It is true.
The following line is best read if you use the voice of Sophia from Golden Girls.
Picture it. Cincinnati, Ohio. 2003; A few weeks before we were ready to open our restaurant.
You can go back to your own reading voice now.
I had finished and signed the last piece of paperwork to sign up to adopt a baby in Ohio. They gave us a nod of approval and a nice window of three to five years of a wait. This was all going according to my plan. At the time I had been a Wedding Planner for ten years. I had a lot of plans and was organised and a control freak. Things usually went according to my plan.
That same day, only a few hours after dropping off the paperwork, I got a call from the social workers telling me there was a five-day old baby girl they were ear marking for our ‘family’ and they felt sure the birth mother would think we were the right choice. I politely said ‘no thanks’ because we were getting ready to open the restaurant and there was no-way-no-how I could be a Mom (to someone else’s baby) and a wife to a demanding Chef and a bartender/hostess with the mostest at our lovely restaurant.
You might wonder, how is it that we ended up with a baby and a restaurant all at the same time? Well, that my friends is His story and I am certain that at some point he will take the finger out and tell it like it really happened.
Anyway, the reason for the title is telling, no doubt. I am sitting in a bowl of the doldrums these days with something that is weighing heavily on my mind. And unlike most people who like to keep all their problems private, I feel that sometimes the only way I can get this figured out is if I air my dirty laundry and get it of my chest.

I am a yeller. It is how I get all these kids attention. For the most part it works.
My kind of yelling is the ‘Jack, get of the roof of the shed’ kind of yelling. Except it is usually more like ‘JACK! Get of the ROOF of the ^&*%($@ shed, NOW!)
Ok, and now you know, I am a swearer.

I do not yell hurtful comments or say hateful things to the kids. That would just be mean and I am not that mean. I am a bit of a softie actually. And after I yell at them, I feel rotten. Like my guts slither onto the floor and I am wrecked with guilt for hours or until I have to yell at them again.
The thing is, and this is a doozey folks, one of my oldest and bestest friends does not like being around me anymore because I yell when she (and her child) are visiting.
Usually things like ‘stay out of the house, we are having grown up chat’ or ‘Jack, stop hitting your sister with a tennis racket’ …ha ha, no, ‘with a hurley‘ – we so do not play tennis. Jack is getting a bad rap here, I know, but that is just because he is my only boy and it would not be fair the pick on the Foster kids and let’s face it, Rory is just so darn good and obedient you would never have to as much as raise your eyebrow to keep her in line. (This is the biggest lie I have ever written. The part about Rory being good, that is).

Do not be fooled by this innocent look folks. He is all boy!
So, I am in a bit of a quandary folks. We don’t spank. It is not all that fashionable these days and the Chef came from a belt wielding parental unit so it suits neither of us to use that method. I do most of (but not all) of the yelling. When I queried the Chef about my yelling habits, as I am genuinely concerned now that I might be causing serious psychological damage to that all these amazing kids in our lives, he insisted that the yelling is not extreme at all, it is just the high pitch at which it is delivered at. Well, I know I am loud and am willing to offer a lower pitched tone, no problem. He also noted, that he does a lot of the yelling and will make a more concerted effort to relieve me of my parenting duties next time we have company. What a love, isn’t he though?

Having just spent a week with siblings (my sister and her four kids and my brother and his two kids) I came to the conclusion that we all parent exactly the same. So, what this all boils down to is simple. It is all my Mother’s fault. Clearly.
She yelled at us. To be honest, she just yelled at me the other day. I am sure, actually, if she were ever to be so unfortunate as to be struck with some rotten disease, it would be a disgusting throat infection that has been festering for a very long time from all the roaring and shouting she did when we were growing up.
She also broke A LOT of wooden spoons chasing after us. Why is it then, that I am not psychologically damaged by it.
OR AM I?
Do I need to get in to therapy and delve back 20 + years to figure out that really, the root of all my problems stems from having a Mum that shouted at me till she was blue in the face? Ah, no. I do not think so. AND, hello? Who the heck said I had problems anyway?
What has spurred me to spill the beans was something that happened earlier this morning. I was outside playing the the kids. Ok, maybe I was not playing ‘with’ them, but we were all golfing on the lawn or in the sand pit or hanging laundry. My youngest (foster kiddie, age 5) was flying around the house on her bike and I told her to slow down because the postman usually passes through around 11am ish and I wanted her no where near his truck. She kept going, and I kept telling her to get into the grass. She did what she was told eventually and hopped on the swings. Yeah! No shouting. I am an AWESOME parent! Woo hoo!
I carried in the laundry basket and heard the postman’s truck drive in the driveway and just because I am, let’s say ‘tuned in’ I glanced over at the swing only to see swinging empty………laundry basket dropped, tripped over patiently-waiting-for-snack duck, I bolted around the corner and yelled for all my life was worth to get her attention SECONDS before the postman’s truck all but reversed right over her.
Yes. I yelled at her. I know. I am no longer an awesome mother. I suck at this. I also hugged her and cried and told her that I would die if anything ever happend to her and then I asked her WHY (and this was in a high-pitched tone folks) the heck did she run out after the post truck when I had just told her not to. Why? ‘because I was bold’….that was all she gave me then she trotted off back to the sand box to play with the others and I went inside and made lunch.

Something with salad perhaps?
I am hoping that all the yummy mummy’s and dapper dads will bombard me with comments and tell me how horrible and insensitive I am, that I need to revisit my decision to be a parent, that I am a perfect example of what ‘not to do’ and then (because you are the experts) share with me all the more effective ways you can parent FOUR (or more) kids without hitting the high notes. I am not to old to learn new tricks, but am not willing to let them run circles around me either.

Leftover homemade buttermilk fried chicken with salad
We are, after all, outnumbered.
Those are all the WiseWords I have for today. I am going to bury my head in the sand and hope for a quieter tomorrow.
WiseMóna
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