High Level Committee Meetings Are In Session

I have to go back to the Old City (which makes this town in the Midwest sound like Jerusalem or Damascus) to complete some more work in a few weeks.  I hope I behave a little better than I did during my first visit.  My behavior was funny -- not ha ha funny but black humor funny, slipping on a banana peel and falling into poop at the bottom of a sewer funny.  I couldn't believe how quickly I made the transformation to Horseface Steve: Angry Pain in the Ass.  It was 4 minute mile fast.
I was trying to find the oxygen in a toxic mix of stress headlined by the Big Move, complicated by my ill-advised efforts to wedge my way into my parent's small house even when it was pretty clear they didn't want me there, sandwiched around a series of arguments with The Boss Formerly Known as The ***hole.  I was a little surprised at how quickly my temper reasserted itself when I had to deal with this guy, who is a master of belittlement.  He is one of those people who knows just what to say to make me feel bad or defensive, not hard with an overly-sensitive, put-upon guy like me.  Normally, I could let his jibes slide off my back but this time I reached some kind of stepping-off point, and I let loose.  I experienced an uncomfortable physical reaction when I got off the phone.  I was literally shaking with rage.  I felt depressed and the stress of all of that sour emotion boiling off left me exhausted.  Not physically exhausted so I could sleep, but mentally wrung out and too upset to sleep.

So I did what I do best: I held a series of high level committee hearings on his behavior in my head.  I talked and I talked and I talked.  I walked a long way in heavy snow to a meeting, talking the whole way, barely paid attention to what was said in the meeting, then talked all the way home.  I'm lucky I didn't get hit by a car.  I was slipping and sliding and trying to stay out of the path of the cars sluicing by on the slick roads.  I'm sure I talked out loud, and I bet I was punctuating my remarks with hand gestures exhibiting varying degrees of violence.  The cops would have been justified picking me up and taking me to the psych ward for a couple of hours. 

Luckily, I won all the arguments.  Unfortunately, I never actually talked to this guy about any of the stuff I was rehearsing.  Not a word.  Never happened.  Total waste of my time.

Boy, the arguments were good, though.