I know I’m critical and judgmental. I don’t sugar coat nothing and my husband complains that he can do no right.

During times of stress, it gets worse.

Like on a day when I’ve unpacked the whole house, cooked meals, cleaned the kitchen and floors, bathed the children, and he’s lying on the sofa playing his iPod.

I’m working through this. Breathe in. Breathe out.

It’s gotta be beer thirty or wine o’clock already.

But I try really hard to appear supportive in public.

I don’t want to be that wife. The one who the Army Sergeant Majors cringe about and are embarrassed for the husband.

They confided to my husband: “Our wives criticize us in private. They give us The Look and we know we’re gonna get it when we’re alone. But she berates him in public, in front of everybody and anybody. It’s sad.”

During a shopping on the German economy class, a lady who has lived here for many years informed me that everyone knows who the Americans are when they yell at their kids in public.

So I’ve been observant. Germans gently pull their kids aside (in a store, at the park, wherever) and speak quietly and firmly to their child. German parents are present, close, quiet, calm.

I’m practicing this.

I’m learning to be quiet.

I think being quiet is scarier.