"I think being a woman is like being Irish." — Iris Murdoch

Just got through an incredibly emotional two hours with Emma... all about homework.  She feels -- intensely and almost violently -- that homework on the weekend is wrong, abusive, unjust, unfair.  She cries, she goes into tirades, she storms off... it is so tiring.  I threatened to hit her (which I never do and did not do).  I was just that frustrated.  Nelson made all sorts of vague threats of taking away the TV, computer, Nintendo...  Emma immediately called his bluff with an "I don't care."

(He always does this, btw.  He says to her: NO TV TOMORROW and then tomorrow, it's well, okay, just a little...)

After we with great difficulty got through the two little pages of homework (it took her less than five minutes), I tried unsuccessfully to comfort her.  While she was under the table sobbing, refusing my embrace, I figured I might as well mention that there would be summer reading... I figured it couldn't make things worse, and it didn't.  Just wanted to prepare her.

Anyway, after she threw down all the emotional napalm in her ten-year-old arsenal, she ran into her room, got her blanket and came back as if none of it had happened.  The only trace was the cry marks on her cheeks, and the stuffy nose that comes with crying.