I consider myself a relatively calm person. Laid back. Chill. I tend to go with the flow. Breezy.
Most days.
Then there are those days where I feel like all of my nerves are on the outside of my body and everything, including the tiniest of air molecules that come in contact with me can set me off and I get dangerously close to throwing myself out the window. (Don’t worry, I don’t hang out in tall buildings.)
(I’ve been told that I tend to be a bit on the dramatic side… I don’t see it.)
Anyway.
I’m having one of those days where my nerves were firmly planted on the outside of my body. After a long day and an ever longer commute home, my sweet two-year-old was acting like a two-year-old who was impersonating a fire truck. LOUDLY. I can’t stress the LOUDLY part of this enough. Because, he’s two. And as a two-year-old he’s required to do EVERYTHING loud.
So I pour myself a glass of wine. Isn’t the sound that wine makes as it pours out of the bottle and into a glass one of the best sounds ever? Or is that just me?
Never mind.
Okay, so I’m making dinner. It’s a recipe that I’ve made hundreds of times – my Mom’s “baked spaghetti.” It’s a favorite of mine (the two older kids could care less) and definitely my version of comfort food. Because it’s pasta and cheese and tomatoes and butter and love. Seriously. It’s so good.
Except on this night, I run out of thin spaghetti. Of course I don’t realize I am going to run out until after I’m halfway through cooking it. And the toddler is still pretending to be a very loud fire truck. And the dog… well, he’s just being himself which is a perfect impersonation of an asshole dog. And dinner is going to be delayed. And I’m totally annoyed.
I substitute the missing thin spaghetti for rotini. People, it’s just not the same if it’s not thin spaghetti! This is a family recipe that has been handed down by… well, at least ONE generation, maybe two… and it MUST be thin spaghetti! I’ve only ever eaten this with thin spaghetti! This is devastating to me. I’m disappointed in myself and disappointed in dinner. So I pour myself another glass of wine.
It tasted fine.
I don’t think anyone would have cared (except me) that it wasn’t thin spaghetti. In fact, the pickiest eater of a toddler loved it and devoured three helpings. WHATever.
I let the toddler down from the table and he runs into the living room. I’m in the kitchen cleaning up and washing dishes. I peek on Kaden and he’s fine; watching some Disney Jr. show which gives me a few minutes to get the kitchen back together.
Another couple of minutes go by and my sweet, precious darling of a boy walks into the kitchen and hands me something that he had been holding.
I say, “What is that?… What is in your hand?…Is that POOP?”
Why yes, it was poop.
After a multitude of hand-washing for both of us, a diaper change, a refill of my wine glass, and some snuggle time with the little stinker… I managed to calm down and get those nerves back on the inside of my skin.
I wish I could say that that was the last time he handed me poop.
Smack in the Middle 
hahahhaa