The Dysfunctional Family

What do you do when you get up in the morning and you're irritable? You don't have a specific reason, but there it is: a massive amount of anger targeted at everything and everyone. You're even angry at the dogs, and you love them. And your feeling makes no sense since you can't attribute it to anything tangible such as a bad dream or another rejection of the writing kind. That's how I am today, and I don't know what to do. I don't think I said more than two words to my husband before he left for work. He probably suspects that I'm in a foul mood, but he probably doesn't figure that I'm angry. When I get depressed I'm usually into self blame and that's energy turned inward. But today I'm turning the energy outward. I'd really like to kill someone--then maybe I'd feel better. However the better part of aggression tells me homicide isn't going to be on my agenda for the day. Could be that the nasty feelings come from w...

Are long weekends like the past Thanksgiving Day one all they're cracked up to be? Retailers like them because they help jump start Christmas shopping. Everyone flocks to malls and discount stores or logs in online and spends, spends, spends. After all, there's nothing else to do but fight with your family, eat leftovers, or go to the movies (if you can afford it, they're so expensive nowadays). So economically speaking the long weekend is a boon to marketers and sellers of anything. But what about the physical and emotional effects of a long weekend? Unless you're self employed and can work from home, you cannot even stay busy and calm your anxious mind with work projects. No, no, we're trained from birth that work is bad and recreation is to be sought after. The idea is to make enough money so you can order others to go out there and work their asses off. I'm not good on long weekends. I hate cleaning so I can't depend on that to keep me busy, an...

For some families, taking turns at the Thanksgiving table to recite "Thankfuls" is mandatory before heaping food onto the plate.In other families, dysfunctional ones for the most part, everyone is wearing a pretend smile and feeling sorry for themselves that they're stuck with this bunch of pain-in-the-asses. Which family are you in? That's for you to figure out. I'm in a group that's getting more popular as we age. Both my and my spouse's parents are deceased and no sibling or cousin lives nearby. And we don't fly on T-Day. Just the thought of standing on all the lines and pushing my way through cold, rainy weather sends chills down my spine. So we will eat alone. But don't feel sorry for us. We've got the pets and Netflix, which has truly become the number one distraction among boomers and millennials. It's definitely therapeutic to list a few thankfuls at the T-Day table. For nervous, anxious, or depressive people, it's a great opp...

Sometimes it seems like everyone's a lesbian but me. Once I heard that only 5 percent of the population are homosexual, but I have my doubts. A lot of people still are in the closet so they don't become a part of the statistics. That's why I think there's way more lesbians around than anyone knows. And I kinda envy them. Just a little. That's because most of the celebrities I day dream about are women. My favorite all-time celeb is Sally Field. I know, I know, The Flying Num girl. But the woman can act. And not only that, she gave up Burt Reynolds for the sake of her sanity. I could picture Sally and me going out for the evening and suddenly she becomes one of her other personalities like she did in the movie/book Sibyl. I'd make scintillating conversation with one or two of her personalities and then we'd talk about the California fire and if it impacted her house. We'd sit real close together on the bench she shared with Tom Hanks in the movie Fo...

For perfectionistic souls like myself, there are past events that I regret. One is high school and the amount of studying I did. A waste, tiresome, boring and something that I was psychologically programmed to do. I could not NOT work hard. It was like an axe was hanging over my head, and I had to do whatever it took to hand in an A-plus job. It was a cross that I had to bear or to use another metaphor, I had been given lemons. So I made super duper gallons of lemonade all through college and graduate school. I graduated with a high GPA, but I always wondered if I could have achieved the same honor with less work. I remember enjoying very little of the grind. I hated memorizing facts for exams and felt more comfortable writing papers, researching stuff and churning out original lesson plans, self-evaluations and other useless crap. Little time for the dating dance. It wasn't just the lack of guys in my life that I regret. It was also the lack of FUN. For amusement and diversion ...

I don't know if I really have food fetishes, but I do admit to a large number of exclusions in my current diet. When you compare what I used to consume ten years ago with what I consume now, "radical" is the best word to describe the change. As a fully mature adult, I basically ate anything. Oh there were a few exclusions--for example, avocados and sardines. I know those green veggies are supposed to be healthy but nothing on God's earth will convince me that shoving that greasy mess down my throat will make me heart attack resistant. I can't stand the color, the texture and the consistency of avocados so if I find one that had the audacity to  appear in something I ordered, I just throw it out. Well, not literally. I don't believe in tossing food on the floor like a baby in a highchair, but napkins will do for relocating the avocado. Or else there's always my husband, who'll eat anything except mayonnaise. What else did I not eat a few years back?...

Dear Abby, I'm not much for consulting newspaper columnists about relationships, but I'm up against a wall. I don't know if I should do anything or not, and if action is the correct response, then what action should I take?. Perhaps you need to know all the details first, and then you can yell at me. My friend's daughter is a psychologist with a doctoral degree. She works in NYC. She's in her early thirties and a stunner. So she is not in any way hard up for dates. Her older sister, who is married, tells me that her younger sister has a habit of on-again-off-again relationships with men. I was not aware of this behavior, and frankly I'm surprised since she seems like such a smart, well-grounded person. Now she has announced that she's engaged, but the man whom she intends to marry really does not want to get married. Her sister said, "He asked her what it would take for them to stay together, and she said marriage. So she kinda backed him into a c...

I used to think he would grow out of it. That he was going through a developmental stage--an adolescent time of awkwardness when all four limbs weren't working harmoniously. I thought that explained his sometime clumsy failure to successfully complete a jump onto a garbage can or some other object a distance away. Now he's definitely an adult. A very mischievous, playful feline who doesn't seem to reason things out completely before he commits to them. So he's still messing up occasionally on his jumps-- he's either stupid or gymnastically challenged. I've seen him hanging by his claws, dangling on a surface he didn't quite reach. Yeah, it's funny, but he's not laughing. I've never had a cat so uncoordinated. Most of them when they're young and healthy have no problem with jumping everywhere. I've had cats jump on top of refrigerators, washers/dryers, kitchen counters, and all types of furniture. They usually do it gracefully with a t...