Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Socks Chasing Panties on a Hamster Wheel

That last post wasn't really as cryptic as it sounds. I was in a terrible mood that day, had just written a somewhat long, detailed post, and then the ghost in the machine decided to erase it in one swipe before I saved it. Bah!

Anyway, the last two days have been nice. Work hasn't been completely insane, and have actually started running again and looking forward to doing so when I come home from work.

I had a Hitchcockian experience yesterday. While running up a tree-lined hill, a bird decided to start dive-bombing my head. I have been swiped at before, but this was really the most ferocious little creature I have ever encountered. I think he took at least five dives at me, all the while chirping angrily. Or maybe it was a she, protecting her nest. I haven't seen The Birds since I was ten, but it made me remember how creepy that movie was. It's really like these tiny dinosaurs flying around, with their cold reptilian instincts.

On Sunday - the day of the terrible mood - I went to see Friends with Money. I really like all of the actresses in it - Jennifer Aniston, Joan Cusack, and Catherine Keener, but I LOVE Frances McDormand. She was awesome in Fargo, and Laurel Canyon. Here, she plays this spastic, angry woman, but she is so likeable. I identified with her because she goes around blowing up at people who steal her parking space and all of these little indignities and affronts, when the root of the problem is much deeper. You just see her simmering all through the movie. Finally, she is in Old Navy when a couple of cuts in front of her. You know, those awful people that jump through the line when a clerk opens another register when you have been waiting longer.
Anyway, she loses it and is kicked out of the store, and while she is walking out in a fit of rage, she breaks her nose on a plate glass window.

The past couple of years, I feel like I have been on that low boil. Getting mad about things on a deeper level, bottling it up, not confronting the actual problems and then embarrassing myself by giving the finger to people on the highway or screaming or punching the wall or throwing things. And when I saw this character in the movie getting so angry she ultimately causes physical damage to herself, I knew that I had been approaching this level of anger, that any day now I am going to just blow - and I don't want that to happen. But at the same time, I want it to happen, like a little kid, show everyone how MAD I am, and feel really gleeful about it!

Oh well. This is why we are called adults, although many of us these days seem to think we are entitled to act otherwise. I often catch myself doing childish things, like whining on a blog :-)

On a happier note, I saw this line in an ad for laundry detergent yesterday and it cracked me up: "Imagine some socks chasing some panties around on a hamster wheel."
I'll buy it if I get to see that!

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