Being Angry
I hate getting angry. It seems that it always bites me on the butt, no matter what the outcome, no matter what I do. Here’s the most recent situation.
We share a farmyard with two other families - one the original farm owner and the other the new owner. The original farm owner recently got a dog, a young Labrador Retriever. The trouble is that the dog would jump on my kids. It wasn’t trying to be threatening, it just wanted to play. My kids haven’t been outside much since August. They would only go outside if I was with them or if I tracked down the dog and tied him him up. The dog’s owner wasn’t pleased with the dog being tied up as a couple of times I’d forgotten to untie the dog when my kids came back in. He let me know that on Friday when I was out looking to tie up the dog.
This made me extremely angry. I can understand why he doesn’t want the dog tied up and left, but now my kids can’t even play outside anymore? Grrr. I stewed and grumbled and ranted about that all afternoon and into the next day. We even did some looking to see if there was a chance we could afford to move out into a place of our own. I’d settled down by today and was going to step up my efforts to get my kids used to the dumb dog.
Now the eldest (who is used to the dog) is saying that the neighbor said that the dog has been sent away. I feel terrible. Now I feel as though I’ve deprived the neighbor of his dog just because I didn’t put enough effort into getting my kids used to having the thing around and because I shot off my mouth about the whole situation. I have exactly what I wanted, and it stinks. Sigh.