This morning got off to a bad start thanks to the commute. It’s incredibly petty, but there’s something about getting up when all I want is to roll over for five more minutes, and hustling through the pre-work preparations when all I want is to take it slow, and getting behind the wheel and navigating to the highway only to find that it doesn’t matter whether I set out five minutes closer to the optimal departure time or not, because there’s a massive all-lanes-blocked accident way up ahead that completely hoses traffic and adds at least a half an hour to the time it takes to get to the Metro anyway. And when, on top of that, I get to the Metro parking lot and find one of the few remaining spots which is still open only because the person with the Jeep Cherokee next to it is parked over the line, oh MAN does that chap my ass. I pulled into the spot anyway and was entirely ungentle in opening my car door into the Jeep, and the apoplexy-center of my brain really wanted to leave a note on the Jeep’s windshield that said something along the lines of “As if the fact that you drive a gas-guzzling, planet-killing, terrorism-enabling SUV wasn’t enough of a clue that you are a selfish fucking asshole, thanks for taking up two spots and making it crystal clear!” But I held back, mainly out of fear that the owner of said SUV would get back to their car before I got back to mine, and they would assume the person parked right up against them left it, and they would slash my tires in retaliation for daring to call them a fucking asshole, or something. So I consoled myself with the possibility of leaving a note this evening, if I get back to my car first. Of course now it’s been a good three hours or so, and the urge to leave scathing missives has pretty well dissipated. Which is probably for the best, as there’s not much to be gained from throwing fuel on the People Suck fire.
The object lesson here is that I get fairly cranky when things don’t go my way, which is something I need to keep in mind as I continue trying to raise a tiny human being. And yet I am still capable of being sucker-punched, sometimes literally. Last night I was repeatedly denying the little guy the right to toddle around while eating, informing him he needed to sit at the table or put down the food. We went back and forth on this a few times, and after a sufficient number of “no”s from me, the little guy changed tactics and said, “Up?” Happy to move on, I bent down and picked him up and held him so we were looking each other eye-to-eye. And at that point, with my height advantage nullified, he smacked me right in the face.
The reprisal for this was that I sat him down on the Time Out step and walked away, because above and beyond the shock I really just wanted to laugh. He pulled a move right out of the Looney Tunes playbook and I totally fell for it. Hopefully not a mistake I will make again in the future, but no less absurd for having happened even once.
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