I never said I was proud of myself.

I received some surprising news yesterday, and my reaction was not as gracious as it should have been. I've been thinking about it ever since, and realizing how really childish I can be at times.

First off, I don't like surprises. Not really. I mean, I like when Eli brings me home unexpected chocolate chip cookies...but anything more substantial than that, I want to know about in advance. So that I can prepare. Mentally.

I don't handle change well. I'm 29, and I just realized this today. I don't. I have a continuously running, film-like progression happening in my mind of the way my life is going to unfold day by day, minute by minute, and when reality doesn't conform to this prearranged mental image, I get pissy. ("Oh," those of you who know me well are saying, "So THAT'S why she's so pissy all the time." Mystery solved.) Thus, being surprised is not a part of my gameplan; it screws with my head and often makes me angry.

Like at the gas station a couple of weeks ago. I was filling Eli's truck up with gas (for the first time ever--I rarely drive the truck), and I swiped my debit card, started the pump going, and then turned around to peek at Eliot through the window and make faces at him. Three years later, the pump clicked off, and I turned around to face the digital readout which said, "$92.07." My face fell off and broke into thirty hundred pieces on the oil-stained asphalt. "Ninety-two fucking dollars and seven fucking cents! WHaaa????" I screamed aloud. I could get a gently used kidney off ebay for that! With shipping! More obscenities followed as I hauled myself back up into the truck and gingerly pulled away, being careful not to gun it and burn $3.00 worth of that precious liquid gold I had just pumped into the tank. By the time I got home I was feeling stupid, thinking I was probably the only person in the country who had yet to smack up against the realization that gasoline is expensive. If you didn't know this yet, I'm telling you now, folks. Gasoline is expensive. Yessir. It is. This is not just a viscious rumor.

Moving on.

So the point is, yesterday my face fell off again, and when I put it back on, I was slightly uglier than before. Which is to say that I wasn't as nice as I should have been to someone whom I love very much, and who deserved the nicest of my niceness. And my only excuse is that I was surprised, and I am immature.

I did, after all, enjoy a DQ thin mint blizzard a few nights ago over webcam while IMing Libby. And I was totally licking my chops and falling on the floor in ecstacy on purpose, simply because I knew that poor Libby Lou, living as she does in my old hometown (indeed, my old bedroom), had no chance of procuring such a delicious treat at that hour. My hometown, The Middle of Nowhere, USA, has zero commerce after 9 p.m. Zero. (Well, unless you count scoring a dimebag off your cousin Jim Bob Daryll in exchange for a handjob. And you only might could get that if'n his momma ain't done smoked it up already.) So yeah, I purposely revelled in ice cream, knowing that my little sister was sitting jealous and ice cream-less on the other end of all the 0's and 1's. I was all, na-na-na-na-na-na. MMmmm. mmm. mmm.

Libby are you reading this? Did I mention I'm drinking a jamocha shake right now? A cold, delicious jamocha shake?

Ahem, where was I? Oh yeah, immaturity. Selfishness. Childish behavior. And extreme over-indulgence in ice cream treats, apparently.

And all of this pointless meandering is just to berate myself publicly for being an ass. It may not have looked like I was being an ass, but I was. Because I was pouting and not wanting anyone but myself to be happy. Sheer selfishness. I have to learn that other people's happiness doesn't have to subtract from my own. I should wish others well more often, and more sincerely.

And I should stop eating so much damn ice cream.