Random Esquire

Today, on my walk home from work, I saw a pedestrian kick the side of a car that had run the light late, crossing the intersection after the light had turned red and the pedestrians had begun to cross.  The driver burst out of the car and a screaming fit ensued.  I rolled my eyes.

Losing your temper is just one form of letting your emotional reaction to a situation dictate your behavior.  I have a real problem with this.  I am not a stoic.  I have strong reactions and feelings to situations but I do my best not to let that emotion become the fuel to inappropriate behavior.  As I get older, I am realizing that I have less and less patience for this behavior.

I have little to no patience for someone who behaves in disrespectful, inappropriate ways because his or her feelings are so strong at that moment, they just can’t seem to control themselves.  It makes me think of an anguished teenager and I am sometimes surprised to see it so prevalent in adults.  And, like a teenager, I think it stems from a form of self-centeredness.  The belief that there is only one way to view something and that another person’s view or feelings simply do not matter as much as their own.

As I watched the screaming fit in the street, I could understand why the pedestrian was upset.  Sometimes, I find myself so eager to get home that dodging tourists and slow movers annoys me a bit.  And certainly, a car in the middle of the intersection is a slow down as well as a possible danger.  But there was a bus in front of the driver and it is very possible the driver followed so closely that he did not see the light change and found himself unintentionally in the intersection and forced to move forward to avoid cross traffic.  And, at that time, to have someone kick your car?  I’d be ticked off, too.  But the pedestrian only saw one thing.  The injury to himself.  And he felt so offended, he felt justified in kicking this person’s car.

This is nuts, no? This loss of temper?   And losing one’s temper is easily identifiable because it is usually coupled with yelling or violence.  But I think it is just one form of a larger issue – the belief that one’s feelings (be they anger, grief, love, etc.) justify that their emotional needs be met at the expense or neglect of another’s.

Sometimes a feeling is just a feeling and not necessarily the way things are.

Tell me about your experience with this?

The media is rubbish.

I read MSNBC and this headline/byline stood out to me:  “$60,000 in debt, and nothing to show for it: Mary Uhazi is drowning in a sea of debt that she built up slowly over more than two decades of easy credit. But now she’s worried she won’t be able to pay it all off.”

Does anyone read that and boggle a bit?  First of all, I have to laugh.  This woman used credit for 20 years and accumulated $60,000.  Okay, that is mind boggling but part of me accepts that this, while an extreme case, does happen and many people do find themselves swimming in credit card debt.  The part that made me laugh was this:  But now she’s worried she won’t be able to pay it all off.

Is it just me or does anyone else think she should have hit that point a long, long time ago?  The article goes on to say:  “Now she worries she won’t be able to pay it off because of the recession, which has led to a reduction in her salary and an increase in her credit card bills.”

Seriously?  The recession has caused her to question if she’ll be able to pay of $60,000 in credit card debt?!  I just have to laugh.  People, the recession is not a catch-all excuse for the failures (human though they may be) of personal responsibility in spending.  Even if her credit cards completely eliminated her interest rate and even if her state job’s income was not decreased due to furloughs…I’m thinking that Mary should have had some doubts long ago about her ability to pay off this mountain of debt.  In fact, it would have been helpful if she’d had those reasonable thoughts before she incurred the debt.

This also caught my eye:  “She’s thought about trying to get a second job in the evenings, but such jobs are hard to get these days, and she worries about taking a position away from someone else who has no other means of income.”

Am I reading this correctly?  She just said: “I thought about trying …but it sounds hard.  And, from the goodness of my heart, I don’t want to take the job away from someone else.”

And this:  “Financial goals she once dreamed of, like buying her own home, have been put off indefinitely.”

Owning a home isn’t some *impossible* dream.  You have to take steps to do it – and I suspect she never seriously looked into those steps because, at some point, she would have learned that having that much credit card debt was going to make her home owning dream that much more of a fantasy.  I think her home buying dreams were probably put off $40,000 ago.

This reminds me of my first entry on the media – where some spammer sent pictures of women having sex with animals and the news group spent all this time and money tracking down the spammer.  No, media, NO.  You go find the woman having sex with these animals because 1) you have her picture and 2) people have more serious questions about her than some dude hitting the send button.
BAH.

I told Besos she was a handful.

She said, “Depends…I am loving, dedicated, amorous, supportive, until you piss me off…then I am just Latina.”

And by ‘Latina’ she means, “..and then I am not any of those things and will eat your head on a stick.  Are we clear?”

We’re clear.

Guess what was in the yard?  My niece was pretty fascinated by the baby bunny we found.  I resisted the urge to take it home and raise it on my patio so that I could later kill it at my neighbor’s bidding.  That’s called strength, people.

Yesterday, as we made Play-Doh animals, my niece watched carefully as I made an elephant for her.  When my elephane was complete, I placed the head on the body and proudly held it out for her inspection.  I said, “I made you an elephant!”

She eyed it and said, “Does it have a hole?”

*sigh*

My niece (turned 3 in March) and my nephew (turned 1 in March) are in town, staying with my parents.  I took two days off work to maximize my blog material with them.  My niece does not disappoint.

1.  We took Little Filthy for a walk.  As we were walking along, my niece said, “What’s that hole?”  I looked on the grassy ground surrounding us.  No holes.  I said, “What hole?”  She pointed.  “What’s that hole?”

She was pointing at Little Filthy’s backside.   As you may know, Little Filthy is a pug mix and that means his tail curls up and sits on his back, leaving his exit door exposed.  I said, “Oh…that’s…” and trying to be sensitive to what words to use, I used a word in another language with which she’s familiar.  My niece said, “Ohhh…that’s his butt.”

2.  My sister asked me if I could make a run to pick up some diapers for my nephew.  I said of course.  I was writing down what to get (because, did you know, diapers are numbered?  Like pencil lead?):  #4 diapers and baby lotion.  I said, “Cool. Anything else?”  My sister said, “God, I need a stiff drink.  Or wine.  Get a bottle of wine.”  My sister and her husband are oenophiles.

There is a Wal-Mart just a half mile or so from my parents’ home so I decided to head there.  Right to the back where I grabbed diapers and then over a few aisles where I found baby lotion.  As I walked back toward the front, I saw an aisle with beer and wine.  I decided to at least check out what they had.  I found a Cab that looked decent and grabbed it.

Now, somewhere in the 10 or so yards I walked to the cashier, I realized that there I was…in Wal-Mart walking with diapers and baby lotion in one hand…and alcohol in the other.  My own sense of propriety made me flinch a little but I tried not to give it another thought.  That is, until the guy behind me in line said, “Diapers!  And alcohol!” and the burst out laughing.

Annnnnd my shame is complete.

1.  If someone says, “Let me tell you something…”

Instantly, I don’t want to listen.

2.  Mumblers.

3.  I say, “I’m going to do X.”

and someone responds, “You should!”

Did…Did I not just say that I was going to?

4.  When people talk to themselves…while I’m there.

What do you think when you see someone’s lips move while they read?  Talking to yourself is like doing that…out loud…simply because you are thinking.  It’s thinking out loud!  Don’t get me wrong – sometimes I talk to myself.  Rarely – but it happens.  But not if someone else is in the room.  Because if you talk to yourself when I am in the room, the only way I can tell if you are addressing me or speaking to yourself is to  listen to what you say and evaluate if it is meant for me or not.    That gets tiresome.

5.  People who get on the elevator before others get off.

6.  People who pause at the top or bottom of an escalator to figure out where they go next.

FOR REAL?  Keep moving!

7.  People who stand around waiting for someone to tell them what to do.

8.  Slapstick.

9.  Spoiled people.

10.  My stupid need to have a numbered list reach some sort of round number.

I stepped out on to my patio today to find my neighbor out on her patio.  We exchanged hellos and then she told me about *cough* a large number of almonds she has found in her plants.  She went so far as to mimic squirrel wife digging in the dirt and dropping in an almond.  She said, “And she doesn’t replace the dirt.  It’s just holes filled with almonds!”

I resisted the urge to tell my neighbor that if she’d replaced the dirt, then she’d be planting almonds and that is just absurd.

She said, “We had a showdown the other day, me and her.  We stared at each other.”

I grinned sheepishly.  And then she said this:

“But as soon as I saw those almonds, I knew you must have a plan.  You must have a plan to feed them so they get comfortable and then you can poison them.”

*Blink*

I looked up, mouth partly open and she was beaming at me.

She said, “I asked our maintenance guy for some poison and so when he gives it to me, I’ll give it to you to mix with the almonds.”

I said, “uhhhh….”

So, either the squirrels days or numbered…or I’m gonna have to put out some Cap’n Crunch or some shit to make it look like I’m a clever bastard dead set on killing squirrels.

Dude, I’ve killed fish and lobster.  In fact, somehow, killing things that normally live in the water doesn’t seem to count as much.  But I’ve never killed anything with fur.

whamaygunnado??