Grumplyanna, Queen of the Grumpletonians

Yesterday, both of my children woke up in moods so patentedly atrocious that I considered taking them back to the kid store and getting different models, because mine were clearly defective.  We got through the morning, but I'm pretty sure it was only because some supernatural being took pity on me and lent a hand.

This morning, I woke up and my kitchen sink was full of dirty dishes and that was just enough to tip my own mood right over the edge of the Cliffs of Insanity, whereupon I turned into some sort of hideous beast that hates everything.  Things that were vaguely annoying yesterday are now enough to make me want to incinerate the world with the force of my anger and start all over again, because clearly I can do a better job running things than the rest of you people.

(I'm sorry.  I love you.  I really do.  It's just that I hate everything right now, and you're caught in the crossfire.  All apologies.)

However, the truth is that I don't have the fricking time right now to incinerate the world, much less start a whole nother one up, so instead, I'm just going to sit here and eat my pancake and bacon sandwich (DON'T JUDGE ME)  (AND YES, IT DOES HAVE SYRUP ON IT) and write a list about all the things I hate, because I am Grumplyanna, Queen of the Grumpletonians, and that is my right.

Mkay?  Mkay.

1. The adulation of athletes in America  When I was in high school, there was an athlete with whom I had a class.  He was talented in a few sports and also, he was a jerk.  The cool girls loved him and I thought that it would be nice if somebody flushed him down the toilet.  Anyway, he and I were both stinking up the place in this class and had the exact same grade going in to the final, which was a 63.  I studied my butt off for the final and wound up making well enough on it to pull my grade up to a 68, which I hoped would mean that my teacher would take pity on me and let me pass the class.  This did not happen.  It did, however, happen to the athlete in question, who actually got a lower grade on the final than I did and yet somehow wound up passing the class.  And then he went on to play on the state championship team for one of his sports and I was bitter and had to take this class in summer school.  ARGH.  The awfulest thing about this young jerk was that not only was he given a pass in the class, he also was given a pass in life, as he cheated on his girlfriends and was generally a turd to anybody who failed to give him his proper adulation.  And so when Lance Armstrong announced he was jumping on the Oprah Pity Train, I immediately transported back to high school and the cheating, adored jerkwad.  Lance Armstrong is a cheating, lying, bullying jerk.  He dumped his wife, he lied for decades, and he bullied as many people as he could to get his way and is now claiming he was just doing what everybody else was doing and it's so AWFUL for him.  Shut the hell up, Lance Assjacket.  I don't want to hear your voice any fricking more.  What would have been big of you is if you had just had a press conference and said, "I lied.  I doped.  I got other people to dope to make me feel better.  I treated people like shit and took advantage of an entire generation of people who thought that I was a hero."  But nnoooooo.  You had to go on fricking Oprah and make a big deal out of your sorry self.  You suck.  And you are indicative of a certain mindset that I've just decided SOME athletes have.  The way I see it (as a non-athlete), everybody who is an athlete has one or two things in common:  natural ability and the drive to excel.  Then they are split into two different factions:  the ones who cheat and lie and showboat and act the fools and the ones who do the work and live their lives with little fanfare.  I like those guys.  Those guys rock.  But the Lances of the world?  The Barry Bondses and the Ochocincos (or whateverthehells) and the rest?  They can go away forever.  And this extends to college sports, too.  I almost quit college football after the Penn State awfulness and yet another Bulldog off-season during which our guys were arrested for drugs and guns and dawg knows what else.  And then the whole Manti Te'o thing comes up and...really?  You had a girlfriend for two years who DIED and you'd never met her and you didn't go to her funeral?  Dude.  Either A:  you need a brain scan because you've taken too many hits to the head or B:  you are a Lance.  My money is on B.  And that feels awful.
2. Time  There is not enough of it.  I suspect this is because I have always mismanaged it and it got pissed off at me and decided that it wasn't going to be nice to me any more.  I am in the process of trying to turn over a new leaf when it comes to balancing work and home, basically because it finally dawned on me that, you know, I'm sort of successful at this whole photography thing and I probly need to get more organized so it all works well together.  So I've started breaking my days up into thirty minute increments and doing thirty minutes of housework and thirty minutes of photography work.  The problem is that I've let the house sort of go for so long that thirty minutes is perhaps not long enough to get all my stuff done.  When it takes you an hour to clean out the fridge,  you are already thirty minutes behind.  And when the kids get home, I have to go off the thirty/thirty thing because our hours are stuffed with outside time and homework and taekwando and Show Kids and, you know, we eat food and junk.  Sigh.  If time would just slow down a wee bit, I would love it.  When I start the world over, I'm totes going to have slower time with it.
3. Math  Math does not suck any less than it did in high school, but I'm trying to pretend it does, because the way math is being taught now is insane to me and Jeffrey's brain doesn't get it and he's FAILING MATH.  I can't stand it.  So, basically, we are doing math homework every night and I'm getting him to add, subtract, divide, and feediddle with fractions all day long and bringing up interesting math facts and hustling him to tutoring three days a week.  Do you know how fricking annoying it is to pretend to enjoy something you hate?  "Math is so super important!  We couldn't live without math!  Yay, math!"  I feel like the Barney actor had to have felt.  He was bouncing around and chortling and singing about friendship in his floppy purple suit, but you know between takes he was smoking crank in his dressing room and dreaming about stuffing that kid with the glasses into the trashcan.  That's what I'd like to do to math.
4. The phrase "gun control" and the discussions surrounding it  A few years ago, folks started calling "global warming" "climate change," because a certain faction of people couldn't grasp that "global warming" didn't mean we all get really hot all of a sudden and palm trees spring up in Minnesota overnight.  "Global warming" acknowledges that the earth is, in fact, getting warmer, but the main problem is not that we wear shorts all year long, but that the climate is getting wonky and ecosystems are shutting down and this is bad.  So we eradicated that phrase because people were like, "Yeah, this global warming is awful" every time it snowed and scientists and people who do things like, you know, acknowledge science were starting to eat our own faces every time it snowed because of those other people.  I wish we could do that with the phrase "gun control," because every time certain people hear the phrase, they lose their minds and start frothing at the mouth and bragging about stockpiling ammunition and talking about their cold, dead hands.  What those of us who favor "gun control" really favor is "more gun regulations to prevent crazy people and/or criminals from having access to assault weapons and bullets that are marketed as being able to pierce armor that our police officers wear, because we are not in a police state just yet and this isn't Red Dawn."  I swear, half of the debates I get into with anti-gun regulation people involve some sort of situation in which a rag tag group of kids overthrows an oppressive government.   A couple of things:  A of all, ain't none of the people I'm talking to qualifying for the term "kid" any more.  B of all, you know what happened to Jed?  He wound up dying and bleeding on a bench with his brother whilst blowing snot bubbles out his nose.  (Oh, Patrick Swayze.  Your two biggest talents were dancing like a BEAST and blowing snot bubbles out your nose.  I miss you.)  Also, C of all?  Any oppressive government of the future is going to do away with you with tanks and heavy artillery, never mind the drones and the  other fancy stuff they have.  I'm just saying.  What I'm also saying is that if you can't come at me during a conversation about the real fears of American people without blabbering about your freedoms being eroded by the Socialist government, just don't come at me.  And certainly don't talk to me about Hitler taking away guns, because, in fact, he loosened gun laws in Germany.  It was one of the first things he did.  Might want to ask yourself why.  Basically, if your biggest argument is that you aren't giving up your guns and people kill peoplegunsdon'tkillpeople and whatever else, just...no.  I love you and I respect you, but we're going to have to not have a conversation until you can actually have a conversation.
5. People who call me a racist during conversations about gun control  This actually only happened once, but when it did, my head exploded.  What was more annoying than being called a racist was when the person who did so then claimed that I was too "emotional" and that he wasn't talking about ME when he insinuated those things and THEN he insinuated that I must be so defensive because I was, in fact, a racist.  Let's talk about what I'm really mad about, which is when you are having a conversation with somebody and they throw out a generalization like, I don't know, "white liberals."  And then they go on to discuss all the bad things that "white liberals" do.  And then they say something like, "I don't know you, but I hope you aren't like that."  But secretly, YES, THEY DO.  Y'all, when people make generalizations that cover the person that you are, they are totally lumping you in with the generalized group.  When you call them on it, they'll accuse you of being emotional or too sensitive or defensive because they want to make you seem weak.  This is a crappy tactic and we all need to stop using it.  Not all conservatives are Karl fricking Rove and not all liberals are Michael fricking Moore, and what I'm really mad about is that we use our language like a bludgeon and it SUCKS.  Stop beating me with your words, people.  Stttoooooooopppppppp.
6. Cold weather without snow  I want a snow day.  With fudge and popcorn.  And a fire.  And cocoa.  With amaretto in it.
7. The Sandy Hook hoax people  I'm sorry, but the folks that say, "I don't know, I just don't think we know the whole story" strike me as, at best, insensitive and, at worst, insane.  Plus, anybody who honestly believes anything like "the Obama administration + Sandy Hook = clear manipulation by the Socialist government to take away our guns" needs to just leave.  I'm serious.  If you think our government, which took almost fifteen years to take out Osama bin Laden, which uses drones to kill civilians in foreign countries against which we aren't in war, which can't even pull themselves together long enough to get money together for stranded hurricane survivors is capable of being meticulous enough to fake and/or execute the murder of 26 babies and their teachers, you need to leave this country.  Seriously.   Because...you hate it.  You don't feel safe in it.  And you're bringing down our collective intelligence.  And, no, I'm not generalizing.  I'm being really fricking specific.  If you honestly believe your country is capable of this sort of awfulness, you can't really want to stay.  Now, if you are saying this stuff because you want to believe that this is one more weapon in your Red Dawn scenario...y'all.  I love you and I know you hate the president and liberals and everybody else that isn't like you, but imagine for a second that you are a citizen in this grieving town and you read this mess on the interwebs and you realize that somebody is minimalizing your pain and the lives and deaths of people you love.  After you imagine that stuff,  STOP DOING IT.  Because your hatred of the president will NEVER be as great as their pain.  Ever. 
8. Kathy Lee Gifford  She never stops getting on my nerves.  Ever. 
9. Photographers who add haze to their pictures  I spend a lot of time setting up my shots so I don't get haze and if I DO get haze I get rid of it as much as possible, so when you show off your pictures that look like your subjects are peering at me through the fog, I want to punch my computer screen.  WHY does anybody think this looks good???
10. My DVR that didn't record Grey's last night  Are you serious, DVR?  You didn't record my show?  I won't get to look at Kevin McKidd look all earnest and pained and, you know, hot.  DAMN IT.

OMFC, y'all, the school just called me to tell me Jeffrey felt barfy.  

I can't stand it.

I'm totally burning down the world after I go pick him up.

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It should be noted that shortly after I picked up Jeffrey, my friend came by with chocolate and we had a good fussing session and I'm feeling much better.

Pretty sure it wasn't just the chocolate...