Anger Management

It started off as a good morning.

I'd had a fun dream that stretched most of the night and was like watching an action/adventure sci-fi movie. The kids managed to sleep in a bit, so I got to smack the snooze a few times and didn't get up until almost 6:30 -- and didn't feel like I was running late, either, since Matt's taking the week off and agreed to take Penny to school so I could go to work straight from dropping off Alex.

And then things started rolling downhill.

Penny whined at me about not wanting to go to school. Then we couldn't find her school library book, and today's library day. We turned the house upside down, and in the process, I got angrier and angrier about all the random flotsam and pieces of paper and junk that she'd just thrown on shelves with no eye at all to actually keeping things organized or finding it later. I actually indulged in a long-suppressed urge to just sweep all the crap off one surface with one big shove. It was every bit as satisfying as I'd imagined it would be.

But I hate myself when I get angry with Penny for this kind of thing. Deep down, it's not her fault. Matt and I are both slobs -- we don't leave food lying around, but we're very bad at organizing our stuff. We don't put things away, we don't clean up regularly. Our bookshelves are horrifying and our couch-side tables are a vomit of chaos. How is she supposed to learn how to be neat and organized, with us for role-models? All very well for us to institute a nightly clean-up policy, but since we've slacked off on picking up after Alex, and we've never picked up after ourselves as part of that policy, how is she supposed to see how it works? We haven't helped her with the organization part, either -- it's been, "get the stuff off the floor, get the stuff off the tables." And since it's a bedtime routine, we haven't had much patience for it, either.

So when I left the house, it was later than I'd been planning to leave, I was still angry with Penny (the book remains AWOL) and even more furious with myself (and seething at Matt, just for good measure). So I tried to respond cheerfully to Alex's chirps and babbles, but mostly I couldn't manage it and I just concentrated on trying not to drive angry.

And then we got to daycare and I took Alex back to his class, and his teacher had changed her hair and he didn't recognize her, so I had to walk away with him screaming and crying. Which did not help my mood any.

Nor did the realization, halfway to work, that I'd forgotten to write the check for daycare.

I thought about going to the gym instead of to work, to get on the elliptical and run off some of this anger and frustration, but then my knee started to twinge and throb even though I wasn't using it for anything. And I forgot to take my allergy meds this morning, which means I shouldn't get my allergy shots today.

I want to scream until my throat is so hoarse it's bloody. I want to scratch and bite something that will writhe and shriek in pain, I want to shake something until it breaks. I spent the last three miles of my drive to work talking myself down from tears because the iris scanner doesn't work so well if I'm crying. (I cry when I'm angry. Which only irritates me further, because it's so stupid.)

I'd think about taking the day off, except that there's nowhere for me to go.

There hasn't been anywhere for me to go for a long time, now.