Ire

I maybe lost my temper today. At 7:37 pm, perhaps.

It wasn't when I was cooking dinner and the aluminum foil sprang out of the box of its own free will and unrolled itself carpet-like across the kitchen floor. I held it together.

It wasn't when I asked a certain child to clean up blocks he'd spread across the living room floor and he said "okay", chucked one block in the box and wandered off to empty the bin of Lincoln Logs. Nope, I held it together.

I didn't lose it while listening to an tremendously epic argument of "Nuh-uh," "U-huh," "Nuh-uh." I just sent them downstairs to finish the dispute out of my earshot.

I was slightly irritated that my well-planned and perfectly executed dinner of Mustard-Seed Pork with Potato-Asparagus salad was poorly received by the punks, and Michael (who I actually cooked the meal for) didn't arrive home until an hour and a half after it was pulled from the oven. Still . . . held it together.

Family Home Evening was the standard circus of wandering children, some jostling for position closest to Dad on the couch and elbows in ribs. Actually, Family Home Evening went unusually well.

No, I really only lost it when I asked my eldest darling to go shower and get ready for bed, then found him 15 minutes later dawdling around in his room, un-showered and unprepared . . . and a little sassy when I called him on it. I may have told him to "Get his butt into the bathroom before I spank it." (Hollow threat, people . . . . hollow threat. And I usually save butt with two t's for when I'm good and mad. It's one of those words that doesn't sound nice coming out of a child's mouth, so I try not to say it, lest they repeat it.)

And I may have UN-lost my temper when I found him seconds later with his body in the hallway and his wiggling hiney sticking into the bathroom hokey-pokey style. "Kay Mom! My butt is in the bathroom!"

How can you not laugh at that?