Did the laptop jump, or was it pushed?

After quitting my full-time job, I lost a lot of my angst. I think it is in no little way correlated to the fact that I’ve spent less time in the presence of one J-Bare, who can wax philosophical and theoretical and analytical and psychological on any subject. I’ve gotten out of the habit of analyzing. This is bad because, as I’m about to show, I need to regularly analyze not only my external world (which I positively cannot stop doing) but also my internal world (which I negatively ignore 99% of the time). It isn’t that my angst is gone, necessarily, but that I’ve stopped maintenance on my internal state, assuming that now that I’m in a better place, I’m hunky-dory emotionally too.

The past few months have been wonderful in so many ways: going on a trip around the world, getting to see my little brother for the first time in a year, quitting a job with too much work and too little reward, working for myself, and having the freedom and time to explore my options for the future. And those wonderful things are what I’ve been focusing on. I don’t think many people would describe me as an optimist because I’m not smiley sunshiney positive Sandra Dee all the time…or ever. My default mode, though, is to look for possibilities and opportunities. To see what can be. That’s the definition of optimism.

This past week, “what is” crashed in on my “what can be.”* Several things happened in a seventy-two-hour period. 1) I paid my credit card bill, and without giving away too much personal information, my bank account isn’t at a level I feel comfortable with. 2) The coffee shop seems to be stalling and my brother/part owner keeps changing things on me. 3) Jasper, my big, lovable, old man dog, had a seizure. 4) I got next month’s credit card bill, and there isn’t going to be a bank account left after I pay it. 5) My computer committed suicide.

*Dear editors who are reading this: I apologize for the scare quotes, but I felt the sentence was unclear without them. I swear that it was an agonizing decision on whether to include them or not, and I did not add them in cavalierly.

The morning of the laptop crash I woke up early (for me that means before 9 a.m.) to finish a manuscript. I’d been working on it too long in small increments while also doing research on the publishing industry and query letters and working on the coffee shop (of course!). I was determined to finish by noon because my brother had promised that we were going to work on our business plan that afternoon. Since I’d recently paid my credit card bill I was keen to a) get paid for the manuscript and b) get the coffee shop up and running as quickly as possible so I would have a steady income.

Grant was supposed to be doing yard work while I was working on editing—both of us securing our temporary incomes in the morning so we could invest in our future incomes that afternoon. Just before noon, my brother walked into my apartment with his miniature dachshund and informed me that a lawn crew was about to show up, so he would be working outside after they left.

This made me angry. Why hadn’t he been outside working this entire time? We could have been working on our business plan while the lawn crew worked. But since I was crawling through what should have been a fast manuscript and wouldn’t be done for the next couple hours, I decided I couldn’t really talk. So I returned to my editing, more determined than ever to finish it and get one thing off my plate since it looked like I would be the only one working on the business plan that afternoon.

Shortly thereafter, several things happened all at once. I paused in my editing to save my manuscript, as anyone who regularly works with documents habitually does. The lawn crew showed up. All three hound dogs let loose barking and baying at the top of their lungs.

The software froze, as it had been doing occasionally.

Barking.

I told the dogs to stop barking.

Barking.

My mouse and keyboard shorted out.

Barking.

I told the dogs to stop barking.

Barking.

The computer was five years old.

Barking.

I told the dogs to stop barking.

Barking.

I lashed out at the closest body to me hard enough to elicit a yelp from Jasper, who cowered at my feet. “Shut. Up.” Ceasar Milan doesn’t have anything on me. When I have energy, my dogs feel it. And I was radiating red. Jasper curled up on the couch. Buckley hid underneath the bed. And that stinking dachshund with her annoying yip ran to the kennel (a place she usually eschews).

If this was a momentary flare of frustration or stress or anger, it should have faded just as quickly, and I should have felt immediate regret for hurting Big Boy. I didn’t. I had left rational, optimistic, analytical Buttercup. I’d stepped out of my brain and fully into the locus of emotions. In this instance, I don’t think the locus was my heart.

When I was younger and I got angry at my parents or my brothers, I would throw my shoes and Barbies at the window in my bedroom. It was a large target and covered by wooden blinds that made this beautiful, satisfying cacophony when hit. The physical action coupled with the resulting racket expressed my frustration and soothed my ruffled emotions. I suppose that influences me still today.

When, only seconds after sending my dogs into hiding, my laptop continued to flicker at me unresponsively, I pounded the keyboard with my hands. Of course, nothing happened. It wasn’t worse or better—and neither was I. The image that had been circling my head since the beginning of this episode swam dizzyingly clear in my mind’s eye. The satisfying crash. The comfort of exacting revenge on the cause of my anger and frustration. Expressing my negative energy in more than just words.

I decided, consciously decided, to take my open laptop and spike it into the ground.

It made a jittery plastic thud on the carpet. The screen swung forward and then back, revealing the spidery effect violence has on sensitive technology and the now 96% dark screen. The casing skewed slightly apart so that the laptop had a pitiful hangdog appearance. What a hick laptop would look like if Disney decided to make the computer version of cars with fancy Apples and the more varied PCs populating the movie as characters.

It was satisfying for all of thirty seconds. And then I was even angrier with myself. This is what happens when I don’t keep tabs on what’s going on internally. I break things. So now I’ve got the laptop on life support, hooked up to an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

What have I learned from this other than emotionally I am still a five-year-old? Optimism is all well and good, but you have to check it with your present reality and adjust possibilities accordingly. And, most importantly in my present circumstances, not mentioning external concerns as they occur can build into an internal problem.

This is not usually any issue with me, but I have the hardest time broaching certain subjects with family members. Because then it is always personal, and I only really have seniority on my little brother, and he’s in India. So I’m low man on the totem pole.

I’ve got some serious conversations coming in the near futures with family members, and I need to make some decisions. Do I continue to help my brother with his dream, which I dearly want to see him achieve because I think he’d be great at it? He could seriously be the OKC Monopoly man. Or do I start building my future, volunteering with different populations to give counseling to see whether or not I want to be a clinical psychologist or an industrial/organizational psychologist?

Whatever happens, I’ll continue writing. Share with me what emotional outbursts you’ve had in the not so distant past. Did you, too, feel like you shouldn’t be acting that way now that you’re an adult? What caused the outburst or what did you learn from it? How do you keep tabs on your emotional health? (I’m asking because despite my resolve to do better, I’ve always been woefully inept at understanding my own emotions.)

P.S. Jasper is fine. After initially ignoring a proffered snack as a bribe (a first in Big Boy’s six years), he climbed into my lap and got a full-body doggy massage followed by some chicken broth. I swear I do not usually hit or yell at my dogs. They’re spoiled rotten.

Deer People, Read My Blog

Surprise! I do still write and think and ponder and expostulate. On occasion anyway. I’ve started several blog posts and then haven’t finished them due to a lack of inspiration. I read back over, think “So what?” and can’t answer the question. Soooo…I don’t bore you with them. But I’ve known for a while now that I wanted to write a post about nature. That sounds so boring though, doesn’t it?

Not so! I find, as many of my literary predecessors have, inspiration from nature. I also find fear. Many of you have heard about my scorpion sting. I will not go into detail here so as not to ever in any way relive the experience. But pain isn’t the only danger in nature. There are also deer, people.

It began…well it began a long, long time ago, I suppose, whenever a developer first decided to develop land north-east of Edmond proper, surrounded by forested plots of land, grazing cattle, and crops. The forested area chosen by the developer was cleared one acre at a time, leaving plenty of leafy coverage between houses so that privacy could be preserved. Because of this, the deer never moved out.

The past two years have been extremely hot. Grass has died, and the only green oases in Oklahoma are well-watered lawns. Enter the deer, in herds. The previous year was perfectly pastoral on our parcel of land with does and their fawns crossing the street at twilight, posing in our lawn in the morning hours, or even sometimes bedding down on the springy bed of grass outside our windows. If I was in the car and saw them close enough to the street, I would stop and roll down my window for a friendly exchange.

“Hey, deer! What a pretty fawn you have. The sweetest! Don’t mind my dogs if they bark at you. They wouldn’t know what to do with you if they caught you. No threat at all. Oh. You’re going? Oh, okay. I understand. Goodbye! Goodbye, deer!”

It was nice. But this summer, something has changed. Last month was the first episode. I was taking out the garbage, easing out my door backward so that the dogs wouldn’t slip past me. I turned and gasped. More of a suppressed scream. Not twenty paces away stood a deer. I dropped the garbage and hopped back in doors. The dogs cocked their heads to the side, silently asking me if I’d lost my bloomin’ mind. “There’s a deer outside!” I told them so that they wouldn’t think I was crazy.

I peeked back out the blinds. It was gone. I could go back outside.

Now, I ask you, why was this seemingly irrational response my gut reaction? Why did I feel as if I needed to go back inside and hide from a deer? Why did I peek outside, checking to make sure it had left and was safe for me to go outside again? Silly. And that’s what I told myself.

But that wasn’t the last encounter. The deer continued to frequent our lawn, encroaching on our house. I dismissed my nerves as an overactive imagination due to lack of stimulation. (Sitting in your house and working/crafting all day can lead to a Rear Window mentality.)

Last week I was walking my dogs late at night, as has become my custom every evening. It must have been around 11 o’clock. I usually walk them after Conan. It was Jasper’s turn, and as we drew close to the forested lot next door to our house, he stopped and perked his ears. Out walked five deer, crossing the road to a neighbor’s lawn in single file beneath one of two streetlights in our neighborhood. It was beautiful. It was what the transcendentalists wrote about in their sublime poetry.

I sat down where I was in the lawn. Jasper watched, alert. All at once he let out a mighty bay. I hushed him, and he sat docilely on my feet (not at my feet, on my feet). Too late. The deer were alerted to our presence. It was the oddest thing, though. They didn’t run. They stared. We—the deer, Jasper, and I—stared at one another what felt like minutes. And then the deer directly below the light yelled at us. There is no other word for it. It opened its deer mouth and emitted a loud noise meant to scare/chastise/in someway harm us. It did this for a while.

Jasper and I continued staring, transfixed by the horrible noise shattering our sublime moment. When we didn’t die/leave, the deer (collectively) turned and ambled out into the darkness. I was spooked. I told my family. They didn’t believe me. This confirmed my suspicion that I was now living a horror story with deer casted as my personal Freddy Krueger, or maybe they’re my birds. Yet to be determined, I suppose. One day they’ll either stand up on their back legs, shed their front hooves, and shiv me with their revealed deer hands… Or they’ll sprout wings and dive-bomb me. Which, let’s face it, is a lot more harmful and scary than Alfred’s Birds.

I continue to walk at night, comforted by my dog’s presence. Each one gets a turn about the yard, and each one has his good points. Jasper has heft and a deep bellow that’s good for scaring away critters and people. Buckley makes noises scarier than that deer, and he’s a killer. I’ve only seen him kill rabbits, but I bet he’d give a deer the ol’ college try should one attack me.

The dogs, however, have only kept the deer at bay, at the perimeters of sight, hidden in the country darkness that I used to find comforting. As I’m walking, I scan my surrounding, finding peace in the stars and beauty of the moon. Taking comfort in the importance of the armadillo’s mad digging. Smiling at the opossum waddling across the street in the moonlight, sometimes with little ones in tow. And then I’ll catch a flash, something reflecting the moonlight. I’ll move my head in increments so that I can spot it again. Two eyes, staring at me. Not close to the ground like coyotes, who are actually quite the scaredy cats. Higher. About the height of deer. And then I can make out the deer shape, and more deer around it grazing. Slowly they’ll raise their heads, eyes shining in the night as they stare at me.

Are you scared yet? Join my nightmare. In rebellion of the fear they’re trying to cage me with, I’m going to see Deer People tomorrow night at the conservatory. You should come, it’s going to be an awesome show. Their music is something everyone could (should) enjoy, and you’d be supporting a local band. Check them out: http://okc.net/2012/09/06/deerpeople-happy-fun-time/