*published February 9, 2006
It was all my fault.
The day began brightly enough, with Dale and me watching Marcus’ basketball game. Marcus’ team played well until the second half. They lost by a few points, and the coaches made a list of what they need to work on at next week’s practice.
My family went home to tackle their major chore for the day, which was to get Marcus’ new Nintendo DS talking to my DSL port. The new game system had been purchased the evening before, and it was probably the crux of my crankiness. After working at the ranch for eight hours, all I wanted was a shower and the crossword puzzle. Instead, I got to take Marcus to Target because he could not endure another second without this new contraption. At 10 p.m. he wanted me to connect the thing to my DSL, but I hissed something about exhaustion and he retreated, but not before giving me his saddest, most guilt-inducing look.
So by Sunday, I was already an unwilling participant in this task, but I sat down at my computer and went to work. In my attempt to get him hooked up, I managed to cut off communication between my computer and the DSL port. This made me even more cross. Dale quickly stepped in and took over, leaving me to work off my steam with manual labor, like doing the laundry.
I turned the machine on to start the water, filled the Tide laundry ball with liquid detergent and held it over the washing machine. Still feeling quite peevish, I told myself not to throw the container in, because the detergent would splash up out of the washer and onto me. Carefully dropping the ball instead, it took a wrong angle, hit the side of the machine and splashed up all over me. The floor, my shirt, and my hair were now splattered with gooey liquid.
My grumbling was so loud, you’d have thought we were having an earthquake. Sticking my head in the sink, I rinsed the soap out of my hair. Maybe it was just the timeout I needed, or maybe it was all of the blood rushing up to my head, but by the time I pulled my head out of the cold water, I saw the day for what it was: my bad mood was spoiling everything I touched.
At that point, I sat down and read the paper, worked on the puzzles and relaxed. My crankiness disappeared and I was able to complete the day’s chores without incident. After all, my planets may have been in retrograde, but I didn’t have to be.