Weekend Break

I haven't seen Penelope in 1 1/2 days. She went to spend the weekend with her Papaw. She is being good for Papaw. Good. I have been helping my Mom with some of her real estate stuff. Makes me feel like I'm contributing since I still don't have any clients. I need to really focus on a strategy to get clients. What I'm doing isn't working. But not today. Today I'm cleaning this house. Didn't have time yesterday with my Mom's deadlines for stuff. It's been nice not having to juggle Penelope and something else. Needed that break.
Feeling very unsure about things lately. I know some of it has to do with my lack of employment, but things are changing with Penelope. I am again on uncharted territory with her and lacking confidence in handling it. My analytical brain is telling me to plan. Prepare. Strategize. My lack of confidence and motivation is telling me to go back to bed and avoid it.
Penelope is doing this whole teenager thing now, but it's the kind that wants to be a bad*ss. I'm trying to remember what she said the other day but basically it was "I don't want to the do the right things because that's not cool. I want to be cool." Shortly later I found her hiding from me because she didn't want me to see the fact she had taken a marker to her hair to color it. She wanted the last couple inches of the hair that framed her face to be blue. She was "smart" enough to use washable marker because she didn't want to get into tooo much trouble. That's a start. I did require her to wash it out before bedtime. But it became a big argument - at least on her part. I didn't engage. I just didn't make not washing it an option. I said "It's good that you decided to use washable marker because I'd hate to have to take you to get your hair cut off tomorrow." That woke her up a bit. She said "Yeah, I'm glad I didn't. I have been working at growing my hair out." I said "Yep, and there was tough annoying times for you with it." But I told her not to use marker again on her hair or it will have to be cut in order to prevent it from happening again.
She also picked out her outfit for school for the first time in a very long time. Usually I have to pick it out because she just can't decide and put it together. It was a little wierd but I'm not going to start that with her. I know she is showing some normal teenager rebellion. But it anything "normal" with RAD kids? It's like twilight zone normal. She is starting to make friends though which is good. There are some bad apples at her school, just like any school, but we are in a nice community with very involved parents so most of the kids are your average well rounded kids. Penelope is the one that these parents should worry about. So the social aspect of her life is good but tends to bring opportunity for bad.
The other thing is that her therapy hasn't been very consistant lately. Her trauma therapist that does the EMDR is so sought after that I can barely get scheduled with her. We were doing weekly to almost weekly, than the holidays hit and then she was sick, then the weather. It had been a month since we had seen her. We go in and have our session, which was kind of a backtracking session, then we go to schedule and she isn't available until next month. I guess I feel frustrated because she is like the only person around that does this for RAD, but her clients are across the board. WE need her. I know that's being selfish but it's hard enough trying to find any help let alone help that is only part time RAD. You know, I consider mental health needs more important than academic needs. She can catch up academically. Maybe if I start trying to access her schedule that is before school is out, she will see how serious this is to us. I don't want to be wasting our time and money. They are $90 a pop. I don't feel once a month is affective help. It doesn't help that last week, after Penelope had a meltdown over me asking her to clean and trying to deal with her overall giving up attitude, we went to therapy an hour away and we didn't get a chance to have therapy with Penelope because she accidentally booked someone 30 minutes after our session was to start. We are suppose to get 1 1/2 hours. So we pushed off the planned discussion to this past week and she called and cancelled. I know things come up but it just is another reminder that we are in this alone. I am Penelope's Mom is 100% responsible for her mental health resources. I hate that feeling. I can't do it alone. I know that. It's hard enough with her support team.
I have to think and get on top of this. Not now though. I need to clean. Clean house helps with a clean head.