Patience of a Saint

I was so ornery today for no good reason. I wasn’t in a particularly bad mood, but my patience was somewhere in the negative range. What’s worse, I had no idea until I was driving along, blithely listening to my iPod (which was, infuriatingly, only playing every other song and there was nothing I could do about it – not even a soft reset could save me), when two girls were driving too slow in the left lane. Honestly, I behaved as though they spit in my eye, the way I carried on and screamed at them and flipped them off wildly with two hands and then rolled down my window and stared them down with the Evil Eye of Angry Honda Driver. Yes, yes, they were going 25 MPH and if I’d stayed behind them, I’m sure I’d have been killed, or at least, okay fine, REAR-ENDED but really? Was the rage necessary?

No. No, it was not.

Later, when a perfectly nice and completely well-meaning co-worker asked me where the envelopes were kept, I felt rage boil within me like nothing I’d experienced before. Well, at least I’d never experienced it related to office supplies. Envelopes as a source of blind rage? Discuss.

I’m always like this when Adam flies, I’ve realized. So, in addition to not sleeping, worrying about random illnesses and a host of other concerns and maladies, I’m apparently a raging psycho who wants to beat up little girls while they drive to work. Oh oh oh! And also: entirely dependent on a husband for my emotional well-being, lest I unleash with the fury of hell on anyone who dares ask me for an envelope.

I am woman, hear me roar.

Really it’s that I’m afraid to fly, and when anyone I love is on a plane, I’m nervous and edgy and awful to be near. And since he was flying into our nation’ s capital, I had visions of some rogue teenager with a death wish blowing him up over the Chesapeake Bay with, I don’t know, Axe Body Spray. He’s fine, and I am now calm.

Also, did you know that I am opinionated and sometimes I can be a major asshole? Yes. I don’t know why I can’t keep my mouth shut, and for some reason, if there’s a subject that I have an opinion on, I feel compelled to stubbornly share that opinion, sometimes loudly, like I’m some kind of expert, even if I do not actually care about the subject at hand.

However, even discussing it at all makes it look like I care, and then, because I’ve launched INTO the diatribe in the first place, I feel compelled to finish it. And then I realize I actualy have no vested interest in the topic or person a hand, and I try to backpedal, because the truth is, I don’t actually care, but by then it is too late, and I have already launched off and I am in very, very deep. And also stubborn and mean-sounding. Over nothing that I actually care that much about.

I did this a few months ago while I was defending the safety of alligators in lagoons. Alligators. I couldn’t care less about fucking alligators, and yet there I was defending them like I worked for the WWF. This is a repeating pattern.

An all-around pleasant day, really. Road rage. Opinion-spouting. Envelope rage. Oh oh, and behaving like a general asshole.

But Big Brother AND Rockstar Supernova are on, and let’s hope the excitement of it all puts me in a better mood.

*Electronic

11 comments August 22nd, 2006