A bad morning . . . and porn!

You know those mornings when you know right from the start that the day is going to suck?  Those mornings when you wish you could just not get out of bed at all and let the day go on without you?  I’m having one of those sorts of mornings.

And yes, it’s because it’s about to be that time of month, but it doesn’t make the experience any less real.  So shut up.

So anyway, I am having one of those days when I hear judgment in everyone’s voice.  One of those days in which Kallan’s loud and angry annoyance at breakfast (I forgot to take a frozen muffin out of the freezer to defrost on the counter overnight) becomes a larger statement about how I suck as a parent and am possibly getting Alzheimer’s.  Twenty seconds in the microwave and the muffin is warm and perfect.  Kallan moves blithely on with her morning, but I get stuck.  And then I act out in little passive-aggressive bad-mommy ways, like packing her a fruit cup instead of a treat for her snack today.  Don’t think I won’t hear about that after school this afternoon.

Yes, it’s one of those mornings.  I took Jack the smaller incorrigible dog out to the bus-stop with the girls this morning.  There was excited discussion among the children about the fact that Jack sometimes has to wear a shock collar (which is true – he tends to stand outside the closed doors of rooms from which he has been excluded and bark, endlessly, until someone relents and opens the door).  This behavior was getting tiresome, and we figured we needed to break him of that habit before we became renters again, so Santa brought Jack a lovely red battery-controlled collar.  He wears it in the house when people who might close doors on him come to visit, and it has worked really well.

Anyway, Jack wasn’t wearing the collar this morning at the bus-stop (because there are no closed doors at the bus-stop), but one of the moms focused on the kids’ conversation and said something about how she had never before met a dog who needed a shock collar.  As she spoke, she bent to pet adorable Jack’s head and neck (which he loved).

OK, this is how I know I should have stayed in bed this morning: What was objectively going on was that a nice woman made an innocuous remark and then petted my happy dog.  But what I actually experienced was a questioning of my fitness as a pet owner, a statement about the cruelty of the shock collar, and a surreptitious checking of my dog’s neck for injury.  I had to bite my tongue to stop from saying something defensive and inappropriate.  Something like, “Fine.  You take the stupid dog home with you, invite a friend over, and then try to lock Jack out of the room.  Tell me that after 40 minutes of ear-piercing high-pitched barking, you wouldn’t plug his tail into the nearest electrical outlet if it would bring you some peace.”

I have learned over the years that the things I want to say when I am feeling like this are almost never things I should say, so I didn’t.  Instead, I just said, “Yes, until I met Jack, I too had never met a dog who needed a shock collar.”  Which leaves open the possibility of another morning on which this woman and I actually speak to one another.  A better choice.

On another topic, Mark installed software that allows me to track visits to my blog.  So I can now check how many people have visited me at any point in the day.  I can see what posts are being read most frequently, where they are linking from, and I can see a weekly summary of traffic.

This is not a good thing, and I need to figure out how to disable it immediately.  All it has done is reveal (again) my tendency toward addictive behavior and my pathetic need for approval from others.  I check it waaaaaay too often, which, given the small numbers of people visiting my blog to begin with, is just ridiculous.  Every upward trend makes me happy, and every downward spike makes me feel sad and rejected.  How retarded is that?

So I am trying (like a drug addict hoping to go cold turkey) not to check the “blog stats” this morning.  I don’t want to be angry with you.

It is interesting to note which post is garnering the most visits, however.  You can probably figure it out.  The lesson seems to be that more of my post titles should suggest the possibility of porn.  Point taken.

I just re-read what I have written here and then I guess I just sat and stared at the computer for a few minutes, because Mark felt compelled to suggest that if I wasn’t doing anything, I might want to unpack the last of the glassware down in the bar area.  Mark is an idiot.  Sitting and staring into space NEVER means, “I wonder what household job I could be doing right now?  I wish someone would guide me.”

How am I married to someone (for over 20 years!) who knows me so little?  Idiot.

I told you I should have stayed in bed.