Mom Entrepreneurs Are Like Sharks?

Have you ever wondered if you were an animal what type of animal you’d be? OK, maybe not but I have after observing a man with a dog that just seemed to have his essence. You’ve seen people who sorta “go” with their animals. Here’s another couple of random questions: “What would you name yourself if you could have picked your name?” “What grade do you think your future son or daughter in law is in right now?” These are questions I have developed to zen myself in stressful situations (like the 35 minute wait at the post office yesterday). Read my post on happiness to gather more information on this subject. I have satisfactorily answered these riveting questions for myself. If you have any interesting or humorous ones to share by all means post it. We could all use a few more mental mini-vacations! 

My youngest sister came over last night for an impromptu visit. She unsolicited offered an answer to the “What kind of animal” question. It turns out I’d be considered a marine vertebrate (a/k/a “shark”).

She walked in the door with a bottle of wine. I shouted out, “Party is in the laundry room!” as I was folding clothes.  I am trained like Pavlov’s dog to the dryer. If I hear it beep I will race from wherever I am to get those clothes out and folded/hung. I don’t iron so its our clothes only hope of being presentable. Afterwards, she watched me feed the kids, answer questions about homework, discipline my 5 year old for walking on the coffee table barefoot. Besides being dangerous how do you explain footprints on a newly polished coffee table? I let the housekeeper go in an effort to force myself to train 3 boys how to keep a house. I created the tagline “Team Bone” for ourselves to help build camaraderie for moments like this weekend when all five of us went nuts cleaning together. We scrubbed walls, toilets, the dog. Anything that was dirty got handled.

It was a typical night at our house-lots of activity. My husband is out of town so I had to handle it all. We normally “divide and conquer” especially if I have a guest over. I started showing her various business projects I am working on one of which required a tv.  We went into my bedroom and she noted I was painting it and asked “Why?” I pointed to the nasty booger stain on the wall (Why use a tissue when you can use your mom’s bedroom wall?) and to the hole in the wall where the doorknob was smashed into the drywall after a particularly energetic burst of “Chase and kill your brother” spilled over into my room. The booger stain on the wall (which is gone now I promise) did it for my sister…she had a mouthful of red wine that darn near came out of her nose. She managed to spit it into the glass before rolling on the bed in peels of laughter. FYI and fair warning: I have a talent for making people shoot liquids out their face. In fact, I used to make my younger brother blow milk out his nose at least once a week at dinner with my stories. The Irish are known for their storytelling abilities. To this day he won’t drink milk around me. It was then that she said, “You know your like a shark. You are constantly moving.”  I am constantly moving. I wasn’t sure I wanted to fall into the shark category as they don’t conjure up a warm and fuzzy, do they? I’ve done my best not to encounter one since Jaws worked its psychological magic of keeping all kids born in the late 60’s and 70’s out of ocean water. However, there are some similarities between sharks and mompreneurs. They are constantly moving and so are we. They bounce on opportunity when presented and so do we. They will rip you to shreds if you threaten their young and so will we! According to Wikipedia, sharks are rarely observed mating…perhaps another similarity? lol! Of course, I like to think we are also like a warm puppy….you can read my earlier post on that one!