I had an enormous fight with my daughter at 1:30 a.m. this morning.

I’d been badgering her to get to bed since 10:30, when she informed me she had just a little bit more of her break-assigned homework to finish. Then she started lollygagging, I sent her to her room and she stalled some more, and finally the last straw came when she insisted on putting on a face mask as I was finally coming up to bed – only to wipe it off and try another type of mask. I yelled the house down (in all fairness, she yelled first. I’m not normally a “yeller”) and doors slammed and that was that.

Except it wasn’t.

I was so freaking pissed off, I couldn’t sleep. So I figured I might as well get up and write. I missed my word count for the day (well, the previous day) so what the hell.

And then I went downstairs, fired up the laptop, and wrote a huge and ugly argument into my novel and got a load of irritation off my chest. Not only did I make word count for the previous day, but I got 1500+ words toward today, as well.

I’d thank her for making me angry, but I can’t. I may be a writer, but I’m still Mom and my darling girl needs to get her shit together.

I may be tearing my hair out over her, but at least I feel like I accomplished something.