Is self-flagellation a defense mechanism or just very smart manipulation?

I had my dermatologist's appointment today. First, before the funny, my atypical cells are not a concern. The margins were free of anything bad so I'm relegated to frequent check-ups and nothing more. Yay me!

But getting to my appointment, oy! (And I'm not even Jewish).

First, I want to preface that I'm one of those ridiculously early people. I do not like to be late. Being late, and running late, raises my blood pressure to ridiculously high levels and I prefer to not stroke out on the way to commitments. This means I usually plan my trips accordingly. Today I needed to be at the dermatologist at 320 so it being an hour trip, I had to leave no later than 220. I grew engrossed in an article I was reading, we had already finished our work for the day and the two children left were finishing their math. Bradley walks in and says, "What are you still doing here? Didn't you have to leave?" I glance up from my reading and sight on the clock. 216. Ruh-roh raggy. You're probably thinking what's wrong, that's plenty of time...but no, it really isn't. Not when you forgot to write down the street address to oldest son's piano teacher since Dad was stepping into the Mom Taxi shoes and you have to a)dig through an email inbox that has less order than entropy and b)scribble said address down c)put on shoes d)find wallet -- left in the office from the scramble to pay a forgotten bill the day before and e)write down the titles for the books you wanted to look for at Barnes and Nobles and f)guzzle some water because it's of course when I'm walking out the door that I'm struck by how thirsty I am!

I pull out of the drive at 236. I look at the gas guage. It takes 1/4 of a tank for the round trip. I have 1/4 of a tank. Great. I'll need to fill up but there was no time en route so that got set aside for when I was coming home.

Newton's first law is that objects in motion tend to stay in motion...except when you're running late for an appointment. I hit every. Single. Red. Light. I even ran one; I swear, completely unintentionally as it was either run the blasted thing or brake and wind up with the nose of the car half-in the intersection and then I'd just look like a total dweeb and have to reverse, holding everybody up anyway. Really, running it was the less painful option. And in this world of "blame everyone else", it was the semi-truck's fault in front of me, for a) being so slow I had to tailgate in the first place and b)hauling a trailer high enough that it blocked my line of sight for the traffic light!

All that stress and I could just feel the veins in my head beginning to pulse. I wind up getting there only three minutes late. I go back. One hour of driving like Andretti equaled less than five minutes of getting stitches removed, and for the record, it hurts far worse than the punch biopsy. I told the nurse that. I don't think she appreciated it. At least I didn't say something like, "Hey, why don't you just rip it out really fast, like a band-aid, instead of drawing out every ounce of burning pain, every time you tug so not-delicately on my not-quite-healed wound!"

The good news, I went from there straight to Barnes and Nobles. This is always something to cheer up the soul. My goal: Choose Your Own Adventure books for Jacob, a new Case Closed novel for Bradley, a vague idea to buy something for Ben and Mike that actually requires reading, two coffees from Starbucks and a request from Ben to get him a, "Lemonade!"

I also had a book I was looking for. Refined to Real Food: Moving Your Family To Healthier, Wholesome Eating. This is yet another desperate attempt to eliminate all that extra sugar, preservatives -- there is definitely something disturbing when you consider there are foods on supermarket shelves that will live far longer than you will -- and to steer our diets into a habit that just might let us live a few years longer, all things considered.

I browsed the science fiction section. It's mandatory, every trip. I'm sorry. I have no excuse. It's just a compulsion. However, I did walk away without succumbing to an impulse buy. I already have a backlog of ten or more books to read and have told myself no more until I catch up. Period. ::sigh::

One manga novel, book 18, as they were out of 16 and 17. Manga is annoying, but at least Bradley chose a series that is big on logic and problem solving. All is not lost, and hey, the book is written in typical Japanese style, the back is the front, so that counts as a little bit of cultural exposure!

I found the Choose Your Own Adventure books and pulled out the next in the series. Jake has read all the Series of Unfortunate Events and latched onto these. Not exactly grade level for him but he reads plenty in our school day so it doesn't fall into the "big deal" radar. The down side is, the last time I bought these they were like $4. Now they've jumped to $6, and I'm sorry, these books just aren't thick enough to warrant $6. I buy two and resent the publishing industry the entire time I'm browsing.

Now I'm thinking what can I get Ben. I briefly consider the Captain Underpants series. My oldest got a couple of these in public school and liked them. I, of course, couldn't stand them. Talk about waste of paper. Yes, it's a personal thing, but the exposure to crass pop culture abounds as it is, why shove it in through yet another route? I set the book down and continued on. Eragon. Huh. He loved the movie, so, I added it to my arms and carried on. Mike is a hard one. He likes to read technical manuals or theory. He loves to program graphics. Oh, hey, we'd talked about getting him started on html! I wander over to the computer section and stare uncertainly at the plethora of HTML, CSS, and XTML! I call hubby, the computer geek. He says no on the CSS, "Just go with plain html, start simple." Okay, problem is, almost all the books combine the programming styles. I find one that looks visually appealing while not being a "4 dummies" as hubby also said those are atrocious and don't really teach anything. I'll let you know if we actually get programming from this or yet more viruses on the family PC. He currently infects it at about a rate of 2.3333333 times a month. Possibly more, we only know when we get errors and pop-ups. We've said repeatedly, "No, you won't really win that ipod and no, if you click there, you won't get a new xbox 360, so PLEASE, STOP CLICKING!"

After all that, my healthier us book is out of stock. The nice lady placed the order for me and it'll arrive at my house eventually. I forgot to ask when. Seeing how I've recently purchased The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin, Dear America The Winter of Red Snow, Apples Daily Spelling Drills for Secondary Students and Apples Phonics Review for Secondary Students and one plush Mario coin block (complete with sounds, aren't I lucky!), it's not like I'm going to care at this point. I do a lot of shopping online at any one time I usually have something on the way.

So, now I'm ready to leave. My phone rings. It's Bradley.

He says, "Where are you?"

"Barnes and Nobles."

"Oh."

"I got you book 18."

He sounds a little excited, "Okay." Then he kind of makes a huff, "Can you talk to Ben? He's crying and calling himself a stupid child."

I frown. "Put him on."

Sobbing child comes on. Lady standing in front of me is finished being checked out. I ask Ben, "What's wrong."

Sobbing. ::sigh:: Ben is known as Emo!Ben in our house. He's Mr. Sensitive. Mr. I -can-cry-at-the-drop-of-a-hat and Mr. Some day I will win an Oscar. I tell him, "I'll call you right back." If he was dying, Brad would've told me. I pay the nice lady and head over to order my coffees. I grab the lemonade. I order a venti cafe mocha with whip cream and a venti carmel machiatto with whip cream. The chocolate's for me, the carmel, for hubby. The venti is for my earlier close call with a stroke. I see the nice, cute halloween specialty gummi worms and toss them next to the lemonade. Boys like gross. It's a little contagious.

Then, while I wait for my brain juice and valium in a paper cup, I call back and ask Brad to put Ben on the phone. Dad is driving Jake to his lessons and Mike is on babysitting duty though they're all at an age where there isn't a clear cut chain of command when we're gone. Not so long as Mom is 7-pushed numbers away.

Ben gets on and the sobbing is gone. Like it never ever existed. I press and remind him he mentioned something about "break" and he tells me how when he opened the refrigerator, one of the shelves on the door fell off. Ah. I ask, a little apprehensively, "Is there any broken glass on the floor?"

"No."

"Oh, okay then. No big deal. It happens all the time. Any other major catastrophes or is that your quota for the day..." Okay, I didn't say that last part, but I thought it!

I'm still trying to figure out how the youngest child has learned the best way to deal with Things That Might Make Mom Mad. He berates himself, cries, then waits for the comfort. Did I mention future Oscar winner here?

Fortunately for him, I encourage their extracurricular activities.