...when I went into Artiste Mode.

Sometimes I get broody.  At these times, I like to think I'm an artistic genius, suffering the tortuous inspirations of the The Muse.  If I'm feeling REALLY broody (or just plain ambitious), I go to Hobby Lobby and buy art supplies.  I am now the proud owner of three sets of art media - pastels, acryclic paints, and watercolors, none of which I know how to use.

This past weekend, I decided to conquer my watercolors.

I thought,

The little muse inside of me said,

After about six seconds, I realized I had no idea what I was doing.

But that didn't stop me.  With a modified attack plan, I forged ahead, creating a twisted and sinister experimental piece, a direct result of the moody, broody, tortured state of  my mind.

But my feeling of triumph and satisfaction didn't last long.  It never does for those of us who are burdened with The Muse.

I tried again.  And again.  And again.  Until I had succeeded.

I wasn't ready to quit brooding, so I kept painting.  But after all the creative energy I'd spent, I had nothing left to distract my mind.  I painted and painted, and pondered and pondered, until eventually I arrived at the point of no return.  The point of irretrievably irrelevant conclusions based on evidence gathered from a world that does not actually exist.

And that's when I decided I was done painting for the day.

...when I 'Rexed out.

I know y'all are ready for me to stop talking about Roswell.  And I'm workin' on it, I really am.  I'm over halfway through the second season, so eventually, I promise, it will stop.  But not today.

I was watching an episode during my lunch break.  Which is usually a pretty ok idea, given that I get to veg out for an hour on a TV show that requires very little mental acrobatics to follow.  It does require seriously suspended disbelief, but that doesn't change the fact that it is not a complicated plot.  Also it's not usually a bad idea because Max, the head alien, is probably one of the cutest human beings (sorry, alien-human hybrids) I've ever seen in my life.  He's not cute now because he has this icky long hair, but at the turn of the century, he was pretty easy on the eyes.  So when I watch at lunchtime, I get a break and something nice to look at.  Oh, those soulful eyes.

But no amount of smoldering eye-locks could make up for what happened yesterday.  I warn you, there are spoilers in the next few pictures.

Yes.  I cried on my lunch break.  My mascara ran and my eyes got red, and I had to close my door and hide from everyone because it is not professional to cry at work.  This is why I mostly stay away from watching things at lunchtime because I can count on my two hands the movies I haven't cried in.  I'm just a sap.  It's true.

So as I was sitting in self-imposed exile, trying to get it together, I realized what I was doing.  Crying at work because a fictional character in a TV show from the early 2000's, the same character who wore chains on his JNCOs and gelled his bangs forward, had died.  That just made me mad.

And I got madder and madder and madder.

So you know how things just add up?  Maybe one thing puts you in an off-mood, and then it just seems like everything that happens after that is exponentially worse than it would have been if it had happened the day before, or the day after, or on some day when you had gotten plenty of sleep and hadn't completely ignored your alarm because you were dreaming about the waiters ignoring you at Imperial Cathay and then bringing you prawns when you had ordered orange beef.  And it all just chips and chips and chips away, compounding and increasing in annoyingness.  And your veneer of control slips a little with each passing second, with each mini-event thrown onto the pile.

Yes.  I'm talking about the Rage Meter.

Eventually, you encounter that one last thing, that one last Goomba in the great Super Mario Bros. game that is your life.

But unlike a video game, in real life it's not Game Over.  It's Game On.




Don't pretend like you don't know what I'm talking about.  Inside of all of us is a Rageasaurus.  And on that day, after my beloved and nerdy Alex kicked the bucket in a completely random and undeveloped plot twist, my Rageasaurus would not be contained.

I will spare you images of the carnage and destruction that followed.

Did my Rageasaurus go back into its inner cave?  Maybe.  But if, on a bright spring day, when the sun is shining and the birds are singing, you hear a far-off roar, terrible in its anger, beware.  Somewhere, somehow, it's Rageasaurus Rex.