You'd Better Stop Making That Face or It's Gonna Get Stuck Like That

It's hot and I'm cranky.

You know what's the worst thing about being cranky when you have kids? You can't just tune out and turn off and go be by yourself until you stop hatin' the world again. You're forced to DEAL with a small person(or more) who OH FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS SANE IN THE WORLD picks up easily on your bad mood, but instead of wisely just doing what she's told to do and/or slinking off quietly to play by herself, decides that SHE MUST NOW ALSO BE IN A BAD MOOD.

Double your pleasure, double your fun, y'all.

So we had ourselves just a lovely morning, the two of us, running errands hither thither and yon in the already sweltering, infernally hot sunshine, gettin' IN and OUT of the car OVER and OVER again, wrastlin' with the new carseat/booster thingy we just installed for the Big Girl which, hey, wasn't this supposed to make my life EASIER since now we'll just be using the car safety belt instead of that ornery old octopus of a five-point safety harness and heck, she'll be able to handle that on her own?

Only it's not easier, because the seatbelt? Well, wouldn't you just KNOW it's in a bad mood too, and will only dain to be pulled out and fastened at one specific-to-within-a-half-a-degree angle and if you have the nerve to deviate from that particular angle then it will firmly cross its little seatbelt arms across its chest and affix upon its face a nasty, obstinate scowl and refuse to either go back into its little seatbelt burrow so you can pull it out in the exact way Its Majesty prefers or just come the heck on out and be fastened already. And so did two hot, cross women and one uncompromising, bull-headed @&%!# of a seatbelt spend a morning together gallavanting around town, spittin' nails for all we were worth.

As we were finally, OH DEAR LORD FINALLY, driving home after my clenched-teethed delivery of the inevitable gutteral, end-of-my-rope, "WHEN WE GET HOME, YOU ARE TO MARCH YOURSELF STRAIGHT UP TO YOUR ROOM AND SIT ON YOUR BED AND DO NOT MOVE AND I WILL BE UP TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT YOUR BEHAVIOR AS SOON AS I GET THE GROCERIES PUT AWAY, YOUNG LADY" warning in the Walgreen's parking lot, I caught a glimpse of myself in the rear view mirror and do you know who I saw looking back at me?

My own mother. And people, she was FIT TO BE TIED.

Which scared me right back into a good mood again.

Amen.