--enormous sigh of total relief--

Guys, really.
I'm trying.
I'm trying to be good, trying to be kind here. I know Squeaky's life can't be easy. I'm trying.

But today, after I'd dropped her and Tim off at the baseball game, after which Tim was going to the bar and Squeak was going to her dad's for the rest of the week at least....well, when I walked in the door I pretty much did the Dance of Total Joy.

I cannot stand hearing another off-key pop song.
I cannot stand to have the plot of another Disney-Channel movie related to me in excruciating detail.
I cannot stand to listen to another story about some almost-famous person whom she almost knows, or almost encountered, or whose brother's cousin's daughter's babydaddy's sister-in-law's auntie went to grade-school with.
I cannot stand to watch the same MadTV skit on YouTube again.
I cannot stand to hear her and Tim talking over each other, no one listening, each one getting louder and louder and louder.

I work hard. I come home at the end of a day, or at the end of a week, and I ask for exactly two things. One is a Pepsi. (Don't ever be the person to drink the last Pepsi at my house, friends; bad things happen to people who drink the last Pepsi.)

The other, though, is a reasonable interval of peace and/or quiet, during which I can recompose myself, wind down, unscrew my neck-muscles and relax. That is all. Not much to ask, is it? I mean, I don't THINK it's much to ask....No, really--IS it??

To walk in the front door and find the TV and the computer speakers both going at once, in two totally different sonic assaults--with Squeaky singing and dancing along to the computer while watching Whatever on TV, with Tim going through his music library at intense volume, all while the two of them bicker and the cats fight in the background...

I'm exaggerating, I'm sure.

What I'm NOT exaggerating, though, is that last night, for the first time in absolutely as long as I can remember in my adult life--I snapped. I yelled. Really yelled. (The last time I remember yelling AT someone? 1993. I was with my ex-husband, and I was PISSED.) I was attempting to convey necessary information to them--information I knew they would ask for within minutes, if they didn't hear me this time--and they were bickering on inconsequentially, and all the noise and clutter and sonic chaos of the past week just overwhelmed my filters, and I finally just lifted up my voice and yelled "HEY! STOP! I'M TALKING NOW!" They looked at me, Tim especially, as though I'd just lost my mind entirely. Tim has known me for so long, and has seen me angry so rarely, that he realized immediately the wisdom of shutting the hell up. That's the advantage of not having a noticeable temper; when you finally do lose it, people sit up and take notice.

And so I simply said what I was trying to say, apologized for snapping, and let them continue on with what they were doing. (Which was "bickering extensively", should you wonder.)

I'm trying, really. I've tried to be there, to listen to Squeaky when she needs someone to talk to. I've been less-charitable than I would like, I know...But it doesn't--does it?--make me a bad person, if I'm almost incapacitated with happiness at her departure??