Getting to Know Me

I have learned a few things about me but I will give you some notes from this weekend before broaching that topic.

I was sick to my stomache on friday and saturday. On friday I finally took some medicine for it so I could get to sleep. I was sitting in the living area waiting for it to kick when the husband of the house came to ask me where the pain was and how it felt. He is the type of person who believes he knows everything about everything but really knows absolutely nothing (he doesn't even know that he knows nothing). Unfortunately, I have discovered that I am not above laughing at him. I answered his question by describing the pain, at which point he diagnosed me with a severe case of cold stomache (it has barely gotten below freezing here). If I had eyes in the depths of my soul I would have been rolling them at this point. I told him that I had just drunk a cup of hot mint tea and a cup of hot chamomile tea to refute his stupid diagnosis. He is also harder to reason with than a brick wall, so he remained undaunted in his synopsis. He told me that those were all wrong for the stomache and that I needed to drink a tea of such and such. He then went outside and grabbed a leaf off of one of the neighbor's bushes and brought it inside to show me the cure. Naturally, I remained skeptical about the cure, the self-crowned curer, and the nature of the neighbor's bush. He went into the kitchen and I headed for the hills (my room) where I slept through the night. Conclusion: He is ridiculous, medicine is not.

I have discovered through self-diagnosis that I have levels of anger. Stage one of my anger is me laughing at awkward situations and not making a big deal out of little things. Stage two involves me shutting down and not talking to people because I don't want to say something I'll regret etc. The next stage of me getting angry is the explosion stage where I tell you exactly what I think of you and your behavior. Basically I put on my very best angry eyes and I equip my state-of-the-art angry voice and I throw down. Luckily, I don't make it to this stage very often. I think the mission helped me to recognize the way I deal with these things and make a change. Now I try to communicate before it reaches the "shut down" or "armageddon" stages. Yesterday I was teaching the youth sunday school class and I almost made it to the armageddon stage with two students that I expected way more from. Fortunately, I recognized how I was reacting and took them aside after class to talk to them. It went well. At the end of the day, I choose how I react. Me getting angry helps nothing and nobody (though it might come in handy if I was forced into a battle to the death with somebody bigger than me).

Conclusions: I don't like getting angry (but, then again, I have never been forced into a battle to the death with somebody bigger than me). Also, I should probably overcome my natural reaction to laugh at the husband. In my defense, he claimed he invented sloppy joe's! I couldn't help myself.