And the winner is...

… my brothers!

Since about Monday, I’ve been very close to losing my cool. No one person is really to blame, but I finally reached a point where I just could not take care of everyone else anymore. To use Dorian’s words, the next person to ask me to do something for them was going to either “see me cry or get punched in the face.” I could not take one more person asking me for space in my oven, or adding guests to the list without telling me and/or after I’d already shopped for the previous number of guests, or requesting help at work, or needing to have their animal looked after. Seriously, I am only one person. So I knew that whoever pushed me over the edge was not going deserve the consequences, and I did my very best to maintain composure. Last night, I was taking out my frustrations on some rather toxic sticky substance on the floor behind my stove when my phone rang. I wasn’t going to answer it, but then it was my brother. He’s been calling a lot lately with simple housekeeping and cooking questions since my mother finally abandoned him at the age of 21. I decided that I could probably handle one more thing as long it was just a question of how long to cook a chicken breast or whether buttermilk is really supposed to smell like that. So I answered the phone. And he asked me for $600. I said no, with extremely deliberate calmness, and he suggested that I shouldn’t complain because I have a whole month to save up. That is when the screaming and crying and swearing and throwing of cleaning implements began. I seriously considered the option of driving the ten hours home to punch him in the face. There has been a long string of unexpectedly expensive communal gift giving lately. It generally starts with me and at least one of my brothers calling to discuss an upcoming gift giving occasion. A budget is decided upon, usually by me, and someone is put in charge of procuring the gift, usually one of them because they’re generally closer to the recipient than I am. Finally, two weeks later, after the recipient has called to thank me for the extremely generous gift, the brother in charge calls me to tell me that I owe him three to ten times the agreed upon amount. I remind him that there’s a reason that I’d set a budget, that it has something to do with the fact that my job pays roughly half of what he makes and that I actually pay rent and utilities rather than living in our parents house while they are away, and I usually end up agreeing to pay about twice what I’d originally suggested. Yesterday’s request was about Christmas. They want to get a gift certificate for Mom and Dad to buy a new couch. And while that’s extremely generous and thoughtful and sweet of them, when I buy new couches, I spend $34 at the Goodwill. The brother who originally called passed the phone off to the other brother with an obvious air of “here, maybe you can talk sense to the crazy person.” I screamed some more and then explained my monthly budget in more detail than I’m sure he was interested in (though he did astoundedly ask “are you doing that math in your head?” Yes, I am you moron!). He tried to defend himself by explaining that they were just trying to give our parents a nice present since they’re paying for all of our trip to Ireland this Christmas. I told him that it was nice of them, but that I’d just have to come up with a thoughtful gift that is within my budget. I did apologize for screaming at him and told him that he’d pushed me over an edge that I’d been teetering on for quite a while and that I knew that he didn’t deserve it, but I’m not sure he got it. I abandoned the cleaning effort, left the implements wherever they’d landed, poured myself a glass of wine, and climbed into a hot bath until I felt like I was fit to be around people again. It was a very good choice. I’m feeling much better. There’s a very good chance that I will neither embarrass myself by bursting into tears in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner when someone asks if there's more gravy nor need to be bailed out of jail for assaulting my guests. Sometimes you just need to throw a fit I guess.