Y'ever have one of those days when you'd be happy, not just to put bullets through soft portions of someone's anatomy, but to have them drawn and quartered? Maybe even tared and feathered?

I'm having one of those days.

The other day, the payday loan place I'd taken out a loan with, a while back, decided that they were going to take the whole balance of my loan out of my bank account.

This left me in a panic about my rent.

I came to an arrangement with my landlord, and wrote him a check.

Today, I discovered that, contrary to having the $40 or so I thought I had in my account, I'm now $200 in the hole, with zero available funds, because some bright young man at the bank decided that he was going to authorize my car payment to be made from my account, without consulting with me about it, first.

I am so closing my account with the credit union.

I knew it was a bad idea to have my primary checking account at the same bank as my car loan!

And bankers wonder why they're regarded as the scum of the earth.

This is a two-part entry. The first part is me ranting about my day; the second is me ranting about the way that people treat other people they say they're in love with. Actually, come to think of it, I guess they're kind of interrelated.

I've had a long and somewhat stressful day. I woke up about seven, got up, showered, dressed, took a load of boxes over to the Little Ship of the Desert (as I've decided to call my trailer, to sort of disguise the fact that I'm living in a (wince) trailer).

I was back at my house and finishing some details of packing about half an hour before I'd asked Mr. Smith to show up for to help me move. I worked on packing and then loading my car for about an hour, which put me half an hour after the time I'd asked him (and he'd agreed) to show up.

I'm not really surprised by this. Mr. Smith does something that my father used to do; something which drives me right up the wall. When I was a kid, in the years we all lived in Tucson, my father would make plans to do things with me. When the time came, he would most often not show up.

Sometimes, he'd call later, and say that "something came up."

Something came up is my least-favorite excuse. If you use it to me, I'll probably forgive you, but I won't forget it... and if you use it to me a lot, you'll probably stop being included in plans I make to do things.

Mr. Smith uses it a lot. What he really means, of course, is the same thing my father really meant... something more interesting came up, and I didn't feel obliged to come and do what I said I was going to do, because that's a drag, man.

Yeah, I have some unresolved issues with my father, even though he's been dead for eleven years. Heck, I guess I have some unresolved issues with my father because he's been dead for eleven years. If he were still alive, I could drive over to his house and scream and throw things and demand to know how he could treat me that way.

Instead, I just have bits and pieces of the puzzle that he was to try and fit together, to try and understand who he was, and why he did things the way he did.

His brother, my uncle Tom, has always been a better father to me than he was.

But today, I was irritated at Tom, too. On Tuesday night, at our D&D game, both Mr. Smith and Tom had agreed to help me today. Tom said that he had to work in the morning, but could help me in the afternoon.

So I said okay, and today, I called him and asked when he'd be available, and he said now, and then asked, in a really annoyed tone of voice, how long it was going to take, because he had things he had to do.

sigh.

I got him to come over, and we did one load of the things I couldn't carry in my car... the bed, the chair, the weasel cage... and then I said, "Okay, thanks, that's all I needed!"

So I'm doing this move 95% by myself. Argh. Plus, I have no hot water. Plus, I have no phone.

If I were Hagar the Horrible, there'd be a line of punctuation in my word bubble, now, to show that I was cursing without actually having any cursewords to offend the easily offended.

Anyway, I decided to take a break in the heat of the day, and came in to work, so I could check my email and glance at LJ and stuff.

You know what really makes me see red? Disrespect to women. No, really, I'm dead serious. I know that it's an antiquated, rusty idea, but I happen to think that women deserve respect. Especially women you say you're in love with!

Look; we're all of us human beings, and we all of us have failings. We're all hurting in different ways, and looking for someone to heal those hurts. I understand that. My god, if anyone understands being hurt, it's me. I'd show you my scars, but who cares, right?

All of that aside, your romantic partner deserves your respect! This is the person you've chosen to walk down the road of life with... to share your good times and bad with. And let me tell you, none of us has our act so together that hanging out with us isn't occasionally an act of generosity!

When people treat women... particularly women I admire, women who are smart, and with it, and working on their lives, who are trying to make a better life for themselves, and their children, as if they were a possession, as if they were a lodestone, as if they were... bottom line, when people disrespect women like that, it pisses me right off.

It makes me want to take them aside, and say, "Hey, yo, do you understand what you're doing here? You're taking that woman's feelings, and tramling all over them, and you're gonna end up the loser, in the long run!"

If there were one thing I could say to women, all women, and I guess to all men, as well, it would be this. YOU ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE!

You are not responsible for other people's choices. You are not responsible for other people's happiness. You are not responsible for anyone but you, and your children, until they're old enough to be responsible for themselves.

Gosh, as I look back on that, I guess it's a little bit sexist, or could be read that way. I didn't mean it like that.

I'll go back to moving, now.

I can tell that I'm stressed out, when I get angry.

Anger is an emotion I'm familiar with. It's in my genes. No one can have an explosive moment of rage quite like an Irishman, or be quite so sorrowfull about it once it's over and done with.

My whole life, I've worked at finding a way to control the rage I feel. Now, instead of snapping, and saying angry words, I turn and walk away, and go do something else for a while. This may lead to people who don't know me thinking that I'm fed up, that I'm walking out for good; this isn't (usually) the case, I just need time to cool down before I say something I'll regret, later.

I'm normally a pretty even-keeled sort of person. It takes a lot to get me angry... unless, of course, I'm already stressed out.

Take this morning, for instance. I went into class, and found that at least half the students hadn't shown up. OAT came in wearing a Tori Amos tshirt, and we talked about Tori for a moment, before class started.

We started going over the review for the test, and OAT asked me to answer one of the review questions. So I started, and while I was just beginning to explain, Kate asked why I'd set it up that way, and when I was a little bit awkward in my explanation, other students started mocking me.

I will not be mocked by idiots.

So I packed up my pack and left.

On the bus ride from school to work, I was thinking about all the things I should've said. "Yeah, you're so fucking cool, you couldn't even begin to answer the question, but you think you have the right to mock my answer?"

And, of course, the ever-popular "Fuck you, you fucking fuck!"

I didn't say any of those things.

I just packed up my bag and left.

Because that way, I don't have to regret anything I said, later.