I used to think my two-year-old was temperamental.

Until I became full-term pregnant in the heat of the summer.

Rubber-band emotions.

I snap back and forth between laughing and crying.

Often laugh-crying, like a creepy psychopath.

I blame the hormones but fear I’ve had a permanent personality shift.

Lord, help us.

Like when one of my medical providers recently diagnosed me with pregnant face.

It’s a very special phenomenon where the general public can look only at your face and immediately tell you’re pregnant.

Not all pregnant women have it, he explains.

Snaps about that one.

Or how about those rubber-band emotions you experience because you dreamt up the crown of all Father’s Day creations.

My Drew loves watching movies at the theater and often bemoans how infrequently he gets the pleasure.

When Drew gets to take in a show, he talks about it for weeks.

Our Andy has never been to the movie theater.

Eureka.

Andy and Drew will accompany one another to the theater for Drew’s Father’s Day treat and for Andy’s first theater experience.

What Frugal Fran doesn’t love herself a two-for-one idea like that.

I secretly schemed about my plan with the biggest smile on my face.

The moment I had fantasized about was here.

It was a matinée.

The theater was refreshingly dark and crisp on that hot Saturday afternoon in June.

I was giddy.

I had my chubby hands stuffed full of popcorn and peanut m&ms, sipping on a barrel-sized Dr. Pepper, living the dream.

And I look over to see both Andy and Drew sawing logs.

Few words were spoken as we exited the movie early.

Mama wore a big frown all the way to the car.

Claps about that one.

But the rubber-band emotions I experienced last Saturday at a local box store likely take the cake.

In need of a variety of millwork products, I perused aisle 22, with hopes that a happy sales associate would guide me.

Except he wasn’t happy.

And I had a very large order of quarter round that he was diligently cutting.

And a line of people was slowly forming behind his sawhorse.

And I don’t really know much about quarter round, so I’m certain my questions were annoying.

And I can’t blame the poor man for being short with me.

And on most days, I would push through, trying to force him to be my friend.

But my telepathic hugs were not being received.

My feelers were hurt.

Eventually, my big buggy and I found ourselves two aisles over, having a good cry.

The kind of cry that is so baseless and irrational that it makes you cry harder because you don’t want anyone to know you’re crying.

At some point, I was crying because I was crying.

We got waterworks on aisle 20.

Laughs about that one.

Snaps. Claps. Laughs.

All the day long.

My two-year-old’s rubber-band emotions ain’t got nothing on mine.