get a grip, Captain Cranky

What is wrong with me today?? I’m in a supremely ill mood, and for no reason at all. My job is great, the weather is gorgeous, I have nothing to whine about, yet I’m cranky and grumpy and….wwwaaaaaahhhhh!!!!

On one of the Dark Shadows episodes we just watched, one character said, "What do you think is causing that, your illness?" but she didn’t pause between "that" and "your illness", so it came out sounding as if she was calling the other character Your Illness. Like it’s some sort of title. Perhaps I should request that everyone refer to me as Your Illness today.

This started yesterday after work. I was going to go walk, and I decided to go home instead and plant the hostas that I had to dig up during Foundation Repair Hell. The ones that have sat in several buckets for, oh, TWO MONTHS because I keep forgetting about them. Yesterday would have been a perfect time – sunny, warm, plenty of time left after work to do it. And if I don’t do it soon the weather is going to change and it’s going to pour down snow and the hostas will all die. And although I don’t even like hostas that much, my mother and my MIL planted these years ago, when we first moved in, and I feel a sentimental obligation towards these hostas. Also, nothing else will grow behind and beside our house because it’s too damp and shady. So, home I went to replant the hostas finally.

And the next-door neighbors have company over. And the company has small children. So instead of two small children in their yard screaming and shrieking as if they are possessed by demons, there are FOUR small children in their yard screaming and shrieking as if they are possessed by demons. Along with the three or four dogs that live in the house on the other side of these neighbors, whose owners leave them on the deck so they were barking nonstop at the screaming children.

This went on ALL EVENING.

And I know children are noisy little things. I don’t expect children to be silent. It would be nice if they were silent, but I’m realistic! And I don’t mind hearing them playing. Playing is one thing, but these kids don’t just laugh and yell some and make the usual little-kids-playing-racket. They SCREAM. At one point it sounded like they were having a contest to see who could scream the longest without taking a breath. And then they would ride their little cars up and down the drive in front of our house, screaming non-stop. It was AWFUL, and I really don’t think I’m just being the evil neighborhood crone when this gets on my nerves. The woman who lives across the street and down the hill from us told Baker B the other day that the kids wake them up on Sunday mornings with their incessant screaming. And that’s before the screamers and their parents go to church, so it’s very early that they are outside screaming. Fortunately we use white noise, aka Mr. Static, so we aren’t awaken by screams early on Sunday mornings. Otherwise there would be some very very late-night and loud Tom Waits concerts going on at our house, that’s for sure.

The Sunday Morning ScreamFest is probably punishment for all us sinners who aren’t up and getting ready for church. Their father works for Samaritan’s Purse, Franklin Graham’s operation, so they are big churchgoers. He’s the one that encourages the screaming, too- he’ll be out in the yard with them, egging them on. I like their mother a lot, but don’t know how she’s stayed even partially sane. I’m not sure why we’re being punished all the rest of the time, though.

ANYHOW, obviously I was driven to the brink of madness by this. And then the ground where I was trying to plant the hostas was like concrete – I couldn’t even dig a hole with a shovel deep enough to plant them. I guess I’ll have to go buy some dirt- when they dug up the yard I think just red clay and that chalk-like stuff has ended up on top. But between skipping a pleasant walk to come home and hear kids shrieking and dogs barking all afternoon, and then not being able to do what I skipped the walk for, I was quite the ill-tempered one. Then Baker B stayed gone till past nine, and although I don’t care that he’s gone till past nine and often I’d enjoy the time to myself, for some reason it just made me even madder last night. I think I was just all bent out of shape by the fact that he’d gone off himself to have a nice after-work hike and then went to campus to play the piano while I was sitting there being driven madder than mad by screaming kids and barking dogs.

The fact that I’m STILL mad about all this and in a bad mood an entire day later probably needs some delving into. 
I think today I’ll go for a walk after work and damn the hostas. Maybe after that I’ll go by Lowes and pick up some bags of topsoil. Maybe I’ll just let the things die.