playing with the camera today

mirrored egg shapes behind chain link
on 5th Street, South of Market, San Francisco

I particularly like the first shot, because if you look closely at one of the shards of mirror, you can see part of my face in it ;-)

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Today was MyFavoriteKid's first day back at school since the winter break. The morning was a bit of shock, both because of the early wake-up call, but also because it was 29-degrees when he headed out for the bus stop. Sunny California??!! Yah. Right.

Tonight I've been working on some writing for the blog (preliminary convalescent hospital stuff), but I keep being interrupted by parenting issues. I have a defiant child making waves around here, and it's making me crabby.

My teenager has become quite the teenager-ish teenager as of late. It's no surprise to me that he would at some point grow into the years where he would find fault with everything I do, I just have not quite figured out how to respond to it yet.

I am no longer cool, I can't do anything right...and I know that this part of his growing up, and I know I'm not supposed to take any of it personally. But I also refuse to take any of his bullshit. And it's also easier said than done.

Once again, he is having a growth spurt and my parenting skills sadly lag behind a beat.
It's been like that since he was a baby, really.
Just when I got used to parenting a baby that could sit up, he started crawling, and whole new set of parenting skills were required for that. And just when I figured out the parenting skills that went with the crawling behavior, he started walking, thereby requiring new skills. On and on it went like that, and he would always leap first, and then my parenting would have to catch up to him. Over the years the leaps got further and further apart, but in this last year or two, as he's grown into becoming a teenager, it's felt like the changes are happening almost as fast as when he was a toddler! (and it times it kinda feels like I am dealing with a toddler sometimes!---a creature who you cannot reason with, who is trying to become his own separate entity, who is prone to unwarranted outbursts, who wants to do everything himself and thinks he knows it all... but also still want his mommy--whee!)

I'm sure, like always, I will figure this teenage thing out just in time for him to be done with this phase and be onto his next great thing.