Anger Management Fund Annual Report

Have you been wondering how my Anger Management Fund is doing? You should be; it's been over a year since I last mentioned it! Since the purchases I make with the Anger Management Fund are pretty much always clothing and accessories, I've been wanting to wait until I've actually used them and gotten a photo before blogging about them. But (I guess because they're generally also frivolous purchases of non-essential items with limited use), most of them are still sitting around unused. And since the list is getting pretty long and I'd like to pare it down, I might as well share its status.

Two and a half years after establishment, it's still doing its intended job. Not all the time—sometimes you just need to have a major conniption (like when you just drove 4 hours home from a weekend trip and all you want to do is relax, but instead you've found out that your robotic vacuum cleaner somehow shut itself down a mere foot from its base, apparently because it ran over its own power strip and turned it off, and thus utterly failed to make it into your bedroom, which is consequently still covered with dog fur and crumbs, which just reminds you of how the dog got into your food while you were at a rest stop and chewed up a nasty pastrami sandwich all over your coat, which is also, incidentally, covered with dog fur and now crumbs, and you still have to pull the laundry from the basement because you didn't have time to finish it before you left, and the kitchen, which was never tidy to begin with, now looks like a war zone because your boyfriend has decided that, instead of putting the recyclables in the recycle bin, which you just went through a lot of effort to empty after also cleaning your rabbit's cage, because heaven forbid that something could actually be clean and ready to use when you get home, he will scatter the recyclables all over the kitchen to supposedly recycle at some undisclosed point in the future!)

But for other, littler things, getting a few bucks as a consolation prize does help me calm down. I've been keeping a tally of what these little things are, and they are mostly minor annoyances that belong, essentially, to just 2 categories: Forgetting/losing things, and Minor accidents to my person/possessions.

Observe: From the summer of 2013 to the summer of 2014, I accumulated 5-dollar credits for each of the following annoying events (I also had a few odd bucks left over from my last Fund expenditures):

• For just missing the train and having to wait 10 minutes for the next one and being about 30 minutes late to my destination.
• For having to drive all the way home from halfway to the store to get a gift card I thought I'd left behind, only to find it stuck to the back of the cell phone I had taken with me.
• For walking into walls all day.
• For putting my phone on the charger all night before a trip only to find that the charger hadn't been plugged in.
• For leaving my bike basket and my cabbage in New Jersey.
• For forgetting to pick up bunny food from the grocery store.
• For the air bag light going on again a week after I took the car to the shop, after having gone off right before taking the car to the shop.
• For having to stop for traffic 6 times on my ride to work when usually it's only once.
• For wearing only high heels to walk to the bus (when usually I wear sneakers) on the one day the bus was early (thus missing the bus because I couldn't move fast enough).
• For spilling my cookies all over the floor and then finding my potted plant had spilled all over my bag and then spilling the dirt all over the floor while trying to clean it up.
• For one dress ruining itself and another dress in the washer thanks to dye transfer, when I'd never even gotten to wear the other dress, since I had spilled oil on it within 15 minutes of putting it on for the first time, and had spent the last three days patiently removing the oil stain.

And for all these tribulations, I bought myself:

This wild-looking swimsuit for $19.39. I have worn it, but only for a 30-minute jaunt in a hot tub. http://www.dresslily.com/solid-color-bikini-swimming-suit-product358218.html
 

A pair of fun fun fun thigh-high socks with rainbow on the top, for 5 dollars. Unfortunately, rainbow thigh-highs have proved the most unwearable accessory I've ever owned, since you can't wear thigh-highs to a rave (they'll fall down with all the dancing) but they're too crazy to wear anywhere else!
 

A hilarious crop top with cat and galaxy print for $12.05. It's pretty much the embodiment of tackiness, and I do have every intention of wearing this one to a rave. http://www.romwe.com/ROMWE-Galaxy-Cat-Print-Sleeveless-Black-T-shirt-p-79889-cat-669.html
 

This rainbow-colored, ultra-embellished, cat-covered (of course) hippie shoulder bag from a store in Pittsburgh, for 18 dollars. Fortunately, I don't have any trepidations about carrying crazy purses, so this one will probably be gracing my shoulder for the entire month of April!

As of today, the fund is still up 75 dollars and I'm feeling pretty happy. You hear that, fate? No more sending trouble my way, because I've had enough in the past to last me at least a few more purchases!