With steaming temps and standing pools of fetid water and everything dripping always, the New Bayou that is Vermont has done a number on our hair. Forced to pull mine back in a frizzy bun, I look like “Mother” in Pyscho.  Not sure what the Tunbridge World’s Fair theme is for 2013, but it could be The Year of the Insect…featuring slugs, skeeters, silverfish, giant ants, leggy fliers, and those mini-snails that destroy irises.  Spiders are building webs double-time. Even the moths seem diabolical—lurking doorside, waiting for a shot to jet in and eat your best fabric.  It’s like some TV movie from the 70s. Slug Slime Saboteur.  Revenge Of The Various Classes Of Insects.  Don’t Go In The Basement.

When I’m not obsessively checking my phone for storm updates or competing in catch-and-release firefly programs, I’m lying around lifeless, thinking deep thots to share with Dear Reader.  Thus was born Aggravation Theory.

Sure, nature occasionally goes nuts. Only, weather-wise, it does it all the time now.  I don’t believe nature is retaliating for petroleum use; it’s just aggravated. Aggravation Theory, a correlate of String Theory, says this: all matter is energetically connected and reactive to other matter. In this paradigm, violent weather is basically collateral damage; that is, when humans are constantly stressed—panicking about hiring freezes and elastic IRAs and tech menaces and global contagion and will we lose the house and can I work 24 hours a day to get the kids through college and and and and—we are vibrating at strung out, inharmonious rates. Through no fault of our own, really; anxiety is a logical place to go when overwhelmed by burdens and fears. In Aggravation Theory, anxiety makes for bad weather. Bad weather makes humans…even worse.

It reminds me of when in New York it was hot for so long that cockroaches crawled up to my 6^th floor apartment. I asked the exterminator why, since I’d never seen one in five years. He replied, “It’s their nervous systems. They’re aggravated. Doesn’t hot weather make you aggravated, Sweetheart?” Modern tymes are hard tymes. They rattle our nervous systems.  As do strangers using the denigrating “Sweetheart” versus the loving one, but I digress. We’re aggravated, and I think our unchecked anxiety is making the whole planet aggravated (which, to be clear, is not proper use of the word; to “aggravate” means “to make worse.”  Really, we’re all irritated. Or exasperated. Or probably losing it.)

Seeing people on Facebook scaling mountains, giving their antique roadsters a spin, and laughing broadly on power yachts isn’t helping any.  I say get the heck out of there. Avert your eyes. Hide the people with the full and easy lives. I don’t know how to, but I’m gonna learn.

Meanwhile, grab onto what little you have control over. Court sanity. When my house is a mess, I wig. Quit walking around piles! Take 10 minutes a week to relocate crap. Chuck it! Also, as adults, we have control over what we eat. If eating a greazy burger and a bucket of macaroni salad makes me happy, that’s exactly what I’m having.

Also worth considering: Luck Theory, which states that people are at birth assigned different kinds of luck. I have bar stool luck. Denise has parking luck. Ochre has baby luck. Jose has first tennis serve luck plus checkout aisle luck. Other lucks reported: celebrity sighting luck, husband luck, sea shell finding luck, hand-me-down luck (clothing), lucky timing (general), dental scheduling luck, and spider avoidance luck. What’s yours? Use it.

I have bad travel weather luck, but I do have a built-in Nutter Locator I make good use of. If I’m lost and need directions, my Nutter Locator leads me to the craziest loon in town. I don’t get the best directions that way, but I do get the best experience. So try, much as you can, to live right in your wheelhouse. Good parking luck? Drive people places. Bad travel weather luck? Stay home.  It makes other things go smoothly when you are unaggravated. And, right now, the entire planet could use your good mood. I know I could.

Your monthly good news is a laundry invention: Shout Advanced, a reported action gel…formulated for set-in stains. You’ll weep when the load is done, “It’s a miracle, Betty. It’s a miracle.”

Good luck in the swamp, Sweethearts. Remain calm. Stay right in your wheelhouse. Catch fireflies. Spread action gel over your entire life. Good day.