the root of it all.

I need to get a new doctor. That's the easiest claim that I can make after this morning. I could also say that I need to get a new four-year old, but that isn't possible, and it's entirely too short-sighted. So, I will lay my misery, my heart-ache, my humiliation, frustration, anger and weariness all at my seemingly-incapable doctor's feet.

It was supposed to be a fairly simple appointment. In and out. Just get a referral for the allergist. Had we lived in Calgary, I could have just picked up the phone and gone back to our original allergist we waited a year for, but we don't. We live in a new city. That means taking a whole morning of grief to go ask a doctor I'm not a fan of to make the appointment for us to get back for the one year check-up. It means a 45 minute wait to get in for our three minute appointment. In which, of course, I am feeling quite frazzled due to the extra-long wait with two little boys who aren't a fan of waiting. 45 minutes in a full waiting room of whining, shouting, arguing over toys, shoving, and more whining behaviour (is this really how I've groomed them thus far?). By the time our doctor came in, as always, my ability to think and hear rationally has flown out the window, along with any patience or graciousness I can muster. I quickly explain that we need to see someone for our one-year appointment and for some strange reason, the sentence out of my mouth doesn't enter her ears in the same succinct manner. She is full of questions, "Why? Who is your doctor? He used to live in Calgary? Is -- what is his name again?-- right, Nathaniel, having any reactions? I have this paperwork? Really? You brought it in to me? Oh. I'll have to check the charts." But the whole time this convoluted conversation is happening, Natty chooses this time to demand to be heard: he's hungry. Now. And it doesn't register, for some bizarre reason, that I am trying to talk to the doctor, whom we have just waited so long to see. Telling him to wait one moment, please, does not register either. Not even when I told him flat-out that he was being rude. And it certainly didn't feel good to have the doctor scrunch up her face in an annoyed, quizzical manner and shake her head in a "I have no idea what you're talking about because your child is too undisciplined" way as I'm talking to her. So. I have no idea what I arranged with her, really. I saw her nodding and shaking her head, I heard a disapproving and reproachful tone, but past that--nada, zilch, nothing. I believe we have set the wheels in motion for a referral.

Why is it that every time I enter her office, I am reduced to a second-rate mother who has wildly behaved little boys in tow? Why can't I carry on a conversation in a civil manner? This is why it is easiest to lay the blame at her feet. Not my own. Not seeing the glaring errors of who I am, short-comings a plenty, and how I am raising my children. No, it's easiest to look outwards and try to stop the aching within with an easier out. That is until we arrive back home, after a tumultuous ride home and time-out in his room, and over lunch Nathaniel proclaims:

"Mom, I would like to move to a new house. All by myself. I don't want to live with you anymore because I need a wife who isn't mean like you. I don't want to live with an angry one. I will live all by myself."

Oh, there's the root of it. Torn out and laying bloody in a heap on the floor. Right. Got it.