Still Not Myself

I think I have two kinds of flu at once. It's been a long time since I've felt this sick but life goes on and doesn't stop for me unfortunately.

Adding to my stress is Salinda's school. A week ago I stopped checking on her as she said she wanted to do this on her own. I offered to put together a weekly to do list and now that I've been out of it for a week it appears that she is planning on failing at least one, possibly two classes. This part doesn't bother me -- that is her choice. What bothers me is that she is not following the guidelines that she agreed to about getting out of bed, etc. She is basically hoping for a life void of parenting and I'm not sure that I can sit back and give her that.

So I'm back into a conundrum about what to do with her. I wrote her a letter this morning which she has responded to, but I haven't seen her response as she is at home and I'm at the coffee shop. However, I've gotten her to agree to having lunch with me so we can talk about this. We need to keep working on communicating about things in a mature way. It's not something we've done well with the past couple years.

In retrospect I think one of the reasons that I am so frustrated is that this whole thing with her blindsided me. From the time she was 6 until she turned 13 she was the most generous, giving, kind, contributing member of our family. She was sweet and loving and we got along great. Sadie was the one I figured would give us a run for our money. And from 13 until now Salinda has been one frustration and heartache after another and Sadie has done so much better.

I guess I planned on life sucking with some of the boys, but I didn't think it would suck this much with her. I'd like to have my little girl back. She was nice.