Control Freak

Everyone has their vices. Mine is control. From the moment I was born I have had my precious label. In kindergarden, I walked in, announced to the teacher that I had arrived and she may now start class. My mother slapped her forehead and I see this in my near future with my daughter.

I've always had the need to have the upperhand and I hate surprises. The one time my husband tried to throw me a surprise party I found out and got so angry I didn't talk to him for three days. In college, I found out he was going to spring a surprise proposal on me, I called everything off and we broke up for 9 months. It's a bit of a problem.

This is a huge reason why I have found motherhood so difficult. You are not in control. You can guide and push, but ultimately, your little bundle(s) are steering the boat.

I go through these phases where I have obsessive needs to organize. As in, I stay up all night and work all day on my current project. Right now, it is getting all of our home movies in a published DVD format. Last week, it cleaning out closets and trashing or shipping away things I don't need/want. The week before that it was redoing the toy room. Whatever "it" is, I can't rest until it's done.

I thought these qualities just made me an organized person. But after some reflection, I found out why I organize. When one part of my life is out of my control, I have to attack something else to regain my feeling of power.

Take for example my time in a research lab. When my experiments were failing all over the place, my lab bench was so neat and clean you could eat off of it (which I frequently did). When my thesis committee was up in the air about whether I was going to be able to defend or not, all of my research was neatly compiled into binders and my computer work was put into stackable folders, to which a monkey could find any experiment ever performed.

As a mom, when I've been the most organized, it's when my kids have been completely out of control. Fussy, not napping, resistant, sick or currently "with attitude". My daughter is so much like me it's painful. She will strike her brother on the head with a toy, then walk over to time out, sit down, yell MAMA and point to "Mr. Timer." After she has instructed me to turn him on, so she can serve her sentence, she will sit there with her arms folded. After Mr. Timer beeps, she will get up, give me a hug and go try to kiss her brother (to which he flails his arms to ward her off). My daughter is so much like me, she doesn't even let me control her own discipline. Don't worry mom, I've got it.

But hey, my quirk could be worse. I could turn to drinking or other more inviting vices. So I guess for now, until my kids get off their crazy wagon, I'll just stick to relabeling and organizing my videos by chronological date and theme.