My oldest went on a Father-Son Camp Out with Dad over the weekend. They came home incredibly happy after all that bonding, but also filthy and exhausted. Apparently there was very little sleeping, but there was an abundance of playing in the dirt and seeing what burned up fastest in the camp fire.

My husband, an Eagle Scout for crying out loud, declared that one camping trip per year is all he can handle at his advanced age. Camping is for the young.

Along with some darling craft projects (walking stick with a hand-tooled leather name band, anyone?) and mountains of disgusting laundry, they also brought home terrible allergies. I suspect they actually smoked a couple packs a day during their father-son time, because we have some serious hoarseness and smoker’s cough going on at our house.

Being the wonderful, loving mom that I am, I decided to keep my little smoker home from preschool one more day. All of that bonding wore him out. He’s not technically sick by school standards – no fever, vomiting, or other horrid disease. It’s just allergies. But in my infinite wisdom I decided he should stay home.

Bad idea. Bad, bad idea.

Nothing is to his liking today.

Outside? Wrong. I pushed the swing wrong. I gave him the wrong ball for his T-ball set. There were bugs in his eyes. IN HIS EYES. Not near the eye. In the eye (according to him, mind you). Tragic.

Inside? Wronger. His brother took his toys. I didn’t let him watch TV for hours on end. I gave him the yucky cheese for lunch. It’s yellow. Way too yellow. More tragedy.

Nap time? Wrongest. He could’t sleep. He needed to play. He needed to hammer on a wooden tool set. I am mean, mean, mean for telling him no hammering while the baby sleeps across the hall.

The tragedy here? That I’m not hammered. I’m kidding. No I’m not. Well, yes, mostly.

And in the midst of all this tragedy, the baby is learning to walk. It’s super cute. He staggers around and is very proud of himself. He has also fine-tuned his balance and is able to more successfully manipulate every door and drawer in the house now. The kicker? He is a most sensitive soul, and if he is not allowed to open every door and drawer in the house he will cry. All day.

That sensitivity also means that if he hears his big brother cry, we can expect baby tears, too. Based on the number of times I’ve disappointed the big brother today, that baby is doing some serious crying. Did I mention that it’s been all day? All. Day. with the crying.

I’m the only one who has not cried, but I’m sure it’s coming.

What I’m wondering today… will I make it to bed time? I don’t want to be drama queen. I mean, we all have hard days.

Days when… The kids are on a tear. Dinner turns out to be a disaster (I will save my chicken failure for another post).

Days when… You feel over-tired and under-nourished. You hate everyone, for no reason.

Days when… Your friend is out of pocket and you really need to talk. Your husband doesn’t live up to expectations, no matter that (in my case) those expectations are unreasonably high.

And usually I just think, in the grand scheme of things, none of that matters. We’re healthy (ish). We’re happy (most of the time). We’re completely blessed.

Usually I think about the annoying stuff for a moment and then I move on. No dwelling. No poor me. I focus on something else.

But damn if I cannot get out of this mood today. Today is one that defines insanity – we’re all doing the same stuff over and over again, expecting different results.

I wonder…

:: What’s your trick for getting out of a funk?

:: Do you give yourself some wallow time or do you immediately get to work on improving your mood?

:: What kinds of things set you off in the first place? Do you recognize your triggers or are you caught off guard?

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In all fairness, I feel that I should tell you this is a re-run. This post originally aired way back in Wonder, Friend’s early days when three people read and two of them were my mother and my husband. My guess is, much like a cult-TV classic, you didn’t see this the first time around.