It's my blog, I can cry if I want to.

So I had one of those weird days - this thing happened, this (metaphorical) poke at a (metaphorical) sore spot I have that I thought was long since healed.

Turns out it isn't. It's still raw and oozing and didn't want to be poked at. It hurt, actually.

So on the way home I was thinking those negative thoughts, you know? The ones that say all the things you aren't, all the ways you have failed, all the ways in which you do not live up to the expectations you hold for yourself.

This happens to me all the freaking time.

When I get like this, I make a list. (I love lists; sometimes I will put something on a list that I've already done just so that I can have the pleasure of crossing it off.) The list I make when I'm feeling lost and lonely and like a big fat failure is the list of all the things I can do,  all the things I have accomplished, all the successes and the skills I have acquired over the years. The list includes the most mundane things: as long as I'm proud of my achievement, it goes on the list.

The list includes the following things:

• I can drive a standard. The person who poked me cannot. Na na na na na na. (Nobody said the list isn't childish)
• I can quiet a class of 32 grade 8 students without saying a word.
• I am the queen of the knitters. Herewith is evidence: the Citron shawl I knit for my gramma. It is fabulous, and by the end I was knitting a row of 437 teeny tiny stitches and not even feeling the urge for a stiff drink.

• I took up riding when I was 34. Not a lot of people do that, although my friend Holly knows a lady who started taking lessons when she was 65 and just did her first show at 72. And I'm not bad at it, either (especially now that I have cracked the canter).
• I own my house. Well, the bank owns it, actually, but they let me live here. Me, a single, unmarried person without a second income. They looked at me and though I was a good risk for a mortgage.
• I'm raising a boy child. On my own. I did not freak out (much) when I got pregnant, I did not run shrieking for the hills because it was not what I planned. I did not leave; I stayed and did my best and I didn't regret it for a moment. This boy here is my greatest achievement (even more than the canter, actually).

• I have three university degrees. Irritating person who irritates me? Oh, they have NONE.
• I make a mean pie. Any kind. Bring it on.
• I have some awesome friends, one of whom swears that she would totally throw herself on a bee for me. Totally.

And this irritating person, who drove me to publishing a self-aggrandizing list of the ways in which I am fabulous, they do not get to make me feel like less of a great person with one poke. I'm not going to let them.