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Yesterday Sarah Palin hit my car.

Okay, not really. But a perky, attractive, arrogant, brunette, middle-American 40-something woman turned left from the right lane yesterday and hit my front right fender. Her name was actually Peterson, but she, too, has five children.

I felt angry as her thoughtless driving instantly derailed my afternoonapos;s plans. And as soon as Ms. Peterson and I spoke, I disliked her "take charge" attitude. Generally speaking, I like a "take charge" attitude, but I couldnapos;t help but feel that as I was just barely detaining the scream of obscenities that I was so ready to fling at her, she was calculating how to turn the whole thing to her advantage.

I wasnapos;t hurt. My car is driveable, if dented. Ms. Peterson followed me to the police station where she insisted that she didnapos;t know there were two lanes going west, and that she was just sure that 47th was a four-lane road. Huh? I was still too angry, and working too hard to keep myself under control, to argue. I just told the police officer what had happened, as directly as possible.

This morning I was still really mad about the whole thing. Thatapos;s probably because I didnapos;t let Ms. Peterson have it yesterday. But I had to come up with some way to release all that pent-up emotion so it wonapos;t just eat at me all day.

My solution?

The compost pile. I donapos;t think I had previously appreciated just how satisfying it is to stab and twist a pitchfork into something over and over again. The yelling and cursing helped, too. About five minutes of that left me quite calm.

It reminds me of an email I got a few years ago when Fiji was in political upheaval. Some family friends who lived there wrote to say, "Weapos;re all right" In the email, the dad said his all-purpose cure for boredom, fear, anxiety, cabin fever and irritation was chopping wood. I get that now.

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