Tuesday, mom and I took the dogs to the Sherman Beach Trail, which is part of the trail we biked on a few weeks ago. I think they enjoyed the new scenery, and it was nicer for us because it was almost completely shaded for the section we walked on. Nothing much happened the rest of the day- the house was pretty quiet because Ben went to work with Dad, so I worked on cleaning my room for a little while and then read more of The Insider's Guide college book. Time's running out to pull my final "look at and decide" list together, and I really should start working on applications since deadlines will come faster than I think, so I'm feeling the pressure a little. :)
Wednesday, our Westminster uniforms came from Land's End. It was bittersweet, because I can't help but feel a little relieved since I'm always less stressed when all the pieces for starting school are coming together (especially since this year I have no idea what to expect), but it made me really sad I won't be wearing the uniforms I've spent every weekday for the past 8 1/2 years wearing. (I'm not sad about not wearing those uniforms, just sad I'm not in the school and with the people!) :) You can't try everything on in a store like with Providence, so it's a trial-and-error process of buying and returning a few times until you get it right.
After trying it all on and deciding what worked and what needed to be returned, mom and Ben started talking about making room in his closet for his uniforms. Ben absolutely hates to have mom help him with room stuff, especially the closet, which always seems to come up as an argument. I came downstairs to hear Ben asking mom if I could help him rearrange it instead of her. I thought briefly about the potential issues with that arrangement, but I figured it would be better than Ben getting mad at mom if she helped him with it, so I agreed after she gave the permission. Ben and I happen to differ on the idea of organization. To me, there is nothing better or more "aesthetically pleasing" than an organized room with everything similar grouped together and everything with its own location, all working together. To Ben, being a typical 13 year-old boy, he's okay with it as long as it's all shoved in somewhere and it appears to be clean (not organized, just "clean") I decided to approach the whole thing by telling him that I was going to make it so that if mom walked in, she'd never have anything to "catch" him on again- it was like killing two birds with one stone, because future conflict would be avoided and the closet would be cleaned and perfectly organized too. :)
Wednesday, we only worked on it a little bit, so the real drama didn't come until Thursday...
I told myself from the beginning that I'd make sure to keep an even temper while dealing with his apathetic opinion about where everything should go, and I kept reminding myself that ultimately, as long as it looked like the doors could shut, he'd be fine with it. But really, if I'm devoting my time to help him clean it, something should at least come out of it, and the job should be done right. Why waste time doing it halfway and getting nothing truly accomplished? It's like cleaning a house but getting bored halfway through and deciding not to bother with the second floor. It diminishes the great job you did cleaning the first floor, and you're not even left with a fully clean house. :)
So, after a while of pulling all his shoved junk out and laying out a plan so that he could reach everything he needed regularly, Ben lost interest and began laying around on his bed and on his floor and just kind of tossing things everywhere without caring where they landed. I could see we were going nowhere, so we took a lunch break. As we headed upstairs to dive back in, I began noticing that as we were putting things like... the hats I had pulled out of the shelves into the empty hat hanger... or the electronic cords tangled in a heap into bundles in a plastic bin... I was seeing two more of the same thing around his room that should go with what we had just designated a spot for and cleaned up. So I made the fatal mistake of venturing out from the wall where the closet is into the other junk-filled corners of his room. We got into our first small argument when he got mad that it was taking longer than he thought it should. He wanted a quick fix- he wanted for space to be made for the uniforms on his clothes rack and for the rest of his crammed closet to be ignored.
I walked away, telling him he could handle it on his own. After we both had time to be apart and cool down, I went to his doorway and apologized for getting frustrated with him. He apologized for getting mad at me since I was helping him, and asked me to help him again (I think he just did that because he still had a bunch of stuff on his floor!) :) We started back in, and the same situation happened again- he got tired of it and started laying around and getting mad that I was moving anything he owned.
We finished his closet, and I was so happy, because it was done, and I had done it so well that he now had 5 empty shelves, where before everything had been falling out. I started to grab a few of the random things that had come out of the broken cardboard "electronics bin" (things like an old Disney lanyard and a bag of shells) to put with the other memorabilia-type things he had, and he wanted to throw them in an extra plastic bin and throw the bin back on one of the empty shelves I had just cleared off. Now, just to vent a little, why would you want to put a bin full of stuff that's not something you would regularly use, like shells, Disney lanyards, and random trash pieces, on a shelf in your newly organized closet that has shelves specifically for easily accessible stuff?!? I should've stopped caring and walked away, but we were so close, and why should the closet I had just spent 4 hours organizing be ruined that quickly? So, I argued against his quick fix-it, and he just started yelling at me continuously, so I walked away and left him on his own. I'm sure half his useless junk is right back on those shelves now.... oh well.
I went back to my room and cleaned it for a while to get over the whole Ben thing, and later that night, mom and dad went to a concert that dad had gotten tickets to for their anniversary. While they were gone, Ben was over at the St. Johns' house, so I vacuumed the house and did the dishes during the commercial breaks of Say Yes To The Dress re-runs. :)
Friday, dad got home early, and we all got ready for our trip to Boston the next day.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
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