Beast

The past few days have been pretty difficult.

I am premenstrual and it's an especially bad episode.

I hate everyone and everything.

I am not rational.

The little things that make me crazy in my marriage, my career and my life as a mother are so magnified and unmanageable right now that I want to take a handful of valium and blur my way through the next couple of days.

Since that is neither advisable nor reasonable, I've chosen to exhaust myself on the water and in the gym.  Ibuprofen is my new best friend.

Yesterday, Olivia came home and one look at the anxiety on her face told me that something was seriously amiss.

"What is wrong?" I asked.  I did so because good mothers find out why their children are distressed and even though I knew her answer was going to piss me the hell off, I thought I should probably fake the good mother part.

"I lost my backpack," she whimpered, looking up at me with teary, apprehensive, eyes.

And then it all went to custard pretty quickly.

The first story I got was how she "turned her back for a second" and the backpack was taken.  The truth was that she had abandoned the bag at the front of the school and gone off to play at the dairy with one of her mates, who happens to be a child that I dislike.  Upon her return, her bag was gone.

We drove to the school to look for it and I bellowed at Olivia like a crazy person.  I suspect that individual who stole the bag saw this exchange between nutso parent and cowering, crying child because several minutes later as we were driving back home, the school office called to tell me that Olivia's PE top, her school jacket, her mitts and her umbrella were turned into the office in a torn plastic shopping bag.  The $85 backpack, her lunch box, homework and book were gone but someone was nice enough to return her school uniform.  It's a bit like a thief taking the money from a lost wallet but returning the ID to the owner... bittersweet, but hard not to be grateful.

We came home, ate dinner and then, I left to go to outrigger practice.  While in the driveway, my husband text me.  I answered and waited for his reply, which never came.  This infuriated me so I spent the next several minutes driving and using the SIRI feature on my iPhone to text Dallas the following message:

"Why in the world do you insist on beginning text conversations in which you find yourself unable to participate?"

SIRI never got it right and the frustration of looking down to see that what I had said and what SIRI had written (a garbled bunch of gobbledygook) were not the same, was more than I could manage.  I threw my head back and screamed in the car until the back of my throat hurt.  I imagine that spectacle might have been terrifying for the other drivers stopped at the red light.

Then, Dallas called and there was so much noise in the background, it was hard to hear him.  He still hadn't left the office and when he gave me the corporate line about how he was the owner of his business unit, had responsibilities, blah, blah, blah, I felt the last drops of empathy leech out of my body and be replaced by quivering, coiled, anger.

I arrived at the ramp, grabbed my paddle and POUNDED it through the water for 10km.  With every stroke, the fury and frustration of my day subsided and by the time we pulled back up to our ramp, I felt mostly sane.

This morning, I'm sore and just under the surface, I'm surprised to find that the rage is still there.

So, I'm off to the gym because it's the only place where I am able to think, these days.