Anger: a strong feeling of displeasure and belligerence aroused by a wrong; wrath; ire.

Man, I’m turning into an angry little person. You know those grumpy old assholes who deliberately cut people off or bark at waitresses or glare at small children for doing nothing more than acting like children, and everyone else in the room thinks “Daaaaamn, what the hell turned you into a bitter old bastard.” Right now, that’s me.

For some reason, over the course of the last couple months several of my otherwise rational, mature, lovely chick friends have regressed to the sixth grade. Because the friends are from totally unrelated circles, I’m beginning to think Invasion of the Body Snatchers was possibly a brilliant work of futuristic foreshadowing from which we all should’ve all taken heed, and that the aliens are slowly making their way from New York (with a nice long rest in Minnesota) to California beginning by kidnapping 30-year-old women and locking them in a hidden spacecraft while a new, identical alien version of them grows into maturity inside a big pea-pod. And when they hatch from the pea-pod, the alien-them begins their mission to take over the world by acting cliquey, manipulative and just like someone’s passive-aggressive mother-in-law.

I’m not sure if I should scream What the Fuck is Your Fucking Problem at the top of my lungs, or if I should go get a massage and drink too much wine to get myself to chill out or if I should do some Zenny meditations identify and address the root-cause of the negative energy circulating in my life right now or if I should be frantically searching underground passages for a hidden space vessel in which my friends are trapped, moments from being shipped to Neptune.

Anyway: I assume they’ll get over it enough to have a mature heart-to-heart and that I’ll get over it enough not to want to throw plates at the wall (ohhhhh that would be so satisfying) and it’ll all work out, but right now, I should be wearing a cape and mask and a leotard that has “Agro Girl” printed across the front.

It’s not just that, it’s also taxes. I shouldn’t bitch because I’m getting a refund—enough for a new couch and all the stuff I need to paint my new place. Yeah! But I loathe such paperwork. It frustrates me beyond comprehension. This year I did some freelance work and had 3 jobs and was doing fairly well with the paperwork until the end: there was still one box that needed some code in it, and I had no code. I didn’t know what it wanted. I called my awesome Dad and he didn’t know, and after digging and digging through books and help-menus online and all that insanity, I found what might be the correct code, but I’m not sure. Holy Christ—what a pain in the ass.

Let’s begin my half-hearted attempt at calming myself down by listing things that do not suck right now:

Tax Refunds
My most patient and handsome and freakin’ hilarious significant other
Getting breakfast at French Meadow with the awesome Voix
The totally awesome crowd of friends I went to the Twins game with this weekend, where the Twins kicked some serious ass
Bike rides around Lake of the Isles
My tax-expert papa
All the prolific writing I’ve done and the many books I’m reading
Having a super cool new apartment and the resources to paint it up and buy groovy furniture
All the awesome friends who offered to help me paint, shop and lug boxes
Lastly, and I must say that my hair has been quite cooperative lately.

There. How’s that for a positive attitude?
(PHHHHT.)