Should the world end on Dec. 21, as predicted by the usual crazies, I’ll at least be satisfied that my final year was anything but boring.

It’s actually been longer than a year since my life was last boring. I’m not sure it’s ever been really boring by normal people’s standards, but according to my scale things were pretty dull five years ago.

I was a journalist. My husband was an engineer. Our daughter, Lily, was a quiet, somewhat sociopath-like child who pooped on the potty at school but refused our potty at home. We fretted stupid things like furniture and televisions, year-end bonuses, vacation time … Life was comfortably stale, or it seems so looking back.

Now I’ve got two kids and a job that has nothing to do with journalism that doesn’t pay the bills. Jerod’s a general contractor, which looks good on paper. The hangup is a lot of people are deadbeats, and contractors can’t afford to sue them.

I don’t worry anymore about the furniture except in my fantasies when I win lottery and buy new-smelling sofas and super-plush carpet and stainless steel kitchen appliances. I lose sleep over big stuff like mortgage payments, electric bills, medical insurance, whether my husband will get paid this week, the leak in the roof, my job, the button that I sew and resew on the only pair of jeans that fit me, quitting smoking, not quitting smoking, and early-onset Alzheimer’s.

I’m finding it increasingly difficult to laugh things off as I usually do; and who am I if I’m not funny? I hate this anger that clamps down and won’t let go—the fever rage that infects your soul and breeds evil, little meth-smoking rage monster inside of you like a virus.

I’ve compiled this list of funny/not-funny-awful things I’m mad about to fill the menacing gap in my writing:

• I received a complaint that I say “vagina” too loud and too often—it makes people nervous.
• I started my period the day before Warrior Dash, a 3.5-mile obstacle course featuring hurdles, barbed wire, cargo nets, fire, and a mud pit.
• There’s gravel in my uterus.
• My father-in-law kicked me out of his house, and my husband went on eating dinner, smiling like nothing happened.
• I walked into the doctor’s office last week with a weird-looking bug bite on my head, and I walked out with a presumed case of lyme disease—presumed, because the doctor didn’t draw blood or do an impressive diagnostic dance. “No need to,” she told me. Apparently, if you catch it early, a strong dose of antibiotics stops the tick-born illness from ruining your life forever.
• My husband began a sentence, “I let you come home and write …”
• I hate lists.
• My mother’s thinking,”I told you to make a list about that make you happy.”
• The sunburn on my nose is pealing.
• A tall, hairy stranger tore my arm off and absconded with my funny bone.
• I didn’t get a picture of Bigfoot.