Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2004-09-06 - 9:28 a.m.

Too Hot To Handle

Man, I was cross yesterday. Know how I knew that? 'Cos I thought I wasn't. No, I wasn't cross, it was just that damn near everyone in the world was being so irritating.

It was hot here. I don't know how hot it got, maybe 102 or so. Too hot. My house got very hot inside. That wasn't my fault. I had it all open in the early morning and I was going to run the exhaust fan to cool the house even further before I shut it all up, but the kid got up and whined and complained about how cold it was in the house, so I didn't. Then, later, the house was an inferno. Her fault, you see?

It was too hot to do anything inside. It was damn near too hot to stand up, and certainly too hot to lie down. It was too hot to work on any projects. It was too hot to do anything but go swimming. BF wanted to come swimming, so I could have seen him, but he had too many kids with him and I can't have that many pool guests because of my irritating condo association rules, so they went off to a public pool, and I could have gone except my irritating kids said they didn't want to go swimming, except that the younger one promptly accepted an offer to go swimming at OUR pool with the neighbors, which was irritating, and the older kid didn't want to go so I stayed home in my little sweatshack of a house, unable to use my computer because her plan for the day apparently consisted of ten hours of continuous chat room marathon flirting. As you can see, none of this at all was my own personal fault.

I HAD been out the night before to see a friend, so had done something for myself, but of course I had taken my kids along, and there were huge fires just north of where we were so the air quality was bordlerline, and bits of ash kept drifting down on us, which was really not too much of a problem, but the kids were surly and refused to interact nicely so I could visit with my best friend, and her kid was mean and smart-mouthed and mine were withdrawn and sullen and the three of them could not agree on anything at all, which was incredibly...irritating.

So after a day of moping and melting around my house and waiting for the little five-minute e-mail checks that my kid was allowing me and trying to clean the house and getting all sweaty, during which the only pleasant task was trying to fix the sprinklers while they were running (I was ineffectual but didn't care because it was wet and cool) I decided to take the kids over to BF's for dinner, but of course they were unenthusiastic and declined to spend the night, and they were less than thrilled with the food (cheese? and crackers? on an hours d'ouevres plate? Is the man CRAZY? And do I HAVE to eat salad?) and less than thrilled with the company (his kids and mine don't mesh all that well, his run off to do their own things and mine have anothing to do at all) and he had of course cooled off HIS day with a glass or six of wine which I got to smell on his breath, and there were twelve people for dinner which was chaotic and messy and every stereo television and voice in the house was permanantly stuck on LOUD so that walking in was walking into the Wall of Sound but none of this was MY fault, was it?

So there I was, my usual charming gracious cheerful creative self, being beset about by all these horrible irritating people and things over which I had absolutely no control. That's hardly fair, is it?

Yeah. Well, I think my boundaries, such as I have, must be made of wax. They don't survive much in the way of heat. Put me in yesterday's slow-cooker, and I lose all my form, end up a whiny shapeless mass. Stop doing these things to me. I just don't seem to have the energy it takes to say, No, that's now how it's going to be, I'm going to do THIS, and I'm not going to do THAT. Oops, that path didn't turn out to be so smart, I'm going to stop/backtrack/reverse course. Stuff like that. My self-direction just melts.

All I seemed to be able do yesterday was sit around and wait for someone to notice what a lovely person I am, and figure out what I need and give it to me. Damn, is that so much to expect?

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