You know, I really don’t lose my temper very often. Ordinarily I am annoyingly placid about things; I can usually find the humor in a situation and I try to focus on that. Sometimes, it’s hard to find anything humorous, but I always try. And I generally give people the benefit of the doubt.

UNLESS it’s not me they’re hurting. If it’s not me, if it’s someone else, someone I love, then I just might go off like Krakatoa, and the landscape is littered with body parts, little chunks of gray matter, toenails, and heartstrings before I’m calm again. You know those Discovery Channel shows about mother grizzly bears? That’s me.

Sometimes I will go off on a rant, scaring people along the way, because not everyone will know what made me mad. It’s a fact that everyone will know I AM mad, though. Last night I discovered that someone I think a lot of was being hurt by some certain other people, and I went off on a rant. Rants are, of course, useless wastes of time and energy, because the people who bring them on very seldom give a toot, and sometimes nice friendly people are given cause to wonder about my the ranter’s IQ.

I’m not sure what I’d do without my very intelligent daughter. I mean, besides the fact that she’s awesome company and a hoot to hang out with now that all that teen angst is over and done with. Almost every time I have an emotional hissy-fit-baby-tantrum on here, she is quick to email me with “Mom, you’re a nimrod, and you’ve done it again, stop it NOW before you frighten all your people away.” And, she’s always right.

Sometimes I don’t even realize how unsophisticated and juvenile I can get, when I’m upset, until she tells me to go back and re-read something for my own good and I do and I am horrified.

Because, you know, everyone expects sophistication and sage advice from old chicks. I guess the sagest advice I could give you would be, “try not to be like me.” Sigh.

(Not the old chicks with weathered stringy permanent tans, who wear spaghetti-strap sundresses from the junior department of the Gap, and whose voices have turned all gravelly and masculine from years of margaritas and Virginia Slims.)

(Not the old chicks who wear running suits and expensive sneakers but never run, who hang out at the mall all day sampling Chick-Fil-A and Auntie’s Pretzels, who carry purses shaped like underwear, and whose voices are LOUD and they don’t seem to realize it.)

(Maybe something more along the line of the Red Hat chicks, those funky old ladies who are draped in purple and red, covered with brooches, charm bracelets, and lockets shaped like purses, who travel in large groups and are not afraid to laugh out loud but who still remember their ‘restaurant’ voices.) (Minus the purple, red, brooches, bracelets, and lockets.)

Or, maybe I’m just me, as you are all just you. And I, unfortunately, tend to have hoof-n-mouth disease. More often than I’d care to have it.

I do try to be nice most of the time. I hope I am. But I also know that sometimes I am not.

Last night I wasn’t. Thank you, my beautiful Belle, for once again trying to raise me to do right.

When did our roles reverse?