I am a Fucking Moron

I was planning to write a post today posing the question, “Is the Universe trying to tell me something?”

I mean, when I started this blog, yes, the financial house of cards was coming down, and I was stymied over whether to finally have “The Talk” with Penny that I knew would lead to divorce. As I wrapped up my previous post, I thought about all that has transpired in the seven or eight months since then. Quite a bit, actually.

And just as it seemed that I’d turned my own financial ship around, I had to go and sever my ACL and require knee surgery. Just as we needed to start packing up some of the extraneous stuff at our house so that it will look less cluttered when we put it on the market (this coming week).

And I spoke with a friend today who said, “Well, maybe the Universe is trying to tell you something,” by having all this crap happen at once — divorce, moving, job change, surgery. He was thinking that maybe the Universe was trying to tell me it’s time for an absolutely complete reset.

Well, then. After that conversation, I had a chat with Penny. And Penny blamed yet another random thing on my “10-day vacation” (as she always refers to it). Lately, this has been a huge theme for her — blaming everything on my “10-day vacation.” And I finally said words to the effect that she was blaming everything on my “10-day vacation”, including things that happened months ago, and that maybe that wasn’t called for.

To which she responded that “your children paid for your 10-day vacation. And they’re still paying for it.”

While I was gone, she was stretched rather thin, and she attributes every unfortunate behavior on the part of the kids to my absence. (And, let’s be fair… if child #3 was a little bit more clingy, it’s entirely reasonable to suspect that my absence contributed to his separation anxiety. I have no doubt that there were some extra pressures brought to bear by my absence, but I also don’t think every fight and every whine and every cry has a direct causal link to me being gone, either.)

This is the first time she ever threw “your kids” into my face, but the message is what I always suspected she believed: I am a selfish prick who never thinks of others, and I obviously don’t care about my kids.

We swapped shouts at each other for a moment or two (which we almost never do), and then she hung up on me. Which I hate. I hate, I hate, I hate.

And then I did the stupidest thing. I was pissed off, and I decided to take out my pissed-off-edness out on an inanimate object. I threw that fucking phone at the fucking wall.

And missed.

And that, ladies and germs, is why I. Am. A Fucking. Moron.

See, my knee doesn’t work. So the physics of my throw were all off. And my laptop… was… well, my laptop was sitting on the bed. Minding it’s own business. And the phone, instead of hitting the wall, smacked my computer dead center and smashed the LCD display into a fucking kaleidoscope of cracks.

This is the cost of anger, my friends. I never release my anger like that. Never. And the one time I do, holy crap do I make the price tag a doozey.

I’m writing this on the work laptop that I do my database work on. This machine is way old, and has no built-in camera, so no Skyping or iChatting for me. Worse yet… all my fiction writing is on my personal machine. Etc., etc.

I’ll find out tomorrow how much it will cost to repair the screen, but I’m afraid that given the computer’s age (three years?), and given how much repairs like that tend to cost ($400 or so), I’m going to find myself in a situation where it’s not cost effective to repair it, and it’s not cost effective to replace it.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I am such a moron. And I hate admitting to you, my friends, what a fucking moron I am. But, well, if you can’t tell your secret bloggy friends, who can you tell?

Oh, and please pardon the profanity. My social filters got cracked, along with my pride.

I’m not expecting any sleep tonight. Looks like I picked the wrong day to quit my Oxycodone prescription.

Feh.

Oh, and PS: yes, my knee still hurts. I gave it quite a workout after my computer’s untimely injury, though. Paced back and forth for about ten minutes without my crutches. Well, “paced” is a generous term. “Limped angrily,” is more accurate, perhaps.  On Monday, my doctor said I’d need to get in as much walking as I could manage. Today’s little episode is the first walking without crutches that I’ve managed to do.

You know, in the right hands, this entire scene could be filmed as a comedy. Well, if it happened to someone else, it could be. (Why am I picturing Cameron from the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off ranting in the background?)