Over the past 24 hours I have done two things I have never done before, neither I am extremely proud of. Let’s start with last night. I had a tough day. Hell, if I am being honest, I have had a tough few weeks. I love my new job but it’s freaking killing me right now. I am drained when I get home. I spend the days running from one meeting to the next, half the time straining to follow along and then working after Ashton goes to bed because how do you get anything done when you sit in meetings for 8 hours a day? It all happens at night after 8 p.m. So, the one part of my day I look forward to all night is picking up Ashton at daycare. I don’t get to see him in the morning so the evening is my time with him. Robyn does the cooking and dinner clean up so I can play with him, give him a bath, brush his teeth and then Robyn reads to him while I sit with them. It’s great and even when I am tired, I look forward to it.
Well, I picked Ashton up from daycare last night and he wanted nothing to do with me. He told me he didn’t want to go home and after coaxing him out of daycare and getting him in his car seat, he told me he didn’t want me to pick him up from daycare anymore, that he wanted Daddy to pick him up. When I asked him why, he said “Because I don’t like you Mommy.” GULP. I was already frustrated with my day, my long commute and my welcome from him and this shocked me. I took a deep breath and said I am sorry you feel that way but I love you. We got settled in the car and I asked him if he wanted his book (He likes to listen to Dr. Seuss audio books on the way home) and he said yes, so I put one on and started to drive home. I tried to ask him about his day like we do every evening and he turned his head away from me, held his hand up to me and told me to stop talking. Who the heck is this child and where is my sweet boy? Then out of the blue he said, “Mama, I don’t love you.” I didn’t think I heard him correctly so I asked him what he said. He repeated it confidently and then said, “I love Daddy, not you!” Thankfully it was pitch black outside and in the car because the tears started. Before I knew it, I was sobbing. I told him that made me really sad that he felt that way but I loved him. I couldn’t speak to him for the rest of the ride home–a first for me. I didn’t want him to see me crying in the front so I turned up his audio book and he proceeded to recite Fox in Sox for me while I drove. I know this is a phase. I know a lot of my friends with kids the same age go through similar things, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt like hell. I should have handled it differently last night, I shouldn’t have shut down. I should of brushed it off, but I just couldn’t. I am not proud of the fact that I stayed silent and stewed in the car feeling angry and sorry for myself instead of trying to engage with Ashton, but I just couldn’t. I suppose it’s better than me yelling at him or showing him how upset I was, but I need to get a better handle on this because I am pretty certain this isn’t going to be a one time thing. A true #mommyfail on my part.
Fast forward to this morning and I was looking forward to my spin class. I have talked before about how much I love my Wednesday morning class and instructor Erin. She is AWESOME and I look forward to her class every week. Well, she was away this week on vacation and we had a sub. Now, I will preface this with saying that I know as an instructor myself how hard it is to come into another instructors class, especially with an established group of regular participants and teach. It’s freaking hard, I get that so I always try to be sensitive to that when a sub walks into one of the classes I take. Well, this morning the sub walked in to teach spin and I smiled, said hello and after she got her music queued up, she began. This is where things started going downhill for me. She blasted her music and didn’t mic up, so you could barely hear her, it didn’t help that she kept her head down too so we couldn’t see her mouth. Then, she was off beat with the music, so the cadence was off and it felt all wrong. Her music was terrible (however, this I will give a pass for since everyone has different music tastes) and she didn’t warm us up/stretch us at all. She kept us at a level 4 for the first few songs and when the music was getting faster which would indicate we should speed up or power through a hill, she had us sit and recover. Recover from what? We were all at a really low-level and I hadn’t even broken a sweat. I told myself to give her more time to find her groove but by the 20 minute mark I was done. I mentally was fighting with myself to stay through the class but I just couldn’t do it. I unclipped from my bike, wiped it down and walked out. I have never walked out of a group fitness class before. I guess there is a first time for everything.
I was beyond annoyed. I was mad that Erin was on vacation (irrational I know) I was mad that our gym had this terrible sub, I mean don’t they test their subs before allowing them to teach? I am pretty sure that being able to follow a beat is a bare minimum requirement to teach a class with music. I was mad at the instructor who ruined my favorite class for me, I was mad at myself for not bringing anything other than my spin shoes to the gym with me which meant I couldn’t really get in any other cardio today and I was mad at myself for walking out of this instructors class. I started my day off on the wrong foot and I was just plain disappointed. After I got ready for work and had time to cool down I gave myself a little pep talk and told myself that I could let this ruin the rest of my day or I could let it go and start again. So, I dropped my gym back off at my car, walked to the Starbucks in our building, ordered myself a tall, skinny mocha and vowed to make today a great day.
I have to learn to let things go, something I am not great at but am working really hard to change about myself and this was the first step to doing just that. So, here’s to making today a better day and being a better, more patient person!
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Question of the day
Have you ever walked out of a group fitness class? How do you deal with frustrating situations?
