Gripe-Fest 2011

I'm feeling angry today and I'm not sure exactly why.  I feel impotent and ineffective.  So far today:

• I received news that a friend of mine from high school, who I haven't seen for probably 20 years, just lost her youngest son, 23, to a mysterious illness.  The visitation is tomorrow, two hours away in Lexington.  I'd like to go, both to support her and to connect with many of my old friends, but it would take a lot of time away from my job.
• Due to sleeping late and talking with another high school friend about my friend's tragedy, I didn't really start my eight hour work day until 12:15.  That always makes me feel stressed out, especially since I only logged 5 hours yesterday due to going to Lexington to (a) pick up Ally from the airport from France and (b) delivering Dad's birthday and Father's Day presents.
• Ally has had an earache for the past two weeks, so I made her an appointment to see her pediatrician this afternoon.  She hasn't switched to an adult doctor yet and the pediatrician says that kids often stay there until they're out of college.  Jeff wants to know, am I planning to take her to the appointment?  I hadn't planned on it -- she's almost 21 years old.  So, he decides that he's going to take her. For some reason that just makes me furious.  The way he coddles and over-protects her makes me crazy -- and I'm also afraid that it gives her the impression that I don't care about her as much as he does.  He's willing to drop huge responsibilities at a high-paying job to be by her side.  I won't be pulled away from my crappy $18/hour job to lend a hand. But she'll never learn to take care of herself if he won't trust her to do it.
• Jeff also wants to know what I have planned for this evening (code for "What's for dinner?).  Ally has been living on bread and cheese in France and wants some meat for dinner. 
• I had planned to make an Indian dish with chicken and rice -- Ally loves Indian -- but that's not good enough.  Jeff wants steak or ribs or something more meaty for her.  
• Kate is going to a friend's graduation party.  So, it's very likely that Jeff and Ally will be going out for a steak dinner together and I will be left at home to make up my work hours. 
• This also makes me mad.  Not so much because I'm left out -- I can't eat steak anyway -- but more because my plan was deemed inadequate and not sufficiently cognizant of Ally's needs.  
• I offered to make steak -- there's some in the freezer -- but he thinks the patio area is too dirty with rabbit stuff to do any cooking there without a major clean-up effort.  We didn't have any propane anyway.     

I suppose that's enough belly-aching for a while.  This is supposed to be a positive and uplifting blog, not a gripe-fest.  Sometimes, though, it helps to just get things off my chest and to crystalize a problem in words.