I’m a bit grumpy this morning. I don’t know why. The past two nights I’ve slept an unbelievable (for me) number of hours. I just woke up feeling raw. I mostly took this feeling out on my kids (with a grumpy voice and numerous pronouncements about how things were going to have to change), so I’m glad they deserved it. They tend to drag their feet just a bit. Without fail they each begin watching a separate television show at 7:30 when by now they should know that I am going to make them leave exactly five minutes before their conclusions. I’m pumping a little Diet Pepsi and Metallica into my brain to help even my mood. I only notice that I am so grumpy this morning perhaps because I was in a very good mood last night. Ethan’s birthday was yesterday, and even though his party is Saturday, I felt that I should do something for him, so I took him out to eat at the park. His mom was working late, so it was just the three of us. Delaney was just a little bit hyper. We’d already had a small issue before we’d left the house. Though we were only going to be home for a few minutes before going to eat, she decided to take off her shoes, socks, and pants. We got past that, and I swore to the kids and myself on the way up the road we were going to all have a nice meal. It was probably at least twenty minutes into our meal before Delaney knocked over her chair. Of course she’d been leading up to it. The fidgeting with her silverware, the complaining about her food, the interruptions of both her brother and myself while we were already talking. After she knocked it over, I asked her to please set it upright, sit in it, and put her feet in front of her. She isn’t one to use a chair in the conventional fashion, so I have to give her hints as we go along. About thirty seconds after she had gotten the foot placement right, she thought of something she had to say to me. When she talks to me, she is always very emphatic. To be emphatic she has to turn her entire body toward me, and in so doing she spilled her 7Up. Luckily, very little of it got on the table or on the floor, because almost the entire contents soaked into the right leg of my blue jeans. Now this is the point I think where some people would have exploded. I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t think of grabbing her by the wrist, leading her outside, and giving her a taste of leather. Experience has taught me, however, that corporal punishment rarely cures carelessness. I try to reserve it for more intentional wrongdoings. Thinking objectively about the situation, the main problem was that my daughter had embarrassed me. To correct the immediate problem for me, the embarrassment, I decided that the best thing was to show total calm in the face of adversity. I admonished Delaney to pick up the pieces of ice that had fallen to the floor, and I got a rag from the waitress to blot myself with. I let Delaney sweat for the next hour thinking of what might happen when we got home. I think the fear of corporal punishment works much better sometimes than the thing itself, and since I put her to bed at eight o’clock as an alternative punishment, she wasn’t nearly so hard to roust this morning. Of course she did grab for the remote first thing.