Big Girls Cry- and Laugh

I went to bed a bit grumpy last night. By this morning, the grumpy seed had grown into a cranky plant. I woke up cranky with a side of pissed off. I have no justification for the cranky, I just knew (and sort of still know) that the combination of my professional and personal lives was the equivalent of 2 tons of ammonium nitrate and about 200 gallons of fuel oil- and my kids' whining was the fuse to that was going to cause the whole thing to go up with a big, powerful kaboom. My first instinct was to try to tamp it down, pretend everything was fine, dig deep and let my husband (who is coming down with the first of what will be an unending stream of colds over the next 9 months) sleep. Then I remembered that I was Badass. Badass does not deny feelings. Badass lets them roll, even if they make other people uncomfortable- and that's just what I did. I informed my husband that his son was the engine on my crazy train and that I needed to get off at the next station. I groused and I snarked (though the snark was largely muttered in multi-syllabic words that neither kid would understand) and I felt...better. Oddly enough, the cranky didn't take over, it didn't drive me to open a bottle of scotch before 9:30. It evaporated. Within a couple of hours, I was laughing myself silly (in a vaguely unprofessional way) at the overwhelming amount of work I'm trying to accomplish. Which is also badass. Badass says "Hello stress. It's about damn time you showed up, with your adrenalin-fueled problem solving power and your slightly inappropriate sense of humor. Let's get to work."

The Badass is not one dimensional. She does not default to a single, cranky worldview. She is not universally cynical, angry, hostile or nasty- though one might not be surprised to experience any of these when in orbit around the Badass. She is also not all funny or kind or generous. She is a complete person, with a complete range of emotions and feelings- some comfortable and pleasant and some...less so.