Not today.  I know it’s Flashback Friday.  I even had a photograph picked out.  I can see it from where I’m sitting.  Today was just one of those days, and I just don’t wanna.

It’s Friday, and as you well know if you’ve been my friend on Facebook for any period of time, I LOVE Fridays because it’s JEANS DAY.  I look forward to it every other work day of the week.  I very rarely if ever take a Friday off when a Monday works just as effectively at giving me a three day weekend, if one is required.  I mean, honestly, I really like Fridays!  Then again, who doesn’t, jeans or no jeans?

About 1 millisecond after I turned off the shower this morning my husband called to tell me that the Public Works Director and cronies would be at our house in less than an hour to inspect our backyard.  They waited until the last minute to tell us when they were coming so that there was less of a likelihood that we would be home.  This was between 7:30 and 7:37 am, and I had been up since 6:30am.  I am not a morning person in general, but facing the prospect of a fight with the Village on short notice, a mere hour after waking, and before 9:00 am even can turn my happy Friday mood sour in no time flat.  Besides which, it was cold, and I had wet hair.  Add to that the fact that my husband wasn’t sure that he could turn around and make it back home to face them with me.  Let me be straight, my husband would be perfectly smitten if he could name me as the designated arguer of all things.  The problem is that although I’m good at holding my own and not backing down and arguing people into a circle until they admit that they are going to do what I want (sometimes), I find it all to be rather unpleasant.  I can’t shake that horrible adrenaline feeling I get by getting all worked up about something after it’s all over, and the angry mindset born of sheer frustration at my lack of control over the situation at hand.  It lingers, and festers, and left unchecked can truly ruin a good portion of my day.  So when this starts so early, and is in regards to something that is SO IMPORTANT…. well, it sucks.  I’m only human.  And I’m a crier.  Not while in the midst, but as a side effect of frustration and release of the adrenaline in the aftermath.  I HATE IT.  Of course it’s very easy for someone who cares about me to feel like I should just relax.  Let it go.  Duh, why didn’t I think of that myself?  Someone who didn’t just talk to a bitchy customer service representative at the telephone company for over an hour only to get nowhere in the end.  Yes!  I should relax!!  For. Sure.  I’m totally on it.

The meeting was so badly this morning, and I was so frustrated and full of despair at the situation (my husband did end up making it just moments before they rang the doorbell, btw) that I considered just crying right in the middle of it all, standing up against the fence in my back yard listening to their nonsensical bullshit.  There were at least three distinct moments during that 1.5 hours when I thought maybe it might be the absolute best thing for me to do for my own well being.  But I didn’t.  Instead, I broke down at work briefly when my boss asked me how it went.  I couldn’t even recount it because it was so upsetting.  I had this horrible anxiety that I carried around with me all day, and a knot in my stomach that just wouldn’t go away.  I went through my workday without actually speaking much at all which is CRAZY off for me.  So of course when I phoned my husband on my way home from work as I often do, I lost control of my tear ducts.  My mind, and my stomach, and my damned tear ducts were all in cahouts and they were absolutely plotting against me.  And I think it scared my husband a little, because usually when I have something upsetting enough to make me cry on the way home from work it’s fairly fresh, and I’m crying and bitching and/or yelling all at once.  But this was just silent, crazy, tears running down my face, all you hear is my sniffling type crying.  Which again is quiet, which is CRAZY off for me.  And frankly it all just really pisses me off.  Unfortunately there isn’t much that you can say to someone who is in such a state of overwhelming stress that is actually going to make it better.  Not that my dear husband doesn’t try.  And it isn’t that I wasn’t aware of the fact that my stress level was way off the charts high for the course of the entire day.  I was desperate to fix it, but this was seriously outside of my realm.  It was really kind of unexplainable, even though I’m attempting to explain it.

Obviously I made it home, and my husband was able to put a few things in perspective for me, even as my tear ducts and my evil stomach and whatever makes adrenaline were still wreaking havoc on my body and mind.  I still couldn’t relax, and it was a nice and sunny day even if it was a bit chilly.  I decided that since everything was wonky and everything about the day had been so off that I was going to do something different than normal.  Kind of.  I mean, it wasn’t an actual pattern of thought, more like just a nervous energy that sent me to the shed for SOMETHING.  Somehow, I picked raking.   You know there’s still snow on the ground here.  Except my mind was going CRAZY, so I got all geeked on raking up the pine needles on one side of our yard where they had removed a dead pine tree a week or two ago.  There are some mundane tasks that I despise.  Dusting.  Pulling weeds.  Raking.  At some point in the past 6 years I had declared that I wouldn’t be caught dead with a rake in my hand EVER for so long as I lived.  I bought a lawn chipper mulcher vacuum just to be sure.  Today though, I raked, and raked, and raked for about…. oh, I don’t know…. hours!  And when I finished raking, not only did I feel like I had shaken off the stress and the overwhelming anxiety that I had been carrying around, I wasn’t crying any longer, and my yard looked nicer too.  Which turned my frown upside down.  Raking!  Who knew?

Then I noticed that I had stepped in dog shit.  From the neighbor’s dog.  In my yard.