Thursday 2 August 2012

Inexplicable levels of grumpiness

I hate moods. I like good, clean emotions. I don’t even mind painful ones – sorrow, fury – as long as they come from somewhere explicable. I like things to have an explanation. Moods descend, without reason or rhyme, and flatten the spirit.

Without any discernible cause, I am heroically grumpy. My throat is tight with grumpiness. I stump about like a furious old woman, muttering under my breath. I crossly tidy the house. It is our highland games this weekend and people will be coming, and some of them may knock on the door, and I do not want them to go away thinking me a slattern.

Usually, tidying the house gives me a tremendous lift. I feel saintly and relieved. I may glimpse, just for a moment, the Mount Olympus that The Organised People know. I even went and got flowers. (The garden is too confused with this weather to have much for cutting; besides, I went mad with the box last year and so there aren’t that many flowers anyway.)

Instead of improving my mood, the tidying induced an orgy of self-recrimination. Stupid idiot bloody piles, went the Mutley mutter; why can’t I learn to throw pieces of paper away?

The Younger Brother arrived to pick some of my honeysuckle for our sister. He was also after sage for the supper he is cooking tonight. ‘I am bloody grumpy,’ I said.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘There is a terrible alignment of the planets.’

This is the kind of thing he says. My empirical mind takes a step backwards like a spooked horse. But quite frankly, who bloody knows?

The brilliant Johnny Murtagh lifts my mood momentarily by riding a perfectly brilliant race on the lovely, tough Saddler’s Rock, on whom I appear to have had rather a lot of money. ‘Go on, JOHNNY,’ I yell. The Pigeon does her cartoon dog jumping up and down on all fours, barking her head off.

Then I lapse back into non-specific fury.

Ah well. I shall take some iron tonic and count my blessings and smell the flowers and everything will be better tomorrow. It always mysteriously is.

 

PS. I do apologise for the tenses, which are all over the damn place. I am far too cross to go back and correct them. I hope that the Dear Readers will allow my flaws for today. Better better better tomorrow. Really.

 

Pictures:

Tidy house:

2 Aug 1

2 Aug 2

2 Aug 3

2 Aug 3-001

2 Aug 5

2 Aug 6

2 Aug 7

2 Aug 7-001

2 Aug 8

You see I have a great fondness for decorative bottles.

Loveliest decoration of all:

2 Aug 11

Look at that Pigeon, with the paws and the posing. She does not give a stuff about the misaligned planets:

2 Aug 12

Red the Mare, who is actually quite grumpy too:

2 Aug 14

The hill:

2 Aug 16

9 comments:

  1. The house looks lovely. Maybe tomorrow the loveliness of tidy and organised will cheer you up. Maybe meantime the Pigeon will have to do the cheering job. Either way, you're on a winner whether you know it or not.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lillyanne - what a sweet thing to say. Pigeon IS very cheering, bless her.

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  2. Memo to self: put hydrangea into a glass box like Tania. This will cheer me up.

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  3. Aboyne Music Lover2 August 2012 at 18:27

    Your home looks pretty welcoming and tidy to me

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  4. You could parlay this into an appearance on that (is it BBC?) series Grumpy Old Women/ Grumpy Old Men or The Grumpy Guide to ____________ (fill in the blank: Christmas, holidays, work, etc.).

    Just saying...

    (PS In the States, you could be called "pissy" , "bitchy" or said to be "having a hissy fit". )
    (PPS Your home is sparkling! My dustballs are working on their third generation...)

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  5. Hope tomorrow is a better day. Please note your home looks welcoming and lovely and 'you'. And, no mattter how long the grumpy mood sticks around, you have those darling faces. Those faces! xx

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  6. Just looked up the cycles of the moon, and according to one source, the latest was August 2. According to the Farmer's Almanac, it was August 1. However, loony (sorry, couldn't help it) as it sounds, very often when I've been in an unexplained grumpy mood, it has been either full moon or a day or two from it. Not so loony when you think that the moon controls the tides and apparently the ebbs and flows of our hormones.

    Most interesting, however, was that the Farmer's Almanac names the moons. The one just past was the Sturgeon Full Moon. The next one, August 29, is the Blue Moon. Can't wait for the January edition, called the Wolf Moon, or March, the Worm Moon. A whole new line of things to learn here--how full moons got such odd names . . .

    Anyhow, hope the mood lifted. At least you have a nice, clean house!

    Bird

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  7. I've had days like that where I actually scream out loud, I get so grouchy. Only the cats around to hear, and they do enough of it that they forgive me.

    Well, it may not do anything for you, but looking at your spiffy house pictures sure gave my day a lift.. especially that beautiful clock (?) just above the picture of Pidge.

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  8. Your house looks gorgeous. I hate cleaning too and get grumpy before I have to clean. Usually once clean I am happy. I am generally not a moody person but I do hold in the stress and the worry. So I sometimes have off the scale anxiety days which result in the need to clean which results in minor grumpiness. Are we not strange beings? Pidge is the most beautiful on her sofa. I may need to let mine join me on the sofa but they are so smelly!

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