Oh, To Be an Avenging Angel

Not sure why yesterday was so awful.

Petty annoyances, a dozen or so of them.

But their effect was cumulative: Idiot client. UPS refusing to deliver the camera batteries I ordered for RTT because there was no apartment number. Half an hour on the phone with UPS people. RTT snippy about the delivery delay. Max not doing a goddamn thing on the website I built for him. Deb the Church Lady canceling the garden’s participation in the July 4th parade because only five people signed up for it. More idiot client shit.

UGH.

I could feel myself shifting into that borderline mental state where you want to start galloping through other people’s landscapes on a roan horse setting fire to their brush, an avenging angel.

What does this ever accomplish?

Nada.

What would I even be avenging?

Who fuckin’ knows?

But the impulse was strong.

I wanted to tell the client, You’re a fucking idiot, which would have been an act of high self-sabotage because right now, there are no other clients on the horizon.

I wanted to push Deb into a nettle patch.

I wanted to cut off both my children, and never, ever speak to them again, and die a lonely and embittered old woman.

Instead, I went to the movies.

###

I saw Yesterday.

I left the movie thinking, Does Danny Boyle need money that desperately? Why?

Is he trying to buy off someone who has incriminating photos of him with 14-year-old boys? Is he purchasing a new yacht?

I mean, this is the guy who made Trainspotting for God’s sake.

Yesterday is so awful that it doesn’t even qualify as a bad movie.

But it was a dark movie theater in which I could sit and eat M&Ms and cry unobserved.

So, that was good.

###

When I left the theater, the sun was setting, and it was magnificent.

And in that brief window between twilight and night, all the fireflies in the universe visited my backyard.

###

I wish I could say I feel better this morning, but the day has already started badly: RTT was having dental issues while I was up there last week and ignored every single one of my maternal admonitions: This is not going to go away on its own. You need to see a dentist.

Apparently, he was up all night with a toothache writing me FB messages.

I can see the corner he’s backed himself into: I can’t take the time off from work! I can’t spend the money! I need all the money to pay my cancer-stricken dad’s rent!

He needs someone to talk him down from desperation: You’ll take one day off from work and work out a payment arrangement. Your father actually has other options; he just thinks having cancer allows him to be selfish about them.

But since he broke his phone and the replacement phone I sent him will not reach him till Friday, I can’t call him.

Sigh…

###

I did have a long phone conversation with Jeanna who was her usual charming, spacey self, and that was nice. Oh, to live in Brigadoon in the Land of Enchantment where time is a mirage.

My trip is on for August/September.