I went outside to take these pictures this morning as soon as I saw the sun coming up. I meant to just take a picture of the sunrise, since the long weekend threw me off and I had forgotten about this post until last night. When I got to the backyard, I saw the sunflowers.

We had them last year around the trampoline, my favorite thing about the end of summer in Kansas, but I haven’t been in the backyard in weeks and didn’t know these had grown (and grown taller than me). So I snapped a few pictures while the kids were eating their breakfasts. Or rather….not eating their breakfasts.

After that, things went downhill. I made eggs for the first time in weeks, and only one child ate them until I started yelling that it was past time for them to be done and dressed. My coffee was a sample flavor that I didn’t like very much, so I hadn’t been properly caffeinated. I had woken up to an email with changes I needed to make on something I finished last night, and then more edits on top of those edits I did at 6am before I even started my coffee, AND a reminder of a meeting I had forgotten about later this evening…on a day that I thought I wouldn’t have to leave the house.

The toddler started dancing when he was supposed to be eating his breakfast, which was cute and funny until it was time to leave and he was hiding under a blanket next to a plate of untouched eggs.

I realized as we were driving to school that even though I said yesterday afternoon that we needed to work on 2nd grade spelling words for a pre-test today, we never actually did it, and I lost it. I was mad at myself for getting distracted and forgetting all about it. I was mad at the kids for not listening to me and not remembering to do it. I wondered if it was their fault that I had so many kids that I can’t finish one thing with one of them before moving on to something else with another, or if I had coddled them so much in the last nine years that none of them feel any responsibility for anything.

As the five of us drove to school and the two of us drove home, I had all of the curse words that I refuse to say in front of the kids pounding on my skull, desperate to be let out, screamed at the sky. Eminem came on the radio, and then the Ramones, and I turned the volume higher and higher to try to drown out the yelling in my head.

Oh Mr. Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun, please shine down on, please shine down on, please shine down on me.

Through The Lens Thursday is a self-improvement photography project that Alison of Writing, Wishing and I are doing this year.

Don’t forget to join our Flickr group or share your own posts if you’d like to follow along and work on your own photography! And use the hashtag #throughthelensthursday to connect with others working on it, too.

Next week’s prompt is BLACK.