Mad and Mushrooms

Forget the stress balls.

Forget counting to 10... or 100... or 50-million bazillion.

I'm mad. And no amount of squeezing on a rubber ball or reciting numbers aloud will calm me down.

Oh, yeah. I'm mad.

Now hear me, I'm not Little Miss 'Best Friend of the Year', with a specialty in Sensitivity. By no means. But I do try to make an effort - most of the time - to be aware of who's around and what's going on with them. You know, I try.

That didn't hold true to the 3 people I encountered today. Count 'em - three. The first, a "friend", I caught making a spectacle out of bad-mouthing me. At work. In front of other work people.

I think my face turned red. Not from embarrassment, either. From pure, in-check anger.

The second, my mother. She does this passive-aggressive thing where she hides real bombshell insults - and let-the-wind-out-of-your-sails comments - in seemingly innocent observations or advice. It hurts, and everytime it's brutal.

Third, and probably most annoying to my blood pressure, was the neighbor girl. The college brat who has probably sent "Torturing Brin" in as a replacement for softball in the next summer olympics. The self-indulged, conceited little twit had the audacity to boss me around like a slave, then eat all my culinary-genius inspired Stuffed Mushrooms. In one sitting. Then she left the kitchen a mess and tore out - leaving the front door wide open. Hate her.

(I mean, I'm on Atkins, and those stuffed mushrooms are like diet gold. And you know how cranky you get when you're on a diet, anyway.)

So.... how to handle these annoying and trivial comments and occurrences?

I choose to try to put them in perspective. Here goes:

REASONS WHY I WON'T STRANGLE ANYONE TODAY:

1. It would only mess up my hair.
2. It could be caught on one of those new Patriot Act, close-circuit cameras. And be broadcast. On 'Girls Gone Psycho'. Or COPS. Then later on COPS DVDs.
3. It would blow my great chances of being the next "it girl" for the CIA. (No, not hit girl.)
4. It would probably trump the endless talk of surgeries, illnesses, and deaths at the family Christmas Eve party. And we wouldn't want that.
5. Who would feed my cat while I'm at Camp Cupcake??

Okay. Better now.

Gotta go. I'm going to go stack all the dirty dishes - with baked-on mushroom juices - in the college brat's bed. You know, so she can enjoy it later tonight. And I won't pre-rinse them, either.