The Big Daddy and I are working on controlling our moods. Angery moods like yelling at the newspaper when we read the letters to the editor. Or hissy fits when a screw falls out of the bathtub faucet for no apparent reason and the replacement doesn’t fit.
“Look, Kath,” The Big Daddy said, “it’s too big even though it’s exactly the size the original paperwork says will fit.”
And I lean over his shoulder and look at the faucet while in my head I’m saying, “Well, isn’t that just the greatest? What are we supposed to do? Buy a new $300 faucet because the seventeen cent screw won’t work? Well why the heck not?”
Out loud, though, I say, “Perhaps we got the wrong size screw from the hardware store.” Because getting mad is counter-productive to a happy life.
Or so they say.
All of this would be so much easier if there weren’t faucet conspiracies, we didn’t have to work with, you know, people, or there weren’t so many Republicans in Kansas.
Since exercise is a good mood stabilizer we try to go after dinner for our twoish mile walk. On this day it was hot and humid. So humid it felt like we were doing laps in a swamp. Mark chatted with some bike buddies and we ran into an old classmate of Will’s and her mom. We saw an owl on the ground near the golf course and tippy-toed closer for a look. Near the end we saw our friends and told them where to look for the owl.
All in all a good way to end the day.
We walked our drenched selves home and just spitting distance from our own yard a pickup truck drove by. The kid hung out the window and screamed WOOT. It scared The Big Daddy and I so that we jumped a foot. The kid laughed and slapped his steering wheel as he drove off.
And I yelled back “F*** YOU.”
The Big Daddy turned around. “I can’t believe you said that. No, wait, let me take that back. I can’t believe you screamed that. In broad daylight.”
Technically it was pre-dusk and not broad daylight, and upon reflection it did seem to be one of those things that might fit into an angerish column.
But why did that little hooligan have to go and ruin my zen mood? Why take the call of the mighty owl we had just seen and use it to scare us?
Our long-time Republican senator who hasn’t even lived in this state in years is beating the tea partier in the Kansas primary tonight and I’m sorta okay with that. It’s like having a deadbeat boyfriend. You know he’ll never do a single thing to make your life easier but at least he won’t burn the house down while you’re off working to pay the bills.
Lookie there.
I just managed some anger.
Woot. Woot.