Anger

Take what you like and leave the rest.

Like most folks, I experience, from time to time, all the prerequisite human emotions.  The way I learned them was: Sad, Mad, Glad, Fear.   Like most other humans, I laugh, cry, cringe and get mad.  But lately I have begun to suspect that I have an unusual relationship with anger.

Most folks get angry and blow up,  or else they simmer and wait for the right time.  Now, I do that.  I do both.  I blow up and I simmer, depending on the incident.  But sometimes, when I feel mad, I have other reactions.

Certain situations bring out something strange.

Trying to give the dog a bath, for instance.  She hates getting wet, so she does whatever she can to get out of it.  She hides, she tries to get under the bed, she runs away.  I keep going after her, getting madder and madder.  After a while she tries passive resistance, simply putting all four paws down firmly on the floor and refusing to move as I try to pull her towards the bathroom.  It makes me very mad, but the whole situation also strikes me as ridiculous.   So I start laughing.

Now, don't get me wrong -- I'm mad enough to chew nails.  I'm furious with the dog. 

But I'm also laughing. 

And I'm laughing so hard I get weak.  Sometimes I can't stand up because of the laughter.

I can't even yell at them, because my breath is all taken up with laughing.

I wet my pants, which makes me even angrier, which makes me laugh harder.

This tends to send mixed signals to the dogs and cats in my life (fortunately, I have had relatively few opportunities to warp the minds of children).  They simply cannot understand if I am angry or amused.  They get very confused.

I'm not doing it on purpose, I assure you.  I hate it that I laugh.  No one knows what the heck is going on and I can't blame them.  It confuses me too.

I'm pretty sure my husband doesn't understand it either.

Now, I don't always laugh when I'm angry.  (The laughter seems to happen most often when I am frustrated, especially if it involves Animals or small children.)  I do have other reactions, more normal.

But even the so-called normal reactions can have ramifications.

For instance, housework.  I am incapable of doing housework unless I am very, very angry.

I do hate doing housework --- that is a given.  But I also want a reasonably clean home. 

So when the house gets to the point where the dust bunnies should be charged rent, I clean. 

But it's a struggle of unbelievable proportions.  Just getting started is like pushing 75 pounds of wet cement across the floor -- and just about as appealing.

I find myself getting angry as I clean.  Angrier and angrier.  I will drag up things from years ago, things that don't really even bother me any more, but I will get angry all over again about them. 

But as I get angry, I get more energetic.  I channel that energy  into cleaning.  The dust flies, the broom takes on a life of it's own, piles of 'stuff' slowly melt as places are found for them  and the house gets clean (or at least cleaner), but I am in a terrible mood!

Sometimes when I am angry, I choose that time to do the cleaning, because since I am already angry, I might as well get something done. 

There is an upside.  You see, I have friends who have offered to get me angry when I am at their house so that I can clean their place.   That might work.

 If I play my cards right, my anger could end up being very, very popular.