My neighbor let her dog use my lawn as a toilet every morning for six months and never cleaned up once — I stayed polite until she made one comment I couldn’t forget, and by the next morning I’d taught her a lesson without raising my voice once.

There is a very specific kind of satisfaction that comes from knowing exactly what you are going to do.

Not the loud satisfaction of starting an argument.

Not the temporary rush of saying something cruel in the heat of the moment.

I mean the quiet kind.

The kind that settles deep inside you after you have tolerated something for far too long and finally figure out how to make your point so clearly that nobody can reasonably accuse you of overreacting.

I set my alarm for 7:15.

Marguerite usually