Bah Humbug!

Although Genesis tells me why I have been given "the curse", the emotional crap that goes along with it is really annoying and altogether unfair. If it is just pain in childbirth, okay. I'm done with all that. Hah! but why do I have days (as in not A day, but three days and counting so far this month) where I want to rip people's head off for anything and everything. Where's the Prozac when you really need it?

I once had an elderly neighbor who bemoaned the loss of her menstral cycle, saying she didn't feel like a woman anymore. I still think she was insane. If a menstral cycle makes me a woman, then I think I'll be gender neutral.

Perhaps the reason for menstruation and the accompanying pain, cramping, bloating, irritability and crying is so that we will welcome old age. Here's the tradeoff: I give up all of that in exchange for some wrinkles and gray hair. My mother says I also get incontinence, arthritis, loss of memory, and a host of other fun things, but for now, give me my dream of a simple trade-off. I'll think about the rest of that later.

Under My Skin

What is it about that one guy at the office that just gets under my skin? Part of it is he puts off a nervous frazzled energy that generates that same response within me. I don't do nervous. I don't do frazzled. So when the carrier gets around to passing it along, I react. Badly.

Then I let every little thing get under my skin. Every. Little. Thing. Every dot of red ink. Every corrected document that comes back cut apart and taped together in new and irritating ways. And why can we never get it right the first time? Or even the second? Why do we have endless time for changes and corrections, but never enough time to do it right the first time?

I have gotten to where I don't give him the completed work until the last minute because it gives him less time to change his mind. I'm heading in right now to steal all his red pens. Hah!

Six hundred and Sixty Pounds of Concrete

Friday, October 10, 2003

By Wednesday I had already had a very stressful week . After work I had to race up to the travel agent to pay for Steve's airline tickets so he wouldn't loose his seat which made me late for AWANA, so the kids didn't have their craft, the leaders didn't have the kids name tags . . .

Anyway, so I get home at 8:45pm, having left at 6:30am. Stuck in my door was a warning notice and door hanger courtesy of the Humane Society.

Apparently my big dog escaped again yesterday, and when they came to investigate, they had tipped their water dish and so I "did not provide adequate water", the kids had shut the sliding door (which I leave open so the dogs can come and go) so I "did not provide shelter" and I had forgotten to renew their licenses.

All the notice said was that it needed "immediate correction" and that they would be back. And that I was to call a number (which, of course) was not available until later in the morning on Thursday.

I was already really stressed out, so to come home and find this was the last straw. I was in near hysterics when I called the office manager to tell her I was taking an emergency personal day to deal with it all.

So . . . I spent the day yesterday fixing the fence: hauling 660 pounds of concrete, digging trenches, mixing and pouring and forming cement, pounding rebar, and taking both dogs to the vet. (At one point I found myself pushed back under the sink, grasping a dog who was crazed by the muzzle, the smell of hundreds of dogs and other critters, and the stranger probing and prodding and sticking needles in his neck and hind side.)

Then back home to mix and pour more concrete to finish the job. So it was 5:30 when I stepped out of the shower, and morning before I remembered the appointment I had missed at Colorado Technical University.

AAAGH!

Still, I am remarkably cheerful this morning. I'm not really sure why . . .
Kim Bentz