Guilt Free

There are days when you feel like you’re a good parent.  Then, there are the other 363 days of the year.  I went to bed expecting to have my #1 Mom mug yanked from my fingers in the morning. It wasn’t because my 5-year-old daughter told the neighbor we had a “shit zoo.”  Our dog is a shih tzu.    I lost my temper with my 8-year-old son.  It happened right before bed time.  He was thirsty.  He wasn’t thirsty ten minutes prior when we were downstairs and in close proximity to the refrigerator.  The minute his head hit the pillow his mouth was drier than Snoop Dog’s.  He was parched or perhaps  he knew  I was finally going to sit down.   She must be stopped. 

Moments earlier he and his 5-year-old sister were fighting.  She was crying, the dog was barking at a big, terrifying squirrel outside. Plus, a heaping pile of laundry was shouting my name.  It was a “Calgon Moment.”  I am dating myself by using that phrase.  To the younger lads reading this a “Calgon Moment” is the opposite of LOL. 

I begrudgingly got my son a glass of water of which  he immediately spilled on his bed.  So, I had to strip off the sheet.   I yanked it off the mattress shouting, “No more wire hangers!”   I didn’t, but may as well have.    I waded the sheet in a ball and threw it against the wall.  “This is ridiculous! Pay attention to what you’re doing!”  It’s not what I said, but how I said it.  I was spitting and smoke may have been pouring out of my ears.  I took a deep breath, tucked him back into bed and whispered, “Sweet dreams.”   I just took this kid on a hormonal roller coaster.   I apologized for overreacting, but it didn’t erase my  guilt.  Getting rid of guilt as a mother is next to impossible.  That is why God invented wine.