Sanity

Everybody is insane, irrational, out-of-control, and totally annoying! 

(Everybody but you and me, we're fine.)

On Saturday I spilled a full canister of flour all over my kitchen floor.  My response may have veered right to the edge of insanity but I caught myself before crossing the line.  

I screamed at the flour, at the floor, and my friggin' ineptitude while employing the other F-word fourteen times at top volume to give the event the gravity it deserved. 

When I discovered that the last user of my vacuum cleaner had rendered the cord no longer retractable and had stored it without informing me of its malfunction, I quickly consulted The Southern Woman's Dictionary of Profane and Obscene Words Only To Be Used When Alone and combined them into compound and inventive multi-syllabic words, an impressive five-minutes' worth.  

(Of course, I didn't actually have time to take this little book off the shelf to consult it; I have it memorized for occasions such as these.) 

I ceased when it occurred to me that Jan and her family might be able to hear, and took it to the safe space of my insentient car.  (One sign of sanity is that you still care a little bit what others think of you--or so says the Owner's Manual of Sane People's Brains.)

In ordinary times, I'm not as much a cryer as some of my friends who are admirably able to produce copious tears.  I see that as a deficit in my emotional range, BTW, but have learned to live with it. 

In these extraordinary times, I cry (and scream)  over literal spilt milk--not to mention moments when the world or one of its inhabitants (most frequently a Trump or Trump-clone type) annoys the hell out of me. Or if someone hurts my feelings, gives me advice of any kind, disagrees with me, or displays his or her own insanity. What keeps me sane is that these crying jags do eventually end and then I feel better. 

I have been known (to myself only since no one else is ever here) to scream invectives at the TV whenever I see the tax-evading, lying president taking advantage of bad old science when it serves him well and willingly boarding the military helicopters at his disposal (without irony) a week after calling those who serve in the military losers and suckers. 

Yesterday I got an email from a designer dog breeder (whose pups cost $6500 plus $500 nanny delivery service) to inform me that she had a litter ready to adopt.  I hate to even concern myself with business while I am praying fervently for "our President and our First Lady...."

I won't tell you what I wrote in response because you'd no longer consider me a nice person and would be justified in calling me a bitch.  

(The Southern Woman's Dictionary of Profane Etc. does include a footnote on page 42 that such words are permissible during pandemics and other national, political, and personal emergencies.)