Having a beer

It's really my fault for playing the do-gooder role with other people's possessions. I fervently wanted my spouse to give his old computer to my friend who just had her appendix out. I overheard he'd transferred all the data from the old computer to the new one. I heard wrong. I must have seemed appallingly eager to take away his "box" that still had allegedly important e-mails on it. I put the pressure on. He got irritated. I got irritated. He left for a while, and in the interim I had to have a beer to calm down. It was only 5 pm, too early for a beer, according to MY rules (my rules are only for me, and I never expect others to obey them). Having the beer led to making chicken soup, which negated our plans for going out to dinner. See how out-of-control I can get on ONE BEER? By the time my spouse got back I'd calmed down and had a basic dinner to offer him. Things seemed peaceful. However, I soon found another source of irritation. I had promised to send an "estranged" friend a copy of some writing I'd done (about her) 30 years ago. I knew it was in my file cabinet somewhere, but I couldn't find it. Leo, the good (and still wonderfully alive) cat, tried to help me, but was only a hindrance, and I became agitated, once again, to the point of using bad language audible to my spouse, who was in another room, trying to "chill." At this point, I craved a second beer. But my "rules" said, "No!" These rules have waxed more stringent lately by the Buddhist influence, the idea of allowing oneself to FEEL COMPLETELY what is going on at the time, not smothering the opportunity to learn by distractions like alcohol, drugs, or television. Oh, I felt it completely. I was ready to smoosh up all the papers I've carefully saved (for whatever pitiful reason) and make a trashy bonfire on the front lawn, just as I often wish my spouse would do with HIS papers. Ranting, I drank an entire bottle of flavored club soda (about as expensive as one beer) trying to avoid the additional alcohol which would have provided the dulling sensation, the RELIEF. But relief did come as soon as I located the elusive materials in a red folder inside the cabinet. Looking at these papers gave me pause. I'd always been a writer. Here I had been fictionalizing a "breakup" between friends, using poetry and film scripting. Perhaps the person I'm sending it to will say, "What the HELL was she thinking?" But I'm fearless. I'll launch it off in the mail, thus bringing full circle one of the mysteries of my life: my obsession with abandonment by various women whose wishes I've "obeyed," thinking I was "pleasing" them by doing so. This one woman's response is not as important as the fact that I've made a tentative reconnection with her. But if I DON'T get an answer in a few days, I reserve the right to have at least TWO BEERS!