I may call for help on the color decision!

Yes, and it's more like, "Wow you're really being irrational. I'm worried about you." Maybe I'm really just being irrational. But it is hard to tell with my mother because she pulls the depression card on me all the time.

I think you can trust yourself and your perceptions. But if you're really wondering, check it with someone else who you trust, like TCG.

I know I'm a little more emotional and exhausted right now. I'm not fully recovered from all the various Ickes I came down with.

I know I'm a little more emotional and exhausted right now.

I'm still not sure that makes you irrational. I mean, yeah, when you're tired and ill (or getting over an illness), your tolerance for irritating stuff is lower, because you just don't have the energy, physical OR emotional. So you might drop the veneer of politeness that you usually have when people's annoying habits wear on you.

Here's an example: that time that my mom and I were talking about my stomach pain, and in the course of the conversation she said THREE TIMES "I'm not going to make this about me..." and then immediately proceeded to make it about her, I just rolled my eyes and let it pass. But if I had zero patience because my stomach was eating itself, so I finally snapped and said "Jesus, Mom, for someone who isn't making it about you, you just spent 10 minutes talking about yourself. Can you cut that out?", would that really be "irrational"? I don't think so.

But only you can know what kinds of things you're reacting to, and how you're reacting. But I still think checking them with TCG isn't a bad idea. Because if your mom plays the depression card all the time, she's a little unreliable. It sounds like she uses it whenever you don't react with sunshine and puppies.

Although I will share this one thing I've learned in therapy that's been useful: when I have a complete weeping, hyperventilating meltdown to something like the TV dying, or Tim deciding it's time to look for a new job, that extreme of a reaction, which is not at all proportionate to the event that kicked it off, is really not about the TV, or about Tim's job. It's about something else, and I have to figure out what that is, and why it made me melt down. That's been really helpful to me.

BUT -- and I feel like this is key -- it's not about when I get irritable about something. Maybe being irritable isn't the kindest reaction in the moment, but it's still a reaction to the thing in front of me, not something else disguised as the thing in front of me.

But it doesn't sound like you're having a total weeping, hyperventilating meltdown here, so I just don't think "irrational" is what's going on here.

TEPPY IS WISE.

I stole it from my therapist. It was a goddamn revelation.

You're wise at knowing what to steal.

Yes, quite wise.

I am going to post the current pictures to the Buffista FB page because easier.

I've been told I was irrational so. many. times. by people who just wanted me to hush and deal with their shit, that I'm not the slightest bit objective about it. However, objectively, I doubt you are being irrational, sj. You seem like a completely rational person to me. Having not-happy emotions and expressing them, even loudly and with tears, perhaps, is not irrational.

I have a small mountain of work to finish today, and my helper is not being super helpful. She's doing her job, she's just doing stuff she doesn't need to, involving people who don't need to be brought in, needing me to explain stuff she should have been taught, and it's slowing things down.