave the room, he'll get worked up and cry so hard that he seems like he's hyperventilating.

Anyway, it turned out that he just wanted the blanket tucked under his legs, which I tried to do twice before. Somehow the third time was special or something.

I'm bummed because we did have such a good day all day - after their naps we were going to go for a walk, but being outside for more than a minute proved to us that it was too damn cold to be walking anywhere, so we decided to go to the toy store instead. My aunt had given them both 5 bucks for Chinese New Year in the mail, so we were going to go spend it. We got this velcro ball/target thing and toy plastic soldiers, which really brought out the boy in Alex. I took one of the plastic dinosaurs so that the soldiers had someone to fight, and Alex had his aggressive boy voice, that was deeper and throaty, and they battled the dinosaur, played by Zoe. Zoe, being disinterested in anything destructive, decided to spin the dinosaur on his belly, after she found out that it spins pretty fast. Anyway, got some of it on tape, might share it later.

All day today I've been trying to get this old wedding done, a wedding that I had the date and location screwed up on. So basically, a mistake on what equates to 10 seconds at the beginning meant that she was unhappy and I had to redo the whole DVD for her. But since I've thrown out the project and it didn't sync right when I tried to relink it, I had to spend a lot of freaking time working on something I've already done once before. So most of today was working on that.

The other highlight of the day was when my wife called her ex to talk about JL. Since she moved back to Bellingham last Nov. under the stipulation that she was moving back to see her father, and that she was going to excel in school in her hometown, she's gotten slightly worse. She aced two classes: Walking and Choir. C in one, D in the other, and two fat F's to round it off. On top of that, something that she never attempted when she was under our wing, was a handful of tardy and hooky days.

Anyway, that's not that uncommon, unfortunately. Her bad grades aren't because she's stupid - she's smart but she chooses to be lazy, and chooses to spend time with her boyfriend. Anyway, she skipped the day after Valentine's Day and tried to tell my wife that "she didn't feel like going to school that day" and that "it was complicated." It was the day after Valentines. We're not stupid. Doesn't take a freaking genius to figure that one out. My wife summed it up by saying, "I'm not your Dad."

Brett is a guy who would walk in on you with a knife in someone, and you could say, "Oh, he walked into me while I was cleaning my knife," and depending on whether he chooses to care or not, he'll either accept that as truth and have a sandwich, or he'll turn your motivation for murder into why his ex-wife's divorce had turned his life and the lives of his children into total disasters. He's really figure out how to survive in Earth's atmosphere without a space suit.

Which is actually something he did this afternoon. My wife was talking to him about JL and how she doesn't listen, thinks she's wiser than everyone, and my wife, being kind and not blurting out things like, "Really? You mean we weren't the ones that were messing up?" or "Maybe you should take time to listen to her or take her to a movie," which was the sage advice he offered us when we were having problems with her. My wife was being polite and basically sharing as to how she's manipulating a lot of truth (i.e. lying her ass off) and trying to relate to him, when he pulled a fresh one out of his stretched-out butthole and vomitted out this nugget, "Well, you know the divorce really affected her."

Yeah, the divorce made her skip school to sleep with her boyfriend. That has so much to do with it. My wife excused herself and then we spend the next hour raving about why stupidity should actually hurt the offender, and why freak accidents always seem to miss the freaks.

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Oh, and to the wanker who's trying to access my account, get a freaking life loser. At least try to access the account of someone who's more interesting than I am.