A Sinner's Lent Day 6: Despicable Me

I was havin' a bad bad day ... on Monday.

After donating clothes and holding dogs, I felt like my day off was slipping away from me.  I wanted to get a head start on the week’s work (never happened), I wanted to clean (barely happened), all the while I just wanted to take a second to relax (still has not happened as of Wednesday while writing this blog).

...And I really wanted to watch Batman Forever on Sunday night, and I couldn’t figure out how to get the DVD to work. I think I was still salty about that.

So I was really grumpy, for a number of reasons, those listed above and other inexplicable ones.  Now, this was a victimless Lenten crime – I wasn’t actually being mean to anyone, I was just wompin. Well, I do recall telling a friend on Gchat “your optimism makes me want to puke” … but that is kind of funny, in retrospect.

Now, I normally have an automatic “off” switch when I get like this.  It’s one of my favorite things about myself. There is a very precise progression:

1. Things annoy me (totally normal)
2. I start getting pessimistic about everything and looking for things to irk me, with minimal humor (the worst part of my process)
3. Bad things happen because I’m moping around  (This is when I start humming the Despicable Me theme song in my head)
4. Eventually I just start laughing at myself because I’m so grumpy.

Sometimes the laughing starts at a particular moment when something REALLY annoying happens. Take Monday for instance. I was cleaning the second of two bathrooms, and I somehow splashed a combination of hot water and soap suds ALL OVER MYSELF. I splashed it against the wall with gusto, and it came back all over me.

And then I just started laughing. At myself. In My bathroom. And my bad mood was gone. Just like that.

And there you have it, my automatic “off” switch. 

What does that have to do with my Lenten journey? Victimless or not, I should probably speed up the process and not waste away an entire afternoon being grumpy.  Perhaps remove step two of the progression and head right to singing Despicable Me.

More on my Lenten Journey:

A Sinner's Lent Day 5: Doing (Awkward) Good Deeds

A Sinner's Lent Day 4: The Walking Dead is Bad?

A Sinner's Lent Day 3: Family Strife