irascible:   adj.

• (of a person) easily made angry
• characterized by or arising from anger

synonyms: irritable, quick-tempered, short-tempered, testy

it’s friday. so why is this word my refrain for the morning? friday is funday when the world is spinning correctly on its axis of gregorian work weeks, but this one finds me moping, and doing it with attitude. i have no particular reason for my ill-tempered blues, and trying to figure one out only makes me feel surly and ungrateful.

so i’m reaching for the reset button inside me instead. i started with some simple, whole food that didn’t taste nearly as good as the first time i prepared and ate it beaming with self-satisfaction. grumble, grumble, whine, whine. it appears that my button is caked with grump, which prevents me from pushing it all the way in no matter how many curse words i hurl while trying. no click, no reset.

now, with this post, i’m trying the soft, damp cloth of catharsis to try to loosen up the cranky crust. honestly, i’d like to go ahead and shut down the main breaker for a while…the switch is next to my tempurpedic, under the pull for my imaginary black-out curtains.

so why do i need a reset? my life is mostly grand. i’ve got a christmas tree for my littlebean and a weekend to decorate til i’m glittered-in-the-face. i’ve got littlebean. i’ve got a great guy who gives great relationship and often keeps me sequestered, smiling and sighing, on my quiet, nine-numbered cloud. i have all these advantages plus a good full-time job. what am i missing? a freshly polished silver spoon full of chocolate free-time? rick(y) schroeder and jason bateman as the perfect pairing of puberty and pretention?

maybe it’s cumulative. what was previously my anniversary just passed and what became the doomsday (a.k.a the “antiversary”) of my marriage looms just days ahead. my trip to see the folkses was good…save for the typical emotions of black sheep at family events. i don’t have a Reagan tattoo, so they can’t get 5 minutes or 3 comments into even a non-political conversation with me before i’m labeled a socialist with Pelosi on speed-dial. nevermind that i’m really an independent and quite moderate…certainly more moderate than my hysterical right-wing family would know from the micro-conversations that take place before names are hurled. it’s a real drag sometimes.

(on an up note, my obnoxious, overly-opinionated, dismissive older brother and i had quite an enlightening quasi-political, philosophical conversation in the calm of a Saints sunday night football blowout – sorry Lions, but thank you. your sacrifice did much for my familial relationships. all those penalties were almost too much…blush.).

add to that the slightest pinch of rejection. my test article for a cool writing gig may well pay off down the road, but i couldn’t quite pull off the impossible request to write from another writer’s heart. we writers…we have such particular relationships with our words. intellectually i’m not disappointed, but the pouter is still periodically poking at my heart.

(hey writers…for a cool look at how your brain parts create your craftiness, check out this article: Brain Mysteries – How the Brain Strings Words into a Sentence.)

however, if i sum my days since my post-thanksgiving-post, they are too good for complaining. i’ve made progress on my business, hugged and drank and scratched mosquito bites with best friends i rarely see, visited family including my ailing mother, caught up a lot at work, whooped some paper monsters at the homestead,  surrounded myself with loving support and inspiration and watched my daughter mature.  she’s even being extra good just in case there is something to this Santa-presents-good-girl thing mom keeps throwing around. with some help, i’ve improved my home and started christmas festivities. even my health is improving, and today i will be chiro-ed and acupunctured somewhere closer to sanity and stable blood chemistry at a wellness clinic i found up the road.

so WHAT IS MY PROBLEM? perhaps it’s one i don’t need to identify. perhaps it’s just stress, impatience and a little subclinical blues presenting as irascibility. over dumb shit. pissed on a friday. i mean, the NERVE of my sunglasses to misplace themselves! i needed them for my 10 minute roundtrip to daycare and they let me down! ack! help! my eyes are bleeding! and what about the part where i’m obviously a failure though i’m not yet sure of what? i do know (today) that it’s something profound enough to color all the remaining years of my life with despair and futility.

winter blues already? SAD? normal life? the oft left-behind reindeer pair, Basher and Bitchy? the shoppers driving slower than a sleigh on flypaper?

it’s friday. i’ll fix’em…the reset button, my attitude and all these frickin-fracken fickle feelings. me and my reindeer will work it out together.