I’ve had a rage-y week.
There’s no logical or obvious reason why, and it hasn’t been a consistent state, but on a few separate occasions, I’ve surprised myself with my own hair-trigger response to things that would otherwise pass unnoticed… or at least with less fury.
And to give you some idea of just how irrational it got, here are 10 things — really, a drop in the pique bucket — that made me boil with bizarre contempt this week:
1. Falling on the ice, into a puddle. Yes, wet. Yes, annoying. But did the puddle feel the weight of my anger? Did the ice cower at my wild epithets? Not so much. I couldn’t victimize either more than I did by landing on them. But by the time I got home, I was ready to punch someone RIGHT IN THE COMMUTE.
2. Running out of pepper. Really. Thank heavens I still had salt, or I might have thrown a ROCK THROUGH THE WINDOW.
3. A woman whacking my iPhone out of my hand with her errant umbrella. I didn’t say anything, but I gave her the crazy eyes straight to the back of her head. For six train stops! THE CRAZY EYES! FEEL MY UMBRAGE, MARY POPPINS.
4. A snowstorm. Which makes sense, what with me choosing to move to New England and all. And I like snow! But I gave those flakes a GOOD TALKING TO.
5. About 1,001 things that people posted on Twitter and Facebook. The amount of comments I’ve crafted and then backspaced into oblivion would form a novel together. An angry, angry novel. Most of the time, people certainly weren’t trying to offend me — they were just linking to something of interest, or sharing something they thought. BUT I TOOK IT ALL VERY PERSONALLY OF COURSE.
6. Dropping grains of cooked rice on the floor. I was eating takeout Chinese food, which is a time that should be reserved solely for happiness and joy, but I kept dropping single grains, and then spiraling into a dizzy well of horror at the thought of them being stuck to my slippers or ending up under the sofa. I picked them up off the floor, and even then — GAAAARRRR!
7. People using too many towels too quickly! Which sounds bizarre — just wash them, you dip — but since we do laundry once a week at the laundromat (the only time we’re free to do it), if we use them all in a hurry at the beginning of the week, we’re dealing with a shortage by Wednesday. Normally? Doesn’t happen. I don’t know if you know this, though, but three teenage boys playing in the snow/showering over the weekend? USE A MILLION TOWELS. It wasn’t actually that bad, and we have three clean ones we haven’t even used yet. And I definitely wasn’t mad at the boys, because that would have been some wacky parenting. Nope… I was angry at THE TOWELS. WHERE DID ALL OF YOU GO? *wordless lifting of hands to the heavens*
8. Bits of fruit in my Burt’s Bees Cranberry-Cherry Sugar Scrub. Hey nature girl with your all-natural products, what are those bits of red in the shower? Why, that’s nature! They actually make this stuff out of real ingredients. Isn’t that wonderful? Normally, I’d have thought that was fun. Last night? WHITE HOT FRUIT BIT RAGE.
9. How hot tea is. Yep, you read that right — I got mad at hot tea. YOU’RE REALLY HOT, TEA! OW! DAMMIT!
10. Angry Birds. And while it might seem appropriate — even empathetic — in the midst of wildly finger-stabbing a slightly bruised green pig into next week, I realized I’d likely be better off leaving the violence to the flying avifauna. BUT NO ONE CAN BALANCE AN ENTIRE PILE OF ROCKS ON THEIR HEAD, PIG. NO ONE.
There you have it.
At best, some of those things might be a bit irksome… maybe even a touch frustrating. But nothing really deserved the nuclear option. I was a short, round Chernobyl, flinging my mental radiation everywhere I looked.
I don’t think poor Gradon felt the brunt of it (unless he feels emotionally connected to the pepper grinder or our house linens)… but I bet he noticed.
So this weekend, in the midst of everything else that needs to get done — cleaning, laundry, some work, feeding the 12 year-old locust playing on my iPad next to me on the sofa — I’m going to focus on cheerfully de-raging myself, and not taking everything so personally.
UNLESS THE TEA KEEPS BEING HOT! AAAAAAAAAA!
