Enjoying a good snit

The physical therapist handed me my cane, and I began to walk, not more shakily than usual I thought but no better either. “Why are you so unsteady this morning?”

“I’m in a snit,” I replied. Between the balance on 2016 taxes, the first quarterly payment on 2017, and the accountant’s fee, I had just paid out what seemed to me the family fortune. And, yes, I was in a snit about it.

“You can’t do anything about it,” she said. “You have to pay the taxes, so just forget it.”

That’s when I connected my snit with poor physical performance. Right or wrong, I don’t think we can just turn off our snits at will. It takes time to work through them, to let the facts that caused them fade into the past. And we aren’t at our best—physically, emotionally, whatever.

I actually did pretty well through much of the therapy session—astounded her by the way I could lift my left leg onto the stool, and she complimented me on the time I started to fall forward and caught myself. But then I caught my foot on the edge of a stool and for the first time since surgery fell with no control—fortunately, Ellen, the therapist, had a belt around me (I forget the name of those belts) and my chair was right behind me. But it scared me.

I don’t like to say we’re victims of our own moods—that sounds like a cop-out to me. But I do think our emotions on any given day govern our reactions, attitudes, the way we do our work, even the way we interact with others. Ever have a pissy day? Of course. We all have. We try not to let such days get the best of us, but they are a force to be reckoned with.

Tonight I’m more reconciled to the outlay of cash, but I’m edgy, out of sorts, not concentrating. I think it’s just one of those days. Tomorrow will be better.

And the tax problem? I blame it on what I now call my “golden hip.” I felt so awful most of 2016, in true pain, that I didn’t pay as much attention as usual to my writing. The result was my income was down not drastically but some, but so were my professional expenditures. Unwittingly, I made a larger profit than usual. Not all good news.

I laughed at Colin, my oldest and a CPA, who reviewed my taxes. “I was sorry to see your income was down. Let’s work on that this year, okay?”

There, my sense of humor is back.