And Extra Onions

A (... uh... well... let's call it a) scheduling issue had me so angry last night, it was leaking out of my eyes.  It was no one's fault, I reminded myself.  Not really.  Some advanced notice might have been preferable.  I talked it over with someone calmer and more rational than myself, decided on a proper course of action, and that's that, right? 

Not quite.  You might find homes for the stray ducks that moved into your backyard – that fixes your problem – but there's still a lot of mess to clean up in the yard once the feathery little bastards are out of your petunias.  Duck muck.  That's where I was.  In duck muck.

I rejected my costume sewing regime for the evening and did what any rational Shannon would do, I grabbed a ball of alpaca and queued up a Guild marathon.  By the time my laptop battery gave out, I had half a sweater, and while the Knights of the Good weren't making much headway in their struggle against the evil Axis of Anarchy, I had cleaned out most the muck and joined my family in sleep.

I feel that I must take a second to advocate the importance of having someone in your life who is, generally speaking, more rational than you. 

I like to think of myself as a rational person.  I expect 99% of people think of themselves this way.  And yet one quick glance around the world will tell you that it is not 99% populated by rational people, which leads me to hold some of my own personal assumptions suspect. 

I used to be fairly assured of my sanity and reason.  Have you ever felt this way?  Have a kid.  I assure you it's the best cure.

Everybody blows a gasket about stuff beyond their control from time to time.  It's not helpful, but it happens.  It can even be healthy in the right circumstances.  It can also make you feel like an ass if you go off yelling before you check yourself and get your head in order.  This is where that second rational person you know comes into play. I have a few very rational friends, some very wise relatives, and a husband who is a saint among men. It was this latter influence who talked me through my temper tantrum calmly while I paced the living room and roared at people not present to defend themselves.

If you do not have someone to fill this void in your life, find one. And try to be that rational person for someone else on occasion. If we all did this, the world would be a more rational place. Maybe not 99% more rational, but you never know.

This morning I awoke examining the bits of duck muck I missed in the cracks of my mental patio and the feathers that were still fluffing around. I treated myself to a stop in at the coffee shop on a whim. (I’ll admit that this isn’t a rare inclination, but as it is not on the calendar as a scheduled event, I’m going to proceed to identify it as whimsical in nature.) In the coffee shop, Green Onions¹ was coming through loud and proud on the speakers. I had been planning on checking in with the world at large via NPR on the way to work, but I decided that what was really in order was more green onions, so when I got to the car, I jacked in my iPhone and cued it up. Which gave way to Ray Charles, who was followed by The Drifters, who coasted me all the way into work in a head space where I was ready to deal with entirely different sorts of problems. The kind of problems that come with numerically coded error messages that are indexed and searchable. Nice clean tidy problems that can be solved by nice clean tide code.

I love my job.

A special thank you to Codex, Booker T., and some fluffy herd of alpaca out there for mucking out the stalls with me, and all the people who had contact with me today no doubt join me in a thanking my husband for helping me to reach a decent level of chill.

God, does this being human thing ever get easier, do you think?

¹Don’t tell me you don’t know that song. Everybody knows that song. Don’t believe me? Fine. Go check. See? You know it, don’t you? Of course you do.