patience

patience is something i've always prided myself on having. i am patient in my work with the children. i am a patient friend, a good listener. i am extremely patient with my daughter, nursing her until she falls asleep, setting her up again when she wakes up, being gentle and sweet and, yes, incredibly patient all the live long day. then there's my dog. i used to love her. i really did. i would hand feed her, patiently, on the ground when she wouldn't eat from her bowl. i let her torture me on the mountains when we hiked and she was too hyper - let her yap and nip at my booty, never disciplining her the way jeff or joellen or any other number of people suggested. and then baby came. and the patience for lucy dissipated like the steam coming from elie's humidifier. poof. gone. out into the universe, never to be found again. it's like i have this well of patience to draw from. but it's not a bottomless well, like, say, a well of love or a well of hope. it definitely has a bottom. and when it's taken a lot of tenacity and hard work to get the baby to sleep and lucy barks like a ballistic hyena at the mailman (even though he has been coming daily since she's been six weeks old), i can't handle it. or when she pulls me on the leash to try and unearth some deer or cat or bear scat on the trail, it drives me nuts. lately my new thing is just letting the leash go and seeing if, perchance, she'll run off. i know it sounds awful. she is the sweetest thing. it's just that she's sort of pathetic these days and, honestly, i don't have time for it. when i cook, she stays on my heels at all times trying to be right there with me, waiting for me to drop stuff on the floor. sometimes i want to step on her on purpose. she truly brings out all the impatience and frustration and general ugliness that seems to be lurking within my otherwise cheery self. so there it is. the dog is making me crazy. at least it's not my daughter.