Lesson Learned

I have a pretty short fuse. It doesn't take much before I am stomping around with smoke coming out of my ears and fire shooting out of my nose. Really, it's quite ridiculous. I don't handle stress well I just melt down and can't function.
This morning I was working on an article that I need to turn in by tomorrow. I also have a writing sample I should have submitted a week ago and a coverletter. Plus I need to refinish my book,clean the house, pay bills and a hundred other menial tasks. Of course as soon as I start working on something important is the minute my girls need a drink or food or they want to watch a movie. After a few minutes of successfully ignoring them E started a full-on tantrum. I flipped out. Stomped into the kitchen and filled her cup with water and yelled the whole way that I needed to work could I please have a few minutes to myself. The only thing this accomplished was sending my other daughter into fits. Pretty soon both kids were screaming at the top of their lungs and I was yelling at them to "Please be quiet, you're driving me insane." Sometime during Hurricane Brown I had a moment of clarity. If someone walked by outside they would surely call the police. I needed to end this party, and fast. So I flipped on my playlist and cranked up a Hannah Montana song (please don't judge that I can sing almost all of the words.) Within seconds both kids were laughing at my boogying skills and started dancing. We spent the next few minutes blowing off steam on the dance floor and by time we were finished we were all a happier bunch of people.
In retrospect I realized that my kids wanted my attention. Taking a few minutes to make them smile and have some fun with mommy will buy me a lot more than the money I am going to make with my articles. I need to work but I also need my kids to know that I love them. I realized that if, instead of flipping out in a moment of stress, I take a few moments to focus on the problem and tried to address the immediate problem we'd all be a little less crazy.