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An easy morning
Things go so much more smoothly with the kids when I am, say, Nurse Bruce Gumption Bruce than when I am me.
This is because, where I would hiss in an angry stage whisper "It's not yet 9 AM and you are being loud again -- after I asked you twelve times to stop!", and feel enraged, and guilty for being enraged, and like a failure...
...Nurse Bruce just says, in his sprightly, somewhat fey Southern accent, "Now Mr. Rosenbaum, some of our other residents on the lower floors are still sleeping, I'm going to have to ask you to be a little quieter, mmkay?" and feels sanguine and businesslike about the whole thing. (Oh, you know how it is with these residents! Nurse Bruce thinks.)
And it's so much more effective, too.
Never underestimate the power of a little method acting.
(Tonight, however, I was me again, which meant things were much more fractious. We did have a very interesting conversation about competition, Steven Hawking, black holes, gravity, light, Kenyan runners, and airplanes on the bike ride back from the grandparents' house; but we got home after bedtime and there was much fussing and carrying on and yelling, some of it even on the part of the kids.)
