In serious hopes that today was the beginning of the end.

I may not be good at many things, but I have been doing a fantastic job of teaching my kids to sweat the small stuff. If there were an Olympic event in flipping out, I would have a case in my living room full of gold medals. I am just that good.

This morning, I lost it big time, but I think I learned a lesson from it all.

Cameron and Drew were in the living room being rowdy, as usual, while Andrew finished getting ready for work so that he could take the older boys to school. I came into the room to make sure they had shoes and backpacks on, and found Cameron and Drew atop the mountainous pile of laundry on the loveseat, looking through the clothes for something.

"What are you doing up there??" I exclaimed.

"We're looking for my glasses," came Cameron's reply. "Drew tore them off my face and threw them."

"What is the matter with you!?" was the opening sentence of my hour long rant.

It seems that they were horsing around, Drew went for Cameron's weak spot, the glasses, and chucked them as hard as he could. Ethan informed me that they must have landed somewhere soft, because no one heard them hit anything. Thus the search through the pile of clothes waiting to be folded.

We looked through the entire laundry pile three times, checked under couches, in the fireplace, I checked the window blinds, thinking that they may have gotten hung up there. We checked behind couch cushions, in the armchair, under the armchair...everywhere. I could not think of another place to look, soft or otherwise. I had already yelled at Drew and sent him to his room. I yelled at Cameron for letting Drew do such a thing. I yelled at Cameron again for being so dense as to not have a clue where the glasses landed, and I yelled at myself for not having folded those clothes on the couch days ago. There they were, mocking me and my lack of appropriate time management. We tried to coax out of Drew a clue as to where he might have chucked the specs, but he looked at us like we were crazy and he wasn't giving up anything.

So after the most frustrating forty-five minutes of my life, with no satisfaction, Cameron and Ethan were late for school, Drew had been sent to his room for his own safety, and I had yelled and cursed and cried until I didn't know what to do anymore. I finally told Cameron to keep looking until he found his stupid glasses, and I sat on the couch to try and regain control of my rage and breathing.

Cameron wandered around the living room for about five more minutes and then looks at me with a confused and yet thoughtful expression and says, "Maybe I didn't have my glasses on yet."

I then became aware that a possible side effect of anger is the body's spontaneous attempt to violently expel all internal organs via an explosion somewhere behind the sternum. I think I had to swallow my heart and lungs to get them to go back where they came from.

I took a very, very deep and deliberate breath and walked as calmly as I could into the bathroom, opened a drawer, retrieved Cameron's glasses from their case and walked back to the living room. I closed my eyes and held the glasses out for Cameron, waited until I was sure he was out of my reach and then opened my eyes, thinking that if I couldn't reach him, I wouldn't kill him and would be able to control my irrational temper. I was wrong.

I yelled a lot. I am not in any way proud of it, nor do I think it did any good, but I had completely lost it. Honestly, how does a kid remain convinced for over an hour that his little brother has snatched his glasses and thrown them across the room, when he never had them on his face in the first place?

So in the process of venting all of my frustrations over the matter, I squashed every ounce of self esteem and respect that Cameron might have possessed. And if ever there was a kid who did not need his mother to tear him down several notches, it was Cameron.

When I had finally calmed down and was drained of tears over the ridiculous incident, I didn't want to send my kids to school. I knew that my over-reaction would cause both Cameron and Ethan to have a terrible day and I didn't want to send them into the world while I was still unable to apologize. But I did it anyway because I knew it would be hours before I was calm enough to say the right things to patch where I had wounded.

My day remained a disaster until the boys returned from school and I could apologize for so explosively losing my temper.

I learned two things today. The first thing I learned was that I am a bigger idiot than I accused Cameron of being, (yes, I did, and I can only hope that time will erase that from his memory). Not only because I didn't put two and two together, (Drew claimed he didn't know where the glasses were, no one saw where they went or heard them hit anything, Cameron is a notorious scatterbrain...Hello?? I should have known that the glasses were never part of the equation), but mainly because I belittled my child repeatedly as my frustration and irritation grew, because I couldn't get my emotions under control. Cameron and I will probably both be tormented by the way I treated him for a long time, and I did it over a $40 pair of glasses that I knew full well when we got them would only survive this house for a few months at best.

I also learned that my temper may have seemed like a small pest a few weeks ago when I would occasionally lose my mind over a wrestling match gone too far or a box of cereal scattered all over the floor, but I've been feeding that pest more often than I should have lately, and it has grown into a beast of gargantuan proportions. I am going to have to work so hard to shrink it back to it's rightful size. It won't be easy, but it is long overdue.

So for as long as it takes, I'll be tackling this problem with all kinds of deep breathing exercises, counting to ten or ten million, humming of churchy songs, and trying to find the bright spot in my woes, even if I have to make one up. Wish me luck, cause I'm gonna need it.