Right now, no. Not the way I've been doing lately. I had a huge meltdown today. I've been having long panic attacks all week. Right now, I can barely be a mom, and I think that is why my husband is so easy on my daughter, to overcompensate for my mental illness. Though I sometimes feel he goes easy on her or takes her side just because he thinks I don't make good parenting decisions because I have a mental illness. I mean, I just can't be wrong about every single thing, every single time?

I do think my daughter deserves a much better mother than I am, one who can engage with her more. When she was younger, I couldn't take the repetition of toddler & preschool games while my husband could or could at least be creative with them. Now that she's older, she's become very interested in computer programming, something my husband is an expert at, and I don't understand a thing. She has this online game she's been playing too, several years now, but I never got in early & don't understand the rules. My daughter plays it on my husband's computer, and really, the way our house is set up (lots of small rooms), only 2 people can sit behind his computer at the same time and see what's going on. Lately, she's taken an interest in games my husband plays on his tablet like Minecraft and others, which I definitely don't understand. So she bonds more with him.

If I have the energy to take her out, we can't do anything outdoors for at least a month or more. Maybe a night hike at a nearby nature bayou, but you have to pay for that, so probably not. She sometimes wants to paint her nails, but it's a take it or leave it type thing with her. She doesn't want to help cook or bake because she is paranoid of knives, raw eggs, and raw meat, as if those things will jump out and kill her. She is the same with razors, and she will need to shave her legs soon, not sure what we'll do about that. I don't like baking or cooking much anyway unless I'm hypomanic and suddenly have all these plans for meals I want to cook or desserts I want to bake. Maybe she'd watch a more girly movie with me (if we checked it out of the library), but I don't know. Sometimes she will watch a movie sometimes not. I want to go to bed early; she wants to stay up late. Then, I'm frustrated, but I'll go in there to wake her up in the morning only to find she's fallen asleep working problems from an old math workbook the school sent home at the end of the schoolyear or doing Brainquest problems from a book my mother bought her. She does like to read, and I do too, but it's hard to turn reading into a bonding moment. I don't know. It's not always easy for me to connect with people, which is probably why I only made one good friend ever (my best friend from college), other than my husband, and lately, he's under so much stress, he is not much of a support system for me right now.

At least, I can go to bed soon. I've had it with this day.