Frustration

Wasn't that a game?  My brain has just developed an earworm of an advertising jingle consisting of the words "Frustration - from Action GT", who I know were a kids' games manufacturer in the 1980's.

Anyway, that's not the point. Busy busy busy day at work today, I've no idea where the day went, and I'm on a course for the next two days, so I won't be in the office til next Monday now (hooray!)  Drove to work just fine, drove off to visit my clients, and back to the office, no problem. Into town, stopped at the post box, to the shops, then home.  All without incident.  Had a nice quiet half hour catching up with emails before heading back out to pick up Squeaky from nursery.  And the car won't start.  Stupid stupid stupid car.  It's been doing this more & more of late. The garage can't find anything wrong, it's an intermittent fault and it intermits itself away when faced with an oil covered mechanic in overalls.

I spent 25 minutes trying to start the stupid car, getting progressively more annoyed with it, then reached the point where I had to make a decision, because I was going to be late to the nursery.  So I legged it out of the road, through the village to the main bus stop, where there's a bus every 10 minutes rather than every half hour.  Waited for the bus, found myself as far as humanly possible from the nursery whilst still in sight of the place, ran across the muddy field & gathered up Squeaky, who was patiently waiting in the Big Kids Room, with chocolate cornflake cakes.  She's used to going home in the car. so she was very unimpressed that there was no car, and no pushchair either (I honestly didn't have time to gather one up), and that she had to walk sensibly or be carried to the bus stop & wait for the local bus (I wasn't carrying her through the two villages, and it was threatening to rain.

So of course.  We had a real, proper temper tantrum.  Screaming, howling, kicking. The kind of behaviour where you normally look the other way and think to yourself "Thank goodness they're not my child". Except, she is my child.  I just about managed to placate her with numerous verses of Row Row Row Your Boat before the bus came, and then as many verses as I could manage of The Wheels On The Bus while we were being The People On The Bus.  And give her her due, she didn't struggle while I carried her up the steps from the main road to our street.  Chocolate cornflake cake reward well earned in the end.

I've never seen her behave that badly though, and I hope it's not the start of things to come.  Hopefully it was just a combination of tiredness and frustration that I didn't let her run everywhere.  No more tantrums please.