I hit a tree tonight.

I find it interesting, and not at all surprising, that bad "accidents" happen when I'm angry or in a foul mood. The mood has to be particularly foul to fall into the categories of "interesting bad accident" correlation, but many negative emotions certainly fit.

For example, when I lost 85% of my hearing.

I had come downstairs one morning and wandered into the kitchen, when I noticed my roommate had left all the kitchen cabinet door open again. He was always leaving the cabinet doors open, and it drove me nuts.

Now, in retrospect, why kitchen cabinet doors being open would be annoying is beyond me. Maybe at the time it annoyed me like toliet seats being left up (though, for the record, I prefer toliet seats being left up to toliet seats being urinated on), I don't know. But it annoyed me.

And so, in a fit of anger, I slammed each and every cabinet door.

Wham!

Wham!

Wham! Wham!

A week later, I was in the doctor's office for a hearing test. I had lost 85% of my hearing in my left ear, and 20% in my right ear.

I used to have really good hearing, being able to hear -/+ seven kHz over normal hearing range. Now, when it's quiet, I hear ringing. In that fit of anger, I managed to induce tinitus in my left ear. The first year of the ringing was very difficult.

"You'll get used to it."

"It's not so bad, at least you can hear."

"Don't worry, it'll go away sometimes."

Didn't quite work out that way. Now, when it's very quiet, say on a mountain hike, and someone comments, "Wow, listen to how quiet it is," I can only wish I could hear the silence.

Because the hum is always with me.

But, back to the tree.

The hitting of the tree was one way to snap me out of the semi-bad mood. Especially with police officer looking over at me when the crunch happened.

That I hit the tree at all was a surprise to me (well, d'uh, I wouldn't have hit it in the first place if I had seen it), because I make it a point to never drive when I'm in a foul mood. I'm responsible for two thousand pounds of machinery that can cause serious injury to people around me, to property around me, and to me. One of the last things I want to do is cause damage because I wasn't in control of that vehicle. Just as using the phone while driving is bad, driving in a bad mood is bad. And I don't like to do it.

So, now, I've gone and hit a tree. The only thing I've damaged is my own property, and that's good. The tree was fine, if a bit scratched. It's a good wake up call. Expensive, but good.

A wake up call to lower the level as to what is an acceptable "bad mood," and don't drive if I'm in that mood.

Wake. Up. Call.

Update: Oh, yeah. The human body heals well when you let it. My hearing has recovered to the range of normal hearing. I wear earplugs when I head out to loud places now (say, like dancing on Saturday nights), and carry around a pair in my backpack pretty much everywhere I go. I still have the ringing when it's quiet, but I can hear fairly well now. Well, except if you speak in a fast English accent. Then I have trouble comprehending what the heck you just said.

Five pounds of salmon, just over four pounds of unbleached flour, six cooks, two couches, four salsas, one pound of beef, five avocados, two heads of lettuce, two cups of organic, trans-fat free shortening, five bags of frozen peppers, two lemons, four onions from three different people, one cup of olive oil, four and a half cups of boiling water, one pair of pliers for pulling salmon bones, twenty delicious cupcakes, one cake, six bottles of wine, two dishwasher loads, six pans, seventeen guests, one mom, two fat but happy dogs, one pregnant lady and one fake blog post later, we have one successful communal dinner.

I have won the ever prestigious 2005 SBW Award! I will be forever honored for this award!

From Megan's site, I received the news:

2005 SBW Awards

I just wanted to pass the title of Smallest Bladder in the World back to the lovely and talented Kitt. My bladder really hasn't been that bad lately, and she's right, her bladder is dinky. So here you go, Kitt. You are now the reigning SBW queen.

I am so honored! I'm so excited! I've never won such an amazing award before! Oh, thank you, Megan, for passing the torch (walnut?) to me!

If I hand you my car keys in, say, a car swap for the weekend, or, to let you borrow my car for some reason, don't change the radio stations. Really, it's for only a weekend.

But, if you absolutely must reset the radio stations because my selection of NPR, modern crap and 70's-80's-and-90's crap don't meet your expectations, don't return the car without the stations reset back to my settings.

And for goodness sake, don't leave it set on some All-Religion-All-the-Time station. Or leave three of the five buttons set on Spanish stations when 1. I know you don't speak Spanish, and 2. none of them are my one favorite local Spanish station.

Not that any of my car-swapping friends would actually do such a thing.

Doyle.

Today at work, I wandered over to the bag of trail mix I had brought in last week. The mix contains almonds, cashews, peanuts, raisins, and plain m & ms. Kris bought it for me for Regionals last week, but it was a Costco purchase and I had a lot left over.

So, I opened the bag, peered in, and started picking out the chocolate and almonds. About three almonds later, Doyle said, "Hey! No picking out the almonds and chocolate. Eat it all."

Did I mention I hate raisins?

I like other dried fruit, dried cranberries being my favorite. But not raisins.

I was reminded of two events when I heard Doyle's voice.

The first was of my grandparents, and a road trip with them and the rest of my family. I have no idea where we went, I'd guess Colorado, but have no idea if that's correct. We were sitting in their hotel room, I was sitting on the bed. The room was of orange/red decor.

I was eating the chocolate out of the trail mix, and my grandmother was upset about it. "Eat the peanuts!" she admonished.

Ugh. Peanuts.

I compromised and would eat a peanut with an m & m. That was about the right proportions.

That memory was similar enough to the experience with Doyle that remembering it would be completely expected. But as I looked at Doyle, and continued to eat the almonds and chocolate out of the trail mix bag, I remembered when I was 24 and went grocery shopping with Roland, my then boyfriend.

We were in the cereal aisle, looking for tomorrow morning's breakfast. Halfway down the aisle, Roland turned to me and asked, "What cereal do you want?"

"Cheerios," I answered, reaching for the biggest box.

"Why do you want Cheerios? How about a sugar cereal?"

I turned to look at him.

"Oh, no, my mother doesn't allow sugar cereal in the house."

blink

blink blink

"And you're how old?"

Warning: guaranteed ramble that you can safely skip.

No, really.

"You have more gray hair up there than I realized. I never noticed it before."

Hmph.

I've been amazed at the number of people who have commented about reading this site. I don't think I can count you on one hand any longer (Kris, John, Megan, Mike, Paul - and two of you were because I insisted). Warren said today that he's been feeling a little gypped with the posts as of late, they being short and not very informative.

To which I respond, "That's because you haven't been logged in reading the good stuff, Warren."

Since this site is more for me than for you, not everything is publicly viewable. There are chunks of my life I'm happy to share with my friends and family, but I'm really not interested in telling some random person I don't know.

This is probably the fundamental difference between my introvert personality and, say, an confirmed extrovert's personality. I'm completely enjoying the "social web" and participating the various social network sites. Some are completely entertaining, some have become stale, some are tools but still networks, and the world it opens up, meeting lots of new and interesting (fascinating!) people, working on projects I wouldn't have imagined four months ago.

The whole concept of being able to learn the arc of a recently-met person's life is fascinating, if not a little (a lot?) voyeuristic. Google and Yahoo! are certainly a starting point, but you can also walk through various websites, reading someone's life for the last few years, if they've been putting it out there. (Sorry, Andy, you were an easy target and a clear example of how you can learn about a person's last few years quite easily.)

Fundamentally, a large part of me still resists putting information out there. Resists sharing even though I think this stuff is cool.

And part of me fears losing my voice here. Fears I might start worrying about what "they" might think. Might stop writing as if I'm talking to myself, and start talking to you instead.

I know there's enough information on this site for someone to destroy my life. As Andy puts it, "I could destroy your world. I know enough about how you react to situations to ruin your life. Fortunately, I'm not interested in destroying worlds." How lucky for me.

But it's true: there's enough information to find me, enough information to know what my buttons are and plenty enough to know how to push them. There's enough information to make my life a living hell.

But, I guess I have to trust that won't happen. That the people who read this site are my friends, or at least people who know me somewhat or some way. If I've met you before, then, "Hey! Drop me a line if you haven't recently. If I haven't met you, introduce yourself.

I won't bite.

Too hard.

Reading this from Bloglines or blogher? I'm sorry if this makes no sense. You're not my "target audience," so all of this may be completely boring.

Hell, it's boring for me, and I wrote it.

I'd say "I'm sorry," but I don't know you, and have no reason to feel anything (positive or negative) there.

Eh.