I don’t know why I am so irritated these days. And when I am irritated I feel like a bad person. And then I stop writing. Because who wants to read the writing of an irritated person? Who would even want to be around such a person? Why would anyone do that willingly?

So I guess, in a sense, I am performing a service by not writing. I am being humane.

Not that this make makes me a better person. Being humane has nothing to do with with being a person, good or bad. Being humane has nothing to do with being human.

So according to my criteria, dogs are probably far more humane than humans. Dogs are not at the mercy of their moods. Dogs would never feel that the world is conspiring against them. Dogs do not see through a lens of negativity. Dogs are there for us no matter what. Dogs only want the best for us. For anyone who questions this, I suggest watching Laurie Anderson’s Heart of a Dog.

Now I am even more irritated, not because I am not Laurie Anderson (although that has been a problem), not because I am not a dog (which might be another problem) but because I briefly lost my internet connection at the hotel from where I write in Rochester Minnesota on the eve of a venogram of my clogged hepatic artery. I guess that might have some relationship to my present state of irritation. But a dog would not let this get to him or her.

Or maybe because it took me 12 hours to travel here from Boston. A delayed flight leading to missing a connecting flight and waiting in an airport for 4 hours. And then the 90 minute ride on the shuttle bus from Minneapolis to Rochester, sitting next to this woman talking loudly on her cell phone for 89 of those minutes in a language I think was Nigerian. But I am glad I could not understand what she was saying because perhaps I may have felt more irritated if I did understand. AndI would have felt very un-dog-like.

And then once I arrived at my hotel, I went to the hotel’s restaurant and I was standing there for over a minute, waiting to be noticed by the host or waitstaff. and the longer I waited, the more irritated I felt, and then looking around the restaurant, the ambiance felt sadder and sadder with each passing minute. And then I left. And found another restaurant that was far more welcoming and less sad. But I could not escape my irritation when my server kept asking me if how I liked the food and I could not answer because I was in mid-swallow. And this happened 3 or 4 times. And I could not wait to leave.

And I guess the universe might not want me to write about this because I have once again lost my internet connection at the sad hotel from where I write.

(10 minutes later)

I am back. Thanks for waiting. It was very kind of you to wait. I hope to one day be as kind as you because I notice I become irritated when I am kept waiting. If I could be a little kinder, that would go a long way.

The challenge for tomorrow’s venogram will be to get beyond the irritation I can sense I will have with the whole experience. I’m already irritated that I must get up at 5:00 a.m. And this is one of those procedures where they do not allow you to leave the hospital unaccompanied. And then I get irritated at the hospital because they seem to forget that some of us do not have partners or family or friends who are available to accompany us out of the hospital. So we are stuck there. Waiting. Instead resting comfortably in our hotel rooms. Even though we probably will not rest because we will be back at our computers unable to check our email because the connection is down.

But a dog could never have written the paragraph above. But a dog would never think  of us less lovingly or kindly for having written it.