34 Morning

Wow, 34 -- actually had to stop and count.  Pretty neat.


Of course I can say that NOW after I've been to work long enough to get settled and eat good chocolates for breakfast. If you'd asked me 90 minutes ago I would have been a shrew looking for not just pebbles but a good-sized rock in my bag of resentment to throw your way (I don't say "at you" because I have lousy depth perception and thus couldn't hit the broad side of a slow-moving cow.)


Anyhow.


Last night I had issues with ABL. He won't -tell- anyone he's running out of anything so the way I discovered he was out of razors was when he came to dinner with only a patch of his beard shaven (he likes to let it grow out till it starts getting annoying, shave, rinse, repeat.)  Well, fine, after dinner I went back into town and got razors. Only THEN did he announce "shaving cream." His clear expectation was that I would immediately make a -second- trip back into town to procure his shaving cream which wasn't happening at all. We don't bowl till Friday and yesterday was only Wednesday; he can wait till I come home tonight for his shaving cream and still have a day to fix it before looking dumb in public.  He also wasn't happy that someone else had already occupied the washer and dryer so he couldn't do his laundry ("bring dirty clothes down") right when he wanted to do it either. So that was trying.


Rewarded myself with an evening (well, what little of it was left) of quiet knitting instead of socializing with the family. A good way to empty out the bag of resentment is a nice lot of solitary playtime.


This morning it was the dogs.  Girl-Beagle has a tiny nervous bladder and will wet the bed in her sleep if you don't walk her about every twenty minutes (okay, I exaggerate.) Boy-Beagle has the opposite problem: he knows that once he does his business we go back in the house so he will hold off as long as he can in favor of sniffing Every. Single. Millimeter. of grass if he's in a mood...and boy was he in a mood this morning.  We live in the country so I don't know whatinthehell kind of critter - probably just the neighbor's outdoor cat - wandered through our front yard in the night but whatever it was left Really Interesting smells and Boy-Beagle was going to suck up every last molecule through his nostrils.  Was out there 20 minutes getting increasingly mad, took a break, came in for my own morning business, went BACK out....I kid you not, it took that damned dog forty-five freaking minutes before he decided to finally pee. With Girl-Beagle barking her fool head off inside the house the whole time thinking she was missing out on something. (Family slept through all of it which I thought was reasonably stunning.)


First thing back in the house he left presents on the family room floor.


Telling it now even I think it sounds like something out of a cheap sit-com but at the time...oh my friends at the time I was one small step away from having a shrieking crying tantrum. The kind where you throw dishes and wake the whole rest of the household.  That "raw emotions" thing was roaring full force.  I'm not sure how I managed NOT to break down.  One thing I do know though is that even while I was getting madder and madder and madder at the dog, at the family who "ought" to magically psychically realize I needed help and appear - poof -  to offer it, at the day itself, at living where we lived...you know how the resentments get rolling...even while I was doing all that there was a little part of my brain saying "and it would be so much WORSE if you were hung over right now."


Well, yeah, it would at that.


I eventually got the dogs settled, bitched to Spouse about it, got dressed and got the hell out of there. Knowing that I had a box of Sober Chocolates waiting for me meant the ten minutes between house and work were increasingly pleasurable even though I -did- get stuck behind a big truck with its flashers on all the way up the hill. Now that I've actually eaten a couple servings of said chocolate I'm pretty okay with the day. That may change but right now instead of continuing to drag around that heavy bag of resentment and anger I've managed to empty it out and start fresh again.  That's sobriety for you: if I'd been hung over, even a little bit, which I -always- was, I'd be carrying that weight around all day and adding to it with the all-day conference I've got then using that as a justification for some major drinking which would have rendered tomorrow morning every bit as, if not more, miserable than before.


Chocolate and perspective is definitely better than dizzy and pushing fluids.