October 21, 2010
I was honest to goodness, no doubt, completely and utterly 100% pure concentrated pissed off today.
How come?
Was this because of the kids and their never-ending issues, concerns, or plots to ascertain how long it will take to rid me of my last, quasi-intact, hanging on my a thread so thin it's almost non-existant shred of sanity?
Or have the dogs kicked up their canine capers, their shameless shenanigans, their tiresome tomfoolery in an equally vociferous attempt to lay claim to my last round and still rolling marble?
Has Stephen tested the limits of my tenderness, taken advantage of my affection, pushed me with some bizarre, ludicrous, singulary Stephen-like activity that makes me feel crazier than a bed bug when I try to explain to him how come doing what he did was not at all logical?
Or plain assisnine?
Case in point: the afternoon I walked onto our back deck to happily slip into my Zen laundry hanging space, and saw my husband, the man I love, adore and want to strangle in equal parts, tettering precariously on a large, unsecured, uneven boulder waving an electric chainsaw over his head in an attempt to rid our very large, very old maple of tree of, in his mind, unwanted and unnecessary branches that were crowding our clothesline and impeding our power lines.
Either way, unless stopped, something was going to happen, it was going to be ugly, and it would most definitely result in an unwanted trip to the Emergency Room.
Really.
Who swings chainsaws over their heads while balancing on a rock in such a way that you are reminded of those crazy ariel riders in the circus, you know, the ones who walk across a clothesline wide wire, in bare feet, juggling flaming torches?
Stephen.
That's who.
In fairness to Stephen, I am even less adept at mechanical maneuvers.
Don't ask me for help with something as simple as hanging a clothesline.
This spring, our clothesline needed to be tightened.
We tried, we failed, we had to go to Canadian Tire and purchase replacement parts, then borrow a long ladder from our across-the-street-neighbour and attempt to restore our clothesline and my Zen space to its natural order.
Our futile attempts were witnessed by our next-door neighbour.
I think that he, and our across-the-street-neighbour feel a sense of paternalism and benevolence towards me and Stephen because while we are book smart, we are not necessarily the most savvy when it comes to around the house things.
Taking pity on us, he asks if he can help.
Actually, he may have been pleading. I think watching us actually caused him physical pain.
Climbing the ladder with a grace and expertise I can't even experience on the ground, let alone on a ladder, he manages, with minimal help from Stephen and me to get the clothesline up, tightened and ready for business in the time that it took Stephen and I to initally figure out how the hell to get the clothesline up there in the first place.
But no, Stephen was not the case of roiling rage burning inside me.
My parents perhaps? Did the nursing home call to inform me that my mother has taken wheel chair wrestling to a new level, arranging a wrestling ring in the nursing home so she could take on all those who annoy and anger her at once instead of one at a time, after she sold tickets to ensure some financial compensation for her sure-to-experience injuries?
Or, did my father's neighbour from across the road call and inform me that, once again, my father was trying to relive his youth and ignore that he was 70, and in his attempt to convince the world that he could do whatever he damn well wanted, climbed up his ladder to clean the gutters of the house, only to have the ladder fall, leaving my father suspended from the roof of the house, hands clasping the gutter in an attempt to not fall and thus land himself in the hospital?
Nope.
Had a student finally breached my seemingly impenatrable armor of patience and understanding, whinging and whining in my office, complaining about some imagined slight or unfair utterance, or more than deserved failing grade, leading me to leap from my chair, and firmly plant my foot on their butt in an effort to remove them from my only site of solitude before I really lost control and starting hurling plants at them?
Not even close.
The reason for my unfettered acrimony, my boiling rage, my ferocious fury. . . .
Me.
I am so angry at myself that if I had any tolerance for pain, I may have actually tried to hurt myself.
I haven't been feeling my finest for the last couple of days.
Annoying and unrelenting headache, tired joints, achy muscles, and in my genetically pre-determined way, I just ignored it.
But like Reilley, I refuse to be ignorned.
At one o'clock, an hour before the event I had been waiting for all week, the event that was previewed with a public lecture by Sheree Fitch, the event I cancelled an Advanced Methods class for, the two hour creative writing workshop by Sheree Fitch that was going to launch me into a long and lucrative career in creative writing, I was sitting in my office.
Was I in my customary office chair, marking papers while listening to episodes of All in the Family?
No.
I was in my blue office chair, the one the students sit in when they have meltdowns of epic proportions.
As an aside, it was interesting to see my office the way a student might see it.
Productive chaos.
Stephen arrived in my office to see me in the comfy the blue chair, my head back, eyes closed.
I usually only look like this during Sunday morning Quaker meetings.
This is a rare enough occurence in my office, however, for Stephen to be concerned.
Sitting in what has been designated as Keith's rolly chair, he wheels over to me and asks if I'm okay.
And here is where the anger starts.
No.
I was not okay.
And I had finally admitted it.
Apparently, I had a slight fever to go along with my other ailments.
Stephen said the words I didn't even want to think, let alone have said out loud.
Do you think its a good idea to go to the writing workshop?
Yes. I did think it was a good idea.
He looked at me in the way only Stephen can look at me.
And it wasn't the love-in-your-eyes-shit-in-your-pants look.
It was the you-know-what-I'm-talking-about-look-so-stop-being-obtuse look.
I knew what he was talking about.
I just didn't want to admit it.
And I knew he was right, which was even harder to admit.
So, rather than walk over to Holy Cross House to participate in the best writer's workshop to ever exist in the natural world, I went home.
Put on my flannel, zebra striped pj bottoms and red long sleeved top, crawled underneath my duvet, and promptly fell asleep until Stephen came in at almost 7.00 pm to wake me up, carrying with him a tray containing a bowl of homemade turkey broth and a few cornbread crackers.
Obviously, then, I wasn't and probably am still not feeling well.
I'm just loathe to admit it.
Rather than think I may be coming down with something, which wouldn't surprise me because my mother and every other resident of the 72 bed nursing home has been battling a cold of epic proportions, and I love to visit my mother and we're a huggy-kissy family, meaning germs travel, I am inclined to think that I am just a little run down.
Over tired.
And my body, no longer willing to enable my state of well-being denial, simply exerted its right to be heard.
It didn't have to scream relentlessly.
A gentle whisper in my ear would have sufficed.
Okay, probably not, but did it HAVE to be today?
The day of the Sheree Fitch lead creative writing workshop?
Yes.
Why?
Because.
Not to be outdone by my antics, the dogs have been up to their own madcap merry making.
Last evening, before we departed for the Sheree Fitch lecture, I took the dogs out for their after-supper outside ablutions.
I had asked Keith to do it, but he said he was putting his laundry away.
Not wanting in any way to deter him from such an honourable activity, one he did while his sisters watched, I might add, I accepted that taking out the hounds was going to have to be done by me.
Stephen would have done it, but Stephen always does it, and besides, he was still recovering from our family dinner feista, the one that required an hour of intense and meditative solitude.
Tikka and Frankie, every single time we take them out. . .
And I do mean every. single. time.
. . .behave in a manner reminiscient of prisoners locked up for 65 years in an underground cavern where they subsisted on grubs and dew particles from the air.
I don't actually know if dew particles exist underground, but I'm choosing effect over authenticity this evening.
Bedlam and pandemonium ensue.
They jostle and elbow each other out of the way in their animalistic need to scramble to the front of the front door.
They whine and paw at each other.
They snarl and leap.
They act like little shits.
A battle over who will be leashed is played out repeatedly, they hover, squeeze and shoulder their way into my private space wanting, needing, insisting on being the first one leashed.
When I bend down to leash one, the other immediately starts licking my face in adoration over the knowledge that soon the snap of the leash will reverberate in their ears.
I wear glasses.
Dog slobber and glasses do not good bedfellows make.
Especially in the chaos-infused catastrophic world of dog leashing.
Meaning, when I put the damn leash on Frankie I couldn't see a bloody thing.
Thinking if I could just get them out of the house and into the driveway, I'd be granted a moment of grace while they danced in the circles of their primitive pee and poo dance.
A moment wherein I could attempt to remove the drying dog slobber from the lenses of my glasses, thus allowing me to see what was going on.
I can't count the fingers in front of my face without my glasses on, let alone manage the visual acuity necessary when taking the hounds of hell outside.
No such moment of grace was allowed.
Because as soon as we were out of the house, but while we were still on the steps, Frankie, with a speed I still can't comprehend, was off like rocket launched by NASA.
Leaving me confused and bewildered.
And Tikka dragging me to the front lawn so she could pee before she exploded.
I couldn't even see what happened because my glasses were momentarily out of commission.
So while our fear infused Frankie was wreaking havoc in our neighbourhood, I was standing in the front yard trying to remove the dog slobber from my lenses.
No water was available and there was no way in hell I was rubbing my tongue over my lenses. . .
. . .there are just some things even I'm not willing to endure, such as a mouth full of dried dog slobber rolling over my taste buds. . .
. . .meaning I am standing there, yelling, "FRANKIE! FRANKIE!!! GET BACK HERE GOD DAMMIT!!!!!!!!!!!" while expertly smearing the dog slobber, instead of clearing it away.
I manage to create a small aperture in the slobber, enough to be able to glimpse with some clarity what the hell was going on.
And there was my Frankie, frolicing, cavorting, romping and revelling in his new found freedom.
While terrorizing anyone who happened to come with 100 meters of him.
Stephen had come out of the house to investigate. Tea towel in one hand, wash cloth in another, slippers falling off his feet, he bellows,
"FRANK! FRANK! GET OVER HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Frankie comes running back to the yard.
Is it because in the midst of his cavorting a little voice inside his head said, "it's probably a good idea to go back home and restore peace and order to our little cul de sac."
Nope.
It was because in the midst of his cavorting, the big voice in his butt was screaming, "FIND A PLACE TO DROP A LOAD!!!!!!!!! BIG WITHDRAWL IMMINENT!"
And being somewhat fastidious about where he makes his fecal deposits, meaning he'll only shit on the lawn, he comes back, circles and drops his butt, all the while watching me wrangle him and put him back on the leash.
Because, in my doggie induced blindness, I didn't hook the leash on his green and sturdy collar.
I hooked it onto the thin and flimsy metal doodaddy that held his "I've had my rabies shot" tag.
So as soon as I snapped it on, he KNEW something wasn't right, and he wasn't asking any questions.
He just took full advantage of the situation and let the chips, or poop in this case, fall where they may.
Tikka, meanwhile, was content to playing her look-at-me-I'm-a good-girl-who-would-never-engage-in- such-an-outrageous-and-unseemly-public spectacle.
Frankie and Tikka.
Mer and Emily.
I'm seeing some similarities.
And this scares me.
Title Lyric: The Prisoner by Tears for Fears
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