Cranky

sand quarry with leaves
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

I'm very cranky today. I'm going to blame this on my hormones and not on any intrinsic personality disorder (not that I don't have lots! But it's all somebody else's fault! No, wait, it isn't! I'm going to cry now! No, I think I'll scream at something instead! Argh!) but nothing seems to be making it better, not even Oreos. So I think I'll just have to wait it out and accept the fact that just because I got ink on my phone (always, gentle readers, alway, always look at the end of a ballpoint pen you've fished out of an old jar before absentmindedly using it to dial your office phone. Switching to your fingers halfway through the number is not going to help; it's only going to get worse.) and then my fingers and then, inevitably, my keyboard, the world is not going to end.

It might end, however, because the stock market is crashing, which is one of those things which makes me cranky, not because I'm losing money (ha! ha! My money is all tied up in such essentials as gas and the water bill, leaving me not a damn cent to spend on cigarettes and beer this weekend, which is why, frankly, I'm so fucking annoyed with the universe, and we haven't even touched on the buying wood vs. buying food dilemma here) but because I don't understand any of it and yet it fills me with vague creeping dread. Bad incomprehensible financial news always starts me thinking about how awful it's going to be when we're all - me, the kids, M, the dogs, my mother, my brothers, possibly a couple of my friends and maybe a few extra people for the hell of it - living in a tenement apartment in Leningrad or New York or a cardboard box under a thruway overpass on the great prairie or somewhere else where, in my fevered imagination, it's always January. Of 1894. And we have a pushcart and some potatoes - blighted potatoes - and TB. Or, wait, maybe that's the hormones too. I don't know but I'm worried.

On the bright side, though, I did dream about having a giant sloth for a pet and I think that this is a brilliant idea. I like sloths; they're so . . . so. . . slothful and relaxing. It could just hang out in the den growing moss on its fur and making me happy and I wouldn't have to walk it at the crack of dawn when it's like 20 degrees outside. Nor, probably, would it eat my stuff. On the other bright side, here is a charming story about an octopus and his Mr. Potato Head pal, which made me inexplicably almost tear up. Almost. Almost, damnit.