May 28 Sucks

So it's May 28 again, and this year marks the 5th anniversary of the worst day of my life. Rory has been on my mind quite a bit in the last week, mostly due to the realization that it's been 5 years since she died. While enough time has passed that I don't think about her every day, she definitely hasn't been (nor ever will be) forgotten. I'm sad but also thankful for what I do have in my life.

I realized earlier tonight that there's something about this date that just makes me want to skip it from here on out. For those of you who use Facebook, you're probably familiar with the "On This Day" feature that lets you see all your posts on today's date from previous years. I was skimming through previous May 28s, and this gem from 2010, when Lucas was 2 years old, popped up:

"today's highlights were intentionally peeing on the rug in the living room and pooping in the bathtub (he IS potty trained)."

Little bugger.

Now you can add May 28, 2017, as the latest May 28 to have a bad memory associated with it. Earlier today, Lucas had his third recital for guitar. The previous two went relatively well, and this was looking to be the best one since he had the song, "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath, down pat. He was playing third in a group of 30-40 kids, and he seemed confident. The song started off well, but he goofed up on about the 8th note. No big deal, right? Just start over and do it again. But he ends up throwing his head back like the world just ended.

After a few seconds, his instructor was able to get him going again, but then he screwed up again, and that's when the wheels came off the cart. He threw his head back again and basically gave up. I can't recall the exact sequence of events that followed, but he ended up throwing his guitar pick, ripping his sheet music in half, yelling, "I hate guitar!" and then he ran out of the room.

So, basically one of the more embarrassing parent moments of our lives. We hastily walked out ourselves and got him in the car. We had planned to go out to dinner afterwards, but that was obviously off the table. We ended up going straight home and had a long talk with him about his behavior of late. Sadly, this wasn't his only bad incident this weekend, albeit the worst.

The most immediate punishment is that he lost his 10th birthday party. I literally just paid the rental fee on the town hall near us this afternoon since we were going to have a big games party with about 15 of his friends on June 17. So we'll probably lose some sort of deposit fee on that, but we're not going back on this decision. He's been way too spoiled lately so it's about time he learns about consequences. He's also likely to be grounded for a couple of days and lose access to his iPad indefinitely.

He will have the opportunity to earn back a small get-together with a couple of friends to have cake on his birthday, but he'll have to be on his best behavior between now and then, and it will be nothing like the party that was planned.

So, just another shitty May 28 in Canada. The only silver lining about today's events were that we didn't have to sit through the recitals of 39 other kids that we don't know. That was pretty painful last winter.

That's enough typing for now. Pictures in the next post, I promise!