Ms. Cranky Pants

Last week was challenging as all those little gotchas kept me from enjoying myself. The flat tire on the way to work; the regular maintenance for both vehicles topping $400; learning that the truck tires need to be replaced due to parking outside, rather in the garage, as the temps swing 50 degrees in a given month; the cart I use to transport myself from the parking lot to class and back falling apart and my files going all over the parking lot; the plastic file box falling off the desk during class and cracking beyond further use; and my thumbnail ripping off well below the quick as I tried to stop the falling box.

Well, it hasn't been ugly, but it's certainly been annoying. Most of the time, I have a pretty decent sense of humor, but underlying every hour of every day is this darned hand, swelling and throbbing at the wrist until I just want to sit down and cry to see if that will either make it go away or, at least, feel better for a while. I don't think the epidural did much, other than make the top of my shoulders feel as if I have been kicked by a mule, that is. It's annoying because this is an area that had no pain, and now it has far too much pain to be ignorable.

I'm engaged in my second reading of a difficult memoir, The Glass Castle, which details the dysfunctional life of the Walls family. This is not a book that can be told about; it is a book that you have either lived to some degree yourself or you won't understand. I can take small bites, but cannot consume an entire meal because it's emotionally draining for me to the point that I become physically ill. My life wasn't as theirs, but it had its moments of being intolerable, and when someone coined the word "dysfunctional," it provided me with a shorthand description for which only I have the translation.

The mother is the polar opposite of my uptight, straight-laced, humorless parent, truly a free-spirited hippie. She ignores her children when she disappears into the art zone and she cannot fathom her husband's total lack of engagement with anyone or anything outside of himself. Their lives are episodic, and the episodes are not to be believed.

One episode ends with the family sleeping in an Oldsmobile tied together with rope to keep the engine cover down, windows patched with plastic bags, and an engine that won't exceed 20 miles an hour. An overnight stop in Oklahoma ends with a crowd gathering around the vehicle, astonished that there is a family sleeping inside.

As the daughter, the author of the memoir, pulls a blanket over her head and refuses to come out until they are beyond the Muskogee city limits, her mother says: "Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy. You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a little more."

This week's goal: focus on the comedy and simply accept that which does not fit neatly into that category. I didn't make an ass of myself last night on international TV as a host of the Emmy's, so life isn't all bad.