This week was something sort of hellish. On no night could I get a decent amount of rest for the life of me, though I went to bed at ten o'clock with the regularity of a healthy octogenarian's bowels. So I was unprepared for most of the normal upsets and wears and tears of my job, and stressed, and easily frustrated.
Not to mention a nice little fender bender on Tuesday night, the result of the most insane act of idiocy I've witnessed on the road to date. A woman who'd turned the WRONG WAY onto a one-way street swung around into the middle lane at an intersection, then, as I came up behind her on the left, turned left FROM THE MIDDLE LANE into the intersection, right in front of me. I slammed on the brakes and lay on the horn for a good five seconds, to no effect. My poor Earl smacked his right front bumper into her left rear door. Plastic headlight and turn signal covers shattered all over the asphalt. My radiator slowly leaking fluid. Me so silently outraged and irate that my passenger (a coworker whom I was driving home) told me later she feared I would throttle the offending driver right there in the street.
I wish I could draw a diagram for you. The blatant stupidity jacked my blood pressure sky-high, even more than if I had been remotely at fault. A quick phone call to 911 (first 911 call I've ever made) brought a police car to the scene in about ten seconds, and since no one was injured and the damage minimal, the officer just did an official exchange of information, gave us some advice, and left. I could barely look the Stupid Woman Who Drove in Front of Me in the face, but I didn't kill her, attempted to be pacified by her frantic overtalkative woe-is-me-what-a-bad-week attempts to appease me, and left. Now I'm just waiting for her insurance company to call me and send somebody to look over my poor baby to assess the cost. At least I don't have to pay for any of the damage.
This weekend is a Note Dame home game, and I have happily holed myself up hermit- or grizzly bear-like in my apartment for the weekend, knowing that if I wanted to leave it would take me hours to get anywhere, and everything would be twice as expensive. (Oh yes. God help you if you want to fill your gas tank on a home game weekend: The prices are ten to twenty cents higher per gallon.)
Boss Meg and Jess (the coworker whom I drove home) have noticed that my Inner Bitch is snarling and rattling the bars of my ribcage -- not in how I treat people, but in my general attitude. She had a lot of free reign in college (though she didn't fool the people who knew me), and even when I worked retail; but now that I'm in social work, and with small children at that, I've stuffed her into a tight drum of controlled kindness. She's in a rage. Sometimes I've found myself longing to really have it out with Slightly Psycho Kevin, the only really hateable person I know, just to blow off steam. (But I haven't because that isn't my place and would open up a suppurating and unpleasant can of long-living worms.)
A good thing I've started working out every day after work with Meg. Without that physical outlet for pent-up aggression, I don't really know what I'd do besides slowly disintegrate.
Which is largely why I'm a.) healthy as a horse and getting steadily stronger, and b.) blowing most of my extra money on really nice-smelling Yankee Candles. Aromatherapy, my friends. It's vital.
9 comments:
Today is (home game) UVa vs. Florida State. God help all of us who live in big football college towns. And of course, we have to live about 1 mile from the stadium...
Sorry about your little accident. At least it wasn't your fault. And least you are safe. Once, when I was little...some lady rammed our car because she had moved over into the left lane to TURN RIGHT!!!!! (and made said, "left-lane right" just as we were going straight, as we should've been). Unbelievable.
As far as idiotic accidents go, how about some uninsured jerk who changes into your lane on the highway, sending you into a 65-mile-per-hour spiral that demolishes your $3,000 car with new tires and an oil change and nearly kills you, and then running off as soon as he saw that I wasn't dead and his car was fine? ARG! I feel your pain--just hope you were properly insured, because I didn't have collision insurance and the only way I got a small pittance was unleashing the I.B. within me on some random claims guy for my "pain and suffering." Now I'm driving a 16-year-old hoopde (sp?) that has been greeting with a lot of trashy pick up lines, like: "Hey, yo, girl, what do you say I take you out dinner tonight? Or, on second thought, how about a car wash?"
So the point of all this, I suppose, is just to say that I'm thrilled that you've found a new outlet for the smoldering rage within. I've been boxing for over a year now and there's nothing quite like lashing out at something legally to tame it at least for the night. I'm at my boxing best when life is at it's worst.
Keep on, keepin' on, girl. Your blog is giving a voice for the blogless everywhere. Ciao!
ah--and sorry for the many deletions. blogger is acting up on me again.
Last year, in November, you posted a comment on my blog that said, "I'll see you in the Norton someday." We're a year removed from those things we used to post and have now moved on to new gripes and new joys, but I did want to ask you: what have you been up to these days? And I command you to write a novel in November, as it is National Novel Writing Month. I'm writing a romance.
you've been tagged!
$%&*^&^! I was going to tag you too! That silly slb got to you first. Oh well, I'm still tagging you because I'm too lazy to come up with someone else. Hi by the way!
Hey, I'm not tagging you for anything, but I just noticed that you haven't updated in a while, which I assume means you are terribly busy. I hope everything is going well with you.
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