RSS Feed

Posts Tagged ‘anger’

  1. Things That Drive Me Crazy

    April 10, 2016 by Diane

    Bun Karyudo The Man, The Legend, The Paper Bag

    Bun Karyudo
    The Man, The Legend, The Paper Bag

    I discovered Bun Karyudo on Twitter some time ago, and I’ve enjoyed his sweet, humorous blog ever since. He can turn the mundane into something rip-snorting funny. I invited him to write a guest post on my blog and he obliged, without any arm-twisting. Enjoy! And to check out more of his fun ramblings, please visit him at http://bunkaryudo.com

    Things That Drive Me Crazy by Bun Karyudo

    “But write about what?” I ask in my email.

    “Things that drive you crazy,” comes the reply.

    I pull at my earlobe and try to think. Anger’s not an emotion that features much in my usual repertoire of responses. There are people who can so concentrate their fury, they need do no more than lower their eyebrows three-quarters of a millimeter and thunderclouds gather in the sky, the earth begins trembling, and grown men and women fall to their knees begging forgiveness.

    This never happens in my case. I can jump up and down, snarl, wave my arms, bang my fist on the counter and the clerk at the post office will merely look through me and shout “Next!” or else give me directions to the nearest restroom. But a guest post is a guest post, so I decide that the next day, I will make a special effort to notice everything that registers the slightest tiny blip on my rage-o-meter.

    The following morning begins, as do most mornings, with the ceiling. Wow! It’s so bright! Have I woken up in the middle of a New Year’s firework display? A naval barrage perhaps? No, it’s just the irritatingly luminous display on my wife’s alarm clock. So what time is it? I have no idea. I can’t actually see the numbers from my side of the bed, just the eerie green glow they cast about the room.

    Blip!

    Woah, great start! The first modest blip on the rage-o-meter!

    I stagger through to the bathroom mirror and see myself. Oh there I am, fresh as a daisy – although, sadly, a daisy in a meadow used by tap dancing elephants.

    Blip!

    As I avert my eyes from the mirror, I happen to notice that one or other of my sons has used up a roll of toilet paper and then simply left the empty cardboard tube in the holder. I try not to give in to annoyance. After all, how can I really expect a mere teenager to manhandle a hulking four-and-a-half inch cardboard cylinder – one weighing almost 1.5 ounces! – and lug it all the way to a wastebasket very nearly four feet away?

    Blip! Blip!

    Like it or not, I’ll have to look back toward the mirror if I’m to shave. Oh look! My elder son has left the mirrored side doors of the bathroom cabinet open again so that he can see his hair from every conceivable angle. He seems to have ignored the fact that I asked him to keep these door closed in order to avoid head-bumping incidents. To be fair, it may simply have slipped his mind since I’ve only mentioned it to him one or two hundred thousand times before.

    Blip! Blip! Blip!

    I shave, splash some water on my face and then look at my face carefully in the mirror again. There has been a massive improvement in that I’m fairly confident any visiting aliens from Mars could now identify my approximate genus. Perhaps they might even be able to make a stab at my species after I’ve had my shower.

    I turn on the water and wet my hair and body. Then I hunt through the various pairs of matching plastic bottles around me for shampoo and conditioner. I check the blue pair first. The conditioner bottle is full but the shampoo bottle is empty. Perhaps the white pair will hav— No, same again. The pink pair? Oh, for goodness sake! My children do this every time! They use up all the shampoo and ignore everything else. It looks like this is just another of those days when I’m going to leave the shower with the best conditioned dirty hair in the Northern hemisphere.

    Blip! Blip! Blip! Blip!

    I turn off the water and reach for the towel which I keep hanging on the rail outside the– Agh! Not again! My towel has been folded back over on itself for some reason, thus ensuring that it hasn’t dried properly. The only light my wife and children can ever shed on this fiendish towel origami is that it definitely, absolutely, positively has nothing to do with them. Oh, those accursed towel fairies!

    Blip! Blip! Blip! Blip! Blip!

    Left with no choice, I begin patting myself with a towel that’s probably wetter than I am. Slowly, my upper body does begin to feel drier, although this may owe as much to evaporation as to anything else. Yet for some reason, my feet feel no different. I peer down to find out what’s going on, and notice the water is not disappearing. I remove the drain cover and check beneath. How can it be clogged with hair again? I removed all that just the other day!

    I think about my other family members and check off each of the possibilities in turn just to be sure. No… no… no… They’re not Yetis, not alpacas and not Afghan hounds. Where can all this hair be coming from? I’m not very excited about having to touch something that looks like it was coughed up by a saber-toothed cat, but I don’t want a flooded bathroom either, so reluctantly I bend down, pick one corner of the squelchy mess between my thumb and forefinger, and toss it into the wastebasket.

    Blip! Blip! Blip! Blip! Blip! Blip!

    After I’m fully dressed, I take a step toward the bathroom door and open it, only it doesn’t open. Recently, the lock has decided that instead of closing when turned left and opening when turned right, it would be much more fun to remain closed whether it is turned left, turned right, turned left-right-left-right-left, is hammered, is kicked, or is sworn at. I eventually get the door to open, but only at a terrible cost…

    Blip! Blip! Blip! Blip! Blip! Blip! Blip!

    Seven blips! My highest total so far.

    At this stage, I decide to call off the experiment. By forcing myself to take conscious note of all these minor irritations, I am quickly being worked into an unhealthy state of agitation. I’ve barely made it out of the bathroom and already I’m feeling angrier than I have for months. If I go on like this, I’m bound to lose my temper at some point today. There’s even the possibly that I might begin raging at some poor store clerk or passerby, and who knows were that might lead? Most likely, down the passage, first on the left, second on the right, to the nearest restroom.

     


  2. Don’t Judge Me, Even if I Behave Like a Lunatic

    December 13, 2015 by Diane

    In our head, there lives a judge who passes judgment on ourselves. We can knock our skull with our fists and stuff a finger in our ears and sing “tra-la-la-la-la” to drown out the voice, and still it drones on about our shortcomings and mistakes. This judge issues pronouncements from its perch in our head, and if we choose to cower under its assault (and we do have that choice), then off we go to a jail of our own making.

    And behind those bars, we sit in judgment of others.

    When others make judgments of us, we might manage to shrug it off, send them a blessing for living in their own private world of hurt. But there are times, like in the midst of Christmas shopping, when we dig in our heels and lash out, which is what happened on a Friday evening at 5:00 in a Ross Dress-for-Less.

    I was browsing the sweaters when I heard a commotion behind me, a woman yelling for a manager, demanding the phone number of corporate headquarters, threatening one and all with: “I’m never shopping here again!”—which might have earned applause storewide, but the woman, when I glanced over, was gargantuan, and seething, and she was flinging the contents of her shopping cart onto the floor, blouses and pajamas and slippers and flip flops and purses and decorative boxes, all her Christmas stash into the aisles, and no one in the vicinity wanted to attract her attention.

    A woman of smaller dimensions stood beside her; a friend, I presumed, as she added her own two-cents worth, dumping her vitriol on a clerk:

    “Do you realize how it sounds, talking about a customer when they can hear? Do you know what that sounds like? And did you apologize?”

    “No,” said the clerk who stood ramrod straight, without a hint of blushing.

    “And you kept interrupting! You didn’t even listen when we tried to explain.”

    “I’ll get the phone number for headquarters,” said the clerk, making haste for the registers.

    “I want your name!” The seething woman added. “I’m going to report you!” She had emptied the cart completely, and gave it a shove into a clothing rack. Then she zeroed in on me. Her face loomed close.

    “Don’t judge me,” she said, and pushed past, issuing a parting judgment of her own. “Cunt.”

    Quick as a whip, I blurted, “Excuse me?” I wasn’t about to let this slur from a stranger slip by.

    “Stop judging me.”

    “I wasn’t judging you.”

    “Oh yes you were!”

    And there we stood, having it out over the racks in Ross Dress-for-Less. I envisioned her taking a swing at me, and me swinging back, and the two of us tussling in the aisles, pulling sweaters from their hangers, toppling the displays, tumbling onto her scattered merchandise as her friend tried to yank us apart.

    All because neither one of us wanted to be judged by someone we would never see again.

    Then I caught a glimpse of my face in the full-length mirror at the end of the aisle. The raised eyebrows. The pinched mouth. By jove, she’s right.

    Tsk, tsk, said the judge in my head.

    The woman continued ranting until her friend pulled her from the store. I allowed sufficient time for the crazy woman to drive away, and then slunk to my car, keeping an eye out in case she was waiting in ambush.

    In my head, the judge was having a field day.

    “That was a mistake, engaging with an irate nincompoop. Don’t engage, and the other person has nothing to engage with. An enlightened person would have remembered that. A sane person would have kept her mouth shut.”

    Blah blah blah, on and on, talking about me as if I wasn’t within earshot.


  3. How to Soothe Body, Mind and Soul to Promote Healing

    November 15, 2015 by Diane

     

    Comfortable homey scene: Book on a tray with a candle

    I spent all of last week fighting a severe cold.

    Not fighting, really. Just lying in bed while it pummeled me.

    Some folks are masters at riding out a cold. Me? I’m cowed by the swagger of it. I crumble under its weight, pinned to the mattress, my world narrowed to the confines of my anxious mind. Without defenses to act as filter, the “what if” thoughts gain traction and I lie curled in my warm blanket believing that all of those books I’ve read on mindfulness and healing and treatments and nutrition are bunk. All of those words of wisdom didn’t slay the dragon. The dragon won.

    Oh, boo hoo. Cue the violin. The cello. The bass, for cryin’ out loud.

    Disgusted, I rise up. I’m done being sick! The surge of anger propels me to my feet, fumbling for thick socks, tucking a muffler around my throat, unwrapping a menthol lozenge, pulling on boots and jacket, flinging open the door and blinking at the thin winter sun, grateful for the blue sky. I walk the neighborhood and fill my senses with the signs of life. Life is bigger than the dragon. Life is everywhere. It’s in the oak trees that hold onto their stiff curled leaves. It’s in the squirrels dashing though fence holes carrying acorns in their jaws. It’s in the carload of children shoving each other in the back seat. It’s in the mossy roofs and the falcon cruising overhead with an eye for a thick brown mouse. It’s in the free little library stuffed with worn paperbacks that lean on each other for support. I saunter through the neighborhood and return home renewed in spirit but tired in body, my lymph glands swollen and painful from the work of draining, draining, draining.

    There is always something to buckle our knees from behind. We prepare ourselves for the worst and hope for the best. It’s the only way.

    When you’re feeling under the weather, here are ten steps to soothe your body, mind and soul as you weather the storm:

    1. Watch your thinking. Are your thoughts of the dreadful variety? Dwell on the opposite. For five minutes. Then ten. Then twenty. Be Shirley Temple at heart, Scarlett O’Hara in determination. Tell yourself: “I can choose to focus on my anxious thoughts, or I can choose to do what I can for myself in this moment to feel better.” Tell yourself: “I can choose to worry about this or I can be mindful of these thoughts and not spiral into the bottomless pit of anxiety.”
    2. Infuse yourself with healing energy. Here’s a short Qigong exercise to cleanse your lungs and clear away feelings of lethargy and sadness. Or try some of Donna Eden’s healing techniques, like this one to help a sore throat. If nothing else, her joyous vibe is a balm.
    3. Focus on what you love. The scruffy cat curled next to you. The man in the kitchen washing dishes. That kid who dreams of becoming an astronaut.
    4. Surround yourself with comfort. A soft blanket, your terrycloth robe, a book within arm’s reach, a fuzzy teddybear.
    5. Distract yourself. Watch funny movies. Read feel-good novels. I recommend The Rosie Project, anything by P.G. Wodehouse, or anything by Rosamunde Pilcher. Listen to audio books. Anything to distract you, to lift you from your lonely self.
    6. Take in nourishment. Warm broths. Herbal teas. Oatmeal. A protein smoothie. When you read, take in the inspirational words. When you walk, take in the abundance of life. Take in the memory of that fine day at the beach when a seagull kept you company and the waves rolled gently on the white sand.
    7. Let go. There’s nothing you need to do except allow your body to heal. You’re tired, so give in to the mattress. Let go of the body tension. Let go of those depressing thoughts that scratch at your throat.
    8. Drink up. Lots of water to flush away the virus lingering in the hallways of your immune system.
    9. Do self-soothing activities. Nap. Draw. Doodle. Write without regard to a finished product. Do crossword puzzles. Sip warm water. Meditate. Pray. Talk to someone who cares: your mother, your sister, your best friend, your lover, your spouse, your inner wise self, God. Whatever soothes the soul is good medicine.
    10. Look to the future. Tell yourself: “I look forward to feeling strong and healthy again.” Tell yourself: “This is a temporary situation and I will rise again.” Tell yourself: “I’m healing. I’m mending. I’m so over this friggin’ cold.” Buckle the knees of that dragon and gouge out it’s red eyes. The dragon is a bit player in your life’s comedy. Refuse to give it a starring role.

     

    And you? How do you soothe yourself when feeling under the weather?