Sigh. This morning, Peg and I had the worst blow up at each other we've had in years.

We're OK. In the grand scheme of things it wasn't that bad. Sugarfoot scratched me up again (sigh), and while I was rushing to the bathroom in a panic to assess the damage, Peg thought it would be a good time to respond to my pleas that I was incredibly stressed by deliberately annoying me for "fun."

She... does that. She's got a contrarian streak like crazy. Like, she's the main model for Olivia in Parallax. If she's in the right mood, "Peggy, NO!" immediately and instinctively translates to "Peggy YES!"

And I lost it for a minute.

I'm actually real proud of myself. I maintained the presence of mind to get all my frustration and stress out vocally. No tableflipping, no self-harm, none of the dumb shit I used to do when I was living with Those People and at the constant brink of confusion, self-loathing, and worry.

It's amazing what a difference it makes, having a partner that will instantly support you when they stress you out -- instead of trying to analyze everything you've done for "solutions," or make it all about how YOU hurt THEM, even though you could have sworn you were the one who came to them with the plea that you were hurting.

The thing that really scared me is that we STILL had to deal with moving the freaking cats back to the kittenarium after that, and it unnerved the shit out of me, being near them and stressed and not 100% sure I was in full self-control.

Everything went okay. I didn't eat nobody. I feel like Sugarfoot even apologized in her way, and it's still really heartwarming and calming that the kittens will still settle in my lap and purr trustingly, even after the fourth time that day I'd been the Bad Guy and had to snatch them away from a toy* (read: "any object whatsoever, preferably a mildly dangerous and quasi-edible one we didn't know was there") and carry them back to their room.

Peg sat down with me and gave me an S-rank reassurance that I'm getting better and better at controlling these "caged tiger poked with stick" panics -- apparently the whole incident lasted all of three minutes, and I spent a bunch of it explaining I wasn't really mad, just really frustrated and overwhelmed.

Still. Then we wound up having a conversation about just how much of the household stuff -- dishes, cleaning, kitten adoption, Peg's *health insurance* -- has been falling by the wayside and how much it's stressing me out.

The cats are having a pretty profound impact on her, and she's apparently putting off major stuff because... well... every time we go from room to room a freakin' cat follows us and demands attention, and if we try to pick Sugarfoot up we gotta roll 1d4 and get bitten on a 1. :p

So right now my big thing is that I'm really torn between "OMG we gotta get these freakin cats out of here for Peg's sanity" and "OMG I saw Sugarfoot snuggling her kittens this morning, she's JUST NOT READY to see them disappear."

I feel like no matter what we do, someone I really care about is gonna get traumatized.