Every little thing he does...


Even with all the other enormously horrible things going on in the world, I managed to find something else to lose my temper over and have a tantrum about today. Not my now daily,

WHYYWHYWHYWHYARETHEYARETHEY
LETTINHTHESEPEOPLEDIE?!!
"CULTUEOFLIFE"MYASS!!IHATTTEEEEGEORGEWBUSH!!!!!!AAAHHHHHHHHAHHHHHHHHH!
!BABYMURDERER!LITTLEOLDLADYMURDERER!AMERICANMURDERER!!!
SHRUBISATERRORIST!! tantrum

But a new tantrum. A totally trivial tantrum that even while I was in the midst of it I felt bad about it.

I asked for and got two very fab floor lamps for the Dark Hole Of Calcutta A.K.A. Camp Knotty Pine A.K.A. My second floor. The room has the proportions and feel of a small submarine. It's dark on the USS Knotty Pine, it's dark all the time. It sucks up artificial light at about the same rate that The RNC sucks up soft money from The Free Republic - It's dark all the time.

I like light. Light is good. Light makes it easier to find my way around. Light make it harder for me to bark my shins on the coffee table in the morning as well as making it harder for my shoes to successfully hide from me.

So the Birthday Faerie was summoned. I said Birthday Faerie, I need a floor lamp for Camp Knotty Pine" and the Birthday Faerie said "Dayum. You need two. A body could hurt themselves up there!"

So I got two kickin' floor lamps for Camp Knotty Pine.Those kickin' floor lamps don't put themselves together. Enter the trivial tantrum.

The instruction book that came with it does not have instructions. It came with pictures. The pictures do not say that you should put the lamp together in an air conditioned environment very different from Camp Knotty Pine so that as not to over heat yourself and sweat into your eyes because this can start the lamp put-er togther-er into having a tantrum. The pictures in the bookare lovely pen and ink drawings that are probably suitable for framing, so lovely are the drawings in the instruction book. Sadly, they are not instructive drawings. They clearly illustrate that you must remove the widget before you attach the shade, but there are no drawings illustrating what to do if the bulb will not screw in properly if the shade and the widget are in place. There is no illustration speaking to why the widget is not able to properly screw in if the shade is in place. The illustration about why the shade must hang limply and the illustration of why light bulb never actually tighten the way its supposed to is not included, either.

So. I stopped trying. I decided that it was wasteful and wrong on my part to have tantrums over something as minor and insignificant in the view of everything that is going on today. The lamps will be put together, it just won' be today and it won' be by me.

Speaking of things that make me crazy. I discovered I can not watch coverage of the hurricane. I can read coverage of it for hours, I can and have looked at photos, I have read pages of discussion of the coverage, I can memorize interviews about the mishandling of the rescue efforts... but I can not watch it for more then a few minutes before I get anxious and nervous and need to go check my email or chase a cat or something, anything but watch it on TV . I hadn't noticed that I had not watched any of it unfolding on TV. I've been stuck to my computer screen and CNN.com and hitting the refresh button over and over but I had not watched any telivised coverage.

Please note the huge Red Cross link. Whatever you and I have donated thus far, we aren't done yet. We have to do more. It's not over. It's not going to be over. We must do more. Think about what you can do with out and go then go with out it and get used to it - donate the money saved to a charity of your choice. If you think can't afford to donate, think about bringing your lunch to work and donating what you would spend for lunch if you had gone out. The Red Cross can take donations of $5, everyday you don't eat out, donate the price of that skipped lunch.