I can be over the top somtimes, especially when my veneer of patience is scratched a bit.

Like, when an employee tells me to stay in Aisle 29 and someone will come help me find the plumbing supplies I've been charged with purchasing for a friend's dad, and then no one comes. And I get pipe lube on my fingers because I was fiddling with a piece I ended up not needing.

I wondered how long I was supposed to wait in Aisle 29, but eventually I wandered. By the time I found the nearest employee, I was in a near panic.

"Somebody said they would come and then no one did and now I'm very overwhelmed standing looking at all these pipes and I have no idea which ones I need."

She helped me.

Last Thursday I stood in my eye doctor's office holding my broken pair of glasses.

"I really need a new pair of glasses - my dog chewed these - and I really need them soon." They had them to me the next day.

And today, standing in the Walmart vision center holding my broken glasses.

"My dog chewed my glasses and I need a new pair of frames, but I don't want to pay a lot of money for them in case he does it again. This is just really not in my budget today."

I paid $18 for a pair of frames she popped the lenses into.

I was very mad when I woke up at 5 a.m. to *him* chewing on my 3-day old frames that I thought I had put out of reach last night. So mad that I wanted to cry, but so mad that I couldn't. So mad that I was silent to him, but so mad I was screaming to myself: You idiot!

I wished I could have relived the previous 8 hours, but instead I told myself, "Stress enables ingenuity. There's nothing you can do about it tonight. Put your ass back in bed and sleep for two more hours. You can duct tape them together and then get a new pair."

So that's what I did.

I guess I've always had a flare for the extreme and melodramatic.

So when my patience is wearing thin with kids these days and their attitudes about life and relationships, I say that when I have children, I will convert to the brotherhood of the Amish.

Some common refutions I hear:

"First thing to go is your cell phone and no more Internet or Hulu Plus."
"You would have to make your own clothes and only 3 colors."
"Say hello to bonnets and strings."

All to which I smile and mumble, "If only you knew..."

"You'd probably have to get rid of your dogs and have 10 kids."
"You'd have to do everything your husband told you to do."

And then I start reconsidering my rash conversaion.

Really all I want is to work my kids' asses off and make them grow food. And help me build shit and not become so infatuated with materialistic mumbo jumbo that they don't know what a hummingbird sounds like or that blackberries grow in the wild (and you can pick them!)

Who knows. Maybe by the time I'm fruitful and multiplying, our society would have worked into such an automated frenzy that we fry all circuits and have to return to foraging, or our own version of the Hunger Games.

In any case, patience is a virtue I have to work for.
And when I can't be patient anymore I can be over the top sometimes.