Anger Management

Oh My God. Yesterday was such a bitch. On a Friday, even. Now, that's just not right.

OK, I realize that I've been on a bit of a short fuse as far as the anger thing goes lately, and I've been trying to work on it. My first anger management challenge happened as I was dropping Madeline off at school. We decided to go for the new drop off and pick up lane by the playground. I was not at all convinced when I first heard of said new lane that it would work at all. It looked like way too small a space for the amount of kids and cars flowing through on a twice daily basis. Anyhoo, I pull in, hop out of the car, open Madeline's door, help her out, get her backpack on her, kiss her goodbye, give her a few reassuring words, and send her on her way. Right about then I hear "Ma'am." Now, at first I didn't really react, cause I don't consider myself a 'ma'am', but when I hear it again, a little more firmly, I stop getting back into the car and look around. There's a woman in a uniform staring at me (police? I don't know), and she says to me, with a smile, "You're blocking traffic." WHAT? Excuse me? It's the SECOND day of school, and I WILL give my kid a kiss goodbye, you biatch! So, I stare right back, and say curtly, "I'm leaving now."

As I was driving away, I'd be surprised if you couldn't see the steam rising out of my ears and drifting out through the window. I was considering A) driving back around and giving her a piece of my mind, B) going into the school and complaining to anyone who was around about the bitch directing traffic, or C) call the principal and resoundingly denounce the new drop off lane as ridiculous and emotionally scarring. Then I took a deep breath, told myself maybe she was just trying to do her job, and me being a psycho probably wasn't going to help the situation at all, so I did D) proceed directly to the Starbuck's drive thru for a medicinal mocha. Anger management crisis averted. (Tip experts, any opinion on tipping in the drive thru? They have a tip jar out, and I drop a tip about half the time, but somehow tipping in the drive thru seems weird to me.)

The day went pretty smoothly. I vacuumed the hell out of my bedroom, with a certain sense of satisfaction that I wasn't going to wake up the next day and find it all covered in black cat hair again. I worked on a project I've been doing for Madeline's room, a new cool fabric and ribbon covered bulletin board. I think they call them French ribbon boards? For displaying her schoolwork and art projects. I had told her I would have it done by the time she got home, but it turned out we needed LOTS more ribbon than I had purchased. So, I decided, if she was up to it, we'd cruise by the fabric store on the way home. It was pretty out of the way, but I wanted to get it done, and it turned out she was up for it, so off we go. Unfortunately, the fabric store only had one more spool of the ribbon we needed, and I kinda thought we'd probably need 2, but we grabbed the one and headed home.

Part two of the anger management challenge happened on the way home. We were headed down Montgomery, at about quarter to 5. The traffic was starting to get a little heavy, but we needed milk and eggs, so we were going to stop by the grocery store real quick. I'm cruising along, minding my own business, when the car in front of me decelerates fairly rapidly. It looked like the car in front of him was making a left decided he really didn't have time to beat that car coming toward him, and hit the brakes, so we were all doing the hurry up and slow down thing. (Can you see where this is going?) I say to the kids "Oh! Hold on!" and brake firmly. Now, I didn't slam on the brakes, but as the guy in front of me has now stopped, I did stop quickly in order to avoid hitting him. Unfortunately, the guy behind me wasn't paying such good attention (and was obviously following too closely), and I hear a screech, then a crunch as he HIT MY CAR. Fuck Fuck Fuck. I ask the kids if they're ok, and seeing how we're in pretty heavy traffic at this point, proceed to carefully and quickly move to the side of the road. As I am doing this, I see the guy who HIT MY CAR, driving away. God Damn MFing ASSHOLE! I grab a pen and jot down his license plate number as he LEAVES THE SCENE OF THE ACCIDENT.

I am freaking out by this point, and I call Clark. I hadn't even got out of the car to assess the damage. He tells me I need to call 911. I wasn't too keen on that, as it wasn't really an emergency, but say I'll call information and see if they can connect me to dispatch. I get off the phone with him, and hop out of the car to see how badly we've been crunched. Amazingly, I couldn't even tell where we'd been hit, which helped cool the anger a tad, but still. I called the police (finally got through on the second number I called), and they say they're going to send someone over. Of course, you can't really tell how much a car is damaged until you get it up and look under it, so we're now waiting for the cops to come so we can file a report. A nice guy stopped by who had witnessed the accident to give me the jerk's license number, which I was glad to see matched the one I had written down. We ended up waiting for the police for AN HOUR. At which time, Clark showed up from work. We called back the cops, and they said no one was on the way yet, and if we wanted we could file a report at any police station within 5 days. So, I'm going to have to go in tomorrow.

After sitting in the car seething for an hour with two hot cranky kids, I had mostly exhausted my supply of anger. I was totally wiped out, and had a throbbing headache, which was only slight alleviated by Friday night pizza and ice cream. (We finally found a place in Albuquerque for the Krause House Friday night tradition, which is a very good thing.) Today I still have the headache, which could be just stress, or could be some mild whiplash. Another reason to file the police report.

I tried to go to a restorative yoga class this morning, but it was cancelled. Bummer, but no immediate angry reaction. Maybe I'm out. Although if my kids keep jumping on my bed, I may have to dig deep into the reserves. Hopefully tomorrow will be better, and I can stop worrying about the whole thing once the police report is filed. Although we probably should have the car checked out. I hope it's ok. And, I hope the asshole's car is SMASHED!