Little Luxuries

I spent all of yesterday pissed. Not pissed in the British sense, pissed in the American "I'm going to kick you in the face" pissed. Well, not so much pissed, as perpetually, mind-numbling, just shoot-me-now irritated. Like that time I sat, wearing shorts, in my uncle's fiberglass-bottom boat and ended up with a fiberglass bottom of my own.

I knew from experience that this feeling would pass, still it was a tough day to get through.

While I had a few ideas regarding the source of my irritation (the fat bus lady who tries to squeeze into the space next to me and the pole, colleagues who insist on repeatedly throwing small stress-balls against the paper thin wall, roommates who don't flush the toilet (even though we got that one cleared up), group mates that leave a meeting early because it interferes with their tennis lesson, mothers who don't approve of blog-site language, jobs that are ending, security clearances that take three weeks to get, finals that must get researched and written)mostly it was myself.

And that's the worst. When you're irritating your own self? You KNOW something's got to give.

I realized that if I was going to get through the day without snapping everyone's heads off, I needed to pacify myself with little luxuries. This sounds ridiculous, but my little luxuries usual revolve around buying something that I wouldn't normally allow myself to buy. As a grad student, surprise surprise, most of my worries/miserableness extends from not having enough money to buy what I *really* want. I end up buying what I need and leaving those flashy gold ballet flats on the shelf.

I'm not usually a proponent of buying happiness, but in a life where spending $1.60 is a major investment, it turned out yesterday that splurging on some good groceries from Whole Foods (green things! good cheese! tapinade!) did the trick.

Oh yeah, and some coffee.

Can you believe I went a whole day with a cup?