{"id":468,"date":"2012-06-26T13:14:03","date_gmt":"2012-06-26T19:14:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/?p=468"},"modified":"2017-03-09T17:13:45","modified_gmt":"2017-03-09T22:13:45","slug":"an-inspired-meltdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2012\/06\/an-inspired-meltdown.html","title":{"rendered":"An Inspired Meltdown"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

We learned late last night that tropical storm Debby is slated to make landfall not today, as originally forecast, but Thursday.<\/p>\n

Thursday. That\u2019s three more days wind, rain, and kids being cooped up inside.<\/p>\n

I celebrated by picking a fight with the Ogre over inspirational YouTube videos.<\/p>\n

No, really, I did. We had a lovely dinner with some neighbors last night and the kids got some energy out of their systems, thank God, and when we were all home and the minions were snoring away, the Ogre said he wanted to show me something. He pulled up YouTube and I tried to suppress my knee-jerk \u201cI hate internet videos!\u201d reaction and worked really hard to pry my rusty, angry, cranky mind open and watch the video charitably.<\/p>\n

Then, on screen, people started running and my mind snapped shut like a friggin\u2019 Venus flytrap.<\/p>\n<\/iframe>\nHere\u2019s the thing about the Ogre: he loves inspirational videos. Especially physical ones, like videos of the Navy Seals or something.<\/p>\nI completely understand why my\u00a0 husband wanted to show me this video yesterday. He read my blog post, he knows I\u2019ve been having a hard time with the grey skies and rain, and he knows I\u2019ve just been down generally the last week or so. He wanted to cheer me up, so he found a video of someone falling flat on their face and then picking themselves up and kicking some ass and thought, \u201cThis is perfect! My wife could totally do that.\u201d<\/p>\nKey word in that last sentence being could<\/em>. Yeah, I could <\/em>do that. I could <\/em>pick myself up, tell the kids to put on their bathing suits, let them play outside in the torrential rain, then bring them in and spend the afternoon baking cookies and doing crafts. But what I\u2019m going <\/em>to do is put on an epic Lord of the Rings <\/em>marathon and stay in my pajamas and tell them to quit whining, because there are kids in third world countries who don\u2019t even know what a hobbit is. <\/em>And I\u2019m going to do that because of that stupid video, which made me feel like the world\u2019s biggest failure.<\/p>\nHere\u2019s the thing about me: I hate inspirational videos. Hate them. Inspirational videos make me feel like crap. I see someone pick themselves up from a face-plant and go on to win a race and I think, Yeah, awesome for her, but what about us <\/em>humans? If that were me, I\u2019d probably still be laying on my face on that track, years later, having only moved to limp pathetically to the nearest 7-11 for several hundred pints of Ben and Jerry\u2019s to console myself with. <\/em>Then I think, maybe that\u2019s just me, though. Maybe that\u2019s my problem. Maybe I\u2019m the only pathetic failure of a human being to ever exist, which is why I don\u2019t find inspirational videos inspirational. I don\u2019t experience moments of ass-kicking awesomeness in my reality, so I don\u2019t find it inspirational when other people do. Speaking of my reality, are we seriously out of ice cream again? <\/em><\/p>\nYou know what I do find inspirational? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/2012\/06\/sewn-shut-with-rusty-wire.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">Joanne\u2019s post from yesterday<\/a>. I read her post and actually felt cheerful for the first time in days. Look, self, <\/em>I told myself, other people fail too! Other people aren\u2019t perfect! Other people sin and get down in the dumps and have to go to confession too! Awesome! <\/em>And then I scheduled a time to go to confession and felt like dancing around to \u201cEye of the Tiger.\u201d<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/225\/2012\/06\/Eye-of-the-Tiger1.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-471 \" title=\"Eye of the Tiger\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/225\/2012\/06\/Eye-of-the-Tiger1-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"614\" height=\"346\"><\/a>\nI was trying to explain to the Ogre why it is that I find failure inspirational, and he began to look at me like I had grown another head. And as I was already a little cranky from being forced to sit through a YouTube video of people running, I had a slight<\/em> hormonal meltdown. The Ogre actually recorded it with his phone, much to my horror, so I can tell you that it went pretty much exactly like this:<\/p>\nI\u2019m tired of you always thinking you\u2019re right! I\u2019m tired of you thinking I\u2019m wrong and stupid for not liking your stupid inspirational videos! You\u2019re not always right, you know that? I don\u2019t care if you think you are, you\u2019re not! And even if you are right, I don\u2019t care! Because I\u2019m never going to find someone falling over and then winning a race inspirational! I\u2019m only inspired by the falling part! And I\u2019m not going to let you make me feel stupid anymore! I choose to feel good about myself! I choose to be happy! And I expect you to start making me feel good about myself! Like, now! Why are you laughing at me? <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\nBy the end, the Ogre was laughing so hard he was literally crying. He said it was because I immediately made the leap from, \u201cI choose to feel good about myself\u201d to \u201cso you better start making me feel good about myself\u201d, but I think it\u2019s probably because watching his enormous wife get angry over an inspirational video and then scream at him for no reason before having to try three times to get herself off the couch because she was too mad to ask for his help was <\/em>actually pretty funny.<\/p>\nAfter that, he asked if I was done yelling at him so he could watch Boston Legal. <\/em>I said I was done yelling, but I couldn\u2019t go to bed yet because I didn\u2019t feel triumphant, so could he please wait to turn the TV on until I had thought of a good parting insult?<\/p>\nI didn\u2019t get my insult in, obviously, because he started laughing again, and I was too impatient to wait for him to calm down.\u00a0 So I just went to bed. I feel much better today, though, and unbelievably, there are patches of blue sky showing outside. Which almost <\/em>makes up for the fact that Charlotte woke up at 2 am with croup.<\/p>\nNow I\u2019m off to educate my children in the ways of Middle-Earth, where I\u2019m pretty sure they never had to endure lame, week-long tropical storms. I would totally take orcs over this. Totally.<\/p>\nPS: If you put a link to an inspirational video in my combox, I will find you. I\u2019m not saying I\u2019d be a real threat once I did, since I\u2019m mostly only capable of waddling quickly and yelling irrationally at this point, but still. You\u2019ve been warned. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We learned late last night that tropical storm Debby is slated to make landfall not today, as originally forecast, but Thursday. Thursday. That\u2019s three more days wind, rain, and kids being cooped up inside. 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