Snark Therapy

I've been in a particularly crummy mood the last few days. (Probably the last few weeks if you asked my husband, but you didn't and he's not available at the moment.) I've got a ton on my plate at work, I haven't been sleeping much, and when I do, I've not been sleeping well. And when I am tired, I get cranky. Really cranky. To be honest, I've kinda felt bad for the people who live with me these days. I try to be less cranky, less snarky, I really do. But it's like asking a hungry person to stop being hungry. Tired me = snarky me. It's just a fact of life that my poor, poor husband has to deal with.

Luckily, I have found a new form of therapy that is proving to be truly helpful. I'm calling it "Snark Therapy." It's based on some basic character "traits" that my husband has helped me identify:

• You really do have an opinion about everything, don't you?
• Do you have to criticize everything?
• Do you really need to share every criticism out loud?  

The answers to those questions are: yes, yes, and yes. (I know! You are totally wishing that you were my husband right now, aren't you?) Funny thing is, most of my criticism is directed at things I'm generally pretty happy with, things I enjoy, things I love. I don't view it as criticism so much as "room for improvement."

But since I know that my constant fault finding with all that is not quite perfect in our home gets really old really quickly, I have decided to turn my snarkiness toward the Internet, specifically Pinterest. (If you don't know what Pinterest is, it's basically a website where you can "pin" pictures from anywhere on the Internet. Pictures of things you love, places you want to go, books you want to read, words that inspire you, stuff you want to buy, etc. You just collect cool pictures, group them into pin "boards", and then look at other people's boards to see what cool stuff they've collected.)

At the peak of my grumpiness the other day, I created a new board: Snark. I haven't gone more than a few hours without pinning something to it since then. And let me tell you, this is working wonders for my mental state. I'm getting all the snark out of my system. I go back and look at the board and (yes this is true) I crack myself up. So then I not only have eliminated some of my snarkiness, but I've also smiled in the process as well.

What kind of things have I been snarking on? Well, here are a couple examples.

This thing is sweeping Pinterest. Really? How do you get into it? How do you get out? And that guy... really? He makes me want to get a really big pair of scissors.

Trust me, this is JUST what your guests want! They WANT to crawl around on the ground in your backyard so that you can prove, once again, that you can kick their ass at Scrabble.

Oh crap, ladies. Really? At this point I'm just going to assume that you WANT the world to hate you. The bodies, yes, we're all jealous. But the pose? We really just want to slap you now.

Now am I supposed to think that this is a great boat for displaying my pillows or that these pillows will look great in my boat?

Do I really need to tell you what the guy across the street thinks about the Hello Kitty townhouse?

Finally! I am so tired of having to keep my extra dryer in the living room!

Well, that's a sample. Gosh. I feel better even now and those aren't even new! Ahhhhhh. Oh this has definitely become my favorite board on Pinterest.Watch out people of Pinterest, the Internet, and the world: you may soon be snarked.

Psst. If you do end up on my snark board, there's a good chance that I really LOVE what's in the picture. For example, if you didn't hang that basket thing above a friggin' body of water, I would love to have it in my backyard... in case anyone is looking for my next Christmas gift. I would totally dig a backyard scrabble game. Those women, yes, I'd like to slap them, but I'd also let you slap me every day for the rest of my life if I could have either of their bodies. There are approximately three things in my house not from PotteryBarn, so if they decided to start selling that boat that they display their pillows in, I'd probably buy it, too. I'm not really sure what's going on with the three washers/dryers, but if I had that kind of money, I think I'd just pay to have my clothes laundered instead.

But the pink house.... yeah, that's just a crappy thing to do to the neighbors.

Anyway. I'm gonna keep on snarking. Feel free to follow along: My Pinterest Snark board.

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